She took a step closer to him. “Hold still.”

Wariness leapt into the depths of his brown eyes, but he froze.

He smelled of leather and wood shavings, and hot, sun-warmed male. She brushed her fingers against the blade of his cheekbone, feeling warm, smooth skin.

At her touch their gazes clashed and the wariness in his eyes shifted instantly to something else, and for a moment she forgot what she was doing, her fingers frozen on his skin.

“You, um, had a little bit of sawdust on your cheek. I didn’t want it to find its way into your eye.”

“Thanks.” She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not but his voice sounded decidedly hoarse.

She forced a smile and stepped back, though what she really wanted to do was wrap her arms fiercely around his warm, strong neck and hold on for dear life.

“You’re welcome,” she managed.

RAEANNE THAYNE

finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honours, including a RITA® Award nomination from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times BOOKreviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www. raeannethayne.com or at PO Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341, USA.

His Second-Chance Family

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the staff and donors of The Sunshine Foundation, for five days of unimaginable joy. Sometimes wishes do come true!

Chapter One

As signs from heaven went, this one seemed fairly prosaic.

No choir of angels, no booming voice from above or anything like that. It was simply a hand-lettered placard shoved into the seagrass in front of the massive, ornate Victorian that had drifted through her memory for most of her life.

Apartment For Rent.

Julia stared at the sign with growing excitement. It seemed impossible, a miracle. That this house, of all places, would be available for rent just as she was looking for a temporary home seemed just the encouragement her doubting heart needed to reaffirm her decision to pack up her twins and take a new teaching job in Cannon Beach.

Not even to herself had she truly admitted how worried she was that she’d made a terrible mistake moving here, leaving everything familiar and heading into the unknown.

Seeing that sign in front of Brambleberry House seemed an answer to prayer, a confirmation that this was where she and her little family were supposed to be.

“Cool house!” Maddie exclaimed softly, gazing up in awe at the three stories of Queen Anne Victorian, with its elaborate trim, cupolas and weathered shake roof. “It looks like a gingerbread house!”

Julia squeezed her daughter’s hand, certain Maddie looked a little healthier today in the bracing sea air of the Oregon Coast.

“Cool dog!” Her twin, Simon, yelled. The words were barely out of his mouth when a giant red blur leaped over the low wrought-iron fence surrounding the house and wriggled around them with glee, as if he’d been waiting years just for them to walk down the beach.

The dog licked Simon’s face and headbutted his stomach like an old friend. Julia braced herself to push him away if he got too rough with Maddie, but she needn’t have worried. As if guided by some sixth sense, the dog stopped his wild gyrations and waited docilely for Maddie to reach out a tentative hand and pet him. Maddie giggled, a sound that was priceless as all the sea glass in the world to Julia.

“I think he likes me,” she whispered.

“I think so, too, sweetheart.” Julia smiled and tucked a strand of Maddie’s fine short hair behind her ear.

“Do you really know the lady who lives here?” Maddie asked, while Simon was busy wrestling the dog in the sand.

“I used to, a long, long time ago,” Julia answered. “She was my very best friend.”

Her heart warmed as she remembered Abigail Dandridge and her unfailing kindness to a lonely little girl. Her mind filled with memories of admiring her vast doll collection, of pruning the rose hedge along the fence with her, of shared confidences and tea parties and sand dollar hunts along the beach.

“Like Jenna back home is my best friend?” Maddie asked.

“That’s right.”

Every summer of her childhood, Brambleberry House became a haven of serenity and peace for her. Her family rented the same cottage just down the beach each July. It should have been a time of rest and enjoyment, but her parents couldn’t stop fighting even on vacation.

Whenever she managed to escape to Abigail and Brambleberry House, though, Julia didn’t have to listen to their arguments, didn’t have to see her mother’s tears or her father’s obvious impatience at the enforced holiday, his wandering eye.

Her fifteenth summer was the last time she’d been here. Her parents finally divorced, much to her and her older brother Charlie’s relief, and they never returned to Cannon Beach. But over the years, she had used the image of this house, with its soaring gables and turrets, and the peace she had known here to help center her during difficult times.

Through her parents’ bitter divorce, through her own separation from Kevin and worse. Much worse.

“Is she still your best friend?” Maddie asked.

“I haven’t seen Miss Abigail for many, many years,” she said. “But you know, I don’t think I realized until just this moment how very much I’ve missed her.”

She should never have let so much time pass before coming back to Cannon Beach. She had let their friendship slip away, too busy being a confused and rebellious teenager caught in the middle of the endless drama between her parents. And then had come college and marriage and family.

Perhaps now that she was back, they could find that friendship once more. She couldn’t wait to find out.

She opened the wrought-iron gate and headed up the walkway feeling as if she were on the verge of something oddly portentous.

She rang the doorbell and heard it echo through the house. Anticipation zinged through her as she waited, wondering what she would possibly say to Abigail after all these years. Would her lovely, wrinkled features match Julia’s memory?

No one answered after several moments, even after she rang the doorbell a second time. She stood on the porch, wondering if she ought to leave a note with their hotel and her cell phone number, but it seemed impersonal, somehow, after all these years.

They would just have to check back, she decided. She headed back down the stairs and started for the gate again just as she heard the whine of a power tool from behind the house.

The dog, who looked like a mix between an Irish setter and a golden retriever, barked and headed toward the sound, pausing at the corner of the house, head cocked, as if waiting for them to come along with him.

After a wary moment, she followed, Maddie and Simon close on her heels.

The dog led them to the backyard, where Julia found a couple of sawhorses set up and a man with brown hair and broad shoulders running a circular saw through a board.

She watched for a moment, waiting for their presence to attract his attention, but he didn’t look up from his work.

“Hello,” she called out. When he still didn’t respond, she moved closer so she would be in his field of vision and waved.

“Excuse me!”

Finally, he shut off the saw and pulled his safety goggles off, setting them atop his head.

“Yeah?” he said.

She squinted and looked closer at him. He looked familiar. A hint of a memory danced across her subconscious and she was so busy trying to place him that it took her a moment to respond.

“I’m sorry to disturb you. I rang the doorbell but I guess you couldn’t hear me back here with the power tools.”

“Guess not.”

He spoke tersely, as if impatient to return to work, and Julia could feel herself growing flustered. She had braced herself to see Abigail, not some solemn-eyed construction worker in a sexy tool belt.

“I…right. Um, I’m looking for Abigail Dandridge.”

There was an awkward pause and she thought she saw something flicker in his blue eyes.

“Are you a friend of hers?” he asked, his voice not quite as abrupt as it had been before.

“I used to be, a long time ago. Can you tell me when she’ll be back? I don’t mind waiting.”

The dog barked, only with none of the exuberance he had shown a few moments ago, almost more of a whine than a bark. He plopped onto the grass and dipped his chin to his front paws, his eyes suddenly morose.

The man gazed at the dog’s curious behavior for a moment. A muscle tightened in his jaw then he looked back at Julia. “Abigail died in April. Heart attack in her sleep. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”

Julia couldn’t help her instinctive cry of distress. Even through her sudden surge of grief, she sensed when Maddie stepped closer and slipped a small, frail hand in hers.

Julia drew a breath, then another. “I…see,” she mumbled.

Just one more loss in a long, unrelenting string, she thought. But this one seemed to pierce her heart like jagged driftwood.

