Her voice was the, first thing he’d noticed about her back then. Letter to Reader Title Page Dedication About the Author Letter to Reader Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Copyright

Her voice was the, first thing he’d

noticed about her back then.

The soft breathlessness of Gabby’s voice had held something sweet and kind that soothed the savage creature raging inside him.

At seventeen, cool Joe Carpenter didn’t have time to waste on thirteen-year-old skinny girls with kind voices, not when high school girls fell all over each other offering to give him anything he wanted.

But touching that bitter, angry place he’d closed off to the world, her voice made him remember her over the years as she grew into a woman, made him lift his head in baffled awareness whenever he heard that soft voice reminding him all the world wasn’t hard and mean and nasty.

And now her voice sent his pulse into overdrive with its pure breathlessness. And to think that now, after all this time, they were going to be neighbors....

Dear Reader,

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Rising star Susan Meier continues her TEXAS FAMILY TIES miniseries with Guess What? We’re Married! And no one is more shocked than the amnesiac bride in this sexy, surprising story! In The Rich Gal’s Rented Groom, the next sparkling installment of Carolyn Zane’s THE BRUBAKER BRIDES, a rugged ranch hand poses as Patsy Brubaker’s husband at her ten-year high school reunion. But this gal voted Most Likely To Succeed won’t rest till she wins her counterfeit hubby’s heart! BUNDLES OF JOY meets BACHELOR GULCH in a fairy-tale romance by beloved author Sandra Steffen. When a shy beauty is about to accept another man’s proposal, her true-blue true love returns to town, bearing Burke’s Christmas Surprise

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Happy Holidays!

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance

Please address questions and book requests to:

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A Kiss, A Kid And A Mistletoe Bride
Lindsay Longford

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my very own “scullery wenches” who gave of their

time and of themselves on a difficult day:

Suzette Edelen, Patty Copeland, Myrna Topol and

Margaret Watson. You worked like dawgs, you were

sunshine through the clouds and you gave me the

greatest gift of all: yourselves. I don’t have words

eloquent enough to thank you.

LINDSAY LONGFORD,

like most writers, is a reader. She even reads toothpaste labels in desperation! A former high school English teacher with an M.A. in literature, she began writing romances because she wanted to create stories that touched readers’ emotions by transporting them to a world where good things happened to good people and happily-ever-after is possible with a little work.

Her first book, Jake’s Child was nominated for Best New Series Author, Best Silhouette Romance, and received a Special Achievement Award for Best First Series Book from Romantic Times Magazine. It was also a finalist for Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award for Best First Book. Her Silhouette Romance Annie and the Wise Men won the RITA for the best Traditional Romance of 1993.

Dear Reader,

Recently my nineteen-year-old son casually asked, “So, Mom, were you a virgin bride?”

After I picked myself up off the floor and hemmed and hawed a few minutes, I answered him. Then we talked for two hours about love and sex and commitment. And, no, I didn’t blush!

Kids. They’ll surprise you every time.

I was touched by his explanation that for him, sex without emotion wasn’t worth much. Love, he explained with all the wisdom of his accumulated years, is the emotional bond that makes everything meaningful because you care about the other person’s feelings as much as you care about your own. And the one you love puts your feelings first, too. Love is worth waiting for, he said.

When I thought about Gabrielle, the heroine of A Kiss, a Kid and a Mistletoe Bride, I wanted a heroine who was virgin by choice, not because she’d never had the opportunity to date, not because she’d had a terrible childhood. I wanted a smart, caring woman who knew the value of her own heart—and body—especially in today’s risky world. She knows what she wants, what she deserves, and she’s not willing to settle for less. Gabrielle is a woman whose first love is her only and forever love.

First love has an incredible power. It’s the one we never forget. Sometimes we’re lucky and our first love is the right love, the person who completes us and makes us better for knowing him. That man becomes our time capsule, the guy who remembers us when we were young, the person who knows us at our deepest levels, both good and bad, and still loves us. My husband of thirty-three years was my first love, a boy when we fell in love, and a man of courage and kindness. I think he would be proud of his son, who knows the value of love.

First love is special, like no other, and that’s what I wanted for Gabrielle. Like her, may you, too, discover love with all its magic and power, whether it’s your first love. only love or last love.

Chapter One

“You can’t have that Christmas tree. It’s mine.”

The voice came at Gabrielle from between two low-slung branches. A foot stomped down, hard, on her instep. Startled, she tightened her grip on the scratchy bark.

Chin jutting out, a pint-size male face scowled at Gabrielle. “So put it back, you hear?” He wrapped stubby fingers around the branch nearest him and jiggled impatiently.

Needles sputtered onto the soggy ground. “Me and my dad already chose this tree. It’s ours. You gotta find another tree.”

Not wanting to encourage the scamp, Gabrielle bit back her laughter and surveyed the small bundle of determination.

His shirt was carefully tucked into new blue jeans, his face was clean, and his eyes, dark brown and anxious, glared back at her. Someone had made a valiant attempt to slick down the cowlick at the crown of his head. The shoelaces on pricey new athletic shoes were double-tied.

Someone had taken pains to spiffy the boy up. Clearly, he didn’t need her pity, but some thin edge of desperation or loneliness underneath his tenacity called to her.

Maybe it was only Christmas, the lights and smells of hope reaching out to her, making her vulnerable to this belligerent, wide-eyed waif. Or maybe it was her own loneliness and need for a perfect Christmas that shone back at her from this boy’s eyes.

“So, lady, you understand? Right? You gotta find yourself another tree, okay?”

She heard the aggression, heard the rudeness. And in the soft darkness of a Florida night sweet-scented with pine and cinnamon and broken only by the glow of twinkling lights strung high from utility poles, she saw the bone-deep anxiety deepen in those eyes frowning up at her.

It was that anxiety and his dogged insistence that got to her. Bam. Like a hand reaching right into her chest, his need squeezed her heart.

But it was her damnable curiosity, which had been a besetting sin all her life, and maybe amusement that kept her interest as she watched him stiffen his shoulders and glower at her, waiting for her answer.

He was a pistol, he was, this tough little guy who wasn’t about to give an inch just because she was bigger than he was. She took a deep breath. Somewhere in happy song land, elves were shrieking in glee because Santa had asked Rudolph to lead his sleigh. But here in Tibo’s tree lot, as she stared at the pugnacious urchin, Gabrielle felt like the Grinch who was about to steal Christmas.

Wanting to erase that dread from his face, she dropped her hand. The tree wobbled, and she reached out to steady it. The boy’s face scrunched in alarm as she grasped the tree again, and she released it as soon as she saw he was able to keep it upright. “How do you know I didn’t see it first?” she asked, curious to see what he’d say.

“‘Cause I was standing here guarding it. That’s why.” His not-Southern voice dripped with disbelief that she could be so dumb. He let part of the tree’s weight rest against him. “My daddy’s over there.” Keeping his grip on the tree, the child jerked his chin toward the front of the lot “He went to get Tibo. Tibo’s gonna saw off the bottom so the tree can get enough water and last a-a-all Christmas,” he said, finishing on a drawn-out hiss of excitement. “And in case you got any ideas, lady, you better not mess with my tree or with me ’cause my daddy’s real tough. You’ll be sorry,” the boy said, never blinking. “You don’t want to tangle with me and my daddy ’cause we’re a team and we’re tougher ’n a piece of old dried shoe leather.”

“I see.” Hearing the adult’s voice in the childish treble, Gabrielle bit her lip to keep from smiling. “That’s tough, all right”

“Da-darned straight.” The square chin bobbed once, hard. “Nobody tangles with us. Not with me and my daddy, they don’t, not if they know what’s good for ’em.” Sticking out his chest, he pulled his shoulders so far back that Gabrielle was afraid he’d pop a tendon.

This boy was definitely used to taking care of himself. His sturdy, small body fairly quivered with don’t-mess-with-me attitude. Still, in spite of his conviction that he could handle anything, Gabrielle wasn’t comfortable leaving him by himself. He couldn’t be more than five, if that. Well, perhaps older, she thought, reconsidering the look in his eyes, but innocent for all his streetwise sass. And it was a scary world out there, even in Bayou Bend.

