It was by far the most intimate experience she’d ever had.

This man, this…stranger, with a few words, had opened himself up to her more than any other human being Galen had ever known.

“Sorry,” she heard Del whisper, his voice gruff.

She lifted her eyes again, meeting his, her heart pounding. “For what?”

She saw him suck in a fast, deep breath, shake his head. “Nothing.” Another breath, a ghost of a smile. “Nothing. Forget it.”

And when she let herself, for the dozenth time, drift in those incredibly honest eyes, she thanked God she wasn’t going to be around for more than a few days. Because she knew, on some level so deep and so pure that the knowledge fairly hummed inside her, she could lose herself in those eyes.

Dear Reader,

The year is ending, and as a special holiday gift to you, we’re starting off with a 3-in-1 volume that will have you on the edge of your seat. Special Report, by Merline Lovelace, Debra Cowan and Maggie Price, features three connected stories about a plane hijacking and the three couples who find love in such decidedly unusual circumstances. Read it—you won’t be sorry.

A YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY continues with Carla Cassidy’s Strangers When We Married, a reunion romance with an irresistible baby and a couple who, I know you’ll agree, truly do belong together. Then spend 36 HOURS with Doreen Roberts and A Very…Pregnant New Year’s. This is one family feud that’s about to end…at the altar!

Virginia Kantra’s back with Mad Dog and Annie, a book that’s every bit as fascinating as its title—which just happens to be one of my all-time favorite titles. I guarantee you’ll enjoy reading about this perfect (though they don’t know it yet) pair. Linda Randall Wisdom is back with Mirror, Mirror, a good twin/bad twin story with some truly unexpected twists—and a fabulous hero. Finally, read about a woman who has Everything But a Husband in Karen Templeton’s newest—and keep the tissue box nearby, because your emotions will really be engaged.

And, of course, be sure to come back next month for six more of the most exciting romances around—right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Everything But a Husband
Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to all those parents who daily face,

and meet, with grace, courage and a never-ending sense of

humor the challenge of raising “special” children;

and to Jack, who has, for more than twenty years,

tirelessly supported my quest to be everything I want to be.

KAREN TEMPLETON

is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty diapers are not mutually exclusive. Her first book for Silhouette appeared in 1998; just two years later, she was thrilled to see her work make the Waldenbooks series bestseller list. A transplanted Easterner in serious denial, she spends far too much time coaxing her Albuquerque, New Mexico, garden to yield roses and something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasizing about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

She loves to hear from her readers, who may reach her by writing c/o Silhouette Books, 300 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10017.

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

Epilogue

Chapter 1

“Because you had a choice.”

Brow knotted, Galen dropped onto the rush-seated ladder-back chair in front of Gran’s desk. That’s all it said, the note wrapped around the large brown envelope, one of those old-fashioned kinds that tied in the back. That, and her name, marching across the front in her grandmother’s distinctive angular scrawl.

She’d had to pry it out of the top right-hand drawer of the desk, wedged as it was behind a cache of loose change and old receipts, a wad of tangled gumbands and at least two dozen long since dead pens. The old woman had refused to let her touch any of her personal stuff. Just because she couldn’t walk so good anymore—or see, or hear, Galen had silently added—didn’t mean her mind was gone, she’d said. Long as she was still breathing, she could handle her own damn finances. Except “damn” came out “dumb” in her thick Slovak accent.

Well, Gran had stopped breathing a week ago, twelve days short of her ninety-first birthday, leaving Galen to sort everything out. And find things, too. Like long brown envelopes with her name printed on them.

The phone—an antique of sorts, left over from the late forties—jangled on the back of the desk. Galen answered it, tucking a stray hank of hair back behind her ear as she distractedly informed the hyper telemarketer that she seriously doubted her grandmother needed another charge card.

She rattled the receiver into its cradle, stared again at the envelope.

“Because you had a choice.”

Now what on earth d’you suppose she meant by that? Well. There was only one way to find out, wasn’t there? Yet…a perverseness not unlike Gran’s stilled her fingers, kept her from untwisting the thin string, opening the envelope.

Or maybe it was more than perverseness?

Galen sighed, squinting out the naked paned window at the flanneled November sky, absently worrying a loose thread dangling from the hem of her sweatshirt. Never could convince her grandmother to splurge on curtains in her bedroom, the old woman insisting the vinyl roller shade was perfectly adequate. Odd how they’d always done that to each other, her grandmother and her. Goaded each other. Driven each other batty. Peculiar way of showing they cared, when she thought about it. Still, all they’d had was each other, for the last three years, a pair of widows keeping each other company in the tiny South Side Pittsburgh house her grandmother had lived in her entire married life.

Now Galen didn’t even have that.

A small, tight knot of anxiety twisted in her stomach.

She dropped the envelope, pushed herself up from the desk. Her hands lifted to the back of her neck, where she released her thick, straight hair from its tortoiseshell barrette, only to immediately finger-comb it back, reclip it. Her gaze lit on the sagging double bed in the center of the room, still shrouded in its yellowing chenille bedspread. Tears pricked behind her eyelids.

Maybe she’d returned to the house where she’d spent so much of her childhood because it seemed she had no choice. Because, after Vinnie died, his medical bills had eaten up whatever there might have been, leaving her flat broke. And without the opportunity she’d naively assumed would be hers. But she’d stayed because she’d wanted to. Somehow, Gran had mellowed in Galen’s absence, allowing a gentleness and sense of humor to rise to the surface of an otherwise dour personality Galen had sure never seen during those interminable years of living with her grandparents after her parents’ deaths. Had Gran’s iron-handedness simply been a reflection of her grandfather’s? She supposed so. After all, most women of her grandmother’s generation and cultural bent felt it their duty to defer to their husband’s decisions. And together, they’d certainly done all they could to clip a young girl’s wings. No makeup, no dating, no going off by herself… To this day, she wasn’t sure how she managed to talk them into letting her take that job at Granata’s, one of Pittsburgh’s most popular Italian restaurants. Four evenings a week, waiting tables. Which was where she met Vinnie, the youngest of the four Granata brothers, already thirty to her sixteen.

Another twist to the gut, this one sharper. Colder. To be sure, he’d courted her slowly. Sweetly. Secretively. Never touched her, except for the occasional stroke of her cheek, a squeeze of her hand, when no one else was around, and not even that the first year. Blinded by the dazzling glare of first love, Galen had been living a dream, hardly daring to believe that this handsome, older man really wanted her. That he might rescue her from the prison of her grandparents’ over-protectiveness. But he did. Enough to keep their secret for two years. The morning of Galen’s eighteenth birthday, they eloped.

He’d cheated her out of a wedding. Too.

A sharp breeze rattled the windows; with a sharp sigh, Galen turned back to the desk, saw the envelope.

“Because you had a choice.”

Yes, it was true. After all, she could have gotten a job—any job—and tried to make a life of her own. After all, it wasn’t as if there were any children—Galen shut her eyes, waiting out the tug of self-pity.

So. She could have refused her grandmother’s offer to come live with her. Just until she got on her feet, Gran had said. Except that within five minutes of moving back, Galen realized the indomitable woman she’d feared so much as a child had somehow turned into a frail and needy old lady. Still domineering, still set in her ways, to be sure, but now someone Galen could love.

But. Now Gran was gone, and Galen found herself back at square one. All she had, besides this house and a couple of not-exactly-impressive bank accounts, was a neurotic terrier-mix who piddled whenever she got too excited, and whatever was inside this envelope. She couldn’t imagine what it might be: Gran had insisted on putting Galen’s name on everything some time ago, insisting she didn’t want any “rigamarole”, as she put it, with the government, when the time came. Said there’d be little enough as it was, no sense making things complicated on top of it.

The old chair squawked as she sank back onto in it, began untwisting the strings on the suddenly blurred envelope. She knuckled away a tear, supposing when your very last relation dies on you, when, at thirty-five, you find yourself childless and husbandless and careerless and lifeless, it’s hard not to feel a little down in the dumps.

Steam hissed from the radiator squatting underneath the window, startling awake the walking mop. Speaking of personal effects. Eyes bulging, the tiny dog hopped out of her basket and clicked over the bare wooden floor to Galen, whimpering to be picked up. Gran’s dog, Baby, a cross between a Chihuahua and a Yorkie. Maybe. Not an attractive animal. For several seconds, dog and woman stared at each other.

With a weighty sigh, Galen scooped the raggedy thing into her lap, then finally undid the envelope, pulled out the contents. Oh. A life insurance policy, looked like. She scanned the first page. Blinked. Heard her heart begin to pound in her ears.