It was silly, really, when she thought about it. Abigail hadn’t been a presence in her life for sixteen years, but suddenly the loss of her seemed overwhelming.

She swallowed hard, struggling for composure. Her friend was gone, but her house was still here, solid and reassuring, weathering this storm as it had others for generations.

Somehow it seemed more important than ever that she bring her children here.

“I see,” she repeated, more briskly now, though she thought she saw a surprising understanding in the deep blue of the man’s eyes, so disconcertingly familiar. She knew him. She knew she did.

“I suppose I should talk to you, then. The sign out front says there’s an apartment for rent. How many bedrooms does it have?”

He gave her a long look before turning away to pick up another board and carry it to the saw. “Three bedrooms, two of them on the small side. Kitchen’s been redone in the last few months and the electricity’s been upgraded but the bathroom plumbing’s still in pretty rough shape.”

“I don’t care about that, as long as everything works okay. Three bedrooms is exactly the size my children and I need. Is it still available?’

“Can’t say.”

She pursed her lips. “Why not?”

He shrugged. “I don’t own the place. I live a few houses down the beach. I’m just doing some repairs for the owners.”

Something about what he said jarred loose a flood of memories and she stared at him more closely. Suddenly everything clicked in and she gasped, stunned she hadn’t realized his identity the instant she had clapped eyes on him.

“Will? Will Garrett?”

He peered at her. “Do I know you?”

She managed a smile. “Probably not. It’s been years.”

She held out a hand, her pulse suddenly wild and erratic, as it had always been around him.

“Julia Blair. You knew me when I was Julia Hudson. My parents rented a cottage between your house and Brambleberry House every summer of my childhood until I was fifteen. I used to follow you and my older brother Charlie around everywhere.”

Will Garrett. She’d forgotten so much about those summers, but never him. She had wondered whether she would see him, had wondered about his life and where he might end up. She never expected to find him standing in front of her on her first full day in town.

“It’s been years!” she repeated. “I can’t believe you’re still here.”

At her words, it took Will all of about two seconds to remember her. When he did, he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t seen it before. He had yearned for Julia Hudson that summer as only a relatively innocent sixteen-yea-rold boy can ache. He had dreamed of her green eyes and her dimples and her soft, burgeoning curves.

She had been his first real love and had haunted his dreams.

She had promised to keep in touch but she hadn’t called or answered any of his letters and he remembered how his teenage heart had been shattered. But by the time school started a month later, he’d been so busy with football practice and school and working for his dad’s carpentry business on Saturdays that he hadn’t really had much time to wallow in his heartbreak.

Julia looked the same—the same smile, the same auburn hair, the same appealing dimples—while he felt as if he had aged a hundred years.

He could barely remember those innocent, carefree days when he had been certain the world was his for the taking, that he could achieve anything if only he worked hard enough for it.

She was waiting for a response, he realized, still holding her hand outstretched in pleased welcome. He held up his hands in their leather work gloves as an excuse not to touch her. After an awkward moment, she dropped her arms to her side, though the smile remained fixed on her lovely features.

“I can’t believe you’re still here in Cannon Beach,” she repeated. “How wonderful that you’ve stayed all these years! I remember how you loved it here.”

He wouldn’t call it wonderful. There were days he felt like some kind of prehistoric iceman, frozen forever in place. He had wondered for some time if he ought to pick up and leave, go anywhere, just as long as it wasn’t here.

Someone with his carpentry skills and experience could find work just about any place. He had thought about it long and hard, especially at night when the memories overwhelmed him and the emptiness seemed to ring through his house but he couldn’t seem to work past the inertia to make himself leave.

“So how have you been?” Julia asked. “What about family? Are you married? Any kids?”

Okay, he wasn’t a prehistoric iceman. He was pretty certain they couldn’t bleed and bleed and bleed.

He set his jaw and picked up the oak board he was shaping for a new window frame in one of the third-floor bedrooms of Brambleberry House.

“You’ll have to talk to Sage Benedetto or Anna Galvez about the apartment,” he said tersely. “They’re the new owners. They should be back this evening.”

He didn’t quite go so far as to fire up the circular saw but it was a clear dismissal, rude as hell. He had to hope she got the message that he wasn’t interested in any merry little trips down memory lane.

She gave him a long, measuring look while the girl beside her edged closer.

After a moment, she offered a smile that was cool and polite but still managed to scorch his conscience. “I’ll do that. Thank you. It’s good to see you again, Will.”

He nodded tersely. This time, he did turn on the circular saw, though he was aware of every move she and her children made in the next few moments. He knew just when they walked around the house with Abigail’s clever Irish Setter mix Conan following on their heels.

He gave up any pretense of working when he saw them head across the lane out front, then head down the beach. She still walked with grace and poise, her chin up as if ready to take on the world, just as she had when she was fifteen years old.

And her kids. That curious boy and the fragile- looking girl with the huge, luminescent blue eyes. Remembering those eyes, he had to set down the board and press a hand to the dull ache in his chest, though he knew from two years’ experience nothing would ease it.

Booze could dull it for a moment but not nearly long enough. When the alcohol wore off, everything rushed back, worse than before.

He was still watching their slow, playful progress down the beach when Conan returned to the backyard. The dog barked once and gave him a look Will could only describe as peeved. He planted his haunches in front of the worktable and glared at him.

Abigail would have given him exactly the same look for treating an old friend with such rudeness.

“Yeah, I was a jerk,” he muttered. “She caught me off guard, that’s all. I wasn’t exactly prepared for a ghost from the past to show up out of the blue this afternoon.”

The dog barked again and Will wondered, not for the first time, what went on inside his furry head. Conan had a weird way of looking at everybody as if he knew exactly what they might be thinking and he managed to communicate whole diatribes with only a bark and a certain expression in his doleful eyes.

Abigail had loved the dog. For that reason alone, Will would have tolerated him since his neighbor had been one of his favorite people on earth. But Conan had also showed an uncanny knack over the last two years for knowing just when Will was at low ebb.

More than once, there had been times when he had been out on the beach wondering if it would be easier just to walk out into the icy embrace of the tide than to survive another second of this unrelenting grief.

No matter the time of day or night, Conan would somehow always show up, lean against Will’s legs until the despair eased, and then would follow him home before returning to Brambleberry House and Abigail.

He sighed now as the dog continued to wordlessly reprimand him. “What do you want me to do? Go after her?”

Conan barked and Will shook his head. “No way. Forget it.”

He should go after her, at least to apologize. He had been unforgivably rude. The hell of it was, he didn’t really know why. He wasn’t cold by nature. Through the last two years, he had tried to hold to the hard-fought philosophy that just because his insides had been ripped apart and because sometimes the grief and pain seemed to crush the life out of him, he hadn’t automatically been handed a free pass to hurt others.

Lashing out at others around him did nothing to ease his own pain so he made it a point to be polite to just about everybody.

Sure, there were random moments when his bleakness slipped through. At times, Sage and Anna and other friends had been upset at him when he pushed away their efforts to comfort him. More than a few times, truth be told. But he figured it was better to be by himself during those dark moments than to do as he’d just done, lash out simply because he didn’t know how else to cope.

He had no excuse for treating her poorly. He had just seen her there looking so lovely and bright with her energetic son and her pretty little daughter and every muscle inside him had cramped in pain.

The children set it off. He could see that now. The girl had even looked a little like Cara—same coloring, anyway, though Cara had been chubby and round where Julia’s daughter looked as if she might blow away in anything more than a two-knot wind.