How could the father have walked off and left this child alone in the dark tree lot—in this day and age? It was none of her business, she knew, but she wouldn’t be able to keep from telling the father that little guys shouldn’t be left alone, not even in Tibo’s tree lot.

“I’m sorry, but I really think I saw the tree first,” she said, not caring about the tree, only trying to keep his attention while she scanned the empty aisles, looking for one tough daddy.

“Nope.” He tipped his head consideringly but didn’t move a hairbreadth from where he was standing.

“What, exactly, would your daddy do?” she asked, prolonging the moment and hoping the urchin’s daddy would appear. “If I’d messed with—your tree?”

“Somethin’,” her argumentative angel assured her. “Anyways, I know we seen it first. You was nowhere around.”

“I saw this tree right away. I liked the shape of it.” She fluffed a branch but made sure she didn’t let her grasp linger as the boy’s gaze followed her movement. “And it’s big. I wanted a big tree this year.” Her gaze lingered on the truly awful ugliness and bigness of the tree, and her voice caught. “I wanted a special tree.”

He shifted, frowned and finally looked away from her, sighing as he glanced up at the tree. “Yeah. Me, too.”

Again Gabrielle imagined she heard an underlying note of wistfulness in his froggy voice.

This stray had his reasons for choosing Tibo’s sucker tree. She had hers.

The singing elves gave way to a jazzed-up “Jingle Bells,” which boomed over her, and Gabrielle sighed. She and her dad had always made a point of dragging home the neediest tree they could find just to hear her mama rip loose with one of her musical giggles.

Last year, dazed and in a stupor, they had let Christmas become spring before either one of them climbed out of the pit they’d fallen into with her mama’s death.

Christmas had always been Mary Kathleen O’Shea’s favorite day.

Gabrielle and her dad hadn’t been able to wrap their minds around the vision of that empty chair at the foot of the big dining room table. No way for either of them to fake a celebration, not with that image burned into their brains.

And so, in spite of a sixty-degree, bright blue Florida day that enticed Yankee tourists to dip a toe into the flat blue Gulf of Mexico, Christmas last year had been a cold, dark day in the O’Shea house.

This year, the giggles might once again be only a memory, but everything else was going to be the way it used to be. They’d have the right tree, the brightest lights strung on all the bushes around the old house, the flakiest mincemeat pie. Everything would be perfect. They’d find a way to deal with the empty chair, with all that it meant. In hindsight, she wondered if they shouldn’t have forced themselves to face that emptiness last year, get past it. They hadn’t, though, and the ache was as fresh as it had been barely a year ago.

But this Christmas, one way or another, was going to be perfect. Whatever perfect was, under the circumstances.

She sighed again and saw the boy’s gaze flash to her face.

He shifted uneasily. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, so softy she almost missed it. “But this is my special tree for me and my daddy.”

She wanted to hug him, to wrap him in her arms and comfort him. Instead, knowing little boys, she tried for matter-of fact.

“Well, that’s life.” Gabrielle thought she’d never heard a kid invoke daddy powers so often in so short a space of time. “Win some. Lose some, she said, hoping to erase the frown that still remained.

“Yeah. That’s life,” he repeated glumly before brightening. “Except at Christmas.”

She heard the hope in his gruff treble. Well, why shouldn’t it be there? All these Christmas lights strung up created a longing even in adults for magic, for something in this season when the world, even in Florida, seemed forever suspended in cold and darkness.

Her throat tightened, but she plunged ahead, desperate to change the direction of her thoughts. All this sighing and reminiscing weren’t going to help her create her perfect Christmas. “You didn’t see me over by the fence? I was there, scoping out this very tree.”

With his too-wise eyes, the boy examined her face, then shook his head with certainty. “Nah. You’re trying to pull a fast one on me.”

“Really?” The kid was too smart by half. “I might be telling the truth,” she said thoughtfully, watching as he continued to study her face.

“Nope.” He grinned, a flash of teeth showing in the twilight of the tree lot. “You’re funning with me now.”

Intrigued, she kneeled, going nose to nose with him. “How do you know?”

“I can tell.” He shifted from one foot to the next, his attention wandering anxiously now from her to the front of the lot. “Grown-ups don’t tell kids the truth. Not a lot, anyways.”

“Oh.” Gabrielle wrapped her arms around her knees to steady herself as she absorbed this truth from a kid who shouldn’t have had time to learn it. “That’s what you think I’m doing?”

“Sure.” His mouth formed an upside-down U. “You’re teasing me now, that’s all.”

This child had learned that his survival depended on knowing when the adults in his life were lying to him. She sensed he’d learned this truth in a hard school, that survival had depended on it. “You can tell when grown-ups are—funning with you?” She made her tone teasing.

“Funning’s different from not telling the truth,” he said matter-of-factly, his gaze drifting once more to the front of the lot. He, like her, was seeking the tough-but-absent daddy. “Funning’s okay. No harm in funning. Most of the time.”

“I see.” Again that squeeze of her heart, that sharp pinch that made her catch her breath. “Want to draw straws for the tree?”

“No way,” he scoffed. “You’re still funning with me.” Suddenly delight washed over his face. “I remember! My daddy took the sticker off the tree, so we got proof.”

“Ah. My loss, then.” She smiled at him easily, letting him know their game was over.

In back of her, a foot scraped against one of the boards that formed narrow pathways between the aisles of trees. An elongated shadow slanted across her, and, still kneeling, still smiling back at the boy who’d shot her a quick grin, she pivoted, looking up at the silhouette looming above her.

“Daddy!” The boy wriggled from head to toe and launched himself at the silhouette, dragging the tree with him. “Daddy!”

Relieved, Gabrielle lifted her chin toward the tough daddy who’d finally shown up. Words formed on her lips—pleasant, instructive words designed to let this man know he should keep a closer eye on his son.

And then she saw the man’s face.

Her heart lurched in her chest. Her throat closed, and her face flushed, with a heat so sudden and fierce she wondered she didn’t burst into flames.

In front of her, Joe Carpenter, a lean, rangy male who’d been born with attitude to spare, attitude he’d apparently passed on to his son, rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiled gently down at the child who’d wrapped himself around his leg. “So, Oliver, reckon you’re still determined to have this tree, huh?”

“Yeah.” Clutching tree and man, the boy fastened one arm around Joe’s waist and leaned against him. “This is the biggest tree. The best A humdinger. Our tree. Right, huh?” He slanted a quick look at Gabrielle and before smiling blissfully at his father.

Gabrielle wondered if she could simply walk away, invisible, into the darkness, disappear behind tree branches, vanish. Anything so he wouldn’t see her.

And then Joe Carpenter looked right at her, wicked amusement gleaming in weary brown eyes. “We’ve got to quit meeting like this, Gabby.” He didn’t smile, but the bayou brown of his eyes flashed with light and mischief.

As memory spun spiderwebs between them, she wished she were anywhere but kneeling at the feet of Joe Carpenter.

Knuckling his son’s brown hair, hair only a few shades lighter than his own, Joe wrinkled his forehead. “Let me see. It’s been what...?” One corner of his mouth gave a teeny-tiny twitch she almost missed in her embarrassment.

In spite of the past, a past embodied in Joe’s son, a past made up of eleven years of creating her own life, she knew to the day and the month how long it had been. And he remembered, too, she decided as she watched his face and willed her own to fade from Christmas red to boring beige.

May 17. Saturday. Prom night Out of place and miserable, she was fifteen years old and younger than her date’s senior friends.

“Hey, pretty Gabby,” he’d said that night, edging his motorcycle right up to the break wall behind the country club.

Water slapped against the dock while he surveyed her, the rumble of his cycle throbbing between them in the humid spring night.

“What are you doing out here? The dance is inside.”

He motioned to the club behind them, with its faint bass beat and blaze of lights.

“I know.” She turned her head and swiped away angry tears.

“So, you going to tell me why the prettiest girl is out here all by her lonesome? Or you going to make me guess?”

Gabrielle knew she wasn’t the prettiest girl. She knew exactly who and what she was. She was the good girl, the one who chaired school committees, worked on the homecoming floats, went to church every Sunday. The girl everybody could count on. The girl who took everything too seriously.

