“Anything’s possible.”

“Like for you to forgive me for last night?” Mack’s voice, deepened by emotion, seemed to slice right through her. Her gaze cut to his and the rough demand in his blue eyes snared her completely. She must have looked confused because he added, “For the stupid things I said?”

“I should apologize, too.”

“No, Corrie,” he said firmly, taking a step forward. “You had every right to be angry. You’ve been nothing but wonderful from day one. I’m the one whose been slinging a bushel of mixed signals.”

“You were pretty clear last night,” she said. Her voice felt rusty, her jaw stiff.

“Yes, if you mean my wanting to kiss you. And liking it. And wanting to do it again.”

“You do?”

“God, yes.”

Dear Reader,

Our exciting month of May begins with another of bestselling author and reader favorite Fiona Brand’s Australian Alpha heroes. In Gabriel West: Still the One, we learn that former agent Gabriel West and his ex-wife have spent their years apart wishing they were back together again. And their wish is about to come true, but only because Tyler needs protection from whoever is trying to kill her—and Gabriel is just the man for the job.

Marie Ferrarella’s crossline continuity, THE MOM SQUAD, continues, and this month it’s Intimate Moments’ turn. In The Baby Mission, a pregnant special agent and her partner develop an interest in each other that extends beyond police matters. Kylie Brant goes on with THE TREMAINE TRADITION with Entrapment, in which wickedly handsome Sam Tremaine needs the heroine to use the less-than-savory parts of her past to help him capture an international criminal. Marilyn Tracy offers another story set on her Rancho Milagro, or Ranch of Miracles, with At Close Range, featuring a man scarred—inside and out—and the lovely rancher who can help heal him. And in Vickie Taylor’s The Last Honorable Man, a mother-to-be seeks protection from the man she’d been taught to view as the enemy—and finds a brand-new life for herself and her child in the process. In addition, Brenda Harlan makes her debut with McIver’s Mission, in which a beautiful attorney who’s spent her life protecting families now finds that she is in danger—and the handsome man who’s designated himself as her guardian poses the greatest threat of all.

Enjoy! And be sure to come back next month for more of the best romantic reading around, right here in Intimate Moments.

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

At Close Range
Marilyn Tracy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARILYN TRACY

Ranging in subject matter from classic women-in-jeopardy scenarios to fallen angels fighting to save the universe, Marilyn’s books have placed on several bestseller lists and earned her such awards as Romantic Times Career and Lifetime Achievement Awards, and Best of Series. She claims to speak Russian with fair fluency, Hebrew with appalling mistakes and enough Spanish to get her arrested at any border crossing. She lives with her sister in Roswell, New Mexico, where the only aliens they’ve seen thus far are the critters in their new home, a converted railroad warehouse.

For Dar, who lost Jim but has dear friends.

For Linda, who survived chemo and has dear friends.

And for Mom, who scared us all this year,

but has cool daughters.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

“They say that curses follow blessings,” Rita said, snapping a top sheet over the bed. “That’s the way it happens. First the good, then the bad.”

“Who’s saying this?” Corrie asked the housekeeper, not looking up from her notebook. She crossed out a word, penned in another.

“Oh, you know. People. Lots of different people, smart people. Too many good things have happened here, they are saying.”

“And there’s something wrong with that?”

“There’s nothing wrong with good things. Good is good. But when so much good happens…”

“It’s time for the bad?”

“Sí, señora, that’s how it works.” Finished with the sheets and the comforter, Rita plumped the pillows with a vigor belied by her tiny frame. Five feet tall, with black hair and snapping black eyes, she couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds dripping wet and could wrestle the most recalcitrant child into washing behind her ears. “And that Doreen at the post office? She’s talking about ghosts again.”

Corrie chuckled, thinking of the bold young mother of three who peddled more gossip than stamps. “I should have thought she was too busy with her wedding plans to worry about ghosts out here,” Corrie said.

“Oh, Doreen was talking wedding plans long before she snagged that young deputy marshal. See, there’s another good thing.”

Corrie nodded absently, already back to studying what she’d written. It was less a journal than a song notebook, but as usual, the lyrics were too sharp and pointed, contrived in a harsh fashion. She sighed. She’d come to Rancho Milagro to join her friends and partners, giving up her safe career—or fleeing it—to help run the ranch. But secretly dreaming she could follow her heart’s desire, she’d run to the ranch in order to give herself the chance to write songs.

If what she’d penned that morning was any indication of the future, and if Reba McEntire decided to sing songs with a decided bite, Corrie Stratton would be a surefire hit; otherwise, she’d better get back into journalism. No one wanted to listen to songs that dripped with romanticism only to end in a kick-in-the-face at the denouement.

Rita moved to the carpet sweeper and began scratching it across the woven rug. “My mother had a saying, ‘Talk about something bad and the Devil won’t notice you.’ The priest, I don’t think he would agree, but me, I think she was right.”

“What rhymes with loss?” Corrie muttered.

“You writing a poem? I like the versos at church. I know, how about sauce? Moss?”

“Or floss.” Corrie groaned and closed the notebook for the fiftieth time in a month. She laid her head down on the desk. “Why did I ever think I was a songsmith, anyway?”

“You’re writing a song? Like ‘Qué Buena Esa Vida’? I like that one. ‘How good life is.’ Mmm. You write songs like that?”

Corrie raised her head from the desk. “I wish,” she said. She pushed up and turned her attention on Rita. “Let me get this right, because so many good things have happened here at the ranch….”

“Sí, like the children coming and being so happy. Like Señora Jeannie falling in love with Chance Salazar and marrying him even if he was a marshal. Like the water coming from the spring after all these years, just like the legend said it would. You coming here, even if your hands still shake and you have no meat on your bones. These things are all good things. Little milagros. Miracles. Of course, you know that because you speak such good Spanish.” She smiled, then sighed, placing both hands on the handle of the sweeper, looking for all the world like a Henriette Wyeth painting. “Now it’s the Devil’s turn. Mischief time. Bad luck.” She raised her hand in the old sign against the Devil himself, a crooked forefinger over a thumb, making a rough cross.

The doorbell of the hacienda rang, and when Rita didn’t make a move, Corrie leaned back, waiting.

Rita looked to the bedroom door and then to Corrie.

Corrie looked from Rita to the bedroom door, sighed and pushed away from the desk.

“Don’t go, señora,” Rita said. “‘When the Devil knocks, don’t answer the door.’ My mama, she says that.”

Corrie withheld a shiver and shook her head. It seemed to her that Rita’s mother was obsessed with devils and demons. She hoped Rita didn’t pass along her mother’s little gems to the children. They’d had enough rough times before coming to the ranch that they didn’t need a heap of superstitious nonsense clouding their fragile psyches.

The doorbell peeled again, the rich chimes echoing throughout Rancho Milagro’s main hacienda before Corrie reached the foyer. If she’d been writing a song about it, the words would have started, Rita’s mama’s Devil knocked at the door….

At least Rita had a mother; Corrie didn’t, nor did either of her partners in the Rancho Milagro venture. There seemed some irony in the notion of three orphans tackling an orphans’ ranch. There was a feeling of coming full circle and, at the same time, one of embarking into completely new territory. They knew how to be orphans, but did they really know how to raise them?

Corrie pulled open one of the heavy wooden doors, sincerely hoping it wasn’t another of the tabloid journalists seeking a miracle story.

The man standing on the veranda didn’t look like a devil, but how could she be sure these days?

He had his back to her, apparently surveying the ranch outbuildings, a few of the children in the corral and the playground, or perhaps he studied the long view to the Guadalupe Mountains in the distance.

He wasn’t dressed in what Corrie thought of as cowboy garb—boots, buckle and snaps—though he still managed to look from the Southwest with his broad shoulders, chinos, crisp cotton shirt and corduroy sport jacket.

If it had been twenty years before, she’d have taken him to be a reporter, but the new breed of journalists didn’t wear sport coats or starched shirts, and their pants usually looked several years worse for wear. She ought to know; she’d seen enough of them in her lifetime, and even more than that in the past month.

“Can I help you?” she asked softly.

He turned slowly, as if steeling himself against something unpleasant, and swiveled an unsmiling and scarred face toward her. Though healed, the scars were obvious results of skin grafting, and done by a rather skilled surgeon. The lack of a smile could be attributed to any of a thousand reasons.

Her first thought was that he must have been a remarkably handsome man before whatever accident had befallen him. Rugged, square features, high cheekbones, piercing blue eyes and graying black hair. Then she realized the scars only accentuated his looks, as if he’d been born of tragedy and it and not genetics had carved his fierce features.

He nodded.