It hadn’t only been the children, though. He had seen Julia standing there in a shaft of sunlight and for a moment, long-dormant feelings had stirred inside him that he wanted to stay dead and buried like the rest of his life.

No matter how screwed up he was, he had no business being rude to her and her children. Like it or not, he would have to apologize to her, especially if Anna and Sage rented her the apartment.

He lived three houses away and spent a considerable amount of time at Brambleberry House, both because he was busy with various remodeling projects and because he considered the new owners—Abigail’s heirs—his friends.

He didn’t want Julia Hudson Blair or her children here at Brambleberry House. If he were honest with himself, he could admit that he would have preferred if she had stayed a long-buried memory.

But she hadn’t. She was back in Cannon Beach with her children, looking to rent an apartment at Brambleberry House, so apparently she planned to stay at least awhile.

Chances were good he would bump into her again, so he was going to have to figure out a way to apologize.

He watched their shapes grow smaller and smaller as they walked down the beach toward town and he rubbed the ache in his chest, wondering what it would take to convince Sage and Anna to find a different tenant.

Chapter Two

“Will we get to see inside the pretty house this time, Mommy?”

Julia lifted her gaze from the road for only an instant to glance in the rearview mirror of her little Toyota SUV. Even from here, she could see the excitement in Maddie’s eyes and she couldn’t help but smile in return at her daughter.

“That’s the plan,” she answered, turning her attention back to the road as she drove past a spectacular hotel set away from the road. Someday when she was independently wealthy with unlimited leisure time, she wanted to stay at The Sea Urchin, one of the most exclusive boutique hotels on the coast.

“I talked to one of the owners of the house an hour ago,” Julia continued, “and she invited us to walk through and see if the apartment will work for us,”

“I hope it does,” Simon said. “I really liked that cool dog.”

“I’m not sure the dog lives there,” she answered. “He might belong to the man we talked to this morning. Will Garrett. He doesn’t live there, he was just doing some work on the house.”

“I’m glad he doesn’t live there,” Maddie said in her whisper-soft voice. “He was kind of cranky.”

Julia agreed, though she didn’t say as much to her children. Will had been terse, bordering on rude, and for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why. What had she done? She hadn’t seen him in sixteen years. It seemed ridiculous to assume he might be angry, after all these years, simply because she hadn’t written to him as she had promised.

They had been friends of a sort—and more than friends for a few glorious weeks one summer. She remembered moonlight bonfires and holding hands in the movies and stealing kisses on the beach.

She would have assumed their shared past warranted at least a little politeness but apparently he didn’t agree. The Will Garrett she remembered had been far different from the surly stranger they met that afternoon. She couldn’t help wondering if he treated everyone that way or if she received special treatment.

“He was simply busy,” she said now to her children. “We interrupted his work and I think he was eager to get back to it. We grown-ups can sometimes be impatient.”

“I remember,” Simon said. “Dad was like that sometimes.”

The mention of Kevin took her by surprise. Neither twin referred to their father very often anymore. He had died more than two years ago and had been a distant presence for some time before that, and they had all walked what felt like a million miles since then.

Brambleberry House suddenly came into view, rising above the fringy pines and spruce trees. She slowed, savoring the sight of the spectacular Victorian mansion silhouetted against the salmon-colored sky, with the murky blue sea below.

That familiar sense of homecoming washed over her again as she pulled into the pebbled driveway. She wanted to live here with her children. To wake up in the morning with that view of the sea out her window and the smell of roses drifting up from the gardens and the solid comfort of those walls around her.

As she pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine, she gave a silent prayer that she and the twins would click with the new owners. The one she’d spoken with earlier—Sage Benedetto—had seemed cordial when she invited Julia and her children to take a look at the apartment, but Julia was almost afraid to hope.

“Mom, look!” Simon exclaimed. “There’s the dog! Does that mean he lives here?”

As she opened her door to climb out, she saw the big shaggy red dog waiting by the wrought-iron gates, almost as if he somehow knew they were on their way.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”

“Oh, I hope so.” Maddie pushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes. She looked fragile and pale. Though Julia would have liked to walk from their hotel downtown to enjoy the spectacular views of Cannon Beach at sunset, she had been afraid Maddie wouldn’t have the strength for another long hike down the beach and back.

Now she was grateful she had heeded her motherly instincts that seemed to have become superacute since Maddie’s illness.

More than anything—more than she wanted to live in this house, more than she wanted this move to work out, more than she wanted to breathe—she wanted her daughter to be healthy and strong.

“I hope we can live here,” Maddie said. “I really like that dog.”

Julia hugged her daughter and helped her out of her seatbelt. Maddie slipped a hand in hers while Simon took his sister’s other hand. Together, the three of them walked through the gate, where the one-dog welcoming committee awaited them.

The dog greeted Simon with the same enthusiasm he had shown that morning, wagging his tail fiercely and nudging Simon’s hand with his head. After a moment of attention from her son, the dog turned to Maddie. Julia went on full mother-bear alert, again ready to step in if necessary, but the dog showed the same uncanny gentleness to Maddie.

He simply planted his haunches on the sidewalk in front of her, waiting as still as one of those cheap plaster dog statues for Maddie to reach out with a giggle and pet his head.

Weird, she thought, but she didn’t have time to figure it out before the front door opened. A woman wearing shorts and a brightly colored tank top stepped out onto the porch. She looked to be in her late twenties and was extraordinarily lovely in an exotic kind of way, with blonde wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail and an olive complexion that spoke of a Mediterranean heritage.

She walked toward them with a loose-hipped gait and a warm smile.

“Hi!” Her voice held an open friendliness and Julia instinctively responded to it. She could feel the tension in her shoulders relax a little as the other woman held out a hand.

“I’m Sage Benedetto. You must be the Blairs.”

She shook it. “Yes. I’m Julia and these are my children, Simon and Maddie.”

Sage dropped her hand and turned to the twins. “Hey kids. Great to meet you! How old are you? Let me guess. Sixteen?”

They both giggled. “No!” Simon exclaimed. “We’re seven.”

“Seven? Both of you?”

“We’re twins.” Maddie said in her soft voice.

“Twins? No kidding? Cool! I’ve always wanted to have a twin. You ever dress up in each others’ clothes and try to trick your mom?”

“No!” Maddie said with another giggle.

“We’re not identical twins,” Simon said with a roll of his eyes. “We’re fraternal.”

“Of course you are. Silly me.’ Cause one of you is a boy and one is a girl, right?”

Sage obviously knew her way around children, Julia thought as she listened to their exchange. That was definitely a good sign. She had observed during her career as an elementary school teacher that many adults didn’t really know how to talk to kids. They either tried too hard to be buddies or treated them with obvious condescension. Sage managed to find the perfect middle ground.

“I see you’ve met Conan,” Sage said, scratching the big dog under the chin.

“Is he your dog?” Simon asked.

She smiled at the animal with obvious affection. “I guess you could say that. Or I’m his human. Either way, we kind of look out for each other, don’t we, bud?”

Oddly, Julia could swear the dog grinned.

“Thank you again for agreeing to show the apartment to us tonight,” she said.

Sage turned her smile to Julia. “No problem. I’m sorry we weren’t here when you came by the first time. You said on the telephone that you knew Abigail.”

That pang of loss pinched at her again as she imagined Abigail out here in the garden, her big floppy straw hat and her gardening gloves and the tray of lemonade always waiting on the porch.