Oh, she knew what she was. She wasn’t the prettiest girl, not by anybody’s definition, but she liked being precisely who she was, and now Joe Carpenter was teasing her, or making fun of her, or flirting with her. Whatever he was doing, she didn’t know how to respond, and she wanted him to stop.

But she wanted even more for him to keep talking to her in that deliciously husky voice that raised the hairs on her arms.

That deep voice vibrated inside her, creating a hunger so unfamiliar that she felt like someone else, not a bit like Gabrielle O’Shea.

Joe Carpenter made her feel—wild.

And curious.

So she drew up her knees under the pale chiffon of her slim skirt, tried not to sniff too loudly and stared out at the shimmer of moonlight on the water. Better to watch the glisten of the water than to think about what Joe Carpenter might mean, because good girls knew better than to be alone with Joe. Even if they wanted to.

Even when their bodies hummed to the tuning fork of Joe Carpenter’s voice.

Especially then, she decided, and wrapped herself tighter in her own arms.

He waited for a moment, but when she stayed silent, he kicked down the motorcycle stand, turned off the engine and walked over to her, his boots squeaking against the wet grass. “The prettiest girl should be inside, dancing the last dance. The one where they finally turn down the lights real low and everybody snuggles up and pretends all that touchin’ is accidental.”

Thinking about the kind of touching he meant, she shivered, and her barely there breasts tingled interestingly.

His voice burred with a kind of teasing she wasn’t able to return, and he stepped nearer. “You know what I mean, Gabby. The kissing dance. That’s what you’re missing. I bet Johnny Ray’s looking all over for you. He’d want to dance real slow, real close, and see if your hair smells as pretty as it looks.”

He flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the bay and took one more step closer, his thighs bumping her stockinged toes. “Because I’ve been wondering. Does it, Gabby? Does it smell like rain shine and night jasmine?” With the tip of his finger, he brushed the top of her head, and her toes curled hard against the cement break wall.

She didn’t say a word. Couldn’t. Not even when he ran one callused finger down her shoulder, slipping under the cap sleeve of her dress and tracing the veins of her inner arm. She didn’t speak even when he touched her wrist, gently, lightly, a butterfly touch that made her pulse skip and stutter. With a half smile she would wonder about for years, he lifted her arm, holding it up. Moonlight glinted on the thin band of her bracelet, on her skin, turning everything silver.

“Aw, what the hell,” he muttered. “Johnny Ray’s not here, but I am. Too bad for ol’ Johnny Ray,” he said, and tucked her arm around his neck. “Damned if I’m not going to find out for myself what rain shine smells and tastes like.” His gaze never leaving hers, he lifted one of the curls that had cost her thirty-five dollars at Sally Lynn’s salon and, shutting his eyes, stroked the curl against his mouth. “Delicious, that’s what,” he whispered, his dark eyes filling her sight. “Who could have guessed?”

And then the baddest of the bad boys kissed her, and she kissed him right back, a great big smooch of a kiss, tongues and lips and bodies touching in that silvery light Oh, Lord, the touching. All down the stretch of his tough, hard body, her fifteen-year-old self melted, and there had been touching.

She liked feeling wild and wicked and out of control. She liked the hum of her body against his, liked the powerful drumming of his heart against her hand.

But just when she felt like soda pop fizzing out of control, his breath buzzing into her ear and making her insides quiver, he’d murmured, “You may be jailbait, sweet pea, but I swear to God it would be worthwhile. Except—”

He pushed her away from him, leaving her skin cold and hot and aching all at the same time. Stepping away with a grin that promised heaven or hell—she’d never been able to decide—he straddled his cycle and left her in a squeal of tires against pavement while she tried to decide if she wanted to call her daddy to come and pick her up or steal the car keys from her football-hero, drunk-as-a-skunk prom date.

For the rest of that night, her mouth, her body, her skin—everything—had ached and burned with that cold heat, and for the next two years she’d dreamed about Joe Carpenter.

Of course, she hadn’t seen him again after that night.

He’d vanished, leaving Bayou Bend with its own kind of buzz as rumors floated, eddied and finally died away, leaving unexplained the mystery of nineteen-year-old Joe Carpenter’s disappearance one month shy of graduation.

Now, staring up the length of his legs and thighs, Gabrielle swallowed. Even in the darkness of this Christmas tree lot, eleven years later, her entire body flushed with that memory.

No wonder he’d been the town’s bad boy.

Well, she didn’t want those disturbing dreams haunting her again. It had taken too many sleepless nights, too many confused days for her to erase Joe Carpenter from her dreams, her memories.

“So how long has it been?” he asked, his voice low and rumbly, goading, baiting her. “Let me think if I can remember the last time I saw you, Gabby. It must have been—”

“A while,” she said grimly, struggling to her feet and catching one flat-heeled shoe on slippery needles and mud. “That’s how long. A while.” Her foot skidded forward and her arms windmilled crazily. Flailing, she saw her purse sail into the darkness.

“Whoa, sweet pea.” Joe’s warm hand closed around her elbow and braced her, his still-callused fingers sliding down her wrist as she balanced.

Even through the silk of her blouse, Gabrielle felt that warm, rough slide. His hand had been warm that night, too, warm against her bare skin. She shivered.

“Cold?” Amusement glittered in his eyes. Heat was in the depths, too, as he watched her.

He knew what he was doing, as he had eleven years ago, eleven years that had vanished like smoke with his touch. He knew, but she was darned if she’d give him the satisfaction of going all giddy and girlish.

She was twenty-six years old, too old for girlish. Giddy and girlish had never been her style, not even at fifteen. “It’s the damp. That’s all,” she muttered. “I’m not used to it anymore.”

“Sure that’s all it is?” His question, below the raucous rendition of the chipmunks and their version of “Jingle Bells,” tickled the edge of her cheek where he bent over her, still supporting her.

“Absolutely.”

“You moved away from Bayou Bend?” He clamped a hand under her elbow and steadied her.

“I’ve been living in Arizona. Same rattlesnakes. Less humid.” She dusted off her red velour skirt, shot Oliver a smile and a “so long” and slung her shoulder strap over her arm. “Nice to see you again, Joe. Merry Christmas to you and your son.”

She was almost safe. One second more, and she would have been up the walkway and gone, out to her car, away from the slamming of her heart against her chest, away from memory and the sizzle of his touch. One second. That’s all she needed.

Out of the darkness of the next aisle, Moon Tibo lumbered, bumping into her and pitching her straight into Joe Carpenter’s arms. “Okay, folks, let’s haul this tree up front and get you on your way. I mean, you only got twenty-four days to the big event. Y’all gonna want time to hang up them ornaments before this year’s over, right?”

“Right.” Joe’s laugh gusted against her ear, and Gabrielle felt her toes curl in memory. “Give me a minute, Moon. Got a damsel in distress here.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. How ya doin’, Gabrielle? Your dad feelin’ better?”

“Much.” She was all tied up with her purse strap and Joe’s arms, and she twisted, pushed, while Joe’s chest shook with laughter against her. Over its broad slope, she finally angled her face in Moon’s direction. “Dad’s cooking jambalaya tomorrow night, in fact. For after we decorate the tree. Come on over. He’d enjoy seeing you.”

Six foot five and built like a mountain, Moon gifted her with one of his rare smiles. “Might do that. Sure like your dad, I do.”

She tugged again at her strap, which had flicked over Joe’s head and bound them together. Mumbling under her breath to Joe, whose only help so far had been to keep her from landing face first in pine needles and mud, she said, “Give me a hand, will you? I can’t do this alone.”

“You got it, sweet pea. Lots of things aren’t any fun done alone. I like lending a helping hand.” His half smile could have lit up the town of Bayou Bend for a couple of blocks, and even Gabrielle’s forehead blazed with heat. Lifting the strap, he ducked under it, his thick hair brushing up against her mouth, and stepped back. “I’m ready to help out. When I can.” His palm was flat and firm against the hollow of her spine. “How’s that?”

“Peachy. Thanks.” Gabrielle untangled herself from Joe’s clasp and blushed back her hair. Joe Carpenter would flirt if he were wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy. “This has been—special.”

“Absolutely.” He plucked a pine needle twig from her hair and handed it to her. “A memento, Gabby. For old times’ sake.” His voice was light, amused, and his eyes teased her.