“Jiminy Christmas,” she said on a long, slow whisper, only to yelp like she’d been goosed, the mutt flying off her lap, when the phone rang again.

Galen managed a strangled “Hello?” as the dog made her stiff-legged way back to her basket, into which she flopped with a little doggy groan.

“Galen, baby? It’s Cora. You know, you’ve been on my mind so much the past couple of weeks, and it’s been way too long since I’ve heard from you, so I finally figured I’d better just go on ahead and call before I drove myself crazy. What’s going on, honey?”

The rich, soothing voice of her mother’s old friend swept over her. Just like that, Galen saw the frown pleating the coffee-brown forehead, remembered long-ago Saturday mornings in Cora Mitchell’s base housing living room in Norfolk, playing dress-up with Cora’s daughters to the comforting hum of their mothers’ conversation a few feet away.

Tears swam in Galen’s eyes, as her throat went dry and tight. She’d been out so seldom during the three years she’d spent with her grandmother, she’d lost touch with what few friends she had. Other than the parish priest and a few neighbors who’d hesitantly inquired about her grandmother, she’d talked to no one this past week. Not that she’d ever exactly been a party girl, but still—

“Oh, Cora!” spilled out on something between a sob and a sigh.

“Galen! What is it? What’s happened, baby?”

So she told the only real friend she had left in the world about her grandmother’s passing, about how things had changed between them, about how much she missed the old bat—this said on one of those crying laughs that happens when your emotions get all tangled up in your head like that wad of gumbands in Gran’s desk—which brought the expected moans of commiseration and sympathy. Galen honked into a stiff, scratchy generic tissue—Gran never would pay extra for the good stuff—then pointed out that Gran had been nearly ninety-one, after all.

“Still,” Cora said, and Galen could feel the hug. “Things had really changed that much? Between you?”

“Amazing, huh?”

“A blessing, is what I’m thinking.”

Barely eight years old, Galen had been staying overnight with Cora while her father, home on leave after six months at sea, whisked Galen’s mother off to New York for a quick second honeymoon. It was Cora, tears tracing silver tracks down dark cheeks, who’d gently told her that her parents had died because some drunk had run head-on into them, just on the other side of Dover, Delaware, on their way back. And, ultimately, it had been Cora and her husband who’d delivered Galen to her never-before-seen grandparents in Pittsburgh. Her father’s parents, they of the stoic, strict Slovak extraction, her mother’s Irish parents having both passed away some time before.

Now, if anyone had bothered to ask Galen her druthers about who she wanted to live with, she would have chosen Cora—who was more than willing—over her grandparents any day. The court, however, ruled in favor of blood over druthers, and that was that. Cora had stayed in touch anyway, even after her husband retired from the military and they moved back to her native Detroit, figuring she was still Galen’s honorary aunt.

Hearing Cora’s voice…well, it was a Godsend, is what it was. Not just because Galen was still getting over her grandmother’s death, but because—it all came back to her, now—there was the little matter of just having discovered she was the sole beneficiary of a life insurance policy worth a quarter of a million dollars.

She burst into tears.

“Oh, hell, honey…Oh, shoot, I wish I was there! Talk to me, baby. Get it out, that’s it, get it all out.”

So, between assorted choked sobs and blubbers, she did.

Cora went understandably, if uncharacteristically, silent for several seconds. Then she said, “And you had no idea?”

“N-none. And I have no idea how she did this, why she did this, where she got the money to make the payments on the policy…” Galen shook her head, pushing that stray wisp behind her ear. “I suppose I’ll never know, now. Thing is, though, I keep thinking I’m reading it wrong.”

“Okay. Tell me what it says. Word for word.”

She did.

“You’re not reading it wrong,” came the dry pronouncement across the wire. “So can I hit you up for a loan? This house I bought’s about to bleed me dry.”

Good old Cora.

“So…what’re you going to do with all that money?”

Galen blew out a sigh, stared again at the policy. Heavens. She was rich. Well, maybe not rich. But certainly not poor. She realized she was shaking. And that her head felt like a fly was caught inside it. “I have no idea,” she said over the buzzing. “Buy some new underwear, I suppose.”

“Don’t knock yourself out, now.”

Galen felt a smile twitch at her mouth.

“Hey! How about blowing some of it on a plane ticket?”

“To?”

“Here. For Thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving? Oh, yeah…that was next week, wasn’t it? Galen’s stomach knotted. “Oh, goodness, Cora. I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about it.”

“Now, don’t you tell me you were planning on spending the day alone?”

“I hadn’t planned on anything. Besides, people do, you know,” she said, only to be cut off by an indignant hmmph.

“Give me one good reason why you can’t come up here.”

A harsh, startled laugh tumbled out of her mouth. But no excuses.

“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought. Look, my girls can’t get out here—Willa’s too busy and Lynette’s too pregnant—and I can’t go to either of their places without putting the other one’s nose out of joint, so I’m staying here, and I hate spending Thanksgiving alone. Gets too damn depressing, buying one of those pathetic little turkey breasts just for yourself. So, you wanna come out Tuesday or Wednesday?”

Galen felt the corners of her mouth lift. Right. Knowing Cora, she probably had a million friends she could spend the holiday with. But leave it to her to twist things around to make it sound like Galen would be doing her a kindness, not the other way around.

The house did suddenly seem extraordinarily empty. And quiet.

But…

She shifted in the chair, making it squawk again. “Oh, I don’t know… I’ve still got so much to do. About Gran’s stuff ’n’ that.”

“It’ll still be there when you get back, baby.”

True enough. “But what about getting plane reservations this late?”

“Hey, if it’s supposed to happen, the way will be made clear, you hear what I’m saying?”

Then the dog propped her chin on the edge of her basket, gave her doleful. Right. “I can’t leave the dog.”

“What dog?”

Galen let out a weighty sigh the same time the dog did. “This mutt of Gran’s.”

Doleful turned to indignant.

She tucked the phone to her chest. “Well, you are,” she said, only to realize she was justifying herself to a dog. An ugly one, at that.

“Last time I checked,” Cora said, “they allowed dogs in Michigan.”

Michigan. Crikey. Galen couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out of Pittsburgh, let alone to another state. Something suddenly leeched all the air from her lungs. “Oh…I don’t know. This just seems so last minute—”

“For heaven’s sake, girl—you ever hear of the concept of spur of the moment? Besides, you live alone now. You can do things just because, and nobody’s drawers are going to get in a knot about it. So. Tuesday or Wednesday?”

Galen stood up, stretched, looked around the bleak little room. Realized she could go. Or she could stay. It was completely her decision.

That, for the first time in her life, she didn’t have to answer to a living soul.

“I’ll…call you back after I make the reservations,” she said, then laughed, nervously, at Cora’s squeal in reply.

Mirroring his increasingly dreary mood, a cold light drizzle began to mottle Del Farentino’s truck windshield as he pulled out of the Standish’s driveway. Two days before Thanksgiving, with four clients wanting/needing/demanding Del complete their remodeling projects by this afternoon.

He shoved his perpetually too-long hair off his forehead, glancing at the dashboard clock. Ten-o-three. Not bad, actually, considering he’d had a devil of a time getting his four-year-old daughter Wendy dressed and out of the house this morning. Something about the purple sweater—which had been her favorite up until five minutes before he tried to get it on her body—being itchy, and she only wanted to wear the pink one, which was buried underneath several strata of dirty clothes in the laundry basket. It had not been a pretty scene, but the last thing he needed this morning was to be late for his eight o’clock appointment with the Goldens, potential new clients with a large house out past Shady Lakes.

Now there was a bright note. Hot damn, would he love to get his mitts on that one. A complete redo, not just a kitchen remodel or add-a-room project. The architect had been there—a youngish woman who understood how to blend practicality with innovation—and the plans made his mouth water. A job like this would be a real feather in his cap. Prove to the world he was more than a handyman. Not that he was complaining about all the smaller jobs that seemed to drift his way. Between Wendy’s special classes and what-all, not to mention full-time daycare, the kid ate up his income faster than a dog ate steak. Money was money, and he’d take whatever he could get. But it sure would be nice to move up to the big leagues. Which, if these people accepted his bid, just might happen.

Damp gravel crunched underneath his tires as he pulled up in front of Cora Mitchell’s mongrel house, close to the center of town. It had a porch and some eaves and a gable or two and a couple of stories, more or less, but you couldn’t exactly call it anything. Except old. Cora, a long-widowed, vociferous, black earth mama in her late fifties, had worked her way up from temp to managing his step-mother’s Realty office. She’d recently bought the fixer-upper for some outrageously low price, only to discover the repair costs would be equally outrageous. Del pictured this project being on the periphery of his, or somebody’s, to-do list for years.