“Years ago,” she answered, then was compelled to elaborate.

“Every summer my family rented a house near here. The year I was ten, my brother and I were running around on the beach and I cut my foot on a broken shell. Abigail heard me crying and came down to help. She brought me back up to the house, fixed me a cookie and doctored me up. We were fast friends after that. Every year, I would run up here the minute we pulled into the driveway of our cottage. Abigail always seemed so happy to see me and we would get along as if I had never left.”

The other woman smiled, though there was an edge of sorrow to it. Julia wondered again how Sage had ended up as one of the two new owners of Brambleberry House after Abigail’s death.

“Sounds just like Abigail,” Sage said. “She made friends with everyone she met.”

“I’ve been terrible about keeping in contact with her,” Julia admitted with chagrin as they walked into the entryway of the house, with its sweeping staircase and polished honey oak trim. “I was so sorry to hear about her death—more sorry than I can say that I let so much time go by without calling her. I suppose some foolish part of me just assumed she would always be here. Like the ocean and the seastacks.”

The dog—Conan—whined a little, almost as if he understood their conversation, though Julia knew that was impossible.

“I think we all felt that way,” Sage said. “It’s been four months and it still doesn’t seem real.”

“Will said she died of a heart attack in her sleep.”

“That’s right. I find some comfort in knowing that if she could have chosen her exit scene, that’s exactly how she would have wanted to go. The doctors said she probably slept right through it.”

Sage paused and gave her a considering kind of look. “Do you know Will, then?”

Julia could feel color climb her cheekbones. How foolish could she be to blush over a teenage crush on Will Garrett, when the man he had become obviously wanted nothing to do with her?

“Knew him,” she corrected. “It all seems so long ago. The cottage we rented every year was next door to his. We socialized a little with his family and he and my older brother Charlie were friends. I usually tried to find a way to tag along, to their great annoyance.”

She had a sudden memory of mountain biking through the mists and primordial green of Ecola National Park, then cooling off in the frigid surf of Indian Beach, the gulls wheeling overhead and the ocean song a sweet accompaniment.

Will had kissed her for the first time there, while her brother was busy body surfing through the baby breakers and not paying them any attention. It had just been a quick, furtive brush of his lips, but she could suddenly remember with vivid clarity how it had warmed her until she forgot all about the icy swells.

“He was my first love,” she confessed.

Oh no. Had she really said that out loud? She wanted to snatch the words back but they hung between them. Sage turned around, sudden speculation sparking in her exotic, tilted eyes, and Julia could feel herself blushing harder.

“Is that right?”

“A long time ago,” she answered, though she was certain she had said those words about a million times already. So much for making a good impression. She was stuttering and blushing and acting like an idiot over a man who barely remembered her.

To her relief, Sage didn’t pursue it as they reached the second floor of the big house.

“This is the apartment we’re renting. It’s been vacant most of the time in the five years I’ve lived here. Once in a while Abigail opened it up on a short-term basis to various people in need of a comfortable place to crash for a while. Since Anna and I inherited Brambleberry House, we’ve kept Will busy fixing it up so we could rent out the space.”

Will again. Couldn’t she escape him for three seconds? “Convenient that he lives close,” she said.

“It’s more convenient because he’s the best carpenter around. With all the work that needs to be done to Brambleberry House, we could hire him as our resident carpenter. Good thing for us he likes to stay busy.”

She remembered again the pain in his eyes. She wanted to ask Sage the reason for it, but she knew that would be far too presumptuous.

Anyway, she wasn’t here to talk about Will Garrett. She was trying to find a clean, comfortable place for her children.

When Sage opened the door to the apartment, Julia felt a little thrill of anticipation.

“Ready to take a look?” Sage asked.

“Absolutely.” She walked through the door with the oddest sense of homecoming.

The apartment met all her expectations and more. Much, much more. She walked from room to room with a growing excitement. The kitchen was small but had new appliances and what looked like new cabinets stained a lovely cherry color. Each of the three bedrooms had fresh coats of paint. Though two of them were quite small, nearly every room had a breathtaking view of the ocean.

“It’s beautiful,” she exclaimed as she stood in the large living room, with its wide windows on two sides that overlooked the sea.

“Will did a good job, didn’t he?” Sage said.

Before Julia could answer, the children came into the room, followed by the dog.

“Wow. This place is so cool!” Simon exclaimed.

“I like it, too,” Maddie said. “It feels friendly.”

“How can a house feel friendly?” her brother scoffed. “It’s just walls and a roof and stuff.”

Sage didn’t seem to mind Maddie’s whimsy. Her features softened and she laid a hand on Maddie’s hair with a gentleness that warmed Julia’s heart.

“I think you’re absolutely right, Miss Maddie,” she answered. “I’ve always thought Brambleberry House was just about the friendliest house I’ve ever been lucky enough to live in.”

Maddie smiled back and Julia could see a bond forming between the two of them, just as the children already seemed to have a connection with Conan.

“When can we move in?” Simon asked.

Julia winced at her son’s bluntness. “We’ve still got some details to work out,” she said quickly, stepping in to avoid Sage feeling any sense of obligation to answer before she was completely comfortable with the idea of them as tenants. “Nothing’s settled yet. Why don’t the two of you play with Conan for a few moments while I talk with Ms. Benedetto?”

He seemed satisfied with that and headed to the window seat, followed closely by his sister and Sage’s friendly dog.

Her children were remarkably adept at entertaining themselves. Little wonder, she thought with that echo of sadness. They had spent three years developing patience during Maddie’s endless string of appointments and procedures.

When they seemed happily settled petting the dog, she turned back to Sage. “I’m sorry about that. I understand that you need to check references and everything and talk to the co-owner before you make a decision. I’m definitely interested, at least through the school year.”

Sage opened her mouth to answer but before she could speak, the dog gave a sudden sharp bark, his ears on alert. He rushed for the open door to the landing and she could hear his claws scrabbling on the steps just an instant before the front door opened downstairs.

Sage didn’t even blink at the dog’s eager behavior. “Oh, good. That’s Anna Galvez. I was hoping she’d be home before you left so she could have a chance to meet you. Anna took over By-the-Wind, Abigail’s old book and giftshop in town.”

“I remember the place. I spent many wonderful rainy afternoons curled up in one of the easy chairs with a book.”

“Haven’t we all?” Sage said with a smile, then walked out to the stairs to call down to the other woman.

A moment later, a woman with dark hair and petite, lovely features walked up the stairs, her hand on Conan’s fur.

She greeted Julia with a smile slightly more reserved than Sage’s warm friendliness. “Hello.”

Her smile warmed when she greeted the curious twins. “Hey, there,” she said.

Sage performed a quick introduction. “Julia and her twins are moving to Cannon Beach from Boise. Julia’s going to be teaching fifth grade at the elementary school and she’s looking for an apartment.”

“Lovely to meet you. Welcome to Oregon!”

“Thank you,” Julia said. “I used to spend summers near here when I was a child.”

“She’s one of Abigail’s lost sheep finally come home,” Sage said with a smile that quickly turned mischievous. “Oh, you’ll be interested to know that Will was her first love.”

To Julia’s immense relief, Sage added the latter in an undertone too low for the children to hear, even if they’d been paying attention. Still, she could feel herself blush again. She really had to stop doing that every time Will Garrett’s name was mentioned.

