When she was eleven and Gabe seventeen, she had fallen in love and made up her mind to marry him.

Dana had spent countless hours fantasizing about her best friend’s big brother.

And now Gabe looked even better than she remembered. Taller. More rugged.

But it wasn’t his broad shoulders or tight jeans that riveted her attention. It was the dark eyes that stared into hers until she wanted to run away again.

But Dana wasn’t a little girl now. And she hadn’t the slightest intention of running away. She told herself her feelings for Gabe Purvis were long gone, and he’d never had any for her.

She told herself she’d come to Iron Springs strictly to fight for little Danny’s future….

But was the real reason standing before her?

Dear Reader,

Happy Anniversary! We’re kicking off a yearlong celebration in honor of Silhouette Books’ 20th Anniversary, with unforgettable love stories by your favorite authors, including Nora Roberts, Diana Palmer, Sherryl Woods, Joan Elliott Pickart and many more!

Sherryl Woods delivers the first baby of the new year in The Cowboy and the New Year’s Baby, which launches AND BABY MAKES THREE: THE DELACOURTS OF TEXAS. And return to Whitehorn, Montana, as Laurie Paige tells the story of an undercover agent who comes home to protect his family and finds his heart in A Family Homecoming, part of MONTANA MAVERICKS: RETURN TO WHITEHORN.

Next is Christine Rimmer’s tale of a lady doc’s determination to resist the charming new hospital administrator. Happily, he proves irresistible in A Doctor’s Vow, part of PRESCRIPTION: MARRIAGE. And don’t miss Marie Ferrarella’s sensational family story set in Alaska, Stand-In Mom.

Also this month, Leigh Greenwood tells the tale of two past lovers who must be Married by High Noon in order to save a child. Finally, opposites attract in Awakened By His Kiss, a tender love story by newcomer Judith Lyons.

Join the celebration; treat yourself to all six Special Edition romance novels each month!

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

Married by High Noon
Leigh Greenwood

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LEIGH GREENWOOD

has authored twenty historical romances and debuted in Silhouette Special Edition with Just What the Doctor Ordered. The proud parent of three children ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-four, Leigh lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. You can write to Leigh Greenwood at P.O. Box 470761, Charlotte, NC 28226. A SASE would be appreciated.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

As she slowly drove down the single street in the tiny mountain community of Iron Springs, Dana Marsh felt like she was stepping back into the past. She hadn’t been here in fourteen years, yet nothing had changed. If it hadn’t been for the little boy sleeping in his car seat behind her, she would have felt that she was a teenager again, coming to spend the summer with her grandmother.

In the town that had betrayed her. She’d sworn never to come here again.

“Wake up, darling. We’re here.”

She was glad Danny had slept almost the entire trip from New York. He still didn’t understand that his mother’s sudden death a month earlier from cancer meant he’d never see her again. He asked for Mattie all the time, especially at night. Dana hadn’t wanted to change his routine by uprooting him from his home so soon, but his uncle had insisted that she bring him to Virginia the minute he recovered from his fever.

Dana pulled her Jaguar to a stop in front of a two-story, white, clapboard house.

“Want juice,” Danny announced.

Danny had his mother’s soft Southern accent rather than the sharp edge of Dana’s New York inflection. Even though Danny wouldn’t be two for another month, he could already talk as well as a four-year-old. That didn’t surprise Dana. He had a brilliant executive of a Fortune 500 company for his father, and an innovative artist for his mother.

“Let’s wait until we get inside,” Dana said.

He still wasn’t potty trained. She didn’t think her initial meeting with Gabe and his lawyer would be the best time to change a wet diaper. She expected Gabe would cringe in disgust. Why should he have any ability to understand a child’s feelings, even his nephew’s? He hadn’t understood hers when she was sixteen.

She got out of the car and opened the back door.

“I’ll get you out of this nasty old car seat. You’ll soon be able to run around to your heart’s content.” There had to be some advantages to living at the ends of the earth. There were plenty of safe places to play.

She took Danny out of his car seat and carried him up the steps of the tall, stark-white house built in the shape of an L. It used to be mostly hidden by trees and vines, but the trees had been trimmed, the vines pulled down and the overgrown boxwoods pruned to a manageable size. Marshall Evans opened his door before she could ring the bell.

“You’re late,” Marshall said.

“Sorry, but I can’t gauge the exact length of a trip from New York,” she said as she stepped inside.

Dana had forgotten that Marshall’s house was filled with Victorian furniture as valuable as it was ugly. She wondered if he would sell her a few pieces. She had a client who was heavily into Victorian. She told herself to forget antiques. She had come to fight for Danny’s future. She was also on vacation. Her doctor had ordered her to take a complete break from business.

“Where’s Gabe?” she asked as her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit interior. Marshall had pulled the heavy, floral print curtains together to shut out the sunlight.

“In the kitchen,” Marshall said, turning in that direction and leaving her to follow.

Everything was backward here. In New York people entertained in the living room. In Iron Springs, only strangers sat in the parlor. Dana passed through a second parlor, a dining room and an old-fashioned butler’s pantry. Enough antiques to set up an entire showroom.

Dana didn’t get a chance to look at the kitchen. Gabe Purvis rose from the table when she entered the room, banishing all thoughts of antiques from her mind.

Shock sent the past thundering down on her like a rock slide. One summer, when she was eleven and Gabe seventeen, he had winked at her as he handed her a cone of butter pecan ice cream. She had fallen in love then and there and made up her mind to marry him when she got out of college. She’d spent countless hours fantasizing about him, prying details about him from his sister. Mattie had laughed at the notion of her best friend marrying her brother, but Dana thought he was the most wonderful boy in the world.

Gabe looked better than she remembered. He had grown taller and had filled out. He looked more rugged, more solid. Despite the season, he wore a checkered shirt rolled up at the sleeves, tight jeans and heavy work shoes. But it wasn’t his clothes that riveted her attention. Nor was it his broad shoulders and powerful forearms, which she supposed came from lifting heavy lumber and wrestling with large pieces of furniture. It was his face that defined his character, his powerful jaw and wide forehead, shaggy brows and weather-roughened skin, thick, nearly black hair that refused to be tamed. And black eyes that stared into her until she wanted to run away.

But she wasn’t a little girl now. Even though she hadn’t wanted to come back, she hadn’t the slightest intention of running away.

Gabe’s gaze moved from her to Danny. “Is that my nephew?”

“Of course.” She shouldn’t have snapped at him, but her nerves were on edge.

She hadn’t been unduly upset when she first learned Mattie had made Gabe Danny’s joint guardian with her. She’d assumed a thirty-six-year-old bachelor wouldn’t want to be burdened with a small child. She would agree to take Danny to Iron Springs to visit Mattie’s family during vacations, might even let him spend a few summers there, but she had every expectation of having the child to herself.

Gabe had exploded that belief.

Not only had he insisted that she bring Danny to Iron Springs the minute the boy recovered from his fever, he said Mattie’s stipulation that Danny be raised near his family meant he had to live in Iron Springs. Dana’s lawyer had advised her to work out a compromise with Gabe, but Dana doubted she could. She had come to Iron Springs ready to do battle.

But right now she had to calm down before she upset Danny. He’d had more than enough change in his life. “Sorry,” she said. “It was a long trip to make with a small child. On top of Mattie’s death…well, I’m still strung out.” She couldn’t think of Mattie without wanting to cry all over again.

She still found it hard to believe anyone as young, vital, and healthy as Mattie could be diagnosed with cancer one day and be dead three weeks later. For twenty-five years, they’d been closer than sisters. Mattie had come to live with Dana when she’d learned she was pregnant. They’d gone through morning sickness together, doctors’ appointments, lectures on prenatal care, Lamaze classes, endless discussions about what to name the baby. Dana had been at Mattie’s side in the delivery room. She’d placed Danny in Mattie’s arms. They’d sat up together on nights when he had the croup or a fever, had taken turns walking him when he couldn’t sleep, had shared the tasks of feeding, bathing, changing diapers.

Danny had become part of Dana’s life, her soul, but now everyone expected her to hand him over to his uncle and go back to her old life as if these past three years had never happened. Losing Mattie had been like losing part of herself. That made her all the more determined to hold on to Danny.

“Let me have him.” Gabe held out his arms, but Danny buried his face in Dana’s neck.

“Not yet. He doesn’t know you.”

“He’ll have to get used to him sooner or later,” Marshall said. “He might as well start now.”

“He’ll start when I say.” She could hear the anger in her voice. She tried to control her tone, the rigidity of her body, but she couldn’t help it. The thought of giving Danny to anyone filled her with an anger at the whole world that was as red-hot as it was impotent.

A knock at the back door came as a welcome distraction. A woman accompanied by a young boy let herself in. “I’m Naomi Ferguson,” she said, introducing herself. “This is my son, Elton. I suggested to Marshall that Danny might be happier if I took him off to play while you and Gabe discussed business. Would you like to play with Elton?” Naomi asked Danny.