Cora was in a dither when he arrived, as only Cora could get herself into. According to Maureen, the woman was the epitome of order and decorum in the office, but for some reason—maybe because she’d be fixing up this house well into old age—this project seemed to keep her off-balance. This morning, she was a mess. Muttering something about a guest arriving that afternoon and she hadn’t yet gone to the store and did Del think the rain might change to snow, she barely allowed a glance in his direction as she tromped from room to room, eventually stopping long enough to shroud herself within a long woolen cape the color of a grape Popsicle.

From the basement, he heard reassuring clunks and clanks as his guys changed out her old furnace. They’d already tackled the leaky roof and the sagging living room ceiling where some overly enthusiastic soul had attempted to make a great room out of two smaller rooms by removing a load-bearing wall.

“Who’s the guest?” he asked.

“What?” Silvery eyes, startling against her dark skin, stared at him blankly for a moment. “Oh, you mean Galen,” she said, her breath frosting in front of her face in the cold house. They hadn’t intended on replacing the furnace until the spring, but the furnace had other ideas. Cora hooked the cape together at her throat. “Her mama and I were friends when our husbands were stationed in Norfolk, oh, Lord, more than twenty-five years ago, now. Galen and my girls used to play together, you know?”

She picked up her purse from the hall table, clicked it open, grunted, then clicked it shut again. “Anyway, Galen’s mama and daddy died in a car accident when she was maybe eight or so. Bill and I would’ve taken her ourselves, but whoever makes these sorts of decisions decided she should go with her grandparents instead. We kept in touch, though. The girls and I even went to Pittsburgh to see her, couple of times.” She hesitated, gazing at the doorknob, her brows drawn. “Strange, the way these things happen,” she said, more or less to herself, then looked again at Del. “In any case, I’m not gonna bore you with all the details, ’cause I know you got things to do and, God knows, so do I, but her grandmother died a couple weeks ago, and that was the only living relative she had left, so I strong-armed her into coming up here for Thanksgiving. Since I can’t get out to California this year to see the girls, you know, what with this house sucking every penny out of me like it is. And I didn’t figure there was any reason for her to just sit in that big old empty place of her grandmother’s down in Pittsburgh all by herself. I mean, can you imagine?”

Without waiting for Del’s response—clearly, one wasn’t expected—she tugged open the glass-paned front door and clomped out onto the slate gray porch, the surface marred with smudged workboot footprints. Del followed. The drizzle had turned to sleet, clicking on the porch overhang, bouncing like tiny white bugs off the winter-dry grass out in the yard; Del frowned, silently questioning the wisdom of Cora’s driving on what could easily become icy roads. He also knew better than to call her on it.

“So,” she said, her face smothered in breath clouds as she looked out over her whitening lawn. She yanked on a pair of driving gloves, taking her time smoothing them over her broad knuckles. “You gonna bring the baby to Elizabeth’s for Thanksgiving?”

Del stuffed his fingers in his jeans pockets, grateful he hadn’t yet removed his down vest if the woman was going to conduct a conversation outside. Elizabeth Louden Sanford was his stepsister, his father Hugh having married Elizabeth’s mother Maureen about a year and a half ago. To make things more complicated, Elizabeth’s husband Guy not only brought three children of his own to the marriage, but was the youngest of five sons. In what had to be either the world’s most courageous or dumbest moment, Elizabeth had volunteered to host Thanksgiving for everybody. At last count, Del’s father had said, the guest list was about to pass fifty, and still climbing.

“I haven’t decided,” he finally said. “That’s a lot of people to subject a certain someone to. I’m just not sure…”

Uh-oh. Cora was giving him her Look. “I swear to Heaven, child—when they pass out the award for Overprotective Father of the Year, you’ll win, no contest. You really gotta do something about those trust issues weighing you down, you know? Wendy loves being with people. She’ll be fine, if Paranoid Papa will give her half a chance. Okay, baby,” she continued without waiting for Del’s response, since clearly, nothing he could possibly say was worth listening to. “I’m going on to the store, then out to the airport. I should be back by one at the latest. You need me for anything?”

Del swallowed a smile. Cora drove his guys to distraction. Knowing she’d be gone for three hours would probably make their day.

“Nah. I think we can manage. I’ll be in and out myself, though. What with the holiday coming up and everything, we’re busting butt all over town today.”

“Huh,” Cora said, not paying any attention. She glanced at her watch, invoked the Almighty’s name and vanished. Del yelled, “Drive carefully,” as soon as he was sure she couldn’t hear him.

He stood on the porch for a moment, thinking about the conversation. About Wendy. About his—yeah, he’d admit it—obsessive need to protect her. He supposed it was only natural, considering. Still, Cora was right. Putting Wendy into a new situation was always harder on Del than it was on his daughter. But even though his kid was a fighter—yeah, a champ!—and even though it would take far more than throwing her into a crowd of strange kids to knock her for a loop…

He let out a long, ambivalent sigh.

Two clients later, in the midst of assuring Mrs. Allen that her stove would indeed be ready to go by that afternoon, his cell phone chirped at him. He’d no sooner said, “Yo,” than he was assaulted by a torrent of words from one really mad woman. The connection wasn’t wonderful, but he made out several choice cuss words, an injunction against nature in general and ice storms in particular, and two very distinct phrases: “won’t be ready until late today” and “her plane’s due in forty-five minutes!”

“Cora?”

“Well, who the hell else would be calling you to go pick up someone at the airport?” That came through clearly enough.

Uh-oh.

“Cora—why on earth are you calling me? I’m backed up clear to Canada—”

“Baby, you think I don’t know that? And I’m really sorry, I am, but I’ve called everybody else I can think of and you’re the first person to answer their damn phone.”

Great.

“Cora, I—”

“Oh, thank you, baby! And I’ll make it up to you, I swear. It’s just that the child’s all broken up about her grandmother and everything, you know—?”

Del didn’t have the heart to point out the “child” had to be significantly over thirty.

“—anyway, you got something to write down the flight number?”

With a sigh, Del pulled out a small notebook and pen he always carried with him from his back pocket, duly recorded the information. Clearly, strong-willed females were part of his karma.

“So, what’s she look like? Galen?”

“Oh, Lord. I haven’t seen her in years. She sent me a wedding picture, though. Poor baby. She’s a widow, did I tell you? Oh! And another picture, maybe four, five years ago. Don’t imagine she’s changed much since then. Longish red hair. Dark, like she uses henna on it except this is natural. Real fair skin, some freckles, maybe, I don’t exactly remember. Kinda tall, I guess. Slender. Eyes like those pictures of the Caribbean. Green blue. Pretty girl. You can’t miss her. Okay, this man is giving me a look like I don’t want to know how much this is going to cost me. I’ll see you back at the house.”

Well, that was that. Del hooked the phone back onto his belt, one eyebrow crooked. Red hair and green-blue eyes, huh?

“Mr. Farentino?”

Mrs. Allen was standing far too close, mouth pursed, hands clasped, one of those women to whom lipstick and a housecoat meant “presentable.”

“Does this mean you’re leaving? Before my stove is installed?”

“Now, Mrs. Allen,” Del said in his divert-the-potential-hysteria voice, flashing her his famous, and woefully unused, female-snagging smile. He fetched his vest from where he’d draped it over the back of a kitchen chair, slipped it on. “You gonna trust me here or what? I promise, Dan and Lenny’ll get you all fixed up, okay? By three o’clock this afternoon, you’ll be baking pumpkin pies in that baby, no problem.”

He was out the back door before she had a chance to point out the stove hadn’t even arrived yet.

Chapter 2

Where was Cora?

Swallowing down yet another surge of the nausea that had plagued her since the plane left Pittsburgh, Galen scanned the waiting room, already filling with passengers for the next flight out. She felt like a pack mule. Her purse strangled her diagonally from left shoulder to right hip, her carry-on bag and winter coat crushed the fingers of her right hand, while a beleaguered whimper floated up from the small plastic pet carrier clutched in the other. Amazing, how heavy it was, considering the animal in it weighed about as much as a hoagie. A small hoagie. A hank of hair had slipped out of its clip to torment her cheekbone, but if she put everything down, she’d never figure out how to pick it all up again. Underneath her five-year-old black sweater, she shivered. And not from cold.