“I was fifteen. Another lifetime ago. We barely recognized each other when I bumped into him earlier today outside. He seems…very different than he was at sixteen.”

Sage’s teasing smile turned sober. “He has his reasons,” she said softly.

She and Anna gave each other a quick look loaded with layers of subtext that completely escaped Julia.

“Thank you for showing me the apartment. I have to tell you, from what I see, it would be perfect for us. It’s exactly what I’m looking for, with room for the children to play, incredible views and within walking distance to the school. But I certainly understand that you need to check references and credit history before renting it to me. Feel free to talk to the principal of the elementary school who hired me, and any of the other references I gave you in our phone conversation. If you need anything else, you have my cell number and the number of the hotel where we’re staying.”

“Or we could always talk to Will and see what he remembers from when you were fifteen.”

Julia flashed a quick look to Sage and was relieved to find the other woman smiling again. She had no idea what Will Garrett remembered about her. Nothing pleasant, obviously, or he probably would have shown a little more warmth when she encountered him earlier.

“Will may not be the best character reference. If I remember correctly, I still owe him an ice-cream cone. He bet me I couldn’t split a geoduck without using my hands. I tried for days but the summer ended before I could pay him back.”

“Good thing you’re sticking around,” Anna said. “You can pay back your debt now. We’ve still got ice cream.”

“And geoducks,” Sage said. “Maybe you’re more agile than you used to be.”

She laughed, liking both women immensely. As she gathered the children and headed down the stairs to her car, Julia could only wish for a little more agility. Then she would cross her toes and her fingers that Sage Benedetto and Anna Galvez would let her and her twins rent their vacant apartment.

She couldn’t remember when she had wanted anything so much.

“So what do you think?” Sage asked as she and Anna stood at the window watching the schoolteacher strap her children into the backseat of her little SUV.

She looked like she had the process down to a science, Sage thought, something she still struggled with when she drove Chloe anywhere. She could never figure out how to tighten the darn seat belt over the booster chair with her stepdaughter-to-be. She ought to have Julia give her lessons.

“No idea,” Anna replied. “I barely talked to her for five minutes. But she seems nice enough.”

“She belongs here.”

Anna snorted. “And you figured that out in one quick fifteen-minute meeting?”

“Not at all.” Sage grinned. She couldn’t help herself. “I figured it out in the first thirty seconds.”

“We still have to check her references. I’m sorry if this offends you, but I can’t go on karma alone on this one.”

“I know. But I’m sure they’ll check out.” Sage couldn’t have said how she knew, she just did. Somehow she was certain Abigail would have wanted Julia and her twins to live at Brambleberry House.

“Did you see her blush when Will’s name came up?”

Anna shook her head. “Leave it alone, Sage. You engaged women think you have to match up the entire universe.”

“Not the entire universe. Just the people I love, like Will.”

And you, she added silently. She thought of the loneliness in Anna’s eyes, the tiny shadow of sadness she was certain Anna never guessed showed on her expression.

Their neighbor wasn’t the only one who deserved to be happy, but she decided she—and Abigail—could only focus on one thing at a time. “Will has had so much pain in his life. Wouldn’t you love to see him smile again?”

“Of course. But Julia herself said she hadn’t seen him in years and they barely recognized each other. And we don’t even know the woman. She could be married.”

“Widowed. She told me that on the phone. Two years, the same as Will.”

Compassion flickered in Anna’s brown eyes. “Those poor children, to lose their father at such a young age.” She paused. “That doesn’t mean whatever scheme you’re hatching has any chance of working.”

“I know. But it’s worth a shot. Anyway, Conan likes them and that’s the important thing, isn’t it, bud?”

The dog barked, giving his uncanny grin. As far as Sage was concerned, references or not, that settled the matter.

Chapter Three

Sage and Anna apparently had a new tenant.

Will slowed his pickup down as he passed Brambleberry House coming from the south. He couldn’t miss the U-Haul trailer hulking in the driveway and he could see Sage heading into the house, her arms stacked high with boxes. Anna was loading her arms with a few more while Julia’s children played on the grass not far away with Conan. Even from here he could see the dog’s glee at having new playmates.

Damn. This is the price he paid for his inaction. He should have stopped by a day or two earlier and at least tried to dissuade Anna and Sage from taking her on as a tenant.

It probably wouldn’t have done any good, he acknowledged. Both of Abigail’s heirs could be as stubborn as crooked nails when they had their minds made up about something. Still, he should have at least made the attempt.

But what could he have said, really, that wouldn’t have made him sound like a raving lunatic?

Yeah, she seems nice enough and I sure was crazy about her when I was sixteen. But I don’t want her around anymore because I don’t like being reminded I’m still alive.

He sighed and turned off his truck. He wanted nothing more than to drive past the house and hide out at his place down the beach until she moved on but there was no way on earth his blasted conscience would let him leave three women and two kids to do all that heavy lifting on their own.

He climbed out of his pickup and headed to the trailer. He reached it just as the top box on Anna’s stack started to slide.

He lunged for it and plucked the wobbly top box just before it would have hit the ground, earning a surprised look from Anna over the next-highest box.

“Wow! Good catch,” she said, a smile lifting her studious features. “Lucky you were here.”

“Rule of thumb—your stack of boxes probably shouldn’t exceed your own height.”

She smiled. “Good advice. I’m afraid I can get a little impatient sometimes.”

“Is that it? I thought you just like to bite off more than you can chew.”

She made a wry face at him. “That, too. How did you know we needed help?”

He shrugged. “I was driving past and saw your leaning tower and thought you might be able to use another set of arms.”

“We’ve got plenty of arms. We just need some arms with muscle. Thanks for stopping.”

“Glad to help.” It was a blatant lie but he decided she didn’t need to know that.

She turned and headed up the stairs and he grabbed several boxes from inside the truck and followed her, trying to ignore the curious mingle of dread and anticipation in his gut.

He didn’t want to see Julia again. He had already dreamed about her the last two nights in a row. More contact would only wedge her more firmly into his head.

At the same time, part of him—maybe the part that was still sixteen years old somewhere deep inside—couldn’t help wondering how the years might have changed her.

Anna was breathing hard by the time they reached the middle floor of the house, where the door to the apartment had been propped open with a small stack of books.

“I could have taken another one of your boxes,” he said to Anna.

She made a face. “Show-off. Are you even working up a sweat?”

“I’m sweating on the inside,” he answered, which was nothing less than the truth.

The source of his trepidation spoke to Anna an instant later.

“Thanks so much,” Julia Blair said in her low, sexy voice. “Those go in Simon’s bedroom.”

Will lowered his boxes so he could see over them and found her standing in the middle of the living room directing traffic. She wore capris and a stretchy yellow T-shirt. With her hair pulled back into a ponytail, she looked fresh and beautiful and not much older than she’d been that last summer together.

He didn’t miss the shock in her eyes when she spied him behind the boxes. “Will! What are you doing here?”

He shrugged, uncomfortable at her obvious shock. Why shouldn’t he be here helping? It was the neighborly thing to do. Had he really been such a complete jerk the other day that she find his small gesture of assistance now so stunning?

“Do these go into the same room?”

She looked flustered, her cheeks slightly pink. “Um, no. Those are my things. They go in my bedroom, the big one overlooking the ocean.”