He hid his face in Dana’s shoulder again.

“I’ll look after him,” Elton said, swaggering like a little man.

Trying not to grin, Dana squatted down until Danny and Elton were eye-to-eye. “Danny’s a little shy. He doesn’t have anybody to play with at home.”

“He don’t have to be scared,” Elton said. “Won’t nobody say boo to him if I tell ’em not to.”

“I’ll keep an eye on both of them,” Naomi said with a wink.

As reluctant as Dana was to let Danny out of her sight, she knew it would be better for everybody if he were at least in another room while she talked to Gabe.

“Do you want to go with Elton?” Dana asked Danny.

The child eyed Elton curiously but didn’t relinquish his hold on Dana’s neck.

“You can have some of my cookies,” Elton offered. He reached inside one of the deep pockets of his baggy pants and withdrew a plastic bag full of chocolate chip cookies. “Mama made ’em,” he said as he took one out of the bag and offered it to Danny. “Can’t nobody make better cookies than Mama.”

The cookie was a sad little thing, bent and twisted from its time in Elton’s pocket. Apparently its sad state didn’t bother Danny. He reached for the cookie.

“I got more,” Elton said reaching into another pocket and drawing out a second bag of cookies. “I’ll get some milk, and we can go sit on Marshall’s porch and eat the rest of them.”

The lure of two handfuls of cookies was too much for Danny. He loosened his grip on Dana and slid to the floor. Elton held out his hand, and Danny took it. “You don’t have to worry about your kid, lady,” Elton said to Dana. “He’s safe with me.”

Naomi laughed as Elton and Danny headed toward the back door. “No child can resist chocolate chip cookies,” she said as she opened the cabinet and took out two glasses.

“I think it was Elton,” Gabe said.

Naomi took milk from the refrigerator. “I’ll keep them on the screened porch.”

Dana couldn’t stop herself from looking through the window. Danny had settled next to Elton, munching on a cookie, looking up at the older boy with wonder in his eyes.

“Your son is an angel,” she said to Naomi.

“Only sometimes,” Naomi said, then closed the door behind her as she joined the kids on the porch.

Dana took one last look, turned to face Gabe.

“Why don’t you leave now?” Marshall asked. “You could be halfway to the interstate before he finishes his cookies.”

His suggestion was so unexpected, so completely without any regard for Danny’s feelings, Dana couldn’t think of the words to tell him what an unfeeling idiot he was.

“We have some things to talk over,” Gabe said.

“A lot of things,” Dana said, recovering her speech. “Not the least of which is this absurd notion you have that you can take care of Danny as well as I can. You don’t know anything about children. Why did you force me to bring him to Iron Springs?”

“Because Mattie wanted him to live here.”

“She didn’t say that.”

“She wanted him brought up with his family. That doesn’t mean New York.”

“I could send him down on vacations.”

“No.”

“Maybe even summers.”

“He lives here. I’ll let him visit you during summers and vacations.”

Dana’s lawyer had already warned her not to expect more than this, but she couldn’t accept the thought of being separated from Danny for months at a time. “He ought to live in one place with somebody he knows, somebody who knows how to care for him. That’s obviously me. How are you going to take care of him? Where is he going to stay?”

“I have a house. Naomi will keep him during the day. He’d have to be in day care in New York. And for much longer hours, considering your job.”

Dana’s lawyer had pointed that out, too

“He doesn’t know you or anybody else here.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Marshall said. “Gabe can—”

“How can I not worry?” Dana said. “He’s lost his mother, he’s been sick, he’s been taken away from the only home he’s ever known, and you want me to turn him over to a perfect stranger and disappear.”

“I don’t see—”

“Then you’re blind,” Dana snapped.

“Nothing’s going to happen to him except you leaving,” Marshall said. “He’ll probably cry, but he’ll get over it.”

Dana fixed Marshall with a look she hoped conveyed what an unfeeling cretin she thought he was. “I’m not relinquishing one bit of my responsibility for Danny. Mattie made me joint guardian. I wouldn’t consider leaving him with Gabe for as much as an hour until I know he can take care of him. And I won’t be easy to convince.”

Gabe opened his mouth to speak, but Dana plunged ahead. “I did my best to convince Mattie to give Danny to me.”

She paused to collect herself, to stop the tears before they filled her eyes. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t lose her temper and wouldn’t cry. She’d done one and was about to do the other. But losing Danny so soon after Mattie’s death would be more than she could bear. After all the worry, love and laughter they shared, she didn’t know how she could stand to be alone again.

She opened her handbag to look for a tissue. Gabe handed her his handkerchief. She hesitated only briefly before taking it to wipe her eyes. Touching him set off a reaction she’d never felt before. He radiated a vitality that drew her like a magnet. She tried to throttle the unwelcome current of excitement that surged through her. She told herself not to be a fool. Her feelings for him were long dead. He’d never had any for her.

She swallowed, took a deep breath, then looked directly at Gabe. “Mattie didn’t give me full custody of Danny because she said a boy ought to have a man he could model himself after. Of course that’s nonsense, but I couldn’t convince Mattie.”

She waited for one of them to argue, but neither did.

“I don’t know why you can’t leave him with me.” Her eyes started to water again, and she buried them in Gabe’s handkerchief. “He’s got his own room. Toys. People he knows.”

“He can have all that here,” Gabe said.

“You could visit him in New York.”

“You haven’t let us see him, not even after Mattie died.”

“I’d have brought him to Mattie’s funeral if he hadn’t been sick.” Though she knew Mattie would understand, Dana couldn’t stop feeling guilty that having to stay in New York with Danny had caused her to miss Mattie’s funeral.

The phone rang. Dana and Gabe both turned to Marshall, but he didn’t move. It rang again.

“Answer it,” Gabe told Marshall. “Dana and I can handle this ourselves.”

The phone rang again, and Marshall left the room. Much to her surprise, Dana felt herself tense. Surely after all these years she could face Gabe without being uncomfortable.

“Before I can think of letting you have Danny for a single night,” she said, “I’ve got to know you can take care of a little boy who’s hardly more than a baby. What do you know about children? Have you ever been around any?”

“I don’t know a lot, but I don’t anticipate any difficulty learning.”

“Well I do,” Dana shot back. “You don’t know what he likes, what he doesn’t, what frightens him, what to do when he gets upset. You don’t know what foods upset his stomach, what he tends to gobble, what he has to be coaxed to eat, when he should go to bed, when to start potty training.” She threw up her hands. “Leaving him with you would be practically the same as leaving him with Elton.”

“I’m a little more capable than that,” Gabe said.

His smile surprised her. She’d expected a snarl.

“Mattie didn’t know how to take care of a child,” Gabe said, “but she learned. I think I can, too.”

“She was a woman. You’re not.” Gabe probably thought if a poor woman could manage, a man would have no difficulty. Just thinking about it made her angry. “Who’s going to take care of Danny while you’re at work?” she asked.

Gabe signed. “I’ve already told you Naomi will take care of him during the week. My mother can help out if I have to be away on weekends.”

“If Mattie had wanted him raised by strangers, she could have left him with me. If you had a wife, it would solve everything. Are you engaged?”

“No.”

“Do you have anybody in mind?”

“I’m not engaged, I don’t have anybody in mind, and I intend to raise Danny without a wife.”

He acted as though having a wife was about as desirable as contracting mumps, but her own reaction upset her more. She could deny it if she wanted, but knowing he was still single excited her.

“I don’t see why you want to know all this.”

“Because you’re expecting me to let you have the child I love,” Dana said. “Did you think I could just drop Danny off and go back to New York as if nothing ever happened?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Well I can’t. He’s been part of my life since the day Mattie moved into my apartment. You might as well ask me to give up my own child.”

“Are you married?” Gabe asked.

“No.”

“Engaged?”

“No.”

“Anybody on the horizon?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“As far as taking care of Danny is concerned, you’re no different from me.”

“Not true. I know him. You don’t.”

“I’ll learn.”

“In how many years?”

Gabe laughed. “I promise to figure it out before he graduates high school.”

“I don’t know how you can take this so lightly. We’re talking about a child’s life here, not some…some piece of furniture. You don’t put it together, polish it up and hand it over to somebody else.”

Apparently she’d finally succeeded in angering him. His brows lowered and puckered. Any hint of a smile disappeared.

“Danny is all my mother and I have left of Mattie. Making sure we do everything right for him is just about the most important thing in our lives. Now call him in from the porch. We can take his things over to the house and settle him in. You ought to be able to start back to New York tonight.”

Dana couldn’t believe her ears. Hadn’t he heard anything she’d said? “I have no intention of turning Danny over to you this afternoon. Or tomorrow afternoon, for that matter. Mattie gave me equal custody. That means I have equal right to approve all arrangements.”

“Satisfying you could take days,” Gabe said.

“I’m sure it will. That’s why I’ve taken two weeks vacation.”

Gabe stared at her very much in the manner she would have expected if she’d grown a second head right before his eyes.