All around her, winterized bodies swarmed and jostled each other, the cacophony of voices drowning out intermittent PA announcements and tinny music. Heavens—she hadn’t actually seen Cora in something like twenty years. Tears bit at Galen’s eyes as something close to panic tangled with the queasies. Baby whined again; Galen automatically offered some vague reassurance, as if the thing could hear, let alone understand, her.

She shut her eyes, hauled in a lungful of air. She’d been cloistered even more than she’d thought if a simple trip could throw her this much. True, she’d only flown once before—with Vinnie to St. Thomas for their honeymoon—but she was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake. Not a little kid. Her stomach heaved again; sweat broke out on her forehead, trickling down the side of her face.

“This is crazy,” she muttered to herself, beginning to re-think dumping at least some of her load before her fingers fell off. One corner of her lower lip snagged between her teeth, she craned her neck, her eyes darting around the terminal. Okay, Volcek. Get a grip. You’re just stressed and woozy. She’ll be here—

“Galen? Galen Granata?”

She jumped a foot at the sound of the deep masculine voice a foot away, whirled around to find herself face-to-chest with a ’63 Buick of a man, nicely packaged in plaid flannel and navy blue nylon. Her gaze drifted upward over a thick neck, a squared chin, a smile both tentative and cocky, and a pair of heavy-lidded, thickly-lashed, puppy-dog brown eyes that all but screamed Latin or Mediterranean or something equally threatening.

And then—oh, my—there was that headful of nearly-black hair at least three weeks past needing a haircut.

This was not Cora.

“I’m sorry,” rumbled the voice again. The kind of voice that, when you hear it over the phone, immediately conjures up, well, someone who looks like this. Except, in real life, you discover, eventually and with profound disappointment, the person attached to the voice really looks like Barney Fife. “I must have the wrong person…”

There he went again. Talking. Galen shook her head at the not-Cora, not-Barney-Fife person, which turned out to be a huge mistake. Served her right, she supposed, for holding everything down for two hours. But losing her cookies into a barf bag at thirty-thousand feet was just so…public. She wobbled for a second, both grateful and irked when a firm, large hand grasped her elbow. She caught a whiff of aftershave, and everything heaved inside her.

“Whoa—you okay?”

Reflex jerked her elbow from the man’s grasp, which was another mistake. Her coat and bag slithered and thunked to the floor as she clamped her hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide. The next few seconds were a blur as whoever-this-was scooped up her belongings, clamped one arm around her waist, and propelled her down the hall to the ladies’ room. She shoved the carrier at him, grabbed the carry-on, then lurched inside, narrowly missing a mother with toddler twins just coming out.

“I’ll wait here,” she thought she heard as the door whooshed shut behind her a split second before she catapulted into the nearest stall.

Well, that wasn’t a moment too soon. Del let out a sigh of relief, leaned against the wall outside the restroom door. He’d never seen anyone actually turn green before.

A redhead, Cora had said. Check. Caribbean-green eyes. Pretty girl. Can’t miss her. Check, and check, and hoo-boy.

Then a sardonic smile twisted his mouth. Yeah, right… Cora’s car skidded on the ice, she was stuck at the service station, she just couldn’t get anyone else to answer the phone…

Woman was about as subtle as Ru Paul’s makeup.

Of course, all the women he knew—and half the men—had been trying to fix him up ever since he moved to Spruce Lake, three years ago. Thus far, he’d been able to deflect everyone’s good intentions with either a grin or a glower, depending on his mood. But like the slow, torturous shift and grind and upheaval of the earth’s plates, so Del’s thoughts had begun to shift over the years, leading him to think that, mmm, well—he scrubbed a palm over his chin, hardly believing he was admitting this to himself—he might actually be open to the idea of marrying again.

Well. He’d finished the thought and his heart was still beating. But it was true. He was tired, dammit. Tired of trying to figure out his precocious, inquisitive, hyper daughter by himself, tired of having nothing but the TV to keep him company after she went to bed, tired of waking up alone. Not that he didn’t love his daughter with everything he had in him, mind, but…

But.

He let out a sigh loud enough to make some woman coming out of the ladies’ room give him a funny look.

Yeah. But.

What did he think, he could order up a wife from Spiegel’s or something? Criminy. Look how long it had taken him to find one woman willing to hitch herself to a guy smart enough to get a college education but not smart enough to use it, who clearly preferred living in near poverty—but, hey, calling the shots—than sucking up to some boss just for some minor thing like, oh, security. Like there was actually another woman on this planet that crazy?

One willing to take on, besides the promise of continued financial instability, the exhausting, often thankless task of raising someone else’s child?

Especially one as strong-willed and independent as Wendy.

Find another wife? Sure, why not? Piece of cake.

Let’s see…if Wendy was four and a half now, and she left home at eighteen, that meant…only thirteen and a half more years of celibacy.

That brought the old mouth down into a nice, tight scowl.

He jumped each time the restroom door opened. Three women gave him the eye, one looked as though she was willing to give him far more than that. Galen finally emerged, slightly less green but still frighteningly pale, hugging her carry-on to her stomach like a drowning woman a log. He thought she might have run a comb through her hair, splashed water on her face, if the damp tendrils hugging her temples and clumped eyelashes were any indication. Those incredible turquoise eyes met his; a flush swept up from underneath the baggy, high-necked sweater—black, severe, a startling contrast with her fair skin, the dark red hair.

“Thank you,” she whispered, a smile flickering over almost colorless lips.

“Rough flight?”

Her gaze darted to his, vulnerable and embarrassed. A breath-stealing urge to put his arm around her swamped him again; he handily fought it back.

She nodded, shifting from foot to foot. Even without makeup, her complexion was flawless, the skin as clear and fine as a teenager’s. Only the hairline creases bookending her mouth hinted that she was older. And yes, Cora, there were freckles. Just a few, nicely arranged.

“We hit—” she swallowed “—turbulence over the lake.” Another smile played peekaboo with her lips. Nice mouth, even if a bit on the anemic side. Geez…how long had it been since he’d noticed a woman’s mouth? Hell, since he’d noticed a woman’s anything? Or, in this case, everything.

At first glance you’d say, okay, sure, she’s pretty—definitely pretty—but in an ordinary way for all that, y’know? Just…average. Average height, average weight, averagely clothed in sweater and jeans. Very average hair, except for the color. Straight, parted in the middle, clipped back. Strictly utilitarian, right? On second glance, however, you’d say, “Hmm.”

On second glance, you’d notice the delicacy of her bone structure, the way one tawny eyebrow sat slightly higher than the other, that the loose sweater, the no-frills jeans, really didn’t hide what he suspected was a spectacular figure as much as she probably thought it did. That her ears were absolutely perfect. If red rimmed.

She held out her hand for the carrier. Short nails. No polish. No rings. “Here, I’ll take that back—”

“No, it’s okay, I’ve got it.” He lifted it up, peeked inside for the first time. Managed not to wince. Huge, batlike ears, buggy eyes, hairy—the thing looked like a Furby. Before they perfected the prototype.

“She was my grandmother’s,” Galen said on a sigh, as if that explained it. Which, in a weird sort of way, it did. “Now she’s mine, I guess.”

Del lowered the carrier. “Lucky you.”

That got a tiny smile. And another blush. “Well. Talk about your inauspicious beginnings,” she said, traces of blue-collar Pittsburghese tingeing her speech patterns. She jerked her head back toward the restroom door, cleared her throat. “So. You know I’m Galen. And you are?”

Del snapped to, now tried to take her bag as well. Wariness flared in her eyes as she inched away, choking it more closely to her. He swallowed a grin. The dog, he immediately surmised, he could have. Whatever was in that bag, though, she’d fight to the death for. “Del Farentino. I’m the contractor doing some work on Cora’s new house.”

“Oh. The one that’s costing her way too much money?” She flushed even brighter. “Th-the house, I mean. Not the contractor…”

“I think she’d probably agree with you on both counts,” Del said with a grin, wondering what it was about this woman that was making him feel…good. Like something remotely human, even. “Well, we might as well get a move on.” Del started down the concourse, assuming Galen would follow.

She didn’t. Del turned around, got bumped from behind by a foreign tourist. He frowned at the not unwarranted suspicion in Galen’s eyes. “What?”

“Why couldn’t Cora pick me up?”

Del took a step back to her, resisting the urge to glance at his watch. “Well, the story is, she went to do some shopping, her car skidded off the road, messing up the muffler or something, so she couldn’t pick you up. And I was the only person to answer the phone. Can we go—?”

She stayed put, squinting at him with an expression caught neatly between guarded and nervous. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

Ah, hell.