But behind the gleam, deep in their shadowy depths, she thought—no, imagined—she saw regret, a regret that made no sense, and so, surely, she must be imagining that rueful glint.

“We never had old times, Joe.” She mustered a smile and let the twig fall to the ground.

“No?”

She shook her head and hoped her own regret didn’t break through. “Not me. You must be thinking of someone else.” Anyone else, she reminded herself. Joe’s track record with adolescent hearts in high school had been gold-medal worthy.

But if she were honest with herself, and she tried to be, she knew her regret ran ocean deep because she’d never, ever felt that wildness with anyone since. She wasn’t fifteen anymore, and she could handle Joe Carpenter’s teasing. Sure she could, she thought as his eyes narrowed intently for a moment.

“Well. If you say so. Must not have been you I was remembering outside the country club.” He shrugged and let his hand rest on Oliver’s head. “It was real good seeing you again.” His gaze sharpened as he gave her a last glance. “Nice, that red skirt and silky blouse.” He smiled, and again that flicker of regret appeared in his eyes. “You look like a shiny Christmas present, Gabby.”

The weariness unraveling his voice and slumping his shoulders was real, and she hesitated, knowing she was making a mistake, knowing she’d be a fool to open her mouth when she had her exit line handed to her on a plate. Say goodbye and walk away. That’s all she had to do.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. She would be asking for more trouble than she wanted, needed. And then, looking down at the boy, Joe’s son, she spoke. “Come for supper. Tomorrow night.” Joe’s sudden stillness told her the invitation surprised him as much as it did her.

She would have taken the words back, but they hung in the air, an invitation she hadn’t intended, an invitation she wished she could take back the minute she spoke.

“Why doncha, Joe? Milo sure wouldn’t care. You know how he is. More the merrier, that’s what ol’ Milo says.” Moon hoisted the tree up with one hand and strode up the aisle toward the shed where the trees were trimmed and netted.

Gabrielle stared after him. She might have known, Moon being Moon, he would stick his two cents in. Trapped, she added politely for appearances’ sake, “Dad makes a big pot. He wouldn’t mind.”

“Jambalaya, huh?” Joe rubbed his chin. “Milo makes good jambalaya.”

“How would you know?” She closed her mouth, stunned. To the best of her knowledge, despite Moon’s blithe assertion, Joe Carpenter had never met her father.

“Oh, I’ve had a plate or two of your pa’s cooking.” Running a hand through his hair, Joe glanced at Oliver, back to her, and then said, so slowly she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, “Thanks. I reckon we’ll take you up on your offer. It’s a good idea.”

Oliver, who’d been strangely silent throughout the whole incident, glared up at her, his face as fierce as it had been the first time she’d seen him, but he didn’t say anything. Taking a sideways step, he plastered himself against his father and stayed there, a scowling barnacle to Joe’s anchor.

Uneasiness rippled through Gabrielle as she saw the boy’s hostility return, and she wished, not for the first time in her life, that she’d counted to ten before speaking. She was trapped, though, caught by Moon’s interference.

Judging by the expression on his face, Oliver was trapped, too. As she looked away from his frown, her words tumbled out. “Good. Company will be great. That’s what the season is all about. Family, friends. Get-togethers. Eggnog.” Mumbling, Gabrielle scrabbled through her purse for a piece of paper and a pen.

“Right.” The corner of Joe’s mouth twitched. “Eggnog’s always sort of summed up Christmas for me.” He ruffled his son’s hair. “Eggnog do it for you, Oliver?”

“No.” Oliver worked his scowl into a truly awesome twist of mouth and nose. “Eggnog stinks.”

Joe’s hand stilled on the boy’s head. “Mind your manners, Oliver,” he said softly and then spoke to Gabrielle. “We’ll be there.”

Retraining her impulsive nature, she bit her bottom Up. Her instinct was to reassure Oliver, but faced with his ferocious grimace, she stopped. Oliver’s likes and dislikes were Joe’s concern, not hers.

Even though the boy’s anger was clearly directed toward her, she knew enough about kids not to take it personally. She didn’t know anything about this particular child. Whatever was going on between him and his father would have to be settled between them. She wasn’t involved.

She pulled out a small cork-covered pad and flipped it open. “All right, then. Let me write out the address.”

“I know where you live, Gabby.” Joe’s hand covered hers, and yearning pierced her, as sweet and poignant as the smell of pine on the cool evening air.

It was all she could do not to turn up her palm and link her fingers with his.

“Unless you’ve moved?”

“No.” Her voice sounded strangled even to her own ears. “Dad hasn’t moved.” Unnerved by the thought that he knew where she lived, she flicked the notebook shut, open. “Oh,” she said, dismayed as a sudden thought struck her. She looked up, made herself meet his gaze straight on. “And bring your wife, too. As Moon said, Dad likes a crowd.”

“I’m not married, Gabby.” Joe’s bare ring finger passed in front of her. He closed her notebook, his hand resting against the brown cork. “What time?”

“What?” Her mind went blank. Nothing made sense. Joe Carpenter, the Harley-Davidson-riding outlaw who could seduce with a look, had a son. Joe Carpenter knew her dad.

Joe Carpenter, whose kiss could melt steel and a young girl’s heart, was coming to her house for jambalaya and tree trimming.

And eggnog.

Sometime when she wasn’t paying attention, hell must have frozen over.

Even in Bayou Bend, Florida.

Chapter Two

“The time, Gabby?” The tip of Joe’s finger tapped gently against her chin, snapping her out of her bemusement.

“What time shall Oliver and I come caroling at your door?”

“Eight, I suppose. That might be late for your son, though.” She hoped Joe would pick up the hint and let her off the hook.

Joe Carpenter, of course, didn’t. “Not a problem. Oliver doesn’t start school until after the holidays.”

Gabby sighed, a tiny exhalation. Joe had a plan. She couldn’t imagine what was possessing him to take her up on her invitation, an invitation offered only out of politeness, not for any other reason.

Liar, liar. You like being around Joe.

With a jerk of her head, she silenced the snide little voice and dislodged Joe’s finger. Her chin tingled, as if that phantom touch lingered warm against her skin.

Bearlike in his red-and-green plaid shirt, Moon waited for them to join him. “Well, then, you folks ready to check out?”

He held up a red plastic ball made of two hoops and topped with mistletoe and a green yarn bow. “Free kissing ball with each tree.” Moon wagged the kissing ball in front of her until she thought her eyes would cross.

Resolutely, she kept her gaze fixed on the tip of Moon’s Santa hat and told herself she was merely imagining the heat lapping at her, washing from Joe to her, and wrapping her in warmth and thoughts of more than kissing.

“Somethin’ special for old Moon’s customers, this is. And we got treats in the shed. Cookies. Apple cider. The boy can have a cup of hot chocolate while I bundle up this beauty. So come along, y’all.” A trail of brown needles followed Moon’s progress as he herded them forward. “Good stuff, cocoa. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, young fella?”

Oliver ducked before Moon’s beefy hand landed on his head. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He trudged after Moon and the tree.

Moon grinned back. “Shucks, kid. Everybody likes hot chocolate.”

Oliver planted one new shoe after the other, following Moon and hanging one hand tight to the edge of Joe’s pocket. “I only like it the way my daddy makes it. Out of the brown can and stirred on the stove. And only with little marshmallows.” Head down, ignoring Moon, Oliver adjusted his shorter stride to Joe’s, matching left foot to left

The boy needed physical contact with his father. Gabrielle slowed and let the two of them walk slightly ahead of her, a team, just as the boy had stressed. Everybody else on the outside.

Her curiosity stirred again as she watched the two, one rangy and dark, a lean length of man, the other, short and dark, a stubby child with eyes only for his father.

“Where’s your tree, Gabby?” Joe stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. “Oliver and I’ll give you a hand with it while Moon bundles ours.”

“Umm.” She saw something tall and green from the corner of her eye and pointed. “That one.”