Marshall returned to the room in this interval of silence.

“She’s not going to leave,” Gabe said to his lawyer. “She’s going to stay here for two weeks, sticking her nose into everything I do, complaining and demanding.”

“You’ve got more important things to worry about than Dana,” Marshall said.

“If you think—”

Gabe interrupted Dana. “What are you talking about?”

Being cut off angered Dana, but Marshall’s expression caused her to choke off her outburst.

“That was Lucius Abernathy, Danny’s natural father, on the phone.”

Dana had been looking over her shoulder ever since Mattie’s death, afraid he would show up again demanding Danny.

“His lawyer is flying to Washington tomorrow,” Marshall said. “He plans to rent a car and drive to Iron Springs.”

“What does he want?” Gabe asked.

“Danny,” Marshall answered.

“Mattie’s will specifically says we’re to be his guardians,” Dana said.

“An uncle and a friend won’t stand much of a chance against the natural father.”

“Is there anything we can do to stop him?” Gabe asked.

“Maybe.”

“What?”

“I’ll do anything,” Dana added.

“Gabe’s best chance to keep Danny is to get married before the lawyer gets here.”

“But he said he didn’t have anybody in mind,” Dana pointed out.

Marshall looked straight at her. “I know. So since you’re willing to do anything to make sure Danny’s natural father doesn’t get him, I suggest you marry Gabe.”

Chapter Two

Marshall couldn’t have stunned Gabe more completely if he’d suggested he have a public drawing to choose his wife. Even if he were foolish enough to consider remarriage, Dana Marsh would be the last woman he’d choose.

Not that she was hard to look at.

He remembered her as a skinny kid with huge brown eyes, sun-browned arms and legs, honey-brown hair that was always getting in her face. As often as not, she had a tear in her clothes and dirt on her chin. She could assume a look of doll-like innocence or change to a pixie-full-of-mischief in the blink of an eye. Despite the hard feelings some locals still harbored against her mother, she could charm nearly anyone into a sunny mood.

But he could see nothing of that innocence in Dana now.

She had turned into a New York siren with a body to die for. Dressed and accessorized with understated but expensive taste, she represented nearly everything he had come to distrust in a woman. At thirty-six years old, mature and experienced, he should have been beyond the impressionable age. Then why did his heart beat as if he’d just run the four hundred? He should be shouting down Marshall’s impossible suggestion that he marry Dana, but all that blood flooding his brain made it impossible to think.

“You’re crazy,” Dana said, finding her tongue before Gabe. “I wouldn’t marry Gabe if he were the last man in the world.”

“You both want to keep Danny,” Marshall said. “Gabe has to get married to have a chance. It’s the obvious solution.”

“There must be another way.”

“Maybe, but you’ve got less than twenty-four hours to find it.”

“You’re the lawyer,” Gabe said. “You’re supposed to find the solution.”

“I have,” Marshall replied.

“You can’t seriously expect us to get married just like that,” Gabe said, snapping his fingers. “We haven’t seen each other in more than fourteen years.”

“And we can’t stand each other,” Dana added.

That was going too far for Gabe. Dana might figure in his mind as the human embodiment of everything that had gone wrong in his life, but a man would have to be a misogynist to have any difficulty standing a woman like Dana.

“We have some differences of opinion,” Gabe said.

“I’m not saying you have to love each other,” Marshall said. “I’m just trying to come up with a way for you to keep this kid. If you don’t want—”

“Don’t be a fool,” Gabe snapped. “You know I want him.”

“Then you have to get married. It’s almost impossible for an uncle to win custody over the natural father, especially when the natural father is a wealthy, respected businessman with a wife and family ready and willing to welcome Danny into their midst.”

“Even if the natural father got furious when Maggie told him she was pregnant,” Dana said, angrily, “ordered her to get rid of the kid, and walked out when she wouldn’t?”

“Even then. Today’s courts lean heavily on the side of the natural parents.”

“He only wants Danny because he’s a boy,” Dana said.

“You can’t prove that. As far as the court is concerned, it would be the perfect situation for Danny, certainly better than living with a bachelor uncle who has to put him in day care. We’d have even less chance if he lived with you.”

“I could hire a live-in housekeeper.” Gabe said.

“You couldn’t afford it,” Marshall said.

“I’ll pay for it,” Dana offered.

“It wouldn’t matter where the money came from,” Marshall said. “It’s the family unit the judge is going to consider.”

Dana looked at Gabe. The look felt almost accusatory. “Can’t you find somebody to marry?”

“Not on twenty-four hour’s notice.”

“Maybe Marshall could get the judge to wait longer. If you could just—”

“There’s nobody I want to marry,” Gabe snapped, “not now, not in twenty-four hours or twenty-four days.”

“I guess that brings it back to you two,” Marshall said.

“You heard what he said,” Dana said. “That nobody includes me.”

“You don’t have to want to get married. You just have to do it. You can file for divorce as soon as the judge hears the case.”

Gabe looked at Dana. She glared back at him. He would never consider marrying her under normal circumstances. But if he couldn’t keep Danny any other way, he could put up with it, particularly if they got a divorce as soon as he got custody. If the natural father got custody, he would never see his nephew again.

“Can a person get married that quickly on a Saturday?” Gabe asked.

“Not normally,” Marshall said, “but there are ways.”

Dana jumped up and headed toward the door to the back porch.

“You can stop looking at me like that,” she said. “I’m not doing it. I’ll take Danny back to New York first.”

“There’s no way the courts will give him to you,” Marshall said.

“You can visit him anytime you want,” Gabe said.

“Do you think his father will make you the same offer?” Marshall asked.

Gabe could tell from her look she knew he wouldn’t. He could also tell she felt caught between two desperate choices, neither of which she felt she could accept. If she was to give Marshall’s idea even five minutes’ serious consideration, he had to find a way to take some pressure off her.

“Why don’t we get Danny and head over to my house so you can see his room?”

She looked relieved to have something else to do, thankful to him for having suggested it. He could understand. After years of burying himself in his work and not allowing himself to feel anything—not bitterness over his wife’s betrayal and subsequent divorce, not anger at the rift that tore his family apart—he felt buried under an emotional landslide. His father’s and Mattie’s deaths coming so close together had demolished his emotional barriers. Danny’s arrival made him feel even more vulnerable. Now, years of bottled-up emotions bubbled to the surface. He, too, needed time to sort things out.

“Why?” Marshall asked.

“Dana said she wouldn’t leave Danny with me until she was perfectly satisfied I could take care of him. Checking out the suitability of where he’ll live ought to be high on the list.”

“What about the lawyer hired by Danny’s father?” Dana asked.

“Let’s work on the assumption we’re keeping Danny.”

Dana nodded, opened the door and went out to the back porch.

“Do you think she’ll do it?” Marshall asked.

“I don’t know. It was a terrific shock.”

Marshall laughed. “I thought all women swooned at the thought of marrying a hunk like you.”

“She nearly did.”

Both men laughed, but Marshall sobered quickly. “What about you?”

“It’ll only be for a few weeks or a couple of months.”

“I wondered if after Ellen…”

“This isn’t the same.”

“You got that right. Dana isn’t a lying, deceitful witch. If she’s going to shaft you, she’ll tell you right to your face.”

“Why don’t you fix your sidewalks?” Dana asked.

They were walking back toward the heart of the community, the street and lawns shaded by huge oaks.

“We like them cracked and uneven,” Gabe replied.

“A person could break a leg.”

“Half the town learned to walk stepping over them.”

“Strangers didn’t.”

“We don’t have many strangers. And those we get stay at the ski lodge or go straight to the camp.”

“How about the people who come to the hotel?” she asked, referring to the huge, pre-Civil War building with wide verandahs on all three levels that towered over the surrounding houses.

“People come to the hotel to get away from their ordinary lives,” he told Dana. “They like the cracks in the sidewalks, the sixteen-foot ceilings, the rocking chairs on the verandas. Some of them come back every year just to sit and rock for a whole week.”

“I couldn’t stand that,” she said.

“I know.”

She whipped around. “What to you mean by that?”

He didn’t know how she walked in those heels without stumbling, though he had to admit they set her legs off to good advantage. Of course her legs would have looked good even if she’d been barefoot.

“Are you going to answer me, or are you going to stare at me as if I’m a piece of wood whose grain you’re judging?”

He grinned. “You’re much finer to look at than any piece of wood I’ve ever worked with. As for your grain—”

“I didn’t intend for you to take me so literally.”

She became uneasy under his scrutiny, looked away hastily, moved ahead quickly. It pleased him to know a country boy could rattle a woman used to the fast lane.

“We should be talking about Danny.”

Danny scampered along ahead of them, peeping through fences, walking in the bottom of the dry ditch, peering into drain pipes. He didn’t have any trouble with the sidewalk. Whenever a piece of concrete tilted a little too high for him to step on the crack, he jumped it. But he stopped frequently to make sure Dana followed close behind.

“Okay, we’ll talk about Danny.”