“Oh, I’m telling the truth, honey, trust me. It’s whether Cora’s telling the truth we have to consider.” He gave her the reassuring smile he’d given Mrs. Standish earlier. She didn’t smile back. Del took a step closer. The dog yipped. Del’s hand streaked through his hair as minutes ticked by like race cars. “You afraid to get in the truck with me, what?”

“Uh, yeah.” Caution stiffened her features, shadowed her eyes. But not, he thought, from experience as much as…lack of it. That’s what it was, he realized. She was like a child on the first day of school, excited and fearful all at once. She shifted the bag, which was clearly heavy. “Kinda got that drummed into me by the time I was three. It stuck.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand—he hoped his daughter would grow up to be half this streetsmart, which he doubted, which he decided he did not need to think about just now—but he still had a lot of work to do and it was Thanksgiving week and he had to pick Wendy up from the sitter’s at four and, frankly, he wasn’t in the mood. Hadn’t he just explained who he was? Did she really think he made all that up, somehow? Still, he plastered on another smile. “Honey, I just got you to the john before you threw up all over the terminal floor. You can trust me to get you to Cora’s with both your reputation and body parts intact, okay? I mean, come on, already—do I look like someone you should be afraid of?”

She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, color pinking her cheeks. Shook her head. But that was it.

Del huffed out a sigh. “Okay, here’s the deal. Trust me, and I’ll get you to Spruce Lake in just under an hour, no hassles, and for free. Otherwise, take your chances with a taxi. And remember. It’s two days before Thanksgiving. And the weather sucks.”

He pivoted on his heel, started to walk away, figuring if this tactic worked at least fifty percent of the time with a four-year-old, he might have a shot of it working with a grown woman.

Five seconds later, he turned back, undecided whether to throttle or comfort the basket case in front of him. Then he lifted both hands, the carrier dangling like a suspended Ferris wheel basket. “For crying out loud, I know who you are, I know who Cora is, I didn’t run off with your dog when I had the chance—” he jerked the carrier to prove his point, which he noticed did provoke a small, startled reaction on her part, not to mention the dog’s “—so why are you so afraid of me?”

“It’s not that…”

He sighed. Mightily. But he walked back, dumped the carrier and her coat, then fished his wallet from the vest’s inside pocket. As what seemed like the entire population of the Great Lakes region milled around them, he flipped it open to his driver’s license, which happened to sit opposite a picture of his daughter. “Okay, here. I don’t know what this will prove, but what the hell.”

She never even noticed the license, he could tell. She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, a soft “Oh” falling from her lips. “Is that your little girl?”

Suddenly, he wasn’t quite so ticked with her. Suddenly, he was aware of her shiny, fragrant hair, the way the part wasn’t quite straight, that she was just the right height to fit neatly under his chin, if he were to hug her.

That this feeling-like-a-human business could easily get out of hand.

After a stunned moment or two, Del angled his head to look at the shot, one of those a-thousand-photos-for-fifteen-bucks JC Penney specials. Wendy’s fourth birthday portrait, all deep brown eyes and dimples. A twinge of something like fear hobbled through his gut, as images of strapping, hormone-sodden teen males—guys just like he had been, once upon a time—popped into his head.

God, she looked so freaking much like Cyndi, although the dark eyes were definitely Farentino stock. And everytime he saw Wendy, or even a photo of her, it socked into him how long it had taken him, was still taking him, to come to grips with her mother’s death. Yeah, Cyndi had been the most bullheaded woman he’d ever known, but he’d loved her from the bottom of his heart, and her death had damn near devastated him. He and God were still on the outs about that one. In fact, he pretty much figured if he did get married again, it would be more for companionship—and, okay, sex—than for love. It wasn’t that he was saying he’d never love again, exactly, as much as he just wasn’t sure he could. Not the way he’d loved Cyndi, that was for sure.

But then, the next Mrs. Farentino—should there ever be such a creature—would be nothing like Cyndi. She’d be…

Demure. That’s it.

Did women even come in demure anymore? Or had that concept gone the way of avocado kitchen appliances?

He glanced at Galen.

Huh.

“Uh, yeah,” he finally said before she wondered if he’d fallen in a hole or something. “Wendy. She’s four and a half. All we’ve got is each other.”

Now why the hell did you say that?

He could feel Galen’s gaze dust his cheek, sweep back to the photo. “What a sweetheart.”

“She has her moments.”

Seconds passed. Del wondered if you could get drunk from just smelling someone. If letting too many hormones flood the bloodstream too fast could give you the bends.

“She has your eyes,” Galen said at last, softly, which, for some odd reason, seemed to settle things in her mind, as they decidedly unsettled things in his. Without warning, she took off, leaving Del grabbing for the carrier, then double-stepping to catch up.

He switched everything to one arm, then took her bag from her; she actually didn’t protest. “You got any other luggage?”

She shook her head, her russet hair gleaming in the overhead lights as she walked. “I’m only here for the weekend. Oh!”

She swayed again, as if being tossed on a wave. Del reached again for her elbow; she moved away. “I’m fine.”

“What you are, is full of it.”

“Not any more.” She bobbled again, but the hell with her. She didn’t want him to touch her, he wouldn’t touch her. Well, unless she listed more than twenty degrees, in which case, he was there.

“You didn’t eat before you boarded, did you?”

A herd of teenagers, all talking and laughing at the top of their lungs, swarmed past, forcing Galen to step closer to him or risk being trampled. Close enough to catch another whiff of her hair. Of her. Floral-scented pheromones. A few more hormones surged forth, like an army determined to breach the enemy’s stronghold.

The throng of kids passed, Galen reclaimed her space, and the hormones ebbed.

“No, really. I’m okay.” Except she went all wobbly again, coming damn close to passing the twenty degree mark.

His hand shot out, grabbed her elbow. “Come on,” he said, steering her toward a coffee shop. What the hell—the day was blown, anyway. As long as he was back in time to pick up Wendy, it wasn’t as if the guys couldn’t cope without him. “You need a cup of tea, something to settle your stomach—”

“Don’t tell me what I need!” She squirmed away from his touch, yet again, digging in her heels. Perplexed, Del was startled to see something almost like fear glittering in those turquoise eyes. “I told you, I’m fine.” Criminy—they were talking a lousy cup of tea. What was with this woman? “If you don’t mind, Mr…. Farentino, was it? I’d really just like to get to Cora’s.”

First he couldn’t get her to leave, now he couldn’t get her to stay. Del stared her down, ignoring—or so he told himself—the odd prickling sensation in various parts of his body when their gazes locked. “Okay, answer me one thing.” The higher of the two slender brows lifted in question. “If you’d just about upchucked all over Cora and she’d suggested getting a cup of tea, would you be giving her a fight about it?”

She looked away, and Del felt like she’d just broken an electrical connection. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, her words coming out on a long breath. “I know you mean well. It’s just…” She flushed, color staining her pale cheeks. “Please?”

Something slammed into him, although he couldn’t have put a name to it. Something about the way she said “Please,” as if she’d had to beg one too many times for things she shouldn’t have had to. Ten seconds ago, he’d been damn close to lusting after this woman—at least, he thought that’s what it was, since it had been so long he wasn’t all that sure he recognized the signs anymore—and now he felt like girding those errant loins of his and going to battle for her, slaying dragons or jerks or whatever had put that apprehension in her eyes.

With a nod, he shifted everything to one arm, then reached out to take her elbow; she flinched again. He lifted his free hand. “Sorry.”

There went the fear again, flickering across her features. But a smile, too. Shaky, insecure, but a smile. “You’re just one of those touchy types, aren’t you?”

“What can I tell you? I’m Italian.”

The poor little grin petered out. “Oh, that much I know,” she said softly, then hitched her purse up onto her shoulder, took a deep breath and headed down the concourse, leaving him once again to follow.

She should have taken her chances with the million other passengers and gotten a taxi. Getting in a confined space with this man was pure lunacy. Not because she was afraid he’d murder her or anything quite that dramatic, but because…

Because…

Spit it out, Volcek.

Because only once before had she been this sexually attracted to a man, and look how that had turned out.

But it made no sense. Not just the part about her blood zinging to parts of her body she’d pretty much decided would need shock treatment to be brought back to life—over a man she’d just met, no less—but because…

Trotting along behind Del through the parking garage, she told herself the flight, the stress of the past few days, had left her addle-brained.