She inclined her head in response and waited, her heart pounding a little faster.

“I’m Mack,” he said. His voice was pitched low and was somewhat gravelly, as though he spoke infrequently or smoked too much. A blues voice. “Mack Dorsey.”

The name seemed familiar, but the man did not. “Corrie Stratton,” she said automatically.

It was customary in the Southwest to hold out one’s hand immediately upon meeting, greeting or saying farewell. But Corrie wasn’t from the Southwest and still found the practice uncomfortable around strangers. Besides which, and to her relief, the screen door still served as a distinct barrier between them.

He gave a half lift of his lips, not, she thought, as if he were trying to smile, but as if trying to remember how. The scars on his face notwithstanding, nothing about him spoke of a damaged man. He looked tough and hard. Cold and unapproachable. His eyes told a story of a sorrow she didn’t think she wanted to know. It was too intense, too wrenching. And too challenging. She suppressed the urge to shut the door and suffer the agonies of rudeness rather than continue to stand there facing the imposing man.

“I’m here about the teaching job,” he said.

Relieved, she almost smiled. She knew who he was now. Jeannie had told her that a new teacher would be coming by for a personal interview. Jeannie and Leeza had already checked his references and investigated his past. Jeannie just hadn’t mentioned that it would be today.

Her partners happened to be in Roswell that day on a shopping run and, perhaps because she’d come to the ranch with trembling hands and jumpy nerves, she hadn’t had a hand in hiring any of the crew there thus far. But she’d been there long enough now that Jeannie and Leeza had been teasing her of late that she needed to take a more active role in the ranch governance, not just play with the children. It was all too likely that, in the manner of swimming instructors of old, they’d simply thrown her into the deep end, foolishly confident she would learn to keep her head above water.

This would be her first employment interview, and while she might have grilled heads of state, she didn’t have the foggiest notion of how to go about hiring a teacher for the children at Rancho Milagro.

Besides which, the man looked nothing like a teacher. With those forbidding icy-blue eyes, squared shoulders and scarred face, he looked as if he’d be more at home riding in a general’s jeep, eyes scanning the horizon for snipers and enemy troops.

“I had an appointment,” he said, and held out one of Jeannie’s cards with the Rancho Milagro logo emblazoned across it. “At one today.”

“Right,” she murmured, though she wanted to ask him to come back another day, sometime when Leeza, Jeannie or her husband, Chance, was there to talk with this stranger.

“And it’s one now.”

“So it is,” Corrie agreed, though, typically, she had no idea what time it might be. She was quaking inside. No matter how many interviews she’d done over how many years, and discounting the numerous tough situations she’d found herself in, she nevertheless still suffered from nervous qualms at bridging the first question. The obvious one seemed easier than most. “Won’t you come in?”

She pushed the screen door out and waited for him to take it, pulling her hand back before his could come within inches of it.

“Thanks,” he said, and let the door fall softly closed behind him as he brushed past her.

She felt the heat he carried on him, and told herself she was imagining things as the day had dawned with frost that covered the ranch. Still, they were in the desert and temperatures could easily soar into the nineties during the daylight hours.

Her hands were shaking as she closed the heavy wood door behind him. Before turning around, she drew a deep breath and whispered the oft-repeated litany that had gotten her through so many bad times in the past and countless interviews after that, “I’m Corrie Stratton, and if I survived my childhood, I can survive this.”

Mack waited for Corrie to turn around and wondered if she might just stay there, forehead pressed against the wood of the oak door, whispering to herself.

Not that he minded the view, he thought. Corrie Stratton was small in stature with a slender frame. Her curves were imperfectly hidden by her long fall of silky chestnut hair, a baggy but elegant emerald shirt and sweatpants that had seen better days. Her feet were bare and her toenails painted a cheery red that seemed at odds with her lack of makeup and inexplicably trembling hands.

“Corrie Stratton. Aren’t you one of the owners of Rancho Milagro?” he asked finally, though the moment she’d spoken to him he’d known exactly who she was. “And from your National Public Radio network, this is Corrie Stratton. Good night.” Maybe she played a larger role in his reasons for appearing at the ranch in the first place.

He watched as her shoulders straightened and her head lifted before she turned around. Her face was composed now, almost as if she’d never had a stray nerve in her life. He was struck by the change in her. Before, she’d seemed disconcerted, even a little frightened. Now she kept her expression neutral, a small smile playing on her full lips.

She nodded as she walked up to him. She held out her hand, and he had the feeling she’d accomplished the simple act by sheer force of will and, moreover, that she’d rather be on any other planet than standing there about to shake hands with him. And because of that he had no choice but to take that slim hand into his.

As always, the shock of feeling someone else touching the new skin on his hands gave him the sense of déjà vu, as if he simultaneously remembered how he was supposed to feel another’s palm and the reality of encountering it through new skin.

He imagined there was something different in Corrie Stratton’s fluttering touch. And that something struck him purely viscerally. Whatever the feeling was, it had nothing whatsoever to do with scars, nerve endings or wounds too recently healed.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He released her hand. He wasn’t sure what she was sorry about, but hid a smile as she curled her hand into a fist and cradled it against her chest, almost as though she were holding his imprint to her.

Or, perhaps, as if he’d injured her.

“Leeza and Jeannie aren’t here today.”

He frowned. “My interview is with you, I believe.”

She blinked. “It is?”

“That’s what I was told,” he said. He glanced down at the business card Jeannie Salazar had given him, though he knew Corrie Stratton’s name was scrawled on the back with the time of the interview beneath it. He flipped it over and held it out.

He thought of the endless hours he’d spent listening to her on the radio and wondering if any woman could measure up to that incredible voice. She did and then some. “Yep, here it is.”

She glanced at the card but didn’t reach for it. “You’ll have to forgive me. I must have forgotten to jot it down in my book.”

She wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d heard her voice a million times, a thousand hours beyond that. Low and sultry, her subdued voice, with its inherent sexuality, had led him to picture her to be long-legged, lush and ultraseductive.

Instead, she appeared scarcely tethered to this planet, held down by sheer gravity only. The epitome of petite, she was an almost elfin creature, only some five foot something, all long, delicate fingers, sloe eyes and cheery red toenails. And yet, her gaze, somewhat shy and attempting to hide her nervousness, spoke volumes. And let him know she was lying.

Someone had neglected to tell her about the interview. How he knew this, he wasn’t sure, but he knew it nonetheless. Corrie Stratton wasn’t the kind of person who might blame another. He wondered if she’d have been more nervous or less had she known he was coming there this afternoon. For the first time in a long, long time, he found himself curious about a real someone; he wanted to know what made a renowned radio journalist like Corrie Stratton so skittish.

She pulled her hair up into a rough ponytail that she held with her fist and walked past him to a long credenza-like entry table, rummaged in the upper drawer and retrieved a couple of pens. One she stabbed through her hair—and, amazing him, it held the mass of brown locks—and the other she tucked over an ear. She tugged a notepad free from beneath the hall telephone, flipped over the top few pages, smoothed them down and turned to him, all cool, calm and collected prospective employer.

“If you’ll follow me,” she said, and led the way across the massive living room through an archway into a dining room that could easily sit twenty people. She took a seat at the head of the table and gestured to a chair flanking hers.

He waited until she sat, then joined her at the table. He took in the children’s drawings over a long sideboard flanking the dining table. At least twenty of them had been carefully matted and framed and hung in rows beside a low mirror. The mirror reflected the living room he’d passed through, the fireplace on the wall behind him, some hand-woven baskets, a couple of original Holly Huber oil paintings, and an R. C. Gorman print.

His eyes continued their survey of the room and rested thoughtfully on a simple but highly effective alarm system on the dining room wall. It was the kind that could be triggered by hand, excessive heat or smoke. If he remembered the shriek it produced, it was worse than deafening.

“So,” she said, after drawing a deep breath. “Please tell me a little about yourself.” To his delight, she lifted her feet to the seat of the chair and wrapped an arm around her legs. After a glance in his direction, she cleared her throat and lowered her bare feet to the floor, crossing her legs in a decidedly studied, ladylike fashion.

He swallowed the smile threatening to surface. And admired the way she’d pulled herself together for an interview she obviously knew nothing about.

“I’ve taught for twelve years, have a master’s degree in history from Texas Tech and am certified in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado, grades K through 12. And, if you have tennis courts, I can coach tennis, too.”

“I see,” she said, jotting down something in her notepad. “And what is it that makes you want to work at Rancho Milagro?”

He hesitated and she looked up to meet his eyes. Hers were a deep, rich brown, he saw, like coffee liqueur. Eyes a man could get drunk and drown in. He thought it was a lucky thing she’d made her mark in radio broadcasting; those eyes on television would have made the male population newsaholics.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What did you ask?”