But talking about Danny wasn’t safe, either. It brought up Marshall’s preposterous idea. Gabe still couldn’t believe he’d suggested it. People didn’t do things like that anymore. Still, Gabe couldn’t dismiss the thought of marrying Dana.

He didn’t know what kind of suit she was wearing, or what kind of material it was made of, but he did know he’d never seen anything cling to and outline a body more effectively. Each time he dropped back to allow her to precede him where shrubs overhung the sidewalk, he marveled at her long legs, slim hips and small waist. He didn’t care if it came naturally or if she spent twenty hours a week in a gym. He practically had to clench his fists to keep from reaching out to touch her.

“How did Danny get along with Elton?” Gabe forced himself to walk alongside Dana, his gaze on Danny just ahead.

“Fine as long as the cookies lasted,” she replied. “Naomi said he seemed a little lost after that.”

“How come?”

“He doesn’t know how to play. He hasn’t had a chance to be around other children.”

Gabe couldn’t deceive himself into thinking the boy would soon forget Dana. Despite Marshall’s advice, he had no intention of attempting to tear Danny from Dana’s arms. If he and his mother wanted to be equally important to this child, they had to give and earn similar feelings of love and security. Gabe doubted two weeks would be enough.

Seeing how much Danny loved and depended on Dana—how deeply she was attached to him—forced Gabe to amend at least part of his opinion of Dana. She was obviously warm and nurturing in her relationship with Danny. Being separated would hurt Danny as much as Dana. Maybe more.

“Did you have a good time with Elton?” Gabe asked Danny.

Danny nodded, ducked his head, ran back to Dana and hugged her around the legs. She picked him up, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her neck. She didn’t seem the least bit conscious of the damage done to her expensive clothes.

Gabe wasn’t sure he could afford to think about Dana’s good qualities. The moment he did, visions of having her naked in his bed turned his thoughts to charcoal. He could forget her seductive charm as long as she stayed in New York, but he had trouble remembering the dangers of being attracted to a woman like her when she walked just ahead of him.

If he had half a brain, he wouldn’t think about that at all. A beautiful, smart, aggressive career woman, expecting to get anything she wanted, she came dangerously close to being like his ex-wife. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was more attracted to Dana than to any woman he’d met in more than ten years. Being told he had to marry her in order to gain permanent custody of Danny merely gave his libido license to go into overdrive.

“Danny will get along with the other kids just fine,” Dana said as she set Danny down again. He started forward, walking on the cracks. “All he needs is a little time. Mattie and I both thought he was too young to go to play school.”

Gabe didn’t think Danny was upset so much as clinging to someone familiar in strange situations. But until he got to know his nephew, he couldn’t be sure what the child needed or wanted. For the time being, he’d have to depend on Dana. And he would listen to her advice. He wanted the very best for his nephew.

“Why don’t we stop at Hannah’s for ice cream?” Gabe asked.

“It’ll spoil his dinner.”

“I don’t remember it ruining yours,” Gabe said with a sudden smile. “And you had it often enough. I dished it up, remember?”

“Want ice cream,” Danny said.

“Now see what you’ve done.”

Gabe chucked Danny under the chin. “What kind do you like?”

“’Nilla.”

“I won’t have you trying to buy his affections,” Dana warned.

Gabe felt a spurt of anger, but he supposed in a way that’s what he was doing.

“I’ve got to start somewhere, and I don’t have any chocolate chip cookies. I have to go inside the store to get the ice cream,” Gabe said to Danny. “You want to go with me?”

Gabe held out his finger. Danny sidled closer to Dana.

Gabe wanted to bend down and scoop the child up into his arms, but he remained perfectly still, waiting, his hand outstretched.

Finally yielding to the lure of ice cream, Danny hesitatingly reached out and took hold of Gabe’s finger.

Gabe was stunned by the feelings that surged to the surface. He’d played with dozens of children, but never had a child’s taking his finger caused him to tear up. Danny looked so much like Mattie he could hardly stand it. Gabe’s throat tightened, and he swallowed.

Gabe held out his other hand. “Want me to carry you?”

Danny hesitated, looked at Dana.

“Go on,” Dana urged. “I’ll be right here.”

After a moment Danny held out his arms and Gabe scooped him up. The little boy felt tiny and fragile in his arms. Gabe shifted him to his right side, and Danny put his arms around Gabe’s neck. Gabe knew it was only to hold on, but his feelings intensified. He was strongly loyal, but he’d never suspected himself of being sentimental.

It was the purely emotional reaction of a man to a child who shared his blood. He guessed it was something left over from primitive man’s instinct to care for and protect members of his family. It had to be instinct. It had come from nowhere to completely engulf him, but it felt good.

“Want cone,” Danny said.

One look into the child’s trusting eyes and Gabe was no longer interested only in proving himself to Dana. He wanted to prove to Danny that he loved him, that Danny could trust him, could always count on him.

Dana stayed behind as Gabe and Danny started up the steps. Remembering how Hannah jammed the rows together until there was hardly room to walk between them wasn’t the reason she didn’t go inside. She wanted to be alone. Danny’s going to Gabe, even though he’d done so only because she encouraged him, had upset her. Another reminder that she was losing him.

She loved Danny, and she wanted him to be happy, but it tore at her heart to see him go to anyone instead of her.

Marry Gabe and you can be with Danny forever.

She didn’t know where that little voice in her head came from, but it might as well go away. Nothing could convince her to consider Marshall’s ridiculous suggestion.

Thank goodness Gabe hadn’t pushed it. She couldn’t believe Marshall had had the nerve to suggest it. She wanted nothing to do with Gabe or Iron Springs. She told herself the instantaneous attraction when she walked into Marshall’s kitchen represented nothing more than a healthy woman’s response to a handsome and virile man.

The tiny voice somewhere deep inside her head kept whispering that this might be her only chance to get what she’d always wanted. She couldn’t convince that tiny voice she didn’t want it anymore.

Even though she had passed her thirtieth birthday and could practically hear her biological clock ticking, she didn’t feel desperate to find a husband. The fact that all the men she dated seemed to be like her father—obsessed with business, short on time for her, unwilling to commit and uninterested in a family—didn’t discourage her. Older women had more trouble getting pregnant and delivering a healthy baby, but New York doctors could do wonders these days.

Still, she couldn’t put the idea of marrying Gabe out of her mind. She was a partner in a business that dealt in very pricey antiques. Despite her family’s contacts, it had been difficult to build up a clientele. She had figured out that one way to attract a woman’s attention to a valuable antique was to have a handsome man sit or lean on it. In five years, she had worked with virtually every top male model in New York. Put up against them, there wasn’t a woman in her right mind who wouldn’t choose Gabe.

It was impossible not to be attracted to him. His smile, when he bothered to smile, was devastatingly sexy. It was a little crooked, one side of his mouth a little higher than the other. He tilted his head ever so slightly, and his eyes sparkled. His lips—those full, wonderful, sexy lips—parted to reveal a set of teeth worthy of any toothpaste commercial. The women in this place must be blind not to have hauled him off to some dark cave long before now. She had known he was something special from the first moment she saw him twenty-five years ago.

She had been a nervous five-year-old visiting her grandmother for the first time. He’d been behind the counter in Hannah’s store. He was eleven. He looked so big and handsome and confident when he winked and gave her an extra big scoop. After that she’d gone for an ice cream cone every afternoon—for the next eleven summers.

Dana pushed the memories from her mind. She couldn’t afford to turn nostalgic. At this rate she’d soon want to marry him. That thought caused a tiny pool of heat to coil in her belly.

“I keam,” Danny cried, as he burst out of Hannah’s store, his double scoop of vanilla leaning perilously to one side of the cone. Some of the ice cream dripped on her blouse when he threw himself into her arms, but she didn’t care. Having him run straight to her meant more than a dozen blouses.

“Don’t blame me for the double scoop,” Gabe said. “That was Hannah’s idea.”

She looked up to see Gabe holding two cones. “Your favorite, butter pecan,” he said as he held one out to her.

“I didn’t want one.”

“Hannah remembered how you could never come to the store without begging your grandmother for a cone. She figured you might still like it.”

Smiling, Dana accepted the cone. “It’s still my favorite.”

Hannah came out of the store. “That’s a fine looking boy,” she said, “the spitting image of Mattie. You staying long?”

“Long enough to help settle Danny in,” Dana said. “We’re going to see his room now.”

“Gabe’s got a beautiful place,” Hannah said before going back inside.

Dana headed off at a rapid pace. Danny ran alongside.

“Don’t be in such a rush,” Gabe said, sauntering along behind her. “It’s too hot to hurry.”

“From what Mattie said, you never come out of your shop long enough to know the season, much less the weather.”

“Mattie exaggerates. Exaggerated.”

He tried not to show it, but she saw the lines of pain in his face. She wanted to let him know she understood, but she didn’t know how.