“That one?” Not believing her, Joe stared at the ratty tree. The one Oliver had insisted on was three good shakes away from mulch, but Gabby’s tree—“You sure?” He frowned at her. “This one is, uh, well—”

“It’s a terrific tree. It’ll look wonderful with all the old ornaments.” Gabby tilted her face up at him. Her off-center smile filled her face. Christmas lights sparkled in her mist-dampened soft brown hair, and he wanted to touch that one spot near her cheek where a strand fluttered with the breeze against her neck.

The look of her at that moment, all shiny and sweet and innocently hopeful, symbolized everything he’d come back to find in Bayou Bend, a town he’d hated and couldn’t wait to leave. Like the star at the top of a Christmas three, Gabby sparkled like a beacon in the darkness of Moon’s tree lot.

“Come on, Daddy. We got to go.” Oliver pulled anxiously on his hand.

Still watching the glisten of lights in the mass of her brown hair, Joe cleared his suddenly thick throat. “Right. But we’ll help Gabby first, Oliver. Because we’re stronger.”

“She don’t need our help. Moon can wrap her tree.”

“Mr. Tibo to you, squirt.”

“She looks strong enough to me.” Oliver scowled and kicked at the ground.

Joe scanned Gabby’s slight form, the gentle curves of her hips under some red, touch-me, feel-me material, the soft slope of her breasts beneath her blouse, breasts that trembled with her breath as she caught his glance. His gaze lingering on her, he spoke to his son. “Well, maybe she is strong in spite of the fact that she looks like a good sneeze would tip her over. Let’s say helping out’s a neighborly kind of thing to do, okay?”

“Neighbors?”

He would have sworn her breathy voice feathered right down each vertebra under his naked skin. Even as a teenager, her voice had had that just-climbed-out-of-bed sigh. He wondered if she knew its effect on males.

Her voice was the first thing he’d noticed about her back when he’d moved to Bayou Bend as a surly high school troublemaker.

Even then, the soft breathiness of Gabby O’Shea’s voice held something sweet and kind that soothed the savage creature raging inside him.

Seeing him on the sidewalk outside the grocery store where he’d lied his way into a part-time job, she’d smiled at him in his black leather jacket and tight jeans and said, “Hi, Joe Carpenter. Welcome to Bayou Bend.” Her voice slid over the syllables and held him entranced even as he folded his arms and gave her a distant, disinterested nod.

At seventeen, a year older than his classmates and new to this small community, cool Joe Carpenter didn’t have time to waste on thirteen-year-old skinny girls with kind voices, not when high school girls fell all over one another offering to give him anything he wanted. Thirteen-year-old junior high girls were off-limits, not worth wasting time on.

But, touching that bitter, angry place he’d closed off to the world, her voice made him remember her over the next two years as she grew into a young woman, made him lift his head in baffled awareness whenever he heard that soft voice reminding him all the world wasn’t hard and mean and nasty.

And now, even years after he’d fled Bayou Bend, her voice sent his pulse into overdrive with its just-got-out-of-bed breathiness.

“We’re going to be neighbors?”

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts as she repeated her question. “Yeah, Gabby. All of us. You. Me. Oliver. We’re going to be neighbors. I bought the Chandlers’ house. Down the block from your place.”

“Oh.” Her hair whipped against his shoulder, tangled in the fabric of his jacket, pulled free as she turned toward the tree she’d chosen. “I hadn’t heard.” With two hands, she lifted her tree and thumped it up and down on the ground a couple of times.

He could have driven a pickup truck through the spaces between the branches, but at least her tree didn’t drop needles like a cry for help.

“We’re living in a hotel.” Oliver tugged him toward Gabby’s tree and checked it out critically. “For now. With a indoor swimming pool. I like the hotel.”

“You’re going to have a tree in the hotel?” Gabby’s quick glance at him was puzzled. “That’s nice, but—”

“A friend’s letting us store the tree for a day or two.We’re moving into our house on Tuesday.” Joe watched as her eyes widened, flicked away from his.

“Ah.” She touched the branch. “Tuesday. You’ll be busy. Do you need some—” She stopped, just as she had before she’d issued her invitation.

Help was what he thought she almost offered before she caught herself.

She was uneasy with him. Edgy. Aware of him.

He took a deep breath. Nice, that awareness.

With one hand still wrapped around Joe’s, Oliver poked his head under one of the branches. “This is a okay tree. Not as good as ours, though.”

Joe inhaled, ready to scold Oliver, to say something, anything, because the kid had a mouth on him. But then Gabby’s laughing hazel eyes stopped him. Her mouth was all pursed up as if she was about to bust out laughing. He shrugged.

“No problem. And Oliver’s right.” She gasped as his son glowered at her. “His tree is better. In fact, a few minutes earlier, we were negotiating which one of us was going to walk away with it.” Her expression told him not to sweat the small stuff.

At least that’s what he thought it meant.

“Right, Oliver?”

“We didn’t nogosh—didn’t do that thing you said,” his son, stubborn as ever, insisted. “It was my tree ’cause I seen it first. Me and her settled that.”

“Yes, we did,” Gabby confirmed, smiling down at Oliver.

Joe ran a hand through his hair. Should he make Oliver give up their tree to Gabby? Was that the right thing to do? Hell, what did he know? He was the last person to try and teach a kid about manners and being a good neighbor and—

This daddy business didn’t come with instructions. Wasn’t like putting a bicycle together. More like flying by the seat of your pants, he was beginning to see. He didn’t think he’d ever get the hang of it.

And he wasn’t used to having a small recorder around, copying his words, imitating his ways, watching everything he did.

The responsibility made him lie awake at night, his blood running cold with the sure knowledge that he wasn’t father material, while Oliver’s warm neck rested against the crook of his arm.

“I like this tree, Joe,” Gabby said gently, as if she could read his thoughts.

Her voice warmed the chill creeping through him. Scrubbing his scalp hard, he stopped his spinning thoughts. “Fine, Gabby. If that’s the one you want.”

“Oh, it definitely is.” Her laugh rippled through the air. “It will be absolutely perfect for Dad and me.”

“Whatever you say. Come on, Oliver. You take that branch and haul it up to your shoulder.”

“’Course.” His son puffed out a biceps you could almost see without a microscope. “Because I’m strong.”

“I can see you really are,” Gabby said admiringly, her expression tender as she looked down at his grumpy son.

God. His son.

Once more that weight settled over him. The responsibility. The constant fear that he’d mess up. But he’d asked for this responsibility, gone looking for it, in fact. He would do what he had to do.

“Ready, Oliver?” Joe heaved the tree off its temporary stand.

“Sure.” Oliver clamped onto the assigned branch with both hands. “This is easy.” His whole body was hidden by the branch held tightly in his grip.

“Can you see?” Gabby’s question brought Oliver’s attention back to her.

“I can see my daddy’s behind.”

“A guiding light, huh? So to speak.”

This time Joe was sure he heard a strangled laugh underneath her words.

“Watch it, smarty-pants,” he muttered to her as she walked beside Oliver. “Nothing good happens to smart alecks.”

“Who? Me?” Her hair glittered and glistened, shimmered with her movements in the damp air.

“Oh, sure. You have that butter-won’t-melt-in-your-mouth look to you, Gabby. Even in eighth grade, you looked as if you were headed straight for the convent. Still do, in fact.” He lifted one eyebrow and felt satisfaction as her face flamed pink. “But I know better. That nifty red skirt gives you away, you know. That skirt’s an invitation to sin, sweet pea.”

She sped up her steps, trying to pass him.

“You’re wicked, Gabby, that’s what you are.” He liked the flustered look she threw him. “Wicked Gabby with the innocent eyes and bedroom voice.”

Her mouth fell open even as she danced to his other side.

He liked keeping her off balance. One of these days, if he ever had the time, he’d have to figure out why he liked pushing her buttons. Always had. “You’re a bad girl, Gabby.” He waggled a finger in a mock scold. “Santa’s not coming down your chimney this year, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, stop it, you fool,” she sputtered, finally darting past him with a laugh. “You’re incorrigible, Joe, that’s what you are.”

“Shoot, everybody knows that.”

“What’s corgibull?” Oliver planted his feet firmly in place, stopping the procession. He stuck his head up from behind the branch. “And why are you and her laughing? What’s so funny?”

“Your daddy is funning with me. He’s making very inappropriate jokes,” Gabby said primly, digging in her wallet and sending Joe a sideways scolding look as she dragged out money for the tree.