She paraphrased her question about working at the ranch.

He looked away from those liquid brown eyes. “I heard what you were trying to do out here. I liked the sound of it. And wanted to be a part of the miracles.” He attempted a chuckle as he finished blurting the raw truth.

He couldn’t tell her that he’d wanted to be around the woman who had pulled him through a nightmare of torturous procedures, that he craved a slice of the joy Rancho Milagro apparently served for breakfast. At least he hadn’t blurted out that he wanted a new life.

Simply wanted.

He didn’t really believe wanting made anything so. He used to, once upon a distant time, but not any longer. He fought the nightmare images that threatened to rise to the surface, the tragic sound of children crying for help, the scent of burning linoleum and, ultimately, the stench of despair. He didn’t believe miracles were possible, but he wanted any and all to come his way so much more than he could ever begin to tell her.

He felt dazed as she gave him a swift, conspiratorial smile. A knee tucked back up into her chest. She clasped it and leaned forward. “Me, too,” she said.

She, who seemingly had everything, wanted a miracle? What could she possibly want? To meet another king, interview another world leader? What was she even doing on this lonely ranch, miles away from everything?

He didn’t voice any of his questions, but apparently his silence seemed to make her potential-employer consciousness take over again. Her leg lowered and crossed again. He resisted the urge to look beneath the table to see if her toes even touched the floor.

She asked, “What was it that you liked the sound of?”

The miracles—and you, he almost said, lured by her eyes into telling more unvarnished truth. “The kids. Taking foster kids and orphans, giving them a working ranch and home environment. Letting them have half a chance before sending them out on their own,” he said.

He’d wanted, perhaps needed, to come to work there because the tabloids and news features referred to the place as a ranch of miracles. When cynical journalists waxed ecstatic, a huge kernel of truth must lie within the story. And one truth was obvious, the Rancho Milagro partners took in the strays of the world and offered them new lives.

He asked, “How many do you have now?”

“What? Oh, children, you mean. For a minute, I thought you meant miracles.” She stopped on a rueful smile, drew a deep breath and continued, “We only have seven so far. Two are already adopted by Jeannie and Chance—Dulce and José—but they take lessons with the others.”

“You already have teachers, then?”

“Only one, Melanie Jorgensen, and she’s not here yet. She’s arriving in the fall.” She released a slight smile, as if remembering Melanie Jorgensen and liking the memory. “In the meantime, we’ve all been pitching in for various subjects.” She made a face as if the classes weren’t going well. “Right now, we’re on home-school status because it’s too far to ship the children into Carlsbad schools and because the children we have now are all somewhat behind in their schooling.”

“So this would be a temporary arrangement?”

He realized his question was inept when she gave him a blank stare. “Temporary? No. Oh, you mean about the home schooling. Again, no.”

He loved the way she couched every answer in formal terms, as if he might misconstrue the slightest nuance of what she said. It was one of her trademarks on the radio, the bit they advertised before her golden voice came on. When Corrie Stratton says it’s true, it’s a fact.

The woman with the golden voice and truth in her words tilted her head at him. “Eventually we’d like our own status as an official school. But that’s a far piece down the road, as they say around here. With the home-school status, however, and with certified teachers, we can still get these kids well grounded in what they need to know to get good college placements.”

Her feet crept to the chair seat again. He was sure she was unaware of the fact that one of her arms wrapped around her knees, drawing them to her chest. He was also sure she was utterly unaware how attractive she was.

“That’s the object, then?” he asked.

She frowned and looked a question at him.

“What you would want from a teacher?”

“I see,” she said as carefully as she had before. “I’m not exactly sure what Leeza or Jeannie would say in answer to that. From my perspective, I think what we want is someone who will be surrogate parent, teacher, friend and mentor with a bit of a kindly uncle thrown in.”

“A teacher of many hats,” he said, and leaned back in the chair, relaxed for the first time since he’d driven onto the ranch.

She smiled at him—a bit wistfully, he thought. “It’s a dream, I know. But…”

“One that’s already working.” Abruptly, it wasn’t just the job he wanted, but to reassure her that the ranch-cum-children’s-home dream was already coming true.

“Yes,” she said, and gave him the most genuine smile she’d managed with him so far—except when she’d expressed her wish for a miracle.

He felt that smile like a fever coming on, making him feel hot and restless.

“So far it’s working.” She cleared her throat as if remembering she was conducting an interview. “Are you currently teaching somewhere, Mr. Dorsey?”

“Mack,” he said.

“Okay. Sorry. Mack, are you teaching anywhere right now?”

“Nothing to apologize for and, no, at the moment I’m not teaching, so I’d be available immediately,” he said.

She gave him a funny look before making another scratch in her notepad. “And when was the last time you were in the classroom, Mr. Dorsey?”

“Mack,” he corrected. He realized then that she didn’t know who he was, that she didn’t realize that he was the so-called hero of the Enchanted Hills incident. Teacher heroically sacrifices himself to rescue ten students burning in blazing inferno. And what else was an inferno but blazing and what was a sacrifice when he had lived and five children had died?

For a moment, as so often happened, the cries of the children, both rescued and lost, echoed in his ears and his nose stung from the acrid scent of burning schoolrooms.

Corrie Stratton, the woman with the golden voice and the coffee-liqueur eyes didn’t blink. Lady journalist extraordinaire, this tiny scrap of a woman didn’t seem to have a clue as to his identity.

He gave a faint and, he hoped, easy smile. “I’ve been out for two years.”

She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. He must have made some kind of gesture. He found it somewhat ironic that he’d come to Milagro in part to escape the newshounds, the incessant prying into his life, and was now being interviewed by one of the nation’s leading investigative journalists and she didn’t have a clue about him. Because of that news interest, he had assumed Corrie’s partner, Leeza, had known who he was and hadn’t asked him to discuss his reasons for being out of the classroom for such a long time when he went through the initial phone interview with Leeza and the secondary meeting with Jeannie. He found himself stymied and irrationally resenting having to reveal the truth about his scars and talk about the many things he couldn’t explain away—the pain, the losses. Her gaze traveled from his hands to the scars on his face. “An accident?” she asked.

Could one call a deliberately executed firebomb that killed five children and a cafeteria worker an accident? In a cosmic fashion, perhaps that would be true.

“Yes,” he said, and didn’t elaborate. He was grateful when she didn’t pursue that line of questioning.

She cleared her throat again. “You do realize that you’d have to be living here on Milagro?”

Living on a miracle. Better than the bitter ashes of regret. “That works for me,” he said truthfully. He didn’t add that it would be an escape. A refuge. Just dodging the media would be a miracle in and of itself.

“And that because we’re providing room and board—and a horse, if you want to ride—we’re not offering even close to what could be considered a competitive salary?”

“With the add-ons of the living quarters, food and, of course, a horse, I’m okay with the salary, provided you offer insurance.”

To her credit, she didn’t look at his scars this time, though he could see a noticeable rise in her color. “Of course. That’s a given.” She didn’t look up as she added, “We require a thirty-day probationary period.”

“Accepted.”

Her eyes shot to his. He felt a jolt of something hot and fiery shoot through him. He had to clear his throat before asking, “Are you offering me the job, Ms. Stratton?” Her partners, Jeannie and Leeza, had led him to believe this interview was pro forma only.

For all the nights of listening to her voice in the loneliest hours of the dark, believing her stories, fantasizing about her, he suddenly wanted her to ask him to stay, not because he was qualified, but because she wanted him to. Knowing a fantasy was impossible didn’t make it fade any more swiftly.

“Corrie,” she said, without answering him.

“What?”

“You can call me Corrie.”

It was like being asked to call Dan Rather, Dan, or Barbara Walters, Babs. But whatever he’d thought before coming out here, despite the needs he’d felt when he saw the opening advertised, he wanted this job now. He wanted it more than anything on the face of the earth. “Okay. Corrie, then.”

Her eyes met his and he saw the wary denial in her gaze. Disappointment shafted through him. She would say no. She didn’t want him as a teacher on this ranch of miracles. Then he saw something else in her gaze. Something confused and alluring, a look that had nothing whatsoever to do with teaching.

He rasped, “Are you offering me the job?”

She shook her head, though her eyes implored him to understand something she didn’t voice. He clearly saw her wary rejection. “I…I don’t think I can do anything without the approval of my partners, Mr. Dorsey—”

“Just call me Mack.” Two could play at that game.

“Mack.” He thought she repeated his name as if savoring it. Her eyes flickered and she shook her head. “I don’t think I can—”

A horse’s angry whinny and a child’s scream cut her words off midstream. In the split second of hesitation following the scream, their eyes locked. Hers, he thought, carried a wealth of fear and helplessness, a pleading that he do something. His, he was sure, told her he couldn’t do a thing to help, that people had died because of him before.

But looking into the depths of her coffee eyes, he felt powerless to resist her. Without a word, he shoved away from the table and was through the doors and across the veranda.

From the time of the scream to his leap from the steps, no more than three seconds could have passed.

A flashy pinto, with a small kid of nine or ten looking like a rag-doll saddle decoration, bucked and lurched toward the hacienda steps, whinnying shrilly and trying his best to rid himself of the child-burr on his back. The boy, all eyes and scrawny legs, screamed bloody murder and held on to the saddle horn for dear life.

Without thinking about it, Mack jumped from the bottom of the steps, directly into the heaving horse’s path. The beast shuddered and whinnied anew but skidded to a halt.

Mack heard a swift shriek from behind him. He heard other yells and ignored them. All his attention was focused only on the horse and the small boy perched above him.

The little boy, who had somehow held on during the wild ride, lost his control at the abrupt stop and pitched forward. He somersaulted down the horse’s neck to land at Mack’s feet.

Mack hooked a leg around the boy and flipped him behind him, not worrying how the boy would fare against the dirt, but terrified that the shivering horse would decide to rear and bring its sharp hooves down onto the child.

Though he knew less than nothing about horses, he instinctively reached for the fallen reins of the horse’s bridle and, talking to the horse the whole time, managed to secure them. The horse turned a white, rolled eye in his direction and, trembling, stamped the ground and huffed several times before seeming to realize he was all right.

When he could find his voice, Mack asked gruffly, “Hey, kid, you okay?”

Corrie stood frozen on the veranda steps, both hands holding a scream inside. Fractured images of alternate timelines flashed through her mind, other presents and myriad futures: Mack Dorsey sitting calmly at the dining table, handing over references while Juan Carlos flew across the air to thud on the ground with a final groan of pain. Mack and Corrie laughing over something and Juan Carlos trampled by Dancer’s hooves. A funeral, a pregnant Jeannie crying in her husband’s arms, a headstone with Juan Carlos’s birthdate etched and the death date today. Juan Carlos riding Dancer and Mack Dorsey deciding not to come to Rancho Milagro that fine early spring afternoon.

She heard him ask, “Hey, kid, you okay?”

Juan Carlos sat up, perfectly all right, using Mack Dorsey’s jeans as a pulley. “Y-yeah, I think. Yeah, I’m okay.”

Somehow, Corrie managed to get down the steps despite her watery legs and reached Juan Carlos about the same time the groundskeeper and sometimes groom, Jorge, came limping around the corner of the hacienda, gasping and cursing in little bursts of winded Spanish.

Even as she patted the boy down, trying unsuccessfully to pry him from his grip on Mack Dorsey’s legs, Corrie felt like laughing at Jorge’s bedraggled curses. Juan Carlos, according to Jorge, would fall down a rabbit hole and be twitched to death by bunny whiskers. Juan Carlos, before the day was over, would have his face torn off by magpies and sewn on backward by prairie dogs. Juan Carlos, if he didn’t learn to listen to Jorge, would have to learn the entire alphabet in both Spanish and English backward and forward.

“Niño,” Jorge panted, seeing the boy alive and tremulously smiling up at Mack Dorsey, “next time you want to kill old Jorge, just get a gun, okay?” He bent over, a hand on his chest, another on one knee.

“El hombre stopped the horse for me,” Juan Carlos said, but didn’t let go of Mack’s jeans. Corrie knew how he felt. Her own legs gave way about then and she sat down in the dirt, one hand on Juan Carlos’s shoulder and the other on the toe of Mack Dorsey’s tennis shoe.

“His name is Mr. Mack Dorsey,” Corrie said faintly. “And you better say a very good thank-you.”

Juan Carlos looked up. “Thank you, señor. But you made me fall off the horse.”

Corrie gave a ragged chuckle that was all too close to a sob. “Not quite good enough, Juan Carlos. Try again.”

“Thank you for getting in the way of my horse, Señor Mack.”

“J-Juan Carlos!” Jorge sputtered. “You get up right now and say you’re sorry.” After some effort, the older man stood upright and took the reins from Mack’s hands. “I’ll take the horse now, señor. Thank God you were here.”

The two men clasped hands and Mack withstood a hard backslap from Jorge before leaning over to shake Juan Carlos’s upstretched hand.

“Take it easy, kid,” Mack said.

“You, too, Señor Mack.”

Corrie looked up to find Mack’s eyes on her, a crooked smile on his lips. He held out a scarred hand.

She put hers in his, felt the smooth skin enveloping hers, let him pull her up, smelled the dust the horse had kicked up, and smelled her own fear and the heady, all-male scent of Mack Dorsey.

She nodded at him. He nodded back.

She smiled and he didn’t.

She drew a deep, tremulous breath. “The sooner you can bring your things, the better,” she said.

Then he smiled.

Chapter 2

If Mack was surprised that everyone shared evening meals together at Rancho Milagro, the others seemed to find it perfectly normal. Within seconds of his entering the hacienda for a second time that day, he was subjected to a rapid-fire introduction to the rest of the household.

He nodded at the awesomely tall and gorgeous Leeza Nelson, whom he’d spoken to on the phone when he first applied for the job. Leeza was only on the ranch for a short time, Corrie had told him earlier; she had to go back to Washington, D.C., to run her company. He also nodded to Jeannie, another of the partners, and Chance Salazar, her U.S. Marshal husband, and raised a hand to their two kids, Dulce and José. He was reintroduced to Juan Carlos—much improved by soap and water—the ranch hands, Clovis, Jorge and Pablo, and four other children ranging in age from six to eleven whom he didn’t have names for yet.

Places were set at the enormous table in the dining room. Only a couple of the chairs were without mats, plates and silverware. Three large pitchers of iced tea with lemons and ice bobbing to the surface served as centerpieces and the cloth napkins adorning each plate all held a different shape.

The housekeeper, Rita—a tiny stick of a woman in her forties—plopped the last dish down on an enormous sideboard before taking a place at the table herself and heaving a huge sigh. “Señors, señoras, and niños…dinner is ready.”

Mack expected the kids to launch from the table and attack the sideboard, but no one moved. Finally, Jeannie held out her hands on either side, clasping her husband’s in one and her daughter Dulce’s in the other. “Grace,” she said. “Juan Carlos? I believe it’s your turn.”

Mack couldn’t remember the last time he’d been a party to saying grace before dinner—some long-ago Thanksgiving when he was just a little squirt, he suspected—and felt awkward taking the little girl’s hand seated next to him and Corrie’s on the other. Corrie’s was dry and warm; the little girl’s scrubbed and slightly damp. While Corrie’s fingers pulsed and trembled beneath his, the little girl’s fingers squeezed his hand, as if offering reassurance, or—in his opinion, far worse—trust.

He bowed his head with the others when Jeannie signaled Juan Carlos to perform the blessing.

The boy cleared his throat and sang out a version of grace he’d obviously been practicing. “Thanks for the tacos, thanks for the beans, and thank you, God, for my blue jeans!”

Mack wasn’t the only one who chuckled. And to his combined surprise and relief, no one reprimanded the boy. The little girl, whose hand had rested so trustingly in his, removed it to cover her giggles.

Jeannie’s husband, Chance, gave a sharp bark of laughter, followed by deep chortles. Leeza muttered something and, shaking her head, hid a grin that threatened to soften her somewhat forbidding features. Jeannie tsked but smiled fondly at the kid whose gift for rhyme might not meet a holier person’s standards.

But Corrie’s reaction was the best, he thought. She bit her lower lip while giving the boy a slow, deliberate wink, as if they’d cooked up the crazy blessing together. And when the boy gave her a cocky thumbs-up, Mack realized that they had. No wonder miracles happened around this place.

When she glanced at him, and recognized by his answering look that he’d caught her coaching, she flushed a little, shrugged, and by tilting her head at Juan Carlos, let him understand that she didn’t want him to say anything. Mack remembered her conspiratorial smile earlier that afternoon. Before the bucking horse episode, prior to her offering him the job, when she’d asked him why he wanted to be at Rancho Milagro, and, at his answer of wanting to be a part of the miracles, she had hunched forward, guileless, conspiratorial, and said “Me, too.”

The little girl next to him leaned against him, still giggling, sharing her laughter in her shaking shoulders. He resisted the urge to place his arm around her. Corrie’s wish of teacher-cum-kindly-uncle might be her dream, but in the real world of lawsuits and traumas, a simple touch could so easily be misconstrued. Still, the little girl pressed against his arm and rested her forehead on his forearm. He couldn’t help but chuckle at her helpless laughter. And for a fleeting moment, wondered how long it had been since he’d laughed.

“Okay, tonight, even though we have a newcomer, kids get to go first,” Jeannie said. “And Juan Carlos? Keep your fingers away from the alarm.”

Seven chairs, including the one next to his, scraped across broad, burnt-sienna-colored Saltillo tile and seven giggling children raced to the sideboard.

“Chance? Would you pour the wine? Thanks, honey. So, Mack, what do you think so far?” Jeannie asked him over the children’s clamor and clanking of serving utensils.

Mack accepted the glass of wine from an openly smiling Chance, and nodded at the kids. “I’m intrigued,” he said.

“Good,” Jeannie said, and put her hand over her own empty wineglass and grinned up at her husband. “Can’t, remember?”

Chance kissed her and lowered a hand to caress her neck. “Worth it?” he asked.

“Every minute,” she said, taking his hand to kiss it.

Mack felt riveted by the overt love in their eyes. He’d read one of the tabloid accounts of the undercover marshal and the ranch owner falling in love, the first of the long string of Milagro’s so-called miracles.

“Jeannie’s pregnant and not letting a single second of the pampering get away,” Leeza explained in a dry voice. He’d have suspected a snipe hiding in her words if he hadn’t seen her eyes, which were, he thought, starkly and unknowingly wistful.

Mack resisted the urge to look over his shoulder for a disaster lurking in the shadows of the large dining room. Kids laughing and jostling in line, adults relaxed and easy, mixed cultures and backgrounds, beautiful scents rising from the food spread on a lavish sideboard; it all seemed too good to be true.

Instead, he nodded, as if Leeza had asked him a question. He gave a rusty smile at the glowing-faced and obviously happy Jeannie. She smiled back at him and raised a protective hand to her scarcely showing belly. “I’m sure it all seems pretty strange to you right now,” she said.

He hoped the kids returning to the table, scraping chairs and trading friendly insults in a mixture of Spanish and English, precluded the need for an answer from him, for if he’d had to give one, it would have been in the negative. It didn’t seem strange; it seemed completely alien. It was too perfect. And anything too wonderful, too perfect was sure to have a downside.

“Señor Mack?” Pablo rose and waved his hand at the sideboard. “You first, yes?”

Mack was in awe at the array of foods prepared for the Rancho Milagro crowd. Far from mere tacos and beans, the fare included an enormous roast beef tenderloin, a salad with seemingly every known vegetable and some cheeses he didn’t recognize, home-baked bread with sun-dried tomatoes, a large bowl of herb-and-butter pasta, and a host of soft or crispy finger foods that would normally be served as hors d’oeuvres.

As he helped himself to a healthy portion of the dishes, knowing from the quantity that he needn’t stint whatsoever, he listened to the easy conversation behind him.

“What’s this, Corrie?” one of the kids asked.

“Fried grasshopper,” she answered promptly. “With enough tempura batter, it tastes just like lobster.”

“Eew!” chirped one of the boys. “Not really?”

After the pause that followed her question, several of the kids laughed, and so did the little boy. “It doesn’t taste like a grasshopper. It tastes good!”

“See?” Corrie said, her sultry voice all the more alluring when filled with teasing laughter. “It’s all in the batter.”

“And this?” another kid piped up. “What’s this?”

“That’s the snake that was bothering me by the back gate. Deep-fried rattlesnacks, I call ’em.”

Beside him Pablo chuckled. “That Corrie, she’s like a kid herself.”

Mack turned his head to look at her.

No employer facade masked her face now. Pablo was right; she almost looked a child herself as she pressed against the table, her eyes sparkling, her face flushed, and a soft, inviting smile curving her generous lips. “And those little ones that look like fried spiders? Well, there you go. I decided we needed to wage war. So instead of nuking the little critters, we’re frying them.”

“Yuck,” one of the boys said.

“That’s what they’re called. Yuckums.”

Juan Carlos laughed and popped one of the spidery confections in his mouth. “Mmm,” he said after crunching noisily, swallowing elaborately. “They’re delicioso.”

Mack found himself mesmerized by Corrie’s face. She looked so at home, laughing with the children, not an aunt or a mother, a mere child herself, lost in the teasing moment, full of merry delight and wonder. So different from the woman who had greeted him at the door, the one who had been unable to remain standing as she ran to the little boy thrust behind his legs, and certainly not the famous newswoman the world knew so well. Here, she was one of the kids, her sultry, well-known PBS voice a beacon and her smile a lighthouse of warmth.

Something inside him twisted and pulled. If he’d met her only a few years before, he thought he’d probably have moved heaven and earth itself to spend some time with her.

Mack’s dinner partner, the little girl with the hapless giggles and the trusting grip, studied Juan Carlos’s antics with now-solemn eyes. “It’s squash,” she announced to the table at large. “I helped. It’s just squash from the pantry place, not spiders. We graded it. It gets an A-plus. Corrie wouldn’t make us eat spiders.”

“Señor?” Pablo asked.

Mack realized he’d been staring at Corrie, holding up the line for dinner. He jerked his attention back to the sideboard, muttered a quick apology and took one of the rattlesnacks and a couple of the yuckums to add to his plate before moving back to his chair.

When he sat down, the little girl with the big black eyes and missing teeth scooted a bit closer and whispered loudly, “They really are squashes. Don’t worry. It’s nothing scary.” She patted his hand and, in doing so, ripped something loose in his long-closed heart.

Corrie, who had almost convinced herself that it was just another rollicking evening at Rancho Milagro, had nevertheless been all too aware of every single move that Mack Dorsey made. She’d heard his throaty chuckle at Juan Carlos’s cheeky prayer, witnessed his surprise when no one took exception to it and saw the precise moment little Analissa had gotten under his skin forever.

She’d felt him jolt when Analissa patted the scars on his long, beautiful hands and told him not to worry; the squash confections weren’t scary. Everything in him seemed to stiffen, as if electrified. And she’d heard him take a hitching breath, as if what he was about to say he swallowed instead.

The children fell as silent as only kids could be while eating with total concentration. The adults talked about various ranch details, feeding the cattle, the shopping trip that day, adding a new corral for the horses in the spring, speculation on adding an official schoolhouse. It should have been just another normal evening, everything casual, simple, but it seemed thrown into chaos with the addition of Mack Dorsey, who contributed nothing to the adult conversation and seemed ill at ease with the children’s chomping noises.

Pushing her own plate aside, Corrie glanced at Jeannie, so at home in her special element of creating a home for disparate souls, and saw her friend’s gaze resting on Mack. To Corrie’s certain knowledge, Jeannie had never judged anyone, and Mack Dorsey appeared no different. Jeannie’s eyes conveyed nothing but warmth, welcome and a sincere level of curiosity.

Next to her, however, Leeza stared at Mack as if he’d suddenly sprouted horns. Her eyes widened and a look of recognition flooded her face. She straightened and stretched out her hand to Jeannie, who, although not breaking her easy smile, looped slender fingers over her friend’s wrist.

Leeza ignored the message. “Mack, I’m sorry, aren’t you—”

“Leeza,” Jeannie murmured in warning. Corrie tensed, waiting for Leeza to continue. Much as she, herself, might want to know about Mack, she didn’t want to put him on the spot.

“I finished my plate, señoras. Can I have dessert now?” Juan Carlos interrupted.

“Let’s see that plate,” Jeannie said, and with no more than a cursory glance, gave her opinion that dessert was in order. “But only after everyone helps clear these dishes.”

Seven bodies bobbed up from the table and Leeza’s question faltered in the wake of so much clatter of dishes and silverware.

Corrie hid a smile as little Analissa snatched Mack’s plate away mid-bite with a blithe “You’re done, right Señor Mack?” and a happy grin when he nodded, before she added confidentially, “I’ll be right back. You stay here, ’kay?”

“Okay,” he said, wiping his mouth on one of the cotton napkins and nodding at the intent young face waiting for an answer from him.

“Right here,” Analissa commanded.

“Just for you, I’ll wait right in this very spot. Can I move while you’re gone?” A half smile played around his lips and Corrie could tell Analissa had melted the frost in his eyes.

The little girl nodded solemnly. “But you can’t go away.”

“I won’t,” he said.

“Promise?”

Corrie frowned when he hesitated. What possible harm could it do to promise the little girl he’d be there when she got back? It would only take a matter of minutes while the kids deposited the dishes and brought in Rita’s amazing anise-flavored biscochitos and homemade ice cream.

“Promise?” Analissa demanded. “You have to promise. And cross your heart.”

“If you hurry back, I’ll be here,” he said, and reached his hand out as if he would stroke the little girl’s hair. His hand hung there for a moment, then dropped back to his lap as if the child’s aura had burned him.

Corrie’s breath tangled in her throat, both at the look of withdrawal in Mack’s gaze and at the lack of promise to the little girl. He’d agreed, but it had been a half promise at best, not the whole she’d asked for. Luckily, Analissa didn’t notice. She only beamed brightly, her partially toothy grin brightening the dining room as it always did. Before the child reached the door to the kitchen, she managed to lose most of the silverware on the two plates she smashed together, and chip at least one of those plates against the doorjamb.

Leeza leaned forward again, having retrieved the errant silverware and handing them to Jeannie’s adopted daughter, who was indulgently smiling at Analissa. “Mack, aren’t you the one who—”

Chance’s wineglass toppled into Leeza’s lap and he swore as he stood up, napkin in hand, and mopped up the wine. He apologized to the table at large for being every kind of a clumsy fool, then before a shocked Leeza could even remonstrate, he leaned down to say something in her ear before turning to kiss his wife soundly.

To Corrie’s surprise, Leeza flushed and shot Mack an apologetic look.

Corrie knew Chance wasn’t clumsy; his every move was measured and slow, calm and deliberate. The marshal had spilled his wine on purpose, stopping Leeza’s questioning of Mack.

Why? What didn’t he want brought out at the Rancho Milagro dinner table? What did he know about Mack? How he acquired his terrible scars, what accident befell him?

Why was Chance avoiding her eyes? Why did Mack appear so tense and stiff beside her? And why did her journalistic instincts rise so readily to the surface when she wasn’t working in the field anymore and never, ever wanted to again?

“Mack,” Jeannie asked, commanding attention as she stretched and leaned back into her chair, “what period of history interests you the most?”

“Prehistoric,” he said swiftly.

“Why is that?”

“Because the lines were so clear in those days. Survival was all that mattered. Find a cave, find a mate, make a home, go out and hunt a bear or two for food, clothing and fat for the fire. Simple. Hard, but simple.”

“Sounds rather macho,” Leeza murmured.

Mack waved a hand in a noncommittal gesture but nodded as he took a sip of wine. “Oh, there were plenty of matriarchal tribes then, too, but the bottom line was still the same. Survival.”

“What about happiness?” Corrie asked, twisting her own untouched wineglass around, wondering why his answer might mean something important.

“Happiness?” he asked.

Corrie thought he repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before, didn’t know its meaning.

He turned to look at her, as if he were trying to imprint some unspoken knowledge on her, and answered, “Happiness was a matter of security, safety, ensuring everyone in the cave had shelter, food and water. Safety. That’s all that matters.”

She heard his switch from past to present tense. “But—”

The door to the kitchen burst open and a beaming Analissa sailed through, carrying a tray laden with ice cream in paper cups.

“Dessert,” she called, and, taking small, heel-to-toe steps, made her careful progress to Mack.

He looked at her as if surprised she’d returned, as if the little girl, all by herself, was a miracle on this ranch in the middle of nowhere.

He gave one of those half lifts of his lips. The little girl nodded solemnly. “You’re here,” she said. The smile that followed her words could have lit the entire city of Carlsbad.

Mack cleared his throat. “I’m here.”

Little Analissa turned her beaming face to Corrie. “Just like he promised.”

From her place beside Mack, Corrie saw a muscle twitch in his jaw, not as if he were laughing, but as if he were biting back some emotion too bitter to swallow. “Just like,” she said.

“And you’re gonna stay here with us, right?” Analissa asked, leaning forward, tipping the tray dangerously.

Mack caught the tray before the ice cream in the Dixie cups slid to the floor. “I’m here,” he agreed.

Analissa launched herself at him, her baby arms thin and spindly against his broad, rock-hard shoulder. The tray teetered dangerously, but not half as much as Corrie suspected Mack’s emotions might be tipping. “To stay?”

Corrie rescued him. “To stay, sweetie. He’s here to stay,” she said, reaching out to stroke Analissa’s silky hair.

Mack didn’t say anything. He set the tray on the table and gently dislodged Analissa from his arm as he pushed to his feet.

The rest of the children poured through the open doorway, treats in store, and raced around the table, making sure everyone had at least two of the prized biscochitos.

“You’re not leaving, Señor Mack?” Juan Carlos asked.

“Really, you must try one of Rita’s biscochitos. She makes the best anywhere on earth,” Leeza said.

“He’s got to go,” Analissa said, all six of her years showing, and twenty-five more to boot. “But he’s staying here now. Corrie says. He’s going to stay with us.”

A cheer went around the table, with a few I-told-you-so’s from Juan Carlos and nods from Jorge.

Corrie thought Mack’s face would have paled had his scarred skin allowed it to do so. Instead, he only stood above them all, seemingly carved in granite, and as acutely uncomfortable as a man could possibly be.

“I’ll walk you out,” she said.

“It’s not necessary,” he answered. “Thank you all for the wonderful dinner.”

“Food will be here tomorrow morning and again at lunchtime and then again at supper,” Jeannie said. “It’s the Rancho Milagro way.”

“And we’ll talk about classes in the morning,” Leeza said.

“And I’ll show you my new saddle for Dancer,” Juan Carlos said. “I can ride again next week. I’m grounded now.” He made a face that was more grin than grimace. “Because I rode Dancer without permission.”

“And I’ll draw you a picture,” Analissa said, curling her hand into his pant leg and dragging on it. “It will have you in it, and Corrie, and Dancer the horse, and Jeannie, and Chance, and Dulce, and—” she looked around the table, her dark eyes questing “—and Clovis, and Pablo, and Rita and everybody.”

“Thanks,” Mack said, but Corrie thought he looked as if the whole lot of them had stretched a hot bed of coals for him to walk across. He turned to the living room as if made of wood—stiff and resistant. If she hadn’t witnessed for herself his reactions to each of the children, she might have wondered how he might act as a teacher. But she’d seen his smile at Juan Carlos’s joking prayer and his tumbling for Analissa.

“Sleep tight,” Jeannie called gently.

Corrie saw Mack hesitate in his walk. He raised a hand as if in farewell.

Juan Carlos called out, “Be careful, Señor Mack. And watch out for La Dolorosa.”

Mack stopped and half turned back to the group at the table.

“What, you afraid of ghosts, Juan Carlos?” Dulce sneered.

“No way! But Rita said people in Carlsbad have seen her lately. And Jorge said—”

“That’s enough, Juan Carlos,” Jeannie interrupted gently but firmly. “Those are only stories. There are no such things as ghosts.” She looked at Analissa with meaning in her gaze.

“But—”

“No buts. Good night, Mack. I’m glad you’re joining us.”

Mack raised his hand again, not in a wave, but more in a gesture of frustration. He nodded and made for the front door.

“See you tomorrow, Señor Mack,” Analissa called out.

The door slammed behind him before the little girl could hear an answer.

“He’ll be here,” Jeannie assured her, drawing the child to her lap. She ran her hand over the little girl’s hair.

“I think he wants us,” Analissa said, pressing her face into Jeannie’s chest. “I think he needs to be here.”

Corrie thought so, too.

Chapter 3

Mack was grateful for the icy chill of the night. He gulped at the air like a drowning man. He could hear the laughter filtering through the French windows of the veranda and could still feel the impression Analissa’s little hand left behind. He listened as the heavy door opened and closed. And knew without looking around that it was Corrie Stratton who’d followed him outside.

She was the last person on earth he wanted to see at that moment. She made him want to tell her things, hard things, raw things he’d rather keep locked inside.

“It takes some getting used to,” Corrie’s sultry voice said from behind him.

He thought about all the times he’d listened to her voice pouring out of the radio into the dark hospital burn unit during his long recuperation. She’d been a friend telling a late-night bedtime story, a woman who talked with kings and soldiers far away and relayed their stories back to those waiting to hear her voice again.

“Overwhelmed?” she asked, stepping up to join him at the railing surrounding the broad veranda.

For some reason, he didn’t want to lie to her, and he wanted to hear that beautiful voice, so he didn’t answer her directly. “How long have the children been here?”

“Let’s see. José and Dulce were the first and they came the same week about a year ago. I think Jason came next, then Tony, Jenny and Juan Carlos. Then Analissa. She’s been here about three weeks. She’s a doll.”

“Tell me about them,” he said.

Corrie leaned against the railing. “No one knows where José came from. He just showed up here one day when Jeannie was first finishing renovations on the place. We’ve searched and searched, but no luck, and if José knows, he’s not saying. Jeannie and Chance have moved five or six mountains to try to unravel the paperwork involved in adopting a child who has seemingly sprung from nowhere. They’re not through the wringer yet, but with the status here for long-term foster care, we all hold high hopes. Dulce was orphaned as a child and was shuffled from one foster home to another until she was so filled with attitude and distrust that she could hardly say her name without spitting at you.”

Mack wondered if Corrie knew her cadence had slipped into a storyteller’s rhythm, graceful and filled with hints of magic. He leaned against one of the large, round viga-pole supports and said, “She’ll be a beauty, that one.”

Corrie agreed and continued, “Tony has parents, but his father is in prison and his mother placed him in the foster-care system because she couldn’t handle things. He’s been in the system now for three years.”

“A lifetime to a kid his age.”

“One third of it, anyway. And Jenny’s father took off shortly after she was born and her mother’s in the hospital having her fifth child. Five children, five different fathers. Not one of them involved with their contributions to the world.”

“What about her brothers and sisters?”

“The grandmother can manage them, she says, but claims Jenny wouldn’t do anything she was told.” A sharp note edged Corrie’s normally soft tones.

“That’s the little girl who never said a word tonight, right?”

“That’s our Jenny. She’s eleven and behind three grade levels, though there’s nothing wrong with her mind.”

“And Juan Carlos?”

Corrie gave a soft chuckle. “That child is a handful. He came to us from a group home in Portales. That’s a town about a hundred and thirty miles north and east of here.”

Mack knew where it was. He’d finished his student teaching there on an exchange with Texas Tech. “What brought him to you?”

“Firecrackers in the toilets,” she said matter-of-factly, with a strange little smile. “I guess the system figured that we were so remote, we probably didn’t have plumbing, so he couldn’t hurt anything.”

“And has he?”

She looked up at him and smiled. Again, he felt that fever. “He hasn’t blown anything up, if that’s what you’re asking. Has he gotten in trouble? That’s his middle name.”

“And what about the other boy, the one with the crush on Dulce?”

“Jason? Does he have one?” Corrie asked. “I should have guessed. He’s always really quiet around her. He’s here for just a few weeks. His mother took off when he was three. His dad’s a fireman and was called up to go to one of the fires in the Northwest.”

“No relatives?”

“Not a one. Poor guy.”

Mack didn’t know if she meant the father or the son. “And Analissa?”

“She’s our resident ray of sunshine. Her parents skipped out on her years ago and her aunt’s just gone into drug rehab for the umpteenth time. The authorities found Analissa when they busted the aunt for dealing. The poor baby was literally wearing her own waste and so hungry she couldn’t keep anything down for the first three days.”

“Jeez,” Mack said. “Did they bring her straight to you?”

“After the hospital, yes. You can see why she wants promises.”

“Everyone wants promises,” Mack said roughly.

“Do you?” she asked.

Her question jackknifed through him. He felt the heat of the fire that changed his life. He heard the screams of children calling for help. He smelled the putrid-sweet scent of burning flesh.

“No,” he said too harshly, then realized his quick exclamation sounded like a denial.

“And why is that?” she asked almost lazily. Dreamily.

“Are you doing a story?”

“No. Are you ducking the question?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. He could see why she’d managed to interview the amazing personalities she had over the years. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I just don’t believe in promises anymore.”

“Miracles, but not promises?”

“If you like,” he said.

“That’s rather sad, Mack Dorsey.”

“Realistic.”

“Is there a difference?” she asked, and pushed herself away from the railing. “It’s been my experience that reality and sorrow seem to travel hand in hand.”

“That’s life,” he said, still refusing to look directly into her eyes.

“Has it always been like that for you or did something happen that made you feel that way about life?”

He didn’t dare answer her, although just being with her almost made him want to.

“Not everything is sad,” she said quietly.

“But some things are too sad to bear.” He thought of the parents waiting outside the schoolhouse that day, the way they held on to each other, as if the weight of their tragedy was pulling them down to the ground.

“That’s what Jeannie used to believe, after her first husband and baby died. We thought for a while we were going to lose her, too. When she cried, it came from her very soul, not just her heart.”

“I didn’t know,” he said. He felt as if he were choking.

“Then she moved here and found her miracle.”

“Chance?”

“And Dulce and José. This place. All of the children.”

“And you?” he asked. “Have you found your miracle?”

She turned away from him a bit. “It’s a miracle enough just being here,” she said in a muffled tone, and he knew she was avoiding his question. She had a look of such longing on her face he wanted to put his arms around her and tell her that she deserved more than just being here, that a miracle was waiting for her just around the corner. But she, who had been trained to listen for the truth, would hear the lack of faith in his voice. He kept silent, watching her tuck her hands into her loose sleeves and hunch forward, giving herself the hug he hadn’t dared give her.

“It’s cold out here,” she said.

In other circumstances, he’d have agreed, but with her standing too near him, it felt anything but cold.

“Last year at this time, it was nearly a hundred degrees in the shade.”

He made some noise he hoped she’d take for assent, though he wouldn’t have known about the weather; he’d still been locked up in a hospital at this time the year before.

“What made you go into teaching?” she asked.

He grimaced. “It sure wasn’t the opportunity to mold young minds.”

“No?”

“I was one of those problem kids, you know the type, the cutup, the class clown, the kid who would never sit still or shut up.”

The look she gave him let him know how remotely he resembled that person now. He was surprised to find that notion troubled him. Until the incident that changed so many lives, including his own, he’d been secretly proud of the fact that one principal hid in his office to avoid his protests over how some of the children were treated. Stuffy teachers wrote copious memos about Mack’s out-of-the-box disciplinary tactics. Mack had been vaguely pleased to be called a rebel, proving the old adage that some kids never grow up.

But, despite her overt disbelief in his ever having been anything resembling a class clown, she understood where he was going with his story. “So you chose to change the system from within?”

“Something like that. I was a seventies kid, so the schools were stuffed full of half-baked ideas from the sixties, trendy notions from the seventies and economically based concepts predicted for the eighties.”

She smiled. “I was there. I know what you mean. Happy faces and dollar signs.”

He nodded with a half smile. “That’s it. The kids become guinea pigs for the latest educational theory. And when the program doesn’t work, it’s dropped—thank God—but the kids still lose. Big business was helping pick up the tab, so bottom lines became the focus—”

“—and the bottom line in school terms is standardized tests.”

“You’ve got it.”

“And you wanted to change this?”

“Let’s say, modify it. I’m a firm believer in the individual.”

“Why not go into administration?”

He gave a mock shudder. “I’m inherently anti-paperwork.”

“And rebels with a cause don’t rise to the top in administrations.”

He found himself liking her, despite his desire to steer clear of personal involvements. He’d admired her from the privacy of his hospital room, listening only to her voice. He’d liked her clarity, her compassion and her attention to detail. Now, standing beside her on Rancho Milagro’s broad veranda, he found himself warming to her in a way he’d thought lost to him forever.

“I imagine you were a rebel, also,” he said.

She gave an abrupt gurgle of rueful laughter and shook her head swiftly. “Anything but,” she said. “I was the good little girl who always did precisely what she was told.”

He had trouble accepting that notion. She’d traveled the world, been in some of the most dangerous places, come back with heart-wrenching stories of pain and hope. A good little girl would avoid such situations like the plague. “How about later?” he asked.

“Exactly the same—always a follower, never a leader. A true coward, in essence.”

He shook his head, not necessarily disagreeing with her but unable to reconcile his preconceptions of her with what she stated was the reality. The Public Broadcasting System’s motto for her ran through his mind. “When Corrie Stratton says it’s true, it’s a fact.”

“I’d better get going,” he said. Once upon a time, he’d have lingered on this veranda, clung to the time with a pretty woman and a chilly night. Back in that time, he’d have believed in futures, been blind to the pitfalls and dangers that lurked in the shadows.

“Oh. Okay.” She looked understandably confused.

“Good night,” he said gruffly. He curled his hand into a fist to avoid raising it to her silken face.

“Do you want a flashlight to get back to the bunkhouse?” She turned to face him. The movement was abrupt and unexpected.

He wished she hadn’t turned to face him. Her eyes were too luminous in the light cast from the windows, her face too guileless and, for some reason, wistful. He could read the curiosity there and a tinge of sorrow or pity. But he couldn’t see the quest for the news story he’d half accused her of pursuing only moments before. He saw a lovely woman on a cold, moonless night, a woman who had come to offer comfort or perhaps mere camaraderie, and he’d closed her out.

It was best that way, he thought. As he’d told her, he didn’t believe in promises. Lost in his thoughts, he’d forgotten her offer of a flashlight.

“No, thanks,” he said, “I can see my way. You’d better get in before you freeze.” But he was the one who turned to go.

“As Juan Carlos would say, watch out for ghosts,” she said.

“I’m used to them,” he said.

“Plural?”

She was too quick, could hear too much. He turned back to face her but didn’t quite meet her eyes. “Plural.”

“As in, you’re used to more than one ghost.”

“As in,” he agreed, almost enjoying the interplay.

“Are you speaking metaphorically or literally?”

“Both,” he said.

“A man who speaks on multiple levels. Hmm. And talks in riddles.”

“We all have ghosts,” he said.

“But most people call them baggage, not ghosts.”

“I could say I’m not most people.”

She gave a slow smile. “I think I’d agree.”

He tried a smile in return, but it felt odd on his lips. “I think I’ll turn in,” he said, lying through his teeth. If tonight were like any other, he wouldn’t sleep until nearly dawn.

“Good night, then,” she said. “Dream of the angels.”

One angel in particular, he thought. “Right,” he said. “You, too.”

“Always,” she said, rocking against the cold. She didn’t seem like a child then; she was everything a man could possibly want on a lonely night. And if he didn’t walk away from her that very minute, he’d find out exactly what kind of a miracle it would feel like to have her in his arms.

He gave her a stiff half wave and got off the veranda as quickly as he possibly could. He wasn’t far enough away, however, not to hear her clear voice murmur, “What are you hiding, Mack Dorsey?”

Chapter 4

From her suite in the main hacienda, Corrie could see the light on in the teacher’s bunkhouse and knew Mack Dorsey was awake as well. He’d looked tired, even exhausted when he’d hurried from the veranda, but somehow she wasn’t surprised to see his silhouette pacing behind the curtains in the wee hours of the morning.

She was sorry he was out there alone. After a terrible incident the year before when a truly evil man kidnapped Dulce and José in an attempt to force Jeannie to turn the ranch over to him, Jeannie and Chance had decided the ranch hands’ sleeping quarters should be much closer to the main hacienda and a new wing had been added. The former staff bunkhouse had been converted to a large, communal-style teachers’ living quarters. But Mack was the only one there now.

Part of her wanted to go offer him some comfort, see if he was in pain, or simply see if he needed some little item he might have forgotten. The other part, the rational side, told her that whatever made him restless was none of her business and she’d be well advised to let him alone.

She turned back to her notebook. He walks alone, late at night. Ghosts trail behind him, calling his name.

She groaned—the same could be said of her. Too many ghosts, too many harsh words, too many people claiming her past.

She tossed her pen aside before turning off her own light, as if shutting him out—both physically and mentally.

The narrow aperture of her curtains let Mack Dorsey’s lit window shine like a full moon with tidal-wave intent. His shadowy form became a sharp focal point. She held her breath, watching him walk back and forth across the curtained lens.

Feeling like a voyeur, Corrie yanked her curtains closed and turned over on her bed so she wouldn’t be able to even imagine she could see his pacing figure. After a few minutes, she swore and sat up in bed. She dragged open the curtains, her eyes automatically seeking the false moon of Mack’s window. Though his silhouette was no longer visible, the light remained on.

Corrie checked the clock on the nightstand. Half past three in the morning.

She sat for several minutes, waiting for the light across the drive to turn off, and when it didn’t, she sighed and swung her legs out of bed. She dragged on the pair of sweatpants she’d worn earlier that day and shoved her bare feet into a pair of boots Dulce had given her, not caring that they were two sizes too big.

She snatched up a bottle of aspirin from her bathroom cabinet, a book from the bulging bookcase on the wall and, not questioning why, a pen and empty notebook from atop her desk. She shoved all these items into the pockets of the elegant duster Leeza gave her two months ago and opened the exterior door to the veranda.

She shuffled across the broad expanse of driveway to the guest quarters and hunched in her duster as if snow lay on the ground, shivering in the cold desert air.

She marched up the stairs of the teachers’ quarters, but, as she raised her fist to the front door, her need to help Mack Dorsey dissolved and so did her resolve. She back stepped, feeling like a fool, hoping he hadn’t heard her determined scuffles across his narrow porch.

He was a grown man, for heaven’s sake; not one of the wounded children that needed tending as if he were a little bird with a broken wing. His cold eyes could lance evil at eighty yards; he wouldn’t need a painkiller for the bruises inflicted by some drunken uncle or father. He wouldn’t need a book—and a soft voice—to lull him to sleep, or a pen to write his experiences down. He would know how to survive until morning.

One of the porch steps creaked beneath her too-large boots as she turned to go. As if the stray sounds were an alarm system, the bunkhouse door flew open and made an enormous clang as the heavy metal hinges collided with the brackets against the side of the house. Light spilled from the teachers’ quarters, incandescence escaping into the night.

Mack Dorsey stood silhouetted in the light, naked to the waist, barefoot, and standing as if he anticipated a grizzly to rush him. His knees were bent, his bare feet spread apart, as if he anticipated a need to move quickly. He held his hands out from his sides as though she might attack him.

“It’s me,” she said. And when his eyes strafed the brightly lit driveway at the main house and jerked back to where she stood, she realized how foolish she sounded. “Corrie. Corrie Stratton.”

He muttered a curse before slowly straightening.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—I was just…”

“It’s okay,” he growled. The light behind him blocked her from reading his face.

“New place,” he said gruffly

That he was in a new place didn’t account for the hours of pacing. “I saw your light on. I thought perhaps you needed something?”

He turned his head toward the main house, eyes zeroing in on the only light visible, then, back to her. “You were up at this hour?”

“Drink of water,” she lied.

“Me, too,” he lied right back at her.

“Oh. Of course. So you don’t need anything?” At best her question sounded lame, at worst it sounded like a come-on. She blushed.

Luckily, he didn’t seem to read meaning into her words. “You and your partners have thought of everything. Except for clothes, I wouldn’t have had to bring a thing.”

And he wasn’t wearing many of those, she thought. “Jeannie gets all the credit,” she said, and hoped he didn’t hear the breathlessness in her voice.

“She deserves it,” he said.

She shivered against the cold. Despite his lack of clothing, he seemed impervious to the deep chill and she wondered if his many wounds, the scars she could only faintly discern in the dimness, blocked the sensation of cold.

“Well…thanks for thinking of me,” he said. His hand ran the length of his torso, a wholly unconscious gesture, but one that robbed her mouth of moisture.

“What?” she asked.

“Thanks for thinking of me.” There was a bitter note in his voice.

She’d thought of little else since she opened the front doors to find him standing there for an interview. But at his words, she felt like a three-year-old being dismissed by a social worker.

“Okay. Sure. As long as everything’s okay,” she said, her voice faltering. “I’ll—I’ll just go back now.” She turned, embarrassed she’d come out there, disturbed at the fact that she had, and that she’d done so armed with a handful of items more suited to welcoming an adolescent than an adult who had obviously survived more than his share of hardship. And then to stare at him like a love-starved teenager. She might be love-starved, but she wasn’t a kid anymore.

However much she might be acting like one.

I’m Corrie Stratton, and if I survived my childhood, I can survive this.

Mack felt like a heel. All she’d done was come to check on him. She’d seen his light on at three-thirty in the morning his first night on the ranch, and had come out into the cold out of simple kindness and concern for him. And he’d greeted her as if she were a terrorist, was curt to the point of rudeness, then capped it off by lying to her and making her feel like she’d intruded.

“Wait. Please…?”

She stopped but didn’t turn around. “Yes?” Given her voice, even that single questioning syllable sounded like a chord straight from paradise.

“Do you have any aspirin?”

She slowly revolved back to face him and dug into her pocket. She withdrew a paperback, a notebook, a pen and, finally, a bottle of aspirin. She handed him the plastic bottle.

“Thanks,” he said, working at the childproof cap. He had to fight himself not to ask about the other items she started to shove back into seemingly rapacious pockets. But he knew instinctively that she’d brought them for him for some reason.

“Here, let me,” she said, bridging the gap between them as she stuffed the last of her things back into her pocket. She held out her hand for the bottle and he gave it up without a struggle, careful not to touch her. He was too aware of her standing so close to him in the night, too aware of his own near nudity, his terrible scars she didn’t so much as look at, and the way the merest hint of a breeze on the cold night air seemed to tease his newly formed skin.

She flipped the aspirin bottle open and held it out at an angle, apparently prepared to shake them into his hand. Her hands trembled so much that only three aspirin fell onto his hand and a few more disappeared onto the ground. He closed his palm around her shaking fingers.

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