There was no reason Del Farentino should remind her of Vinnie. None. Vinnie was suits and ties. Vinnie was never a hair out of place, manicures and pinky rings, expensive men’s cologne and an accent carefully culled of any hint of its working-class roots. Vinnie was culture and class and money, the quintessential product—like his three older brothers—of the American dream. His grandparents might have come to the States on the great immigration tide at the turn of the century, but they worked their fingers to the bone so their children would have it better than they did, their grandchildren better than that. The four boys, like their parents before them, may have been restaurateurs, but they could hold their own in a conversation anywhere and with anyone.

Del Farentino, on the other hand, was solid blue-collar stock, as average as any other guy she’d ever known in her grandparents’ working-class neighborhood. The guys her grandparents wouldn’t let her date, the guys they declared weren’t good enough for her. Yet, despite what she knew were surface differences, there was…something—a quality? an attitude?—that made her husband and this ordinary, slightly disheveled enormous man striding beside her more alike than different. She just couldn’t put her finger on it. And then there was this crazy, unwarranted attraction. To a complete stranger. Sure, he was good looking. And nice, if a little full of himself. And, granted, she’d lived like a nun for three years. Longer, since she and Vinnie hadn’t been intimate for some years before his death. But still, it wasn’t as if she’d been languishing from sexual frustration all this time. She’d never really thought all that much about it, frankly. Sex ‘n’ that.

Until about twenty minutes ago.

Caution hummed through her, warning her she needed to…what?

Protect herself.

She started at the thought, not comprehending. For heaven’s sake, she was only going to be here for a few days. She probably wouldn’t even see him again. Yet, as she watched him lope to the truck, his strides sure and strong, yet oddly reckless, she was again struck by the differences between Vinnie and this man. She couldn’t even imagine him in a suit. Not that there wasn’t a certain grace to his broad movements, like the movements of a wild beast. But the word “elegant” was not the first word that came to mind when you looked at Del Farentino.

Actually, the first word that came to mind was “hot”.

Oh.

Oh, my.

While she stood there, mulling over why her brain had run away with her libido, like the dish with the spoon, Del opened the door to the extended cab, settled all her things, and the dog, in the back, then hooked a hand on her elbow to usher her up to her seat.

His heat sizzled right through her sweater, dancing along her skin clear up to her ears, which must be downright glowing. She told herself she was still feeling the aftereffects of her upset tummy.

He strode around to his side, yanked open his door, climbed in. Yup. Just as she expected. This cab was much too small.

“Put your seatbelt on,” he growled, and she shot him a look.

He looked back, heavy black brows dipped. They’d only been outside for a minute, but the sharp, biting wind had done a real number on his shaggy hair. He shoved it back off his forehead. It fell right back. “What?”

She yanked on the belt, drawing it across her chest to ram it into place. There it was. What had reminded her of her husband. The one thing that should easily negate whatever this physical business was. “I’m not a child, Mr. Farentino,” she said quietly, directing her gaze out the window. Away from those intense eyes. “I don’t need to be told what to do.”

His sigh seemed equal parts frustration and contrition. She risked a quick peek at the side of his face as he put the truck into reverse, started to back out of the parking space. His mouth had thinned, but the corner was tilted into kind of a smile. “Sorry.” She flinched when his long arm suddenly slammed across the back of the seat, his hand landing right behind her head, as he shifted to see behind him. “Force of habit. Hey…” The truck lurched to a stop, half-in, half-out of the space. “You okay?”

She gasped. The parking garage, redolent with exhaust and gasoline, combined with the tension of unwelcome feelings and even less welcome memories had threatened the fragile peace with her stomach. But she would have been fine had Del not jerked to a stop like that. “I was.”

“Ah, hell—you’re white as a sheet. You gonna lose it again?”

She couldn’t tell if he sounded more annoyed or worried. She sucked in a slow, steadying breath. “No,” she said tightly. “I’ll be okay as soon as we get out of here and into some real air.”

“You sure?”

“I don’t need to be coddled,” she bit out, hot, dumb tears needling her eyes. “I just need some air, okay?”

His skepticism practically vibrated between them, but he slowly completed the maneuver, carefully driving the truck out of the garage and, within a minute or so, onto the highway. At the moment, despite the heavy, solid clouds still crouched overhead like a huge cat waiting to pounce, the bad weather had called a truce of sorts. She cracked the window, breathing in the damp air. Willing herself to feel normal again.

To feel safe.

“You can open it more, if you want. I don’t mind.”

She did, afraid to speak, to admit the air wasn’t helping at all. To admit she felt, again, like a helpless child, alone and ill in a stranger’s truck.

She heard Del chuckle, which she might have enjoyed, actually, were it not for the fact that she really felt like yesterday’s garbage and that she had the definite feeling the chuckle was aimed at her. But the words that followed couldn’t have been more gentle.

Like Vinnie’s used to be.

“Okay, since my pointing out that you’re being stubborn would probably only make you feel worse, I’m just gonna say that anytime you want to stop, you only have to say the word, okay?”

Her stomach heaved. How, she didn’t know, because there wasn’t a blessed thing inside it. She rolled down the window some more.

“How long did you say until we get to Spruce Lake?” she managed, inexplicably angry. At her body, for betraying her in a hundred ways. At herself, for feeling petulant. At Del, for reminding her of Vinnie.

The Vinnie she’d thought she was marrying, anyway.

“Little less than an hour.”

An hour? Her eyes burned. How on earth would she make it that long? Oh, why had she let Cora talk her into this? A chill raced up her spine, exploding into a cold sweat at the back of her neck, her forehead.

“Stop!”

Del pulled smoothly up onto the shoulder, was out of the truck and to her side before she even got the door open. Then she was on her knees in the wet winter weeds by the side of the road, Del holding her shoulders as she heaved to the sound of traffic whizzing by them.

Could the gauge on her mortification scale possibly sink any lower?

“Better?” she heard in her ear.

Well, apparently, since she started to bawl, there was indeed another point or two left on the bottom of that scale. About what, she had no idea. Nothing. Everything. Barfing in public and losing her grandmother and having no family and embarrassing herself in front of a complete stranger and realizing how really, really bad she was at being alone. And how she had no one but herself to blame for getting herself into such a sorry state.

“Hey, hey…c’mere, honey.” Squatting beside her, Del tucked her under his chin, one arm still clamped around her shoulders. “These things happen, y’know? Nothin’ to be embarrassed about.”

“Oh, right,” she said on a shaky breath, not liking how much she liked the way his chin nestled on top of her head. How good it felt to have a man’s arm around her again. How this whole man-woman thing was such a crock. “I suppose this kind of thing happens to you all the time.”

“Actually, you might be surprised. I do have a four-year-old, you know.”

At that, she drew away enough to look up into his eyes. And immediately regretted it. Not because she didn’t like what she saw, but because she did. Not just the way the skin crinkled around his eyes when he smiled, or even the profound goodness she sensed behind the smile. No, it went far, far deeper than that, because she suddenly figured out another reason why this man reminded her of Vinnie. Actually, of every man she’d ever known.

Del Farentino, she realized with the force of a thunderclap, was a Protector. Too. The kind of man whose mission, as he saw it, was to take care of all the females in his life, to ensure their health, safety and well-being. On the surface, a desirable enough trait, until the down side of having a man look out for your every need smacks you between the eyes. Until you wake up one day and realize you’ve never made a single important decision on your own.

Heck, that you’ve barely made any little decisions on your own.

And that, because of what you’d allowed to happen, you weren’t considered capable of handling what should have been yours by right.

Vinnie had been a Protector. As had her grandfather. Granted, they had different ways of carrying out their mission, but the message was the same: a woman needed a man to take care of her, to give her what she needed, to guide her through life, to protect her from…herself. Maybe Vinnie had been a kinder, gentler example of the species, using sweet talk and presents to get his way, but get his way, he did. In everything. And how the heck was a completely sheltered eighteen-year-old who’d never even dated another man to know how detrimental such an attitude could be? That her husband’s outdated ideas about men’s and women’s roles, his determination to shield her from the worries and cares of the everyday world—in other words, life—had also created the woman who now couldn’t take a simple little trip without becoming violently ill?

She scrambled to her feet then, throwing off both Del’s concern and his arm. True, she wobbled for a second, but ultimately forced everything to settle down.

Her body hadn’t gone haywire because of the plane, or the exhaust smells or anything else physical. Not really. She was sick because she was petrified. Of being alone. Of being on her own. Of being unable to handle decisions other people—other women—handled without a second thought. With the money her grandmother had left her, she really could do pretty much whatever she wanted…and the prospect of being the only person responsible for her life absolutely terrified her.

The prospect, however, of being sucked into another relationship, of falling under another man’s protection, terrified her far more.