“Yeah?” Oliver stuck his fist on a nonexistent hip and rushed to Joe’s defense. “My daddy’s ’propriate.”

“Oliver’s right, Gabby.” Joe tightened his mouth. “I’m very appropriate. Especially—”

“Uncle,” she said, her eyes gleaming with laughter and something else that made Joe want to step closer and see for himself what shifted in the depths of those changeable eyes.

But he didn’t.

Getting too close to Gabrielle O’Shea would be one of the stupidest moves in a lifetime filled with mistakes.

“I give up, Joe. Let me pay for this dratted tree and get home. Dad’s probably wondering what sinkhole opened up and swallowed me.”

Joe stood the tree against a pole.

Pine needles in his hair and all over his clothes, Oliver stomped up beside him.

“Stay with Gabby, Oliver, while I lug this tree over to Moon.”

Mutiny glowered back at him.

“It’s polite, son. To provide ladies with an escort.” Feeling like a fool, Joe didn’t dare look at Gabby. She’d be laughing her head off at him. Him. Giving etiquette lessons to a kid. What on earth was the world coming to?

When he turned around, though, she wasn’t laughing. Her face had gone all blurry and kissable, and he couldn’t figure out what he’d done to make her look at him the way she was.

If they’d been alone, he would have kissed her for sure. Would have stepped right up to her, wrapped his arms around her narrow waist and given in to the itch to see what that shiny blouse felt like under his hands.

No question about it. He wanted to kiss her more than he’d wanted anything for himself in a long while.

Instead, ignoring the warning alarms in his brain, the voice screeching Stupid! Stupid! he gave in to the lesser temptation and slicked back the curl of hair that had been tantalizing him for the last fifteen minutes.

Against the back of his hand, her hair was slippery like the silk of her blouse. Against his palm, the slim column of her neck was night-and-mist cool. For a long moment she stood there, not moving, just breathing, hazel eyes turning a rich, deep green, jewels shining in the darkness as she stared at him. He curled his palm around her nape and dipped his head.

Well, he’d never laid claim to sainthood.

Against the end of his finger, her pulse fluttered and sang to him, a siren call.

And beside him, clinging like a limpet, his son leaned, small and cranky and utterly dependent on him.

The strains of “O Holy Night” drifted to him. Heated by her body and nearness, the scent of Gabby, so close, so close, rose to him. Surrounded by scent and sound, he forgot everything except the woman in front of him.

Forgot the silenced alarms in his brain.

Forgot responsibility.

Forgot everything.

Oliver pulled at the edge of Joe’s pocket. “I want to go, Daddy. I’m tired.”

Joe stepped back and let his hand fall to his side. He wasn’t about to tell sweet Gabby he was sorry, because he wasn’t, not at all. If it wasn’t for Oliver, well, mistake or not, he’d have Gabby O’Shea wrapped up against him tighter than plastic wrap.

But Oliver was in his life with needs and fears Joe was only beginning to glimpse.

His son had taken up permanent residence in the cold, lonely recesses of Joe’s heart.

No one else had ever found the key to that cramped room. But Oliver had, that first time three weeks ago when Joe had taken his small hand in his and walked with Oliver out of the apartment where he’d been left.

Not hesitating, Oliver had picked up a raggedy blanket, latched onto Joe’s hand and said only, “I told Suzie you’d come. I told her I had a daddy who would find me.” He’d smiled at Joe, a funky, trusting, gap-toothed smile. “I knowed you would. You did.”

That had been that.

Next to that power, even Gabby in Christmas mist and glittery lights could be resisted.

He hoped. And maybe only because she backed away at the same time he did, both of them knowing better than to yield to that sizzle.

So when his son’s gruff voice came again, Joe knew the choice was easy. Whatever he wanted wasn’t a drop in the bucket compared with what Oliver needed.

It couldn’t be.

He wouldn’t let anybody, not even himself, cause this tiny scrap of humanity one more second’s worth of pain.

“Okay, squirt. You’re right. It’s late. But first we have to drop off Gabby’s tree with Moon. Then we’ll hit the highway. We’ll decide what to do about the party later.”

Oliver’s sigh was heavy enough to crush rocks. “I want to go home. Now. And I don’t want to go to a party.”

Joe was torn. What was he supposed to do? Yell at the kid for being mouthy? Is that what a good parent would do? It didn’t feel right, though, not with Oliver looking up at him like a damned scared puppy who’d just peed on the rug. Hell. Strangled, Joe tugged at his shirt collar.

Gabby curled her fingers around Joe’s arm. “No problem, Joe. You and Oliver decide after you get back to the hotel whether you want to stop at the house tomorrow night. Right now, Oliver’s tired and probably hungry.” Not crowding his son, she added casually, “Maybe having some of Moon’s cocoa and doughnuts would be a good idea.”

Her skirt pulled tight across the delicate curves of her fanny as she stooped to Oliver’s level, her manner easy and relaxed. Joe admired the way she gave Oliver space.

He admired her tidy curves, too, and decided a man could be forgiven for appreciating a work of nature. Looking didn’t hurt anyone. Be a shame not to admire Gabby’s behind. After all, she’d checked out his.

She caught his faint grin and yanked her skirt free where it had tightened against her.

“Turnabout’s fair play,” he drawled. “And the view is swell.”

Being a woman of good sense, she ignored him. “Oliver, I understand you’re particular about your cocoa. Anybody would be, but Moon makes a killer cup of chocolate. The older guys like it. But maybe it’s an acquired taste.” She stood up, shrugged. “You’d make Moon feel good if you gave his cocoa the Oliver taste test.”

His son hesitated, reluctant to give in. Stubborn little squirt. “Maybe I’ll take a sip. If it’ll make Moon feel better.”

Bless her. Oliver was probably hungry. Joe kept forgetting how fast a six-year-old ran out of gas.

“I was thinking—” Gabby wrinkled up her face “—that you look like a guy with discriminating taste buds.”

Intrigued, Oliver quit scuffing the ground.

“Doughnuts might not be your thing. Want to try some trail mix?” Gabby pulled out a plastic bag with chips of dried fruit and nuts. Opening the closure, she pulled out a couple of raisins and offered the bag to Joe.

“Trail mix sounds good. Raisins, huh?” Joe hated raisins, hated dried fruit. Prissy stuff. But he took a handful and handed the bag to Oliver, who, imitating him, grabbed a fistful and shoveled it into his mouth.

“Lots of raisins.” A sly smile tugged at Gabby’s mouth, curving her full bottom lip up. “You like raisins, don’t you, Joe?”

“Yum. My favorite—” Dubiously he looked at the wrinkled speck he held between two fingers.

“Fruit, Joe. Filled with nutrition.” Her eyes sparkled up at him.

“Yeah. I know.” He ate a raisin and figured he’d learned another lesson. Carry food. He reckoned his jackets would start looking like chipmunk cheeks before the kid grew up.

No wonder kids needed two parents. His respect for single parents shot up five hundred notches. How did they do it, day after day? How could he be this kid’s only adult? Day after day.

Impossible.

He scowled.

“Hope your face doesn’t freeze like that, Joe.” Gabby poked him in the stomach.

“I was just thinking.”

“Oh?” The sweetness in her voice almost undid him.

“Nothing.” Grimly, he picked up the tree and walked to the shed, Gabby slightly ahead of him. Clamped at his side, Oliver chomped happily on trail mix.

The kid deserved better than a selfish thirty-year-old loner who didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do now that he’d become a parent literally overnight.

You couldn’t return a child like a piece of merchandise.

A kid was for life.

The kid hadn’t asked for Joe, either, not really. Oliver had wished on a star for a dad, and a whimsical fate had thrown him Joe.

So, the kid was stuck with him as a dad. Joe was all the kid had. Where was the fairness in that? The justice?

Coming to the end of the aisle of trees, Joe tipped his head up to the velvet blackness of night in Bayou Bend. Nothing in the star-spangled darkness answered him. Sighing, he glanced back down at his son.

And in that moment, as he watched Oliver manfully chew on trail mix while checking out Joe’s reaction, wonder settled over Joe. Nobody had ever looked at him like that, like he’d hung the moon and stars, like their whole world was filled with him.