He headed in the direction she pointed, noting again no sign of a Mr. Blair. On some instinctive level, he had subconsciously picked up the fact that she wore no wedding ring when he had seen her the other day and she had spoken only of herself and her children needing an apartment. Was she widowed, divorced, or never married?

He only wondered out of mild curiosity about the road she might have traveled in the years since he had seen her. Or at least that’s what he told himself.

In her bedroom, he found stacks of boxes, some of them open and overflowing with books. The queen-size bed was already made up with a cozy-looking comforter in soft blue tones, with piles of pillows against the headboard.

An image flashed in his head of her tousled and welcoming, her auburn hair spread out on those pillows and a soft, aroused smile teasing the edges of those lovely features.

He dropped the boxes so abruptly he barely missed his toe.

Whoa. Where the hell did that come from?

He had no business thinking about her at all, forget about in some kind of sultry, welcoming pose.

When he returned to the living room, her cheeks were still flushed and she didn’t meet his gaze, as if she were embarrassed about something. It was a damn good thing she couldn’t know the inappropriate direction of his thoughts.

“I’m sorry.” She fidgeted with a stack of books in her hand. “I probably sounded terribly ungracious when you first came in. I just didn’t expect you to show up and start hauling my boxes inside.”

“No problem.”

He started to head toward the door, but she apparently wasn’t content with his short response. “Why, again, are you helping me move in?”

He shrugged. What did it matter? He was here, wasn’t he? Did they really have to analyze the reasons why? “I was heading home after a job south of here and saw your U-Haul out front. I figured you could use a hand.”

“How…neighborly of you.”

“Around here we look out for each other.” It was nothing less than the truth.

“I remember.” She smiled a little. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to come back to Cannon Beach. I remembered that sense of community with great affection.”

She set the stack of books down on the coffee table, then turned a searching gaze toward him. “Forgive me, Will, but…for some reason I had the impression you weren’t exactly overjoyed to see me the other day.”

And he thought he’d been so careful at hiding his reaction. He shifted his weight, not sure how to answer. Any apology would only lead to explanations he was eager to avoid at all costs.

“You took me by surprise, that’s all,” he finally said.

“A mysterious stranger emerging from your distant past?”

“Something like that. Sixteen seems like a long, long time ago.”

She nodded solemnly but said nothing. After an awkward moment, he headed for the door again.

“Anyway, I’m sorry if I seemed less than welcoming.” It needed to be said, he decided. Apparently, she was going to be his neighbor and he disliked the idea of this uneasiness around her continuing. That didn’t make the words any easier to get out. “You caught me at a bad moment, that’s all. But I’m sorry if I gave you the impression I didn’t want you here. It was nothing personal.”

“I must say, that’s a relief to hear.”

She smiled, warm and sincere, and for just an instant he was blinded by it, remembering the surge of his blood every time he had been anywhere close to her that last summer.

Before he could make his brain work again, Sage walked up carrying one bulky box.

“What do you have in these, for Pete’s sake? Did you pack along every brick from your old place?”

Julia laughed, a light, happy sound that stirred the hair on the back of his neck.

“Not bricks, but close, I’m afraid. Books. I left a lot in storage back in Boise but I couldn’t bear to leave them all behind.”

So that hadn’t changed about her. When she was a kid, she always seemed to have her nose in a book. He and her brother used to tease her unmercifully about being a bookworm.

That last summer, he had been relentless in his efforts to drag her attention away from whatever book she was reading so she would finally notice him….

He dragged his mind away from the past and the dumb, self-absorbed jerk he’d been. He didn’t want to remember those times. What was the damn point? That stupid, eager, infatuated kid was gone, buried under the weight of the years and pain that had piled up since then.

Instead, he left Sage and Julia to talk about books and headed back down the sweeping Brambleberry House stairs. On the way, he passed Anna heading back up, carrying a suitcase in each hand. He tried to take them from her but she shook him off.

“I’ve got these. There are some bulkier things in the U-Haul you could bring up, though.”

“Sure,” he answered.

In the entryway on the ground floor, he heard music coming from inside Anna’s apartment. Through the open doorway, he caught a glimpse of her television set where a Disney DVD was just starting up.

Julia’s twins must have finished playing and come inside. He spotted Julia’s boy on the floor in front of the TV, his arm slung across Conan’s back. Both of them sensed Will’s presence and looked up. He started to greet them but the boy put a finger to his mouth and pointed to Abigail’s favorite armchair.

Will followed his gaze and found the girl—Maddie—curled up there, fast asleep.

She looked small and fragile, with her too-pale skin and thin wrists. There was something going on with her, but he was pretty sure he was better off not knowing.

He waved to the boy, then headed down the porch steps to the waiting U-Haul.

It was nearly empty now except for perhaps a half- dozen more boxes, a finely crafted Mission-style rocking chair and something way in the back, a bulky- looking item wrapped in an old blanket that had been secured with twine.

He went for the rocking chair first. Might as well get the tough stuff out of the way. It was harder to carry than he expected—wide and solid, made of solid oak—but more awkward than really heavy.

He made it without any trouble up the porch steps and was trying to squeeze it through the narrow front door without bunging up the doorframe moldings when Sage came down the stairs.

“Okay, Superman. Let me help you with that.”

“I can handle it.”

“Only because of your freakish strength, maybe.”

He felt his mouth quirk. Sage always managed to remind him he still had the ability to smile.

“I had my can of spinach just an hour ago so I think I’ve got this covered. There are a few more boxes in the U-Haul. Those ought to keep you busy and out of trouble.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and he smiled at the childish gesture, with a sudden, profound gratitude for the friendship of those few people around him who had sustained him through the wrenching pain of the last two years.

“Which is it? Are you Popeye or Superman?”

“Take your pick.”

“Or just a stubborn male, like the rest of your gender?” She lifted the front end of the chair. “Even Popeye and Superman need help once in awhile. Besides, we wouldn’t want you to throw your back out. Then how would all our work get done around here?”

He knew when he was defeated. With a sigh, he picked up the other end. They had another minor tussle about who should walk backward up the stairs but he won that one simply by turning around and starting up.

She didn’t let him gloat for long. “I understand you know our new tenant.”

His gaze flashed to hers. Uh-oh. Here comes the inquisition, he thought. “Knew. Past tense. A long time ago.”

The words were becoming like a mantra since she showed up again in Cannon Beach. A long time ago. But not nearly long enough. Like a riptide, the memories just seemed to keep grabbing him out of nowhere and sucking him under.

“She’s lovely, isn’t she?” Sage pressed as they hit the halfway mark on the stairs. “And those kids of hers are adorable. I can’t wait until Eben and Chloe finish up their trip to Europe in a few weeks. Chloe’s going to be over the moon at having two new friends.”

“How are the wedding plans?” he asked at her mention of her fiancé and his eight-year-old daughter. The question was aimed more at diverting her attention than out of much genuine interest to hear about her upcoming nuptials, but it seemed to work.

Sage made a face. “You know I’m not good at that kind of thing. If I had my way, I would happy with something simple on the beach, just Eben and me and Chloe and the preacher.”

“I guess when you marry a gazillionaire hotel magnate, sometimes you have to make sacrifices.”

“It’s still going to be small, just a few friends at the ceremony than a reception later at the Sea Urchin. I’m leaving all the details to Jade and Stanley Wu.”

“Smart woman.”

She went on about wedding plans and he listened with half an ear.

In a million years, he never would have expected a hippie-chick like Sage to fall for a California businessman like Eben Spencer but somehow they seemed to fit together.