Still, even though the men in her life could be, in large part, credited for the state in which she now found herself, she wasn’t dumb enough or naive enough to consign the entire blame to them. For thirty-five years, Galen Volcek Granata had let men boss her around, one way or another. Strip her of her autonomy, her ability to function as a complete human being. For ill or good, she had made her own choices, all along.

Now she had the opportunity to fix things.

She stomped over to the truck, yanked open her own door before Del could, climbed in on her own steam.

“I guess that means you’re ready to go?” he said at her window.

“More than I’ve ever been in my life,” she said, chin raised, and the nausea simply vanished.

Chapter 3

Del ordered pizza—extra cheese, black olives, pepperoni—then turned to the stack of dirty dishes patiently waiting for him on the counter beside the sink. God bless Pizza Hut. What with having to pick Galen up at the airport and all, he’d had no choice but to drag Wendy along on his last-minute check-ins. But all was finished, all was fixed, all was well, and now he had five whole days with nothing to do but rest, watch TV, and play with his daughter.

Notice, he did not include thinking about Galen Granata on that list.

He rinsed off the last Corelle bowl from breakfast, slowly set it in the drainer. Of course, trying not to think about the redhead was like trying to ignore a mosquito bite. The woman was, without a doubt, the strangest creature he’d ever encountered. Whatever was going on in that gal’s head, it was definitely scary. One second, she’s looking at him like a lost puppy; the next minute, like he’d just threatened to sue her. Or she, him.

Del dried his hands, rummaged in one of the cupboards for a couple of paper plates. Once back in the truck, Galen had sat with her hands tightly folded in her lap, staring straight ahead, that luscious mouth of hers pulled in a straight line. He made a few lame attempts at conversation, but lighting wet wood would’ve been easier. After three or four tries, he’d given up.

What bugged him, though, was why her uncommunicativeness should bother him so much. So what? He’d only been doing Cora a favor, after all. Wasn’t as if her houseguest was going to be around, someone he had to entertain or even put up with. And if Miss Caribbean Eyes had been actually rude, he probably wouldn’t even be thinking about her now. She’d just been…unwilling to talk. As if getting to know him, or letting him get to know her, somehow put her in danger. As if she was trying to prove something to herself.

He wondered about her husband.

He wondered why he was wondering about things that were none of his business.

The phone rang, interrupting pointless musings.

“Yo.”

His father, a successful developer, chuckled. “Real professional, Del. Good way to impress all those potential clients, you know?”

Del shrugged, sliding down onto a kitchen chair. “Hey—one, this is my personal number, and two, who the hell would be calling me about a job tonight?”

“Guess you have a point there.”

“Thank you.”

Hugh Farentino laughed again, making Del smile. Dad and he might have had their moments—still did—but he genuinely admired the man. Liked him, too. And he was glad his father, a widower for so many years, had found someone to make him happy. On the surface, Maureen Louden seemed no different than a hundred other well-heeled, Midwest born and bred, middle-aged lady Realtors—blonde and small and pretty and impeccably dressed, no matter what the occasion. But in the year-plus since his father’s remarriage, Maureen had proven that, yeah, she was strong willed, to be sure, but also determined to wring every drop of passion out of her life—and equally determined that everyone in her circle did the same.

It was also almost embarrassingly clear how much she loved Del’s father.

Del’s heart did this funny stuttering thing, making him frown. Was that a twinge of envy? For Dad and Maureen? Absurd.

“So. Cora told Maureen you hadn’t decided whether or not to come to Elizabeth’s,” his father said.

If he wanted privacy, he’d have to move elsewhere. Like to a hitherto unnamed planet. “I don’t know, Dad. Sounds like an awful lot of people…”

“Exactly. All those kids for Wendy to play with.”

Apprehension pulled tight in his chest, as it did a hundred times a day. Wendy hadn’t met most of these children, they wouldn’t know—

“Del,” Hugh said softly, interrupting his paranoia. “I know what you’re thinking. But you’ve got to let Wendy start stretching her wings.”

“She’s not even five yet, Dad—”

That got a laugh. Which Del returned, somewhat. “Okay, yeah, I know she’s a little advanced for her years—”

Hugh snorted.

“—but still. And she’s also very sensitive…”

“Which doesn’t have a damn thing to do with anything, and you know it. That’s just the way she is. You were, God knows. And it’s something she’s going to have to learn to deal with, sooner or later. It’ll be fine, Del. And Wendy will have a blast.”

Wendy wandered into the kitchen, squeaking a chair across the floor as she yanked it back, sank into it, her face caught in her palms. Bored, would be Del’s guess. Just the other day, in fact, she was begging to see Elizabeth’s and Guy’s kids, including their toddler daughter Chloe.

He was being silly. Wasn’t he?

“Okay,” Del said on a resigned sigh. “I guess we’ll be there.”

“Good. Give our girl a hug for us.”

Del no sooner hung up than the doorbell rang. Wendy jumped up, holding out her hands for the money, which he retrieved from his wallet and handed to her. He opened the door and took the pizza, letting Wendy pay—keeping an eye on the delivery kid to make sure they got the right change back—his chest swelling with pride when she said a very clear “Thank you” to the kid as he left.

Galen looked up from unpacking her few things from her bag, blinking in astonishment at Cora, enthroned in an armchair in front of the heavily draped guest-room window. Somehow, in all the thousands and thousands of words they’d already exchanged since her arrival, Cora had overlooked these. Just as Galen had not mentioned Del Farentino, other than to thank Cora for sending him. She was having enough trouble figuring out her bizarre reaction to the man without throwing her surrogate mother a bone to gnaw on.

“What do you mean, we’re going to somebody’s house for dinner on Thanksgiving?” The dog jumped up on Cora’s guest-room bed; Galen pushed her off before the beast’s sharp nails snagged the comforter’s ivory satin cover. Nonplussed, Baby pranced over to Cora, who scooped her up onto her broad lap. “What was all this about not wanting to spend the holiday alone?”

“And you believed me?”

Galen let out a weary sigh, then carried her sweaters over to the bureau drawer.

“See, Elizabeth and Maureen are doing the turkeys—”

Galen turned so fast she nearly put out her shoulder. “Turkeys? Plural?”

“Well, yeah, since one bird ain’t gonna feed fifty people—oh, close your mouth. It’ll be fun. And then everybody else is bringing the side dishes.” One maroon-nailed hand drifted up to toy with a processed wave artfully draped across a forehead smooth as the polished walnut headboard on the bed. “’Course, with Elizabeth, you can’t call it potluck, since she wouldn’t likely see the humor in a table full of twenty-five pumpkin pies and nothing else. So she assigned people food groups.”

With a smile, Galen turned back to the bed, fishing her underwear from the bag. She’d already heard a lot about this woman and her tendencies toward obsessive-compulsiveness. And how her marriage to Guy Sanford, a free spirit with three young children and no discernible fashion sense, had loosened her up quite a bit in the past couple of years. “And what did you get?”

“Green vegetables.” Clutching the dog to her impressive bosom, she tugged the hem of her loose red sweater back over her thighs. “’Cept when I suggested bringin’ a mess of greens, she kinda blanched. Oh, she’s too polite to say anything, but she sure did brighten up when I mentioned as how a green bean casserole might hold up better, you know? Oh, honey…”

Galen looked up. “What?”

“I see you didn’t get to buy yourself that new underwear after all.”

Galen glanced down at the white cotton undies in her hands. “Sure I did. See?” She waved a bra. “Still has the tag and everything.”

Cora heaved herself from the chair, canine in tow, and snatched the bra from Galen’s hand. Glowered at it. “You mean, you just inherited two hundred fifty thousand dollars, and you bought underwear from K mart?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, child, if you have to ask, there’s your answer right there.” Cora tossed the bra back like it was a snake, then hmmphed through her nose. “What are you now? Thirty-four, thirty-five? And still dressing like they just let you outta the convent. Girl, I would kill for that figure you got, and there you go, keeping it all covered up like it was some kinda sin to let the world see how gorgeous you are. And then have the nerve to wear that sorry stuff underneath.”

Galen felt her cheeks flame. “It’s cotton. I like it.”

It’s what good girls wear. Good women. The kind of woman I married, Galen.

Over another hmmph behind her, Galen added, “Besides, it’s not like I’ve got anyone to exactly, well…” To her chagrin, she blushed even more. “Wear it for,” she finally finished. And no, that was not Del Farentino’s hooded, appreciative gaze that just popped into her head.

And call it instinct, but somehow she had the feeling Del wouldn’t tell her only cheap women wore fancy, lacy underwear.