He might be all the kid had, he might not be worth a tinker’s damn as a father, but, by heaven, he had one thing working for him.

He wanted to do right by this boy more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. That ought to count for something.

Taking a deep breath, Joe grinned at Oliver. “Come on. Hitch a ride on an old hoss.” Holding the tree with one hand, he swung Oliver up onto his shoulders and settled him. “Been a long day, huh, partner?” He patted Oliver’s foot.

Oliver rested his chin on top of Joe’s head as they approached the shed. “Yeah.” Oliver’s chin ground into Joe’s head with each munch of trail mix. “I like it up here.” He folded both arms on top of Joe’s head and wrapped his legs around Joe’s neck.

Hell, nobody was born knowing how to be a parent. There were plenty of books on the subject. Joe could learn. He’d make mistakes, but he could keep from making the same mistake twice. With a little luck.

And a lot of work.

He could do this daddy business.

“I’ll find Moon, Joe. If you don’t mind, just lean the tree against the shed and you two go have that cup of cocoa.” Gabby reached up and wiggled Oliver’s toe. “Nice meeting you, Oliver. Let me know what you think of Moon’s cocoa, hear?” She pivoted and whisked behind the corner of the shed so fast Joe didn’t have a chance to stop her.

He thought the night seemed darker and colder without the glow of Gabby’s face.

“Let’s go, Daddy.” Leaning forward, Oliver peered into Joe’s face. “We don’t need anybody else, do we?”

“Duck, son. The shed door’s low.” He didn’t see Gabby again. By the time he and Oliver drank cocoa, checked out the baskets of ornaments and made their way to the van, Gabby was nowhere in sight.

“Gabby leave yet?” Joe slammed the van door shut.

“Right after I tied down her trunk. She was in a hurry. Worried about her dad, I guess.”

“Milo looked fine when I saw him. But that was from a distance.” Joe lifted Oliver into the passenger side and motioned for him to fasten the seat belt. “What’s the problem?”

“Damned if I know. Milo’s complaining about Gabrielle coming home, swearing she’s making a fuss over nothing, that’s all I know. He’s worked up a head of steam about Gabrielle threatening to sell her Arizona condo and come back to Bayou Bend on a permanent basis.” Moon leaned over confidentially. “You ask me—and I notice you didn’t—that’s the problem.”

“I don’t get it. What do you mean?” Sticking the key into the ignition switch, Joe paused. “She’s back for good?”

“That’s what’s making Milo crazy. He’s ranting and raving that she would be making a mistake, that he doesn’t need any help—”

“Does he?” Joe straightened out Oliver’s twisted seat belt and snapped it into the slot.

“I don’t know.” Moon rolled his shoulders. “He was in the hospital for three weeks back around Halloween, but you know Milo.”

“No, actually, I don’t. Not well, anyway.”

“Huh.” Moon raised his eyebrows. “Funny. I thought you knew the old man. Don’t know where I got that idea.”

“Neither do I.” Joe kept his face empty of expression. What Moon might know or might guess wasn’t important. Joe wasn’t about to fill him in on any details.

He’d told Moon the truth. He didn’t know Milo well.

Not in the usual meaning, at least.

Moon nodded. “Anyway, if Milo’s got a health problem, he sure wouldn’t broadcast it. He’d make a joke out of it, but he’d keep any problem to himself. Milo’s good at keeping secrets.”

Joe didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to read between the lines. Moon knew something, after all, about that night years ago, but, like Milo, he could keep a secret. “Thanks for your help, Moon.” Joe reached out to shake Moon’s ham-size hand.

Moon’s face split into a grin. “Sure. Any old time.” His squeeze of Joe’s hand was hard enough to discourage circulation for a few minutes. As Joe started to pull the driver’s door shut, Moon rested his hand on it, stopping Joe’s movement. All the folksy drawl disappeared from Moon’s rumble of a voice as he gave Joe a keen look and said, “Merry Christmas to you and your boy.” He slammed the van door shut. “And, Joe...”

“Yeah?”

“Welcome home.”

Looking at Moon’s large, sincere face, where understanding lay beneath the good-old-boy mask, Joe felt his throat close up.

He’d felt the same way years ago when Gabby welcomed him to Bayou Bend, a place he’d never called home.

A place he couldn’t wait to run from as fast as he could.

A place he’d returned to because of Oliver.

And if it killed him, he was going to make this town home for his son.

Staying away from Gabrielle O’Shea would be part of that price, no matter how drawn he was to her sweetness.

In the hotel later, Joe watched shadows dance across the wall. Shifting, changing, like his life, the shadows passed one after another, each blurring into the other until the original pattern was no longer visible.

Beside him, snoring gently, small bubbles popping with each breath, his son slept. Peacefully. Securely.

Safely.

For the first time since he’d heard about his son, a son he didn’t even know he had, Joe slept soundly, too.

In his dreams, pine scent and Christmas carols mingled, and he followed the glow of Gabby’s smile, like a star leading him through the darkness.

Chapter Three

“Here Taste.” Milo handed Gabrielle a wooden spoon dripping with broth and rice. “What do you think?”

Gabrielle thought her dad’s face was too gray and too exhausted-looking, that’s what she thought. She kept her opinion to herself and took the spoon. Tasted. A complex mix of flavors burst on her tongue, and she sighed with pleasure. Her dad’s version of jambalaya might not be authentic New Orleans, but it was a feast for the senses. “I think it’s perfect, Pa. Best you’ve ever made.”

“Good.” Milo snatched the spoon from her and stirred the huge pot of rice, tomatoes, chicken, broth and sausage. Pale green celery dotted the red and white. Next to the stove, piles of translucent shrimp shimmered in a heap on a bright green ceramic platter. “But it needs a touch more red pepper.”

“Maybe,” she agreed. “But don’t make it too spicy, Pa.”

Not looking at her, he sprinkled pepper flakes carefully over the simmering mixture. “The boy. Oliver.”

“Oliver.” Gabby nodded. She didn’t know whether to hope that Joe and his son would ring the doorbell or hope they wouldn’t.

Every time she thought of Joe, her tummy fluttered, her pulse raced and she felt—agitated.

All this internal turmoil must mean she’d be disappointed if they canceled.

Or maybe it meant she didn’t want to face the knowing glint in Joe Carpenter’s brown eyes again.

What did she want?

She sensed that it was crucial that she figure out for herself what she’d wanted for herself in returning to Bayou Bend.

She looked around the homey kitchen with its worn wood cabinets and old linoleum floor. Milo’s banged-up copperbottomed pots hung from stainless steel hooks fixed into ceiling beams. On the counter over the double sink, the deep pink buds of a Christmas cactus hinted of the promise of the season, a reminder that darkness would end in light.

Spicy scents of past and present mingled with memories in a mixture as rich as Milo’s jambalaya, scents evoking joy and laughter and warmth from earlier years.

Like the cactus, happiness was a prickly-leaved plant waiting to bloom.

That was why she’d come home. To find that joy she’d lost, the joy she believed in her heart Milo needed.

What did she want?

And where did Joe Carpenter and his son fit into the new life she was shaping?

She wanted the best Christmas she could make, and being around Joe made her sparkle and feel alive. Made her look forward to the next hour or day, when she hadn’t looked forward to anything since her mother’s death.

Being around Joe made her feel like the Christmas cactus, all tight pink buds waiting to burst forth.

If he decided to take a pass on an impulsively issued invitation, she couldn’t blame him.

But as her attention focused on the cactus buds, the truth slapped her in the face.

She wanted him and Oliver to ring her doorbell. She wanted them in this old house, sharing the tradition of arranging ornaments to hide the bare spots on the tree. She wanted to see them spoon out heaping bowls of jambalaya and hear them sing carols around the ancient upright piano.

She wanted all the corny, traditional trappings of the holiday, all the gaudy color and glitter and sound. She longed to surround herself with heaps of packages wrapped in shiny red-and-gold paper and elaborately tied bows.

For whatever reason, she wanted Joe and Oliver to be part of that richness, not left by themselves to celebrate Christmas in a hotel on the highway.