They walked down the middle of the street, eating their ice cream. She couldn’t imagine such a scene in New York. She kept veering toward the sidewalk, but Gabe continued down the middle of the road. After a while she gave up. She hadn’t see a car since she arrived. “Where is everybody?” she asked.

“Probably napping. We’re between sessions at the camp and the hotel. The new campers and a group of folk dancers will come in tomorrow afternoon. Until then we’ve got the place to ourselves. Isn’t it wonderful?”

It would be if there were any reason to live here, but she didn’t say that to Gabe. He loved this town. He crossed the street and started up a short sidewalk.

“I thought old Mr. Wadsworth lived here,” she said.

“He did. But his children didn’t want the house after he died, so I bought it.”

Dana couldn’t imagine why Gabe should want such a large house. She walked inside and came face-to-face with an enormous grandfather clock. The hand work was incredibly intricate.

“I’m surprised one of the Wadsworth children didn’t want this,” she said.

“They did, but I wouldn’t sell it.”

“Why would their father sell it to you instead of leaving it to one of them?”

“It wasn’t his to leave. It’s mine. I made it.”

Dana had always known Gabe handcrafted furniture, but she’d never expected anything like this.

“Did you make any of these tables?” she asked. There were four in the hall, all with ball-and-claw feet. The carving alone must have taken days.

“I made all the furniture in this house,” Gabe said, waiting for her to follow him.

Dana’s gaze turned to a dining room she glimpsed through pocket doors. It contained a huge mahogany table surrounded by six chairs. A sideboard stood against the far wall next to a china cabinet. She crossed the hall into the living room. Tables, corner cabinets and a table-model grandfather clock offered mute proof of Gabe’s considerable skill. She wondered if he had any idea how much all of this would be worth on the New York market. She doubted he knew or cared.

“Come on,” he called. “You can poke around in corners later.”

A porcelain-topped kitchen table with pull-out leaves restored her feeling of how Iron Springs ought to be—old-fashioned, out of date, comfortable. She immediately found the paper towels. She tore off several pieces, dampened them under the faucet and washed Danny’s face and hands.

“Me, too,” Gabe said, holding out his hands just like Danny.

Marshall’s preposterous suggestion came crashing back with the force of an exploding bomb, and paralysis held Dana still for a moment. She jerked herself back into reality. She didn’t intend for Gabe to see how badly his joke had shaken her. “Sure. What’s one more grubby little boy?”

But touching him, holding his hands while she washed away the nonexistent ice cream, caused a recurrence of the agitation that had attacked her earlier. “Can you cook?” she asked, hoping to distract herself from the uncomfortably disturbing feeling.

“Sure. I’ve been cooking for myself since my divorce.”

She’d been expecting him to say he ate at his mother’s house. “Show me Danny’s bedroom.”

She followed Gabe up a staircase that curved along three sides of the front hall. The windows on the upper landing offered wide views of the front and back yards as well as provided a cool breeze.

“You ought to air condition the place,” Dana said, pushing aside the thought that living in this house could be very pleasant.

“I have, but the trees keep it cool most of the time.”

“How many bedrooms do you have?”

“Five.”

“Why so many?”

“That’s how many came with the house.”

She didn’t appreciate his sense of humor. “Danny will feel lost.”

“I bought it when I still expected to have a large family.” He said it as though his shattered dreams didn’t matter anymore. He opened the door to one of the rooms on the front. “This will be Danny’s.”

Dana stepped into a room at least twice the size of Danny’s bedroom in her apartment. Gabe had furnished it with a bed, a chair and table, two chests of drawers, an armoire and two boxes spilling over with toys. Danny wiggled past her.

“Where did all of these toys come from?” Dana asked.

“All over. Everybody wanted to help when they heard Danny was coming home.”

Danny bypassed the boxes of toys for a hobbyhorse in the corner. Dana didn’t think anybody had such a toy anymore. She instinctively knew Gabe had made it.

“Horsey,” Danny said, pointing at the hobbyhorse.

“Do you want to ride?” Gabe asked.

“Yes.”

“Say please,” Dana added without thinking.

“Pease,” Danny said.

Gabe moved to lift Danny onto the horse, but Danny ran to Dana. “Want Danie,” he said.

Danny still loved her, wanted her, trusted her. Right now that meant more than anything in the world.

If you marry Gabe, you can have Danny with you forever.

The voice lied. They’d both demand a divorce the moment Gabe got permanent custody of Danny.

“He’s still nervous about all the changes and new people,” Dana said as she lifted Danny onto the hobbyhorse.

“That’s understandable.”

Dana could tell Danny’s reaction hurt Gabe. But if his family was so important to him, he shouldn’t have let his father close Mattie out of their lives.

If you marry Gabe, neither of you has to be hurt.

Before the voice had the chance to drive her mad, they heard footsteps downstairs.

“Gabe, are you here?” a voice called out.

“Up here, Ma. We’re in Danny’s room.”

In less than a minute a tall, matronly woman with iron-gray hair, glasses and a busy print dress that nearly gave Dana hives entered the room. Mrs. Purvis looked extremely nervous about finding herself face-to-face with Dana.

“I was sorry to hear about your husband,” Dana said.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Purvis responded. An awkward silence followed. “Thank you for bringing Danny,” she finally said. She waited, looking even more uncomfortable. “And for taking care of Mattie. We…Gabe and I…”

“She was my best friend,” Dana said. “I would have done anything for her.” She still couldn’t understand how any mother could allow herself to be cut off from her child.

She sensed Mrs. Purvis had suffered terribly, suffered still. The older woman smiled sadly, as though accepting the implied guilt, but when she turned her gaze to Danny her entire countenance was transformed.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was here?” she demanded of Gabe, planting a kiss on Danny’s head and rocking the hobbyhorse so vigorously Dana was afraid Danny might fall off.

“Because I knew you’d take him away the minute you saw him,” Gabe said, smiling fondly at his mother, “just as you’re doing now.”

Mother and son bent over the child, making over him like doting parents. Dana stifled an urge to elbow them aside.

“We need to think about dinner,” she said. She’d planned to eat at a restaurant or up at the hotel.

“You’re eating at my house,” Mrs. Purvis said.

“She’s been planning what to cook for days,” Gabe said. “She’s changed her mind three times already. We can’t stay too late,” he warned. “Danny needs to get to bed early.”

“I don’t think he ought to sleep in this room tonight,” Mrs. Purvis said.

“Why not?”

“It’s too new, and he’s too far away from you.”

“He could sleep in my room.”

They were talking as if she wasn’t there, as if she didn’t matter.

“You don’t have to worry about Danny being alone,” Dana said. “He’s staying with me.”

“I don’t want him staying at the hotel,” Gabe protested.

“He won’t be,” Dana replied. “We’ll be staying at my grandmother’s farmhouse.”

Chapter Three

“You didn’t have to come with me,” Dana said to Gabe. “I still remember the way.”

“Nobody goes to that house anymore. No telling what you’ll find there.”

Dana appreciated his company. The farm lay ten miles out of town.

“Nothing more intimidating than a fox or two,” she said.

“More likely a raccoon or an opossum.”

Dana didn’t like the sound of that. She should have thought before she left New York to call the real estate agent and have her check over the house. But trying to figure out how to keep from losing Danny had filled her mind to the exclusion of everything else.

“Do you want me to drive?” Gabe asked.

“Why?” The road curved abruptly as it wound its way through the hills.

“You’re not used to driving in the mountains.”

Dana laughed. “I spend at least a month each summer in the Adirondacks. Sometimes, after driving a particularly mountainous stretch of highway, I feel as though I never want to go back to flat roads. The sense of freedom is intoxicating.”

But that’s not how she felt about these mountains. They gave her an empty feeling. She couldn’t understand why Mattie had insisted her son be raised in the very place Mattie had been determined to leave behind. There was nothing for anybody to do here except work, talk and take naps. Dana didn’t understand why such a handsome, intelligent man as Gabe hadn’t left years ago. Surely he had some ambition.

“It shows,” Gabe said.

“What?” His voice scattered her thoughts.

“Your experience driving in the mountains. You drove that section like you’ve been doing it all your life.”

It was a rather insignificant compliment, but Dana found herself quivering with pleasure. She told herself not to be silly, that she was no longer a little girl desperate for the approval of a handsome older boy.

As they neared the entrance to the lane leading to her grandmother’s house, Dana caught sight of the little red barn mailbox. She felt a lump in her throat. She used to beg her grandmother to let her get the mail just so she could open the sliding door.

“I need to get someone to paint that mailbox,” Dana said, noticing the colors had faded badly.

“Why? There’s nobody here to get mail.”

That wasn’t important. What mattered was that the mailbox look the way it always had. She couldn’t explain that to Gabe because she couldn’t explain it to herself. She had thought she hated Iron Springs, never wanted to see the farmhouse again. Yet one look brought a wealth of memories surging to the surface, good memories she had forgotten.