Sage was more at peace than he’d ever known her, settled in a way he couldn’t explain.

She was one of his closest friends and had been since she moved to town five years ago and found herself immediately drawn into Abigail’s orbit. He loved her as a little sister and he knew she deserved whatever joy she could find.

He wanted to be happy for her—and most of the time he was—but every once in awhile, seeing the love and happiness that seemed to surround her and Eben when they were together was like a slow, relentless trickle of acid on an open wound.

Despite knowing Julia was inside, he was relieved as hell when they reached the top of the stairs and turned into the apartment.

“Oh, my Stickley! We bought that when I was pregnant with the twins. I know the apartment is furnished but I couldn’t bear to leave it behind. Thank you so much for carrying that heavy thing all that way! That goes right here by the window so I can sit in it at night and watch the moonlight shining on the ocean.”

He set it down, his mind on the rocking chair he had made Robin when she was pregnant with Cara. It was still sitting in the nursery along with the toddler bed he had made, gathering dust.

He really ought to do something with the furniture. Sage would probably know somebody who could use it….

Not today, he thought abruptly. He wasn’t ready for that yet.

He turned on his heel and headed back down the stairs to retrieve that mysterious blanket-wrapped item. When he reached the U-Haul, he stood for a moment studying it, trying to figure out what it might be—and how best to carry it up the Brambleberry House stairs—when the enticing scent of cherry blossoms swirled around him.

“It’s a dollhouse.” Julia spoke beside him in a low voice and he automatically squared his shoulders, though what he was bracing for, he wasn’t quite sure.

“My father made it for me years ago. My…late husband tried to fix it up a little for Maddie but I’m afraid it’s still falling apart. I really hope it survived the trip.”

So she was a widow. They had that in common, then. He cleared his throat. “Should we take the blanket off?”

She shrugged, which he took for assent. He unwrapped the cord and heard a crunching kind of thud inside. Uh-oh. Not a good sign. With a careful look at her and a growing sense of trepidation, he pulled the blanket away and winced as Julia gasped.

Despite her obvious efforts to protect the dollhouse, the piece hadn’t traveled well. The construction looked flimsy to begin with and the roof had collapsed.

One entire support wall had come loose as well and the whole thing looked like it was ready to implode.

“I’m sorry,” he said, though the words seemed grossly inadequate.

“It’s not your fault. I was afraid it wouldn’t survive the trip. Oh, this is going to break Maddie’s heart. She loved that little house.”

“So did you,” he guessed.

She nodded. “For a lot of reasons.” She tilted her head, studying the wreckage. “You’re the carpentry expert. I don’t suppose there’s any way I can fix this, is there?”

He gazed down at her, at the fading rays of the sun that caught gold strands in her hair, at the sorrow marring those lovely features for a lost treasure.

He gave an inward groan. Dammit, he didn’t want to do this. But he was such a sucker for a woman in distress. How could he just walk away?

He cleared his throat. “If you want, I could take a look at it. See what I can do.”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask that of you.”

“You didn’t ask,” he said gruffly.

She sent him a swift look. “No. I didn’t.”

“I’m kind of slammed with projects right now. It might take me awhile to get to it. And even then, I can’t make any guarantees. That’s some major damage there. You might be better just starting over.”

She forced a smile, though he could see the sadness lingering in her eyes. Her father had made it for her, she had said. He didn’t remember much about her father from their summers in Cannon Beach, mostly that the man always seemed impatient and abrupt.

“I can’t make any promises,” he repeated. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much, Will.”

Together, they gathered up the shattered pieces of the dollhouse and carried them to his truck, where he set them carefully in the back between his toolbox and ladder.

“I’m happy to pay you for your time and trouble.”

As if he would ever accept her money. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s see if I can fix it first.”

She nodded and looked as if she wanted to say something more. To his vast relief, after a moment, she closed her mouth, then returned to the U-Haul for the last few boxes.

Chapter Four

Between the two of them, they were able to carry all but a few of the remaining boxes from the U-Haul up the stairs, where they found Sage and Julia pulling books out of boxes and placing them on shelves.

“You’re all so wonderful to help me,” Julia said, gratitude coursing through her as she smiled at all three of them. “I have to tell you, I never expected such a warm welcome. I thought it would be weeks before I would even know a soul in Cannon Beach besides Abigail. I haven’t even started teaching yet but I feel as if I have instant friends.”

Sage smiled. “We’re thrilled to have you and the twins here. And I think Abigail would be, too. Don’t you think, Will?”

He set down the boxes. “Sure. She always loved kids.”

“She was nothing but a big kid herself. Remember how she used to sit out on the porch swing for hours with Cara, swinging and telling stories and singing.”

“I remember,” he said, his voice rough.

Color flooded Sage’s features suddenly. “Oh, Will. I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “Don’t, Sage. It’s okay. I’d better get the last load of boxes.”

He turned and headed down the stairs, leaving behind only the echo of his workboots hitting the wooden steps. Julia turned her confused gaze to Anna and Sage and found them both watching after Will with identical expressions of sadness in their eyes.

“I missed something, obviously,” she said softly.

Sage gave Anna a helpless look and the other woman shrugged.

“She’ll find out sooner or later,” Anna said. “She might as well hear it from us.”

“You’re right,” Sage said. “It just still hurts so much to talk about the whole thing.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Julia said quickly. “I’m sorry if I’ve wandered into things that are none of my business.”

Sage glanced down the stairs as if checking to see if Will was returning. When she was certain he was still outside, she turned back, her voice pitched low. “Will had a daughter. She would have been a couple years younger than your twins. Cara. That’s who I was talking about. Abigail adored her. We all did. She was the cutest little thing you’ve ever seen, just full of energy, with big blue eyes, brown curls and dimples. She was full of sugar, our Cara.”

Had a daughter. Not has. An ache blossomed in her chest and she knew she didn’t want to hear any more.

But she had learned many lessons over the last few years—one of the earliest was that information was empowering, even if the gaining of it was a process often drenched in pain.

“What happened?” she forced herself to ask.

Sage shook her head, her face inexpressibly sad. Anna squeezed her arm and picked up the rest of the story.

“Cara was killed along with Will’s wife, Robin, two years ago.” Though Anna spoke in her usual no- nonsense tone, Julia could hear the pain threading through her words.

“They were crossing the street downtown in the middle of the afternoon when they were hit by a drunk tourist in a motorhome,” she went on. “Robin died instantly but Cara hung on for two weeks. We all thought—hoped—she was going to pull through but she caught an infection in the hospital in Portland and her little body was too weak and battered to fight it.”

She wanted to cry, just sit right there in the middle of the floor and weep for him. More than that, she wanted to race down the stairs and hug her own precious darlings to her.

“Oh, poor Will. He must have been shattered.”

“We all were,” Sage said. “It was like a light went out of all of us. Will used to be so lighthearted. Like a big tease of an older brother. It’s been more than two years since Robin and Cara died and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him genuinely smile at something since then.”

The ache inside her stretched and tugged and her eyes burned with tears for the teenage boy with the mischievous eyes.

Sage touched her arm. “I’m so glad you’re here now.”

“Me? Why?”

“Well, you’ve lost someone, too. You understand, in a way the rest of us can’t. I’m sure it would help Will to talk to someone who’s experienced some of those same emotions.”

Julia barely contained her wince, feeling like the world’s biggest fraud.