She also had the feeling she was losing it, hooking up Del and sexy underwear in the same sentence when she no earthly reason to be thinking about either of them at all.

“Who said anything about anybody else?” Cora was saying. “A woman wears pretty things next to her skin because they make her feel good. Like a woman, you hear what I’m saying? At least, that’s the first reason to wear ’em. Any other reason that might happen to come along’s just frosting on the cake.”

Her cheeks still burning, Galen quickly tucked the garments in the drawer, slamming it shut maybe a little harder than she meant to. Somehow, she knew what was coming.

“Anyway, you didn’t wear anything pretty for your husband?”

What the hell is this? If I’d wanted someone cheap, I would’ve married one of the Ruscetti girls. So you just take that stuff back to the store. If they give you a hard time, tell ’em your husband said he didn’t like it….

“They…all wore out.”

Cora plopped back down into the chair, laughing low in her throat. Her “uh-huh” laugh. Galen knew Cora didn’t mean her reaction to sting, but the truth was…

The truth was, Galen really didn’t feel like thinking about the past tonight. Or ever. Far as she was concerned, there was only the future, starting right this very minute. A future completely non-dependent on what kind of underwear she wore. The eighteen-year-old girl who’d only bought the pretty lingerie because she thought it might please her husband, the husband she loved more than she’d ever loved anyone in her life, didn’t exist anymore.

And the thirty-five-year-old woman who’d taken her place was perfectly happy with cotton.

Vinnie hadn’t been mean about it, really. Or even angry. In fact, something like amusement had flashed in his dark eyes when she’d come to him, shyly untying the deep green satin robe she’d bought to go with the matching satin bikini panties, the push-up bra. No, he’d just looked at her—briefly—as he might have a child who’d put her shoes on the wrong feet. Then he’d pulled the robe closed, kissed her on top of her head, and calmly told her to go change.

And take back the underwear. Which of course she couldn’t do because she’d worn it. If only for five minutes.

When she’d finally thrown it out, she didn’t fully understand, not then, why she felt like something’d been stolen from her.

“Okay.” Galen turned around, arms folded across her waist, mentally whapping at the heebie-jeebies. Wondering who she might have been, if she hadn’t made some of the choices she had. If she hadn’t let desperation cloud reason, all those years ago. How long, she wondered, could a seed remain dormant before it would no longer spring to life? Guess she was about to find out, huh? “You’re doing green beans. What can I do?”

“Do?” Cora leaned back, her features twisted. “Baby, unless I’m very mistaken, this is the closest thing you’ve had to a vacation in years. Nobody expects you to so much as lift a finger while you’re here.”

Galen squinted at her. “You’re forgetting. This is the woman who loves to cook, who hasn’t had a chance to strut her stuff for nearly five years. Invalids and old ladies aren’t very appreciative when it comes to anything fancier than custard and boiled chicken.” She grinned, several possibilities swirling around in her brain. “You wouldn’t have a pasta maker by any chance?”

Cora’s eyes went wide. “You make pasta?”

“It’s the only way.”

“Uh, no. The only way is to buy stuff in boxes, throw it in boiling water, ten minutes later you eat.”

“You’d make a lousy Italian, Cora.”

“Not something that keeps me awake at nights, believe me.” Cora stood again and tramped to the door, still hanging on to the moony-faced dog. “Besides, Miss Irish-Slovak Mutt, you weren’t exactly born singing ‘O Sole Mio’ yourself.”

“Minor point.”

Cora chuckled, then said on her way out the door, “But, as it happens, I do have a pasta maker.”

Galen followed, confused. “But you said—”

“Didn’t say I used it.” Cora started down the narrow stairs, one wide hand braced on what seemed to Galen to be a very flimsy banister. “Rod and Nancy—you’ll meet them tomorrow, friends of Elizabeth’s and Guy’s, she’s crazier than a loon but they’re both just the sweetest people you’d ever want to meet—anyway, they gave me one when I moved in here. He’s some sort of gourmet cook himself, you should see his kitchen, honey. Mm-mm. But back to what I was saying before…” Now at the bottom of the stairs, she turned back to Galen, brows drawn together. “You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”

Galen stopped, two steps from the bottom, hands tucked in her pockets. “For heaven’s sake, Cora. I’m on vacation, not convalescent. So where’s this pasta maker?”

“You don’t have to do this—”

“Hey—you want me to go to this thing? You let me bring something.”

“Oh, Lord.” Shaking her head, Cora pivoted on the bare wooden floor, her leather-soled flats tapping against the boards as she made her way to the kitchen. “Now I’m beginning to remember what you were like as a child. Like to give your mama fits, what with you always getting a bee in your bonnet about one thing or another.” She finally jettisoned the dog, then opened and closed several heavily enameled white kitchen cupboard doors before she found what she was looking for. She lugged the machine off the shelf, thunking it down onto a badly worn Formica counter in a hideous shade of aqua.

Galen oohed at the pasta maker for several seconds before Cora’s words sank in. She looked up, brow puckered. “What are you talking about?”

“Baby, you were a real piece of work when you were little. Stubborn? Hardheaded? Willful?” Cora laughed. “Take your pick.” She nodded toward the appliance. “That okay?”

“What? Oh, yeah.” Her brain spinning, Galen caressed the glistening surface of the appliance. “This is like the Rolls-Royce of pasta makers.”

“Yeah?” Cora looked at it the way those people did on the “Antiques Road-show” when the appraiser told them the piece of junk that had been sitting in their great-aunt’s attic for a thousand years was worth more than their house, then shrugged. “Still.” Then she took off for the living room, leaving Galen, once again, to follow. Which she only did because she wanted Cora to tell her what the heck she was talking about.

Cora grabbed the clicker from the coffee table, settled herself on one end of the nubby, striped sofa. “Now, I’m not saying you were a bad child. Nothing like that. You never sassed your mama, least not that I ever heard. And you were always so good with my girls, even though they were so much younger than you. But you sure were a determined little thing. When you wanted something, you’d either drive your mama nuts until she gave in, or figured out some way to get whatever it was you wanted on your own.” She angled her head, frowning. “You don’t remember that?”

With a sigh, Galen sank into the overstuffed cushions beside Cora, her arms knotted at her waist. “Vaguely. But somewhere along the line…” She stopped, trying to figure out how to put what she felt into words. The dog hopped up onto her lap, bestowing two tiny kisses on her knuckles. Galen smiled in spite of herself. “I guess my parents’ deaths shook me more than I even realized.”

“Knocked all the fight out of you, in other words.”

“Maybe. Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, honey—” Cora aimed the clicker at the TV, surfing through several channels until she lit on some sitcom Galen had watched once and vowed to never watch again “—ain’t nobody around to tell you what to do anymore, is there? You wanna make something for dinner, you go right ahead.” Without waiting for a reply, she waved at the TV. “You like this show?”

Galen reached around to finger a stray hair tickling the back of her neck. “Actually…” Cora pinned her with a look she’d seen a thousand times on her grandmother’s face. “Sure. It’s…one of my favorites.”

“Good. I was hoping you’d say that.”

Galen just sighed.

Even though the brilliant flush of high autumn was long past, Thanksgiving decided to be clear and bright and crisp, a day to do Norman Rockwell proud. Around two, Cora’s little Ford Probe slid in behind a conga line of minivans snaking around from the front of Elizabeth’s and Guy’s corner-lotted Victorian. They got out, carefully withdrawing the terry-blanketed casseroles from the floor behind the front seat: Cora’s green-bean casserole and a dish Galen had learned to make on the sly by watching Vinnie’s grandmother. Galen had dragged Cora all over creation for two hours yesterday before she found a store with the right kind of prosciutto ham, the Parmesan cheese—fresh, not the Kraft stuff—the ricotta. Then, this morning, she’d spent a couple more blissful hours in the kitchen, humming contentedly as she chopped and stirred and layered, while Cora made assorted “better you than me, baby” comments.

To tell the truth, Galen had often thought she preferred cooking to sex. A revelation she kept to herself, for obvious reasons. Sex had always left her feeling…what? Agitated, somehow. Like there should be more, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what the “more” should be. It wasn’t that Vinnie was bad in bed as much as he just didn’t seem all that interested.

So much for the passionate Italian lover theory.

Instead, she found incredible satisfaction in making even the most intricate, complicated dishes from scratch. When she was in the kitchen, rolling out pasta, chopping herbs, layering cheeses and meats in obscenely expensive pans, she was at peace. Since she’d been married to an Italian, she’d learned to cook Italian. Learned to cook it well.

Even if she rarely had the opportunity to show