The mailbox didn’t bother her as much as the neglected appearance of the driveway. Grass and great clumps of weeds grew through the loose gravel. A bank of tall weeds and bushy shrubs leaned into the driveway, seeming to block the entrance to the farm, telling people to stay out. Dana didn’t remember the trees being so tall. Their outflung branches would soon meet overhead.

“It looks deserted,” she said.

“It is deserted. No one’s lived on the place since your grandmother died.”

Her grandmother had died of a heart attack during Dana’s senior year in high school. Dana’s mother had wanted to bring her to New York for burial, but Grandmother Ebberling’s will had been very specific. She was to be buried in the Iron Springs Cemetery alongside her husband.

“I thought someone rented the land.”

“They used to, but it’s hardly worth the effort to farm these days. They wanted to fence the fields and turn them into pastures, but your lawyer wouldn’t authorize the money. Nobody’s used the place for five years.”

Dana had left all arrangements to the family lawyer. “It was supposed to be kept in order,” she said.

“Not according to your rental agent, Sue. She keeps asking for permission to make changes so it can be rented out again, but your attorney refuses to authorize any expenditures beyond making sure the roof doesn’t leak.”

Dana knew she was as much to blame as the lawyer. Her parents wanted her to sell it, but she kept putting off making a decision. Her grandmother’s will had stated that Dana was to have the farm so she would always have a place to call home. Dana hadn’t understood why the daughter of a millionaire father needed a farmhouse in order to have a home.

“A couple of people tried to buy it, but the lawyer said you wouldn’t sell,” Gabe said.

Couldn’t was more accurate. She’d started to several times, but something always stopped her. She prepared herself to see the house surrounded by weeds and vines growing up to the second floor. Surprisingly, the lawn had been recently mowed.

“Who cut the grass?”

“Sue has her son do it once a month. She met her husband at one of the parties your grandmother used to give when your mother was a girl. She got her first kiss under the oak near the back meadow. With all those memories, she said she couldn’t stand to see the place go to ruin.”

Dana made a mental note to repay Sue. She pulled the Jaguar to a stop in front of the house. Danny couldn’t wait to get out of his car seat, but Dana didn’t want him out of her sight.

“This house is in no condition for you to stay here,” Gabe said.

“Probably not,” Dana agreed, “but I won’t know until I look inside.”

Suddenly she knew she wanted to be alone when she entered the house.

“Swing!” Danny cried.

Memories of the swings flooded back poignant and strong. She and Mattie used to swing side by side for hours, talking about anything that came into their minds.

“I’m not sure it’s safe,” Dana said.

“I’ll check,” Gabe said.

“How?”

“I’ll sit in it. If it holds my weight, it’ll hold Danny.”

Danny didn’t draw back when Gabe held out his hand, but he made no move to take it and leave Dana. As much as his clinging to her gratified Dana, she knew her own feelings weren’t the ones that mattered now. She might hate it, but Danny’s future depended on his being able to trust both his guardians, to be happy living with either. If she loved this child as much as she believed, she’d do everything in her power to help him learn to love Gabe.

But having good intentions was easier than living up to them. A part of her hoped Danny would always love her better than Gabe. That made her wonder about her own character. She’d always considered herself a generous person. Being selfish wasn’t good for Danny.

Dana knelt down in front of Danny and forced herself to say, “Why don’t you go play on the swing with Gabe? I have to go inside and see how many spiderwebs have been built since I was here a long time ago.”

Danny continued to cling to Dana, but not so tightly.

“If we go down to the fields, we might see a deer,” Gabe said.

“He doesn’t know what a deer is,” Dana said. She could tell from Gabe’s shocked expression he probably thought she was guilty of criminal neglect in the boy’s education. “Gabe will swing you,” Dana coaxed. The idea seemed to appeal to him. When Gabe reached out and took Danny’s hand, he didn’t pull away.

“Won’t you come with me?” Gabe coxed.

“Go on,” Dana urged. “I’ll be out in a jiffy, then you can push me in the swing.”

Danny’s smile was immediate and brilliant. “Danie not swing.”

“I did, too,” Dana said. “Your mama and I used to swing all the time. We’d have competitions to see who could go higher.”

“Who won?” Gabe asked.

“I did,” Dana replied, suddenly self-conscious.

“I thought so,” Gabe said. He smiled, but Dana had the feeling she’d just confirmed some point in his poor opinion of her.

“Danny swing,” Danny suddenly announced. “Swing high.”

Not too high, Dana mouthed to Gabe.

“We’ll swing you up into the tree,” Gabe said. “Then you can look in all the birds’ nests and see if they have any eggs. Robins lay bright blue eggs. Have you ever seen a robin’s egg?”

“No,” Danny said as he looked over his shoulder to assure himself Dana was still there.

“Have you ever climbed a tree?” Gabe asked.

“People not climb tree,” Danny announced. “Monkey climb tree.”

“Little boys climb trees, too,” Gabe said. “I’ve got a perfect tree at my house for climbing. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to get up in it.”

“Way high?” Danny asked.

“Way high,” Gabe replied.

That bribe melted Danny’s resistance. She guessed that was part of what Mattie meant when she said a little boy had to have a man in the house. Dana wasn’t ready to admit a woman couldn’t do at least as well as a man, but it was clear men had an unfair advantage in some areas. After all, what grown woman wanted to climb a tree?

Dana turned toward the house. When she reached the steps she looked back. She wondered how high Gabe would let Danny climb. She wondered if he’d be able to see across the fields. She didn’t remember that she’d ever climbed a tree when she was a girl. She wondered why not.

The porch ran the full length of the front of the house. At one end the same old swing moved ever so slightly in the stiff breeze that came up from the valley below, but the half dozen chairs where her grandmother had rocked while she visited with her friends had disappeared. So had the flower boxes of petunias, the pots of ferns and baskets of begonias trailing long ropes of vivid red, pink and orange blossoms. Her grandmother had been particularly fond of her flowers. The porch didn’t look right without them.

But Dana was in for an even bigger surprise when she unlocked the door and stepped inside. Though the neglect was obvious, everything looked so much the way she’d last seen it fourteen years ago it gave her a terrific jolt. She could almost expect her grandmother to call from the kitchen to ask if she and Mattie wanted molasses cookies or hot soda biscuits with fresh butter and blackberry jam. The weight of memories was so sudden and so enormous—memories of warmth, happiness, closeness—Dana wondered how she could even think about selling the house that had been a home as much as a haven.

Dana didn’t doubt her parents loved her, but they were always coming home from somewhere, getting ready to leave again. Her father traveled constantly to or from one of several foreign countries to oversee his business interests. Her beautiful, smart and talented mother jetted from one high-profile social or charity event to another. They owned three apartments and two vacation homes, all professionally redecorated every two or three years. Nothing ever became old or familiar. Her grandmother’s house never changed and her grandmother was always there.

Always.

Dana had forgotten how much she looked forward to summers here, how much she had depended on her grandmother for feelings of belonging and permanence, for the show of affection her parents were too busy to give, for the chance to be herself, to not have to measure up to anyone’s wishes or expectations. In the years since her grandmother’s death, she’d gotten so busy trying to build a career successful enough to attract her parents’ attention she’d forgotten what this place had meant to her, what her grandmother had provided for her without her even being aware of it.

It was the only place she’d ever been completely happy. She guessed that was the reason she’d never been able to sell the place.

Now Mattie and her grandmother were gone, and the house was all she had left to remind her of some of the best moments of her life. She couldn’t sell it. Not ever. She would fix it up. It would be a place to stay when she visited Danny.

If you marry Gabe, you won’t need a place to stay.

If Dana could have gotten her hands on that miserable little voice, she’d have strangled the wretch. She had been under too much stress lately to think dispassionately. Coming here had merely added more layers of emotion, many strange and unexpected, all in conflict. She couldn’t possibly marry Gabe, even for a short time. That would throw her entire world into chaos.

But she couldn’t let Lucius get Danny. She’d promised Mattie she’d do anything she could to prevent it. When she made that promise, she hadn’t expected the solution to be so drastic. Improbable. Impossible. Insane.

Marriage should be forever. Despite the large number of divorces and separations among her friends, Dana had always been certain it would be different for her. She would know Mr. Right when she saw him, and he’d know her just as certainly. They wouldn’t be anything like her own parents. They would come home to the same house every night, eat dinner together, go out together, vacation together, raise their children together. Dana wanted at least three children. Being the only child of absentee parents had been very lonely.

She looked out the window and saw Gabe pushing Danny in the swing. Even though a tangle of weeds and vines ringed the yard, the scene touched her deeply. It seemed right. Much to her surprise, some of the tension seemed to leave her. She supposed Danny’s laughter and Gabe’s happiness had communicated itself to her.

But there was something else going on between those two, something she could only partially understand. Gabe was obviously working hard to win Danny’s trust, talking to him, laughing with him, helping him experience something new. But there was a look on Gabe’s face Dana hadn’t seen before. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said Gabe was acting like a proud and loving father on an outing with his son.

Danny looked different, too. Though he laughed like any little boy laughed when having a good time, he looked up in wonder at the big man who was devoting his entire attention to him. His look seemed to say he wanted that very much but feared it a little at the same time.

Dana shook her head. All this intense emotion was causing her to imagine things. She lived in the real world, not in a fairy tale where everything always had a happy ending.

But even though she focused her mind on inspecting the house thoroughly—even the room she’d called her own for so many summers—the image of Danny and Gabe together wouldn’t leave her mind. Maybe she wasn’t imagining things. Maybe even stories in the real world could have fairy-tale endings.

When she came outside again, she didn’t see Danny or Gabe anywhere. For a moment panic caused her heart to race. Then she told herself not to be foolish. Gabe wouldn’t let Danny out of his sight, wouldn’t let anything happen to him. But her heart climbed into her throat once more when she walked around the side of the house and still didn’t see them. Hearing voices coming from the side yard in the vicinity of a huge white pine, she worked to regain her calm as she walked across the coarse grass.

She bent down to pass beneath the branches of the pine. But they weren’t under that tree. The sounds came from the old maple just beyond. They sounded as though they were coming from somewhere above her. She looked up, and a scream nearly ripped from her.

Gabe sat perched on a limb at least ten feet off the ground. Danny was seated on a branch above him.

“Don’t you think that’s a little too high?” She didn’t know how she managed to sound so calm. She wanted to scream that Gabe was an idiot and order him to bring Danny to the ground this very minute.

“We were looking for a break in the trees so Danny can see the mountain on the other side of Iron Springs,” Gabe explained.

Under other circumstances Dana might have been intrigued by the possibility of seeing Iron Springs from her grandmother’s maple tree. “Maybe you should wait until the leaves fall,” she said to Gabe. “Then you won’t have to climb so high.”

“Climbing high is half the fun,” Gabe called down.

“Wait until he’s a teenager.”

“Tree,” Danny called to her, pointing to the surrounding branches.

“I see it, darling, but it’s time to come down now.”

“Stay in tree,” Danny said.

“We’d better come down for now,” Gabe said. “I’ve got a bigger tree at my house. Would you like to climb that with me?”

“Me climb big tree,” Danny said.

Dana made a silent vow to cut that tree down herself before she’d let Danny climb it.

Gabe dropped to the ground. When he held his hands up, Danny jumped into them without a moment’s hesitation. The second Gabe set him in the ground, he came running to Dana.

“Me climb tree,” he announced as he threw himself into Dana’s arms.

She grabbed him up and held him tight, relieved to have him safely on the ground. If Gabe thought she was going to leave Danny here just so he could risk his precious little neck by letting him climb every tree in Iron Springs, he had another think coming. She’d take Danny back to New York and fight Lucius herself. If she didn’t win, she could seek refuge in her parents’ apartment in Paris. She could always sell antiques in France. The country was full of them.

“How did things look inside?” Gabe asked.

She didn’t want to talk about the house. She wanted to talk about his callous disregard for Danny’s safety.

“Except for a thick layer of dust, it looks very much the way I remember it.”

“It’s still in no condition for you to occupy.”

“I realize that. I’ll just have to say in your house. You can go to a motel.”

She hadn’t meant to say that. It just popped out of her mouth. From his expression, she guessed it surprised him as much as it did her.

“It’s important for Danny to start getting used to your house. It would be better if he could do it with me close by.”

If you marry Gabe, Danny will always be close by.

She shook her head vigorously, hoping to fling the maddening little voice into the grass where she devoutly hoped it would be nibbled to death by voracious ants.

She managed to get her racing thoughts under control. “I didn’t mean to commandeer your house like that. I was just thinking out loud.”

“No problem,” Gabe said, but he looked as though it were anything but all right. “I can spend the night with Ma.”

“Maybe Danny and I should go to your mother’s house.”

“No. The sooner Danny gets used to his bedroom, the better.”

But he won’t be able to spend many nights in it if you don’t marry Gabe.

Dana began to wonder what part of her mind could take such sadistic enjoyment in torturing her. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Why should it be happening now when she was at her most defenseless?

“We’d better head back to town,” Gabe said.

“Why?”

“Mother’s expecting us for dinner. She’ll worry herself into a fit if we’re a minute late. What did you decide to do about the house?”

“I’m going to keep it.”

“What for? You haven’t used it in fourteen years.”

“I’m going to fix it up for myself. I can stay there when I visit Danny.”

An uncomfortable silence fell. She could practically read his thoughts, but right now she couldn’t take the blame for Lucius getting Danny. She’d had too much to endure these past weeks. One more thing just might be too much.

“Why did you stay in Iron Springs?” she asked.

Chapter Four

She hadn’t meant to ask that. She resented it when anyone asked her such a personal question.

“Why should I leave?”

She could think of a hundred reasons. “Mattie said you did very well in college, that you had two promising job offers.”

“I discovered I’d rather work with wood than be an engineer.”

“But you could do that anywhere. Why come back here?”

“Why go anywhere else?”

“Mattie couldn’t wait to get out.”

She hadn’t meant to say that. She didn’t know if he knew how his sister felt about Iron Springs, but she figured learning wouldn’t improve his attitude toward her. A glance at his profile—the rigid jaw and pursed lips—told her she’d judged correctly.

“Being with people I know and trust is important to me.” Gabe stared straight ahead. “I met lots of people in college who considered me their friend, but it wasn’t the same as with people around here.”

“Why not?”

“Because they only knew me for a few years, a semester, even a month. The people here have known me since I was born. They knew my parents before that, their parents before that. It’s like a large family. If anything happens to one of us, it happens to everybody.”

Dana could believe that. Her mother had made a lot of people in Iron Springs angry before she left for college. Years later, when Dana visited her grandmother, they still remembered. She’s a Yankee, poor thing. You can’t expect anything better of her.

“I wanted to stay near my family,” Gabe said. “After Mattie went away, Ma and Pa didn’t have anyone but me. I liked being able to walk to my parents’ house before breakfast, or have them visit me.”

“Most people don’t want their parents that close.”

“To me it’s a privilege. There’s nobody more concerned for me, more willing to lend a hand if I need it. I can’t always depend upon friends. I can on family.”

Dana’s life had been entirely different. Even in grade school, her parents had been away from home more often than not. When she went away to boarding school, college, started work, they sent cards, talked on the telephone, kept in touch by e-mail, but they maintained their separate lives. Dana couldn’t think of anything more unlikely than her mother showing up at her apartment before breakfast. Her mother never got out of bed before 10:00 a.m.

“I like familiar places,” Gabe continued. “I can’t go anywhere without being reminded of something I really like doing, somebody important to me. If I left Iron Springs, I’d lose all that.”

Dana opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. Coming back to Iron Springs had brought to the surface many memories she’d forgotten. But stepping into her grandmother’s house had been almost like becoming a different person, someone she used to be but hadn’t been in a long time. She hadn’t expected that, wouldn’t have believed it an hour ago. She had left a great chunk of herself in Iron Springs, and she hadn’t realized it until now.

“I like the slower pace,” Gabe said. “Everybody’s not after you to do 10 percent more this year than you did last. We don’t have to justify everything to cost accountants or efficiency experts. If I need to take the afternoon off, I just close up my shop. I also like selling things I make to people I know. Every piece of furniture I make is designed with a specific person in mind. I know what they like, what they need, even where it’ll go in the house. It’s nice to be able to see how close I came to finding the perfect solution.”

Dana could understand that. She’d often wondered where a particularly beautiful antique would be placed, if its setting would complement the piece. Even repeat customers seldom invited her into their homes.

“Maybe most of all, I like being around people I can trust, people who consider me part of their own family. People buy furniture from me even though they could get it cheaper at a discount store, because they know I’ll work a little harder to give them what they want. That’s a wonderfully warm feeling. It may sound trite in this day and time, but it makes my work more fun because it adds meaning to everything I do.”

Dana had never looked at things like that. Everyone she knew subscribed to the theory that you ought to do ten percent more this year, fifteen if you could manage it; that you shouldn’t worry about anything but making the sale; that numbers were all that counted; that you weren’t a success unless you were a success in other people’s eyes; that if working fifty hours a week was good, working sixty was better; that everything in life was secondary to being successful. She had to be a huge success to force her parents to recognize her achievements.

She had done all that and more.

Before Mattie came to live with her, she’d never once questioned that she was doing exactly what she wanted. But after Danny’s birth, she found her job at odds with being able to spend as much time at home as she wanted. Despite her partner’s objections, she stopped working sixteen-hour days, seven-day weeks. She’d even gotten to the point where, while she was trying to make a sale that might have netted them as much as fifty thousand dollars profit, she’d be thinking of what she meant to do after she left work.

Then Mattie got sick, and the worry and fear made Dana impossible to live with. Her partner had been relieved when Dana’s doctor ordered her to take some time off. Neither of them considered it anything but a temporary situation. But Gabe’s remarks, coming after her visit to her grandmother’s house, had reshuffled things in her head, had put them together in a way she’d never looked at them before.

In the world’s eyes—admit it! In hers, too—Gabe was a failure and she was a great success. But even with a failed marriage in his past, Gabe was happy and content while she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Maybe Iron Springs hadn’t failed her. Maybe she hadn’t heard what it tried to tell her.

“I always thought you wanted a family,” she said.

“I do.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’ll have to leave here to find a wife.”

“I don’t need a wife now. I have Danny.”

“You won’t have him if you don’t find a wife.”

“That’s why I think you ought to marry me.”

Surprise caused her to swerve in the road. “I thought you hated that idea as much as I do.”

“Marriage is my only option, and you’re my best choice. We can work out an equitable agreement, stay married as long as necessary, then get divorced. The whole thing won’t be messed up by a tangle of emotions. It’ll be pure business.”

The thought of her marriage being a business deal upset her. Even though nearly all her effort so far had been poured into building her career, a successful marriage had always been her goal. Getting married in this way made her dream seem further away, less real, less attainable. No one would call her relationships with men successful, but accepting Gabe’s offer made it seem like she’d given up.

On the other hand, he would lose Danny if he didn’t marry someone. What kind of woman could he find to marry him by tomorrow? How would she treat Danny? Or Gabe?

Everything was up to her.

Marrying Gabe shouldn’t be so hard. He would agree to her staying at her grandmother’s house, even living in New York. She could come down every weekend to see Danny. She and Gabe would hardly have to see each other.

“Well, what do you say?” Gabe asked.

“I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

She could tell he didn’t like that answer. But after being asked to marry him, in fewer than twenty-four hours, she deserved at least half of those hours to think about it.

Gabe studied Dana’s profile. It seemed absolutely incredible he should be asking a woman he hadn’t seen in fourteen years to marry him, a woman he barely knew, one who embodied nearly everything he distrusted. He might as well close his eyes, leap over a cliff and hope someone remembered to tie a bungie cord to his ankles. No, it was worse, like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. It could only end in disaster.

Her resemblance to Ellen frightened him. But Marshall was right. If Dana meant to shaft you, she would warn you first. She was direct, honest. Blunt, even. He hated the prospect of a second divorce. He’d promised himself if he ever remarried, it would be forever. Still, if he couldn’t get Danny any other way, he’d do it. It wasn’t as if he was marrying a stranger.

He wondered why he’d never realized that before. Though he hadn’t seen her since she was sixteen, she’d continued to be a part of his life. Through Mattie’s letters he knew about their years at that fancy New England college, their vacations in exotic places, Dana’s determination to make a success of her career. Mattie had seemed almost unaware of her own great talent, but she’d chronicled Dana’s success almost week by week. When she’d sent pictures of Danny, half of them included Dana.

Gabe couldn’t understand Dana’s almost frantic need to succeed, her willingness, like Ellen, to sacrifice nearly everything for her career. He couldn’t understand how she and Mattie had stayed friends. Given the kind of life she wanted, he couldn’t imagine why she concerned herself with Danny. She didn’t seem to need anyone—family or friends—or need to belong anywhere. He couldn’t understand such emotional isolation, her need to be so independent. Maybe she feared letting someone into her life would use up the energy she needed for her career.

Yet her decision to renovate the farmhouse caused him to wonder if she was as much of an emotional desert as she seemed. He’d seen the emotion in her eyes when she turned her car into the lane, when she saw the house, the swings, the yard. He’d also sensed she didn’t want anybody with her when she entered the house. It wasn’t a fancy apartment or a palatial villa on the Costa del Sol. Just a farmhouse. Still, something about those long-ago summers retained a very strong hold on her emotions.

Maybe he’d let his prejudice keep him from seeing a side of Dana that even she didn’t know existed. She had insisted Mattie share her apartment. She’d been at her side through the pregnancy and Danny’s birth. And during Mattie’s illness, according to Mattie’s last letter, Dana had virtually abandoned her job. Now she watched over Danny with the ferocity of a mother bear. Maybe Danny and Mattie had changed Dana more than either of them realized.

The more he thought about that idea, the more it intrigued him. Maybe finding the answer would help him keep his mind off her body for the few weeks they would be married—if she agreed to marry him.

He glanced to his left again. No, nothing short of unconsciousness could do that. A woman with Dana’s figure should never be seen in profile. It had the power to send the juices churning through his body in a matter of seconds. And she should certainly, absolutely, positively never wear a short skirt when driving. A good look at those long, slim legs could send any red-blooded male over the edge. He didn’t know a thing about hosiery, but Dana’s made her legs look as smooth as silk. The impulse to reach out and trail his fingertips along their length was nearly impossible to resist.

Her skirt was too short. It ought to extend half way down her calf. Or, just to be on the safe side, down to her ankles. And it shouldn’t be tight-fitting. The sight of her slim hips so cleanly outlined wasn’t good for his concentration. Maybe one of those things with elastic at the waist and lots of thick, gathered material.

And that didn’t take into consideration a blouse so filmy he could practically see her breasts. He knew he couldn’t, but the material made him think he could. He wondered how much they paid designers to create that effect. It ought to be millions.

“Everything looks so green,” Dana said.

“We’ve had a lot of rain.”

“It ought to help prevent fires.”

A hurricane couldn’t have doused the fire building inside him. “We almost never have fires up here.”

“I was thinking of the hay at my grandmother’s farm.”

“Get someone to cut it.”

“I don’t know anyone.”

“I do.”

“Will you take care of it for me?”

She turned toward him for a moment—not long enough to affect her driving, but long enough to endanger his self-control. There ought to be warning labels sown into every piece of her outfit saying Wearer subject to attack by sex-starved males.

Not that a man needed to be sex starved to want Dana. Even the perfume she wore tugged seductively at his senses. Half the time he couldn’t catch the scent. But when he did, it acted on him like a hypnotic drug, one that a man became aware of only after it had him firmly in its coils.

Everything about this woman seemed designed to eat away at his self-control. He’d better rectify that. No matter what arrangement they reached, city-bred Dana Marsh wouldn’t want anything to do with a country boy who made furniture and lived in a Podunk mountain town in Virginia.

“What time would you like to leave for Ma’s house?” Gabe asked, determined to get his mind off Dana’s body. She cast him a quick glance before turning her gaze back to the road. She didn’t look too happy about that idea, but he hadn’t expected she would.

“I’d been thinking of picking up something and spending the evening letting Danny get used to your house.”

He turned to look in the back seat. Danny had gone to sleep in his car seat, his head tilted to one side. There was something about the child asleep that reached out and grabbed Gabe like nothing ever had. He couldn’t decide whether it was that he was such an angelic-looking child, his complete trust that they would take care of him, or the sweet innocence of his expression. He just knew he was more determined than ever to be the one who would rear his sister’s child.

“If you want to continue to be part of Danny’s life, you’re going to have to get to know the people in his life.”

“Nobody in Iron Springs likes me.”

“Maybe a few of them haven’t forgotten the things your mother said when she left—she badmouthed just about everybody and everything in Iron Springs—but the rest like you just fine.”

“No, they don’t. You might not have seen it, but I felt it. I asked my grandmother about it.”

“What did she say?”

“She said to pretend it didn’t exist.”

“Sounds like good advice to me.”

“It’s not good enough for me now.”

“Then you’ll have to figure out a way to change their minds.”

“Would marrying you do that?”

Until he married Ellen, he’d always taken belonging for granted. She looked down on everybody, and they sensed it right way.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I supposed you’d have to like Iron Springs, want to live here, want the people to be your friends.”

“They’d have to want me, too. I was always that kid from New York.”

“They probably felt you were just visiting, that you had no more intention than your mother did of having anything to do with Iron Springs after you grew up.”

“Why should they think that?”

“You were always telling us about your big plans to become a famous businesswoman and make millions of dollars.”

Back then he’d never heard of a million dollars. That figure had been a constant reminder of the great distance between their two worlds.

“Little girls always dream big.”

“A little too big for people around here.”

“It shouldn’t be.” She sounded short, a little defensive. “You could have half a dozen millionaires in town if a few people decided to sell off a mountain or two. Even if they couldn’t be used for ski slopes, they could be turned into retirement communities.”

“We don’t want things to change,” Gabe said.

Bringing that many people and that kind of business into the area would destroy most of what he loved about Iron Springs. He knew Dana wouldn’t see it that way—she’d probably think it would be the salvation of the place—but she didn’t see the real value, the most precious resource of Iron Springs.

The people.

“It won’t matter,” Dana said. “If I agree to marry you, I won’t be here long enough for anybody to notice.”

Gabe thought Dana was mistaken about many things. But in no instance was she further from the truth than in believing she could be anywhere without being noticed.

Dana approached Mrs. Purvis’s house with trepidation. She had been the only mother to make Dana welcome when she first visited her grandmother. Even after Mattie decided to defy her father and go to college, Mrs. Purvis had never said an angry or accusing word. Still Dana felt like she was stepping into the enemy camp.

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