“Grief is such a solitary, individual thing,” she said after an awkward moment. “No one walks the same journey.”

Sage smiled and pressed a cheek to Julia’s. “I know. But I’m still glad you’re here, and I’m sure Will is, too.”

Julia was saved from having to come up with an answer to that when she again heard his footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, he came in, muscles bulging beneath the cotton of his shirt as he carried in a trio of boxes.

He had erased any trace of emotion from his features, any sign at all that he contained any emotions at all. Finding out about his wife and daughter explained so much about him. The hardness, the cynicism. The pain in his eyes when he looked at Maddie.

She had a wild urge to take the boxes from him, slip her arms around his waist and hold him until everything was all right again.

“This is the last of it. Where do these go?”

Her words tangled in her throat and she had to clear her throat before she could speak. “The top one belongs in my bedroom. The others are Simon’s.”

With an abrupt nod, he headed first to her room and then to the one down the hall where Simon slept.

He returned to the living room just as the doorbell downstairs rang through the house.

“Hey, Mom!” Simon yelled up the stairs an instant later. “The pizza guy’s here!”

Conan started barking in accompaniment and Julia rolled her eyes at the sudden cacophony of sound. “Are you sure about this? The house was so quiet before we showed up. If you want that quiet again, you’d better speak now while I’ve still got the U-Haul.”

Sage shook her head with a laugh. “No way. I’m not lugging those books back down the stairs. You’re stuck here for awhile.”

Right now, she couldn’t think of anywhere she would rather be. Julia flashed a quick smile to the other two women and Will, grabbed her purse, and headed down the stairs to pay for the pizza.

Simon stood at the door holding on to Conan’s collar as the dog wriggled with excitement, his tail wagging a mile a minute.

Her son giggled. “I think he really likes pizza, Mom.”

“I guess. Maybe you had better take him into Anna’s apartment so he doesn’t attack the pizza driver.”

With effort, he wrangled the dog through the door and closed the door behind him. Finally, Julia opened the door and found a skinny young man with his cap on backward and his arms full of pizza boxes.

She quickly paid him for the pizza—adding in a hefty tip. She closed the door behind him and backed into the entry, her arms full, and nearly collided with a solid male.

Strong arms came around her to keep her upright.

“Oh,” she exclaimed to Will. “I didn’t hear you come down the stairs.”

“You were talking to the driver,” he answered. He quickly released her—much to her regret. She knew she shouldn’t have enjoyed that brief moment of contact, but it had been so very long…

She couldn’t help noticing the boy she had known now had hard strength in his very grown-up muscles.

“I thought you said the trailer was empty,” she said with some confusion as he headed for the door.

“It is. You’re done here so I’m heading home.”

“You can’t leave!” she exclaimed.

He raised an eyebrow. “I can’t?”

She held out the boxes in her arms. “You’ve got to stay for pizza. I ordered way too much for three women and two children.”

“Don’t forget Conan,” he pointed out. “He’s crazy about pizza, even though all that cheese is lousy for him.”

“Knowing my kids, I’m sure he’ll be able to sneak far more than is good for him.”

The scent of him reached her, spicy and male and far more enticing than any pizza smells. “I still have too much. Please stay.”

He gazed at the door with a look almost of desperation in his eyes. But when he turned back, she thought he might be weakening.

“Please, Will,” she pressed.

He opened his mouth to answer but before he could, the door to Abigail’s apartment opened and Maddie peeked her head out, looking tousled and sleepy.

“Can we come out now?” she asked.

“As long as the dog’s not going to knock me down to get to the Canadian bacon.”

At Maddie’s giggle, Julia saw a spasm of pain flicker across Will’s features and knew the battle was lost.

“I really can’t stay.” He reached for the doorknob. “Thanks anyway for the invitation, but I’ve got a lot of work to do at home.”

She couldn’t push him more, not with that shadow of pain clouding his blue eyes. Surrendering to the inevitable, she simply nodded. “You still need to eat. Take some home with you.”

She could see the objections forming on his expression and decided not to take no for an answer. Will Garrett didn’t know stubborn until he came up against her.

“What’s your pleasure? Pepperoni or Hawaiian? I’d offer you the vegetarian but I think Sage has dibs on that one.”

“It’s not necessary, really.”

“It is to me,” she said firmly. “You just spent forty- five minutes helping me haul boxes up. You have to let me repay you somehow. Here, I hope you still like pepperoni and olive.”

His eyes widened that she would remember such a detail. She couldn’t have explained why—it was just one of those arcane details that stuck in her head. Several times that last summer, they’d gone to Mountain Mike’s Pizza in town with her brother and Will always had picked the same thing.

“Maddie, can you hold this for a second?”

She gave the box marked pepperoni to her daughter, then with one hand she opened it and pulled out half the pizza, which she stuck on top of the Hawaiian.

He looked as if he wanted to object, but he said nothing when she handed him the box with the remaining half a pizza in it.

“Here you go. You should have enough for dinner tonight and breakfast in the morning as well. Consider it a tiny way to say thank you for all your hard work.”

He shook his head but to her vast relief, he didn’t hand the pizza back to her.

“Mom, I can’t hold him anymore!” Simon said from behind the door. “He’s starving and so am I!”

“You’d better get everyone upstairs for pizza,” Will said.

“Right. Good night, then.”

She wanted to say more—much more—but with a rambunctious dog and two hungry children clamoring for her attention, she had to be content with that.

Blasted stubborn woman.

Will sat on his deck watching the lights of Cannon Beach flicker on the water as he ate his third piece of pizza.

He had to admit, even lukewarm, it tasted delicious—probably a fair sight better than the peanut butter sandwich he would have scrounged for his meal.

He didn’t order pizza very often since half of it usually went to waste before he could get to the leftovers so this was a nice change from TV dinners and fast-food hamburgers.

He really needed to shoot for a healthier diet. Sage was always after him to get more vegetables and fewer preservatives into his diet. He tried but he’d never been a big one for cooking in the first place. He could grill steaks and burgers and the occasional chicken breast but he usually fell short at coming up with something to go alongside the entree.

He fell short in a lot of areas. He sighed, listening to the low rumble of the sea. He spent a lot of his free time puttering around in his dad’s shop or sitting out here watching the waves, no matter what the weather. He just hated the emptiness inside the house.

He ought to move, he thought, as he did just about every night at this same time when the silence settled over him with like a scratchy, smothering wool blanket.

He ought to just pick up and make a new start somewhere. Especially now that Julia Hudson Blair had climbed out of the depths of his memories and taken up residence just a few hundred yards away.

She knew.

Sometime during the course of the evening, Sage or Anna must have told her about the accident. He wasn’t quite sure how he was so certain, but he had seen a deep compassion in the green of her eyes, a sorrow that hadn’t been there earlier.

He washed the pizza down with a swallow of Sam Adams—the one bottle he allowed himself each night.

He knew it shouldn’t bother him so much that she knew. Wasn’t like it was some big secret. She would find out sooner or later, he supposed.

He just hated that first shock of pity when people first found out—though he supposed when it came down to it, the familiar sadness from friends like Sage and Anna wasn’t much easier.

Somehow seeing that first spurt of pity in Julia’s eyes made it all seem more real, more raw.

Her life hadn’t been so easy. She was a widow, so she must know a thing or two about loss and loneliness. That didn’t make him any more eager to have her around— or her kids.

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