“Hope these damn shrimp taste as good as they look.” Milo held a glistening shrimp up to the light and examined it critically before adding so casually that Gabrielle was immediately alerted, “Didn’t know you know Joe Carpenter?”

She knew what he was doing. Joe Carpenter wasn’t the real issue. Her dad wanted to talk. Like a cat stalking a bird, he’d sneak up on what he really wanted to talk about and, sooner or later, pounce.

That’s when the feathers would fly.

She could wait.

Because Milo wasn’t happy with her. She was pretty sure he was ready to launch into a lecture about her return to Bayou Bend, and she was in no hurry to tangle over this particular subject with a stubborn Irishman.

Double dose of hardheaded, is what she called him.

“So how do you happen to know Carpenter?” He plopped a shrimp back onto the heap.

“It’s a small town, Pa. Why wouldn’t I know him?”

“Bayou Bend’s small, all right. Folks know everybody’s business more than they should. Seems funny, though, you knowing Joe. He’s older than you, and he left town before you were in high school.”

“No, he left his senior year. I was in tenth grade. I used to see him around town. That’s all.” She wasn’t about to tell her dad about that long-ago night. Harmless as it had been, it felt private. Special.

“That’s right. You were only a sophomore. I’d forgotten.” His frown disappeared. “So you saw him at Tibo’s and invited him? That’s all?”

Puzzled, Gabrielle glanced at her dad. “Sure. Why? Is inviting him a problem?”

“No.” Milo poked at the shrimp, cleared his throat. “Just—oh, Joe Carpenter’s had a hard life, least that’s what I’ve heard. I wouldn’t want you getting hurt, that’s all.”

Gabrielle avoided addressing the implied question. “It was a friendly invitation to new neighbors, nothing more. Is there a problem?”

“Nope. Not at all. Joe’s welcome in my house.”

“Maybe not in other houses?”

“Probably not in a lot of houses,” Milo agreed.

Joe’s tough, don’t-give-a-damn exterior made it difficult to see him as vulnerable to the town’s opinion, but her heart ached as she imagined Joe with his son, seeking shelter from Bayou Bend’s coldness. He needed a friend.

She could be a friend.

“Here, Pa. Your scalpel.” Gabrielle handed him the deveining knife. Poking her father lightly on the shoulder, she studied him surreptitiously.

Usually thin, he’d lost even more weight since she’d last visited.

“Thanks, honey.” He ran the knife down the back spine of the shrimp, discarding the vein on a paper.

“Want help?”

“Nope.”

Thinking of the conversation the day before at the tree lot, Gabrielle added, “Didn’t know you’d had Joe Carpenter to dinner.”

“Not recently.” Milo pitched the shrimp into the colander, picked up another. “And it wasn’t exactly a dinner party, for your information, missy.”

“You’re making me curious, Pa.”

“Well, we know what curiosity did to the cat.”

Gabrielle opened the refrigerator and found the mushrooms and red onions she’d sliced earlier. Digging around the overloaded interior, she plucked out bags of lettuces and endive. “I can’t help being interested.”

“Be interested. That’s fine.” He ignored her whuff of exasperation.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” Gabby tilted her head.

“Not my place to. If you’re so interested, ask Joe. It’s his business. If he wants you to know, he can tell you. I already told you Joe and his son were welcome here.” Holding up the knife and using it as a pointer, he stopped her midsyllable. “And that’s all I’m going to say about that, Gabrielle, so don’t go poking around trying to make me tell you, hear?”

“We’ll see.” From under lowered lashes, she glanced at her dad.

He groaned. “I know what that means. You’re going to pester me until you winkle out what you want to know, aren’t you?”

“Probably. After all, I learned from the master. I didn’t grow up a lawyer’s daughter without picking up a few tricks.”

He shook his head, grinning back at her. “My sins are coming back to haunt me. And speaking of coming back—”

Interrupting him, a tiger-striped cat thudded onto the counter.

“Down, Cletis!” Flapping her hand, Gabrielle made frantic shoo-shoo motions at him. “Take your greedy self off this counter this instant. If you know what’s good for you.”

Cocking a hind leg and licking it, Cletis mewed inquisitively, “Mrrrr?”

“Yes, you, mister. I mean it. Down. Now.”

Working his head under a paper bag lying on the counter, he made himself as invisible as twenty pounds of fur-covered creature could.

“Sorry, buster, I can see you.” Gabrielle hoisted the cat off the counter and took out a saucer from the cabinet.

His attempt to hide from her was no more successful than hers had been as she knelt at Joe Carpenter’s well-shod feet yesterday. An errant sympathy for Cletis moved her to swipe a piece of sausage from the jambalaya.

Chopping up bits of sausage, she used her hip and leg to keep him on the floor even as he chirped and twined himself around her legs. “Here, beast.” She placed the saucer on the floor and stooped to scratch him between the ears. “You are one spoiled fat boy.”

Cletis slurped and gnawed enthusiastically.

Milo was suspiciously quiet.

Kneading the cat’s head, Gabrielle glanced up at her dad. “You’ve been letting him on the counter, haven’t you, Pa?”

“Once in a while.”

Cletis nibbled her thumb as she started to stand up. “Hah. Every night is my guess.” She could understand. The cat was company for her dad. “Lord, he’s gained weight while you’ve lost at least ten pounds. You’re feeding him and not making meals for yourself, just nibbling from the refrigerator and counter, not sitting down for a real dinner, right? It’s a good thing I came home to take care of you.”

Milo thwacked the spoon on the edge of the pot. “That’s what I want to talk to you about, missy.”

“And what’s that?” Gabrielle rested her arms gently around her dad’s bony shoulders. As she’d thought, the discussion about Joe was a red herring. Push had finally come to shove.

“This damn fool notion you have. That you have to look after me. What makes you think I need any help? I have most of my hair, my hearing and, with bifocals, I see pretty damn well.” He slapped the spoon on the counter.

Cletis looked up hopefully.

“You’re not taking care of yourself, Pa. I can see that. You look worse than when I came home when you were in the hospital. You haven’t bounced back from your surgery.”

“It was minor surgery, and Doc Padgett says I’m fine. I feel fine. So I’m fine, Gabrielle. This nonsense about selling your business and moving back to Bayou Bend is—” He frowned, twirled the spoon between his fingers. Rice grains speckled the counter. “Honey, I love you. You know that. And I’m pleased as punch you’re home. For a while.”

A sharp pang whipped through her. She went motionless, stunned by the unexpected pain and sense of rejection.

“Now, don’t look at me like that.” He patted her hand. “I’m doing fine. We should have talked over this decision of yours before you leaped headfirst into this kind of change.”

Gabrielle decided to be as blunt as he had been. “Pa, I don’t like the way you look. Your face has all the color of a banker’s suit. I think you’re sick—”

“Damn it, missy. I was in the hospital for three weeks before Thanksgiving. I lost my appetite, that’s all.” He scowled at her. “I was a skinny guy even before my surgery.”

“And I wouldn’t have known you were having surgery if Taylor Padgett hadn’t called me.”

“I’m right annoyed with that boy, too.”

Taylor Padgett was thirty-six years old and had been practicing in Bayou Bend ever since he’d finished medical school. “Why?” she asked with exaggerated patience.

“I didn’t want him bothering you.”

“Bothering me? Bothering me?” Pacing in a circle, she waved her arms in frustration. “Heaven forbid that my aged father should bother me. I certainly wouldn’t want to miss out on my busy social schedule because my father was in the hospital.”

He picked up another shrimp and sliced it down the back. “You’re worrying too much, Gabrielle. And I may be sixty-four years old, but I’m not aged, so don’t get sassy.” Head down, his fists balancing him on the counter, he stopped, sighed. “Somehow you got it in your head that I can’t manage alone since your mama died.”

“Pa, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Gabrielle rested her cheek against his paper-thin one. She remembered too well her panic at the sight of her strong, bullheaded dad surrounded by tubes and IVs. “I want you to get well, to be your old ornery self.”

He snapped his head up and went back to deveining shrimp with a vengeance. “Then don’t worry me any more with this idiotic plan of sacrificing your life to look after me, Gabrielle Marie. You’re a good girl, and you mean well, but, honey, I’m fine. I don’t need you here to baby-sit me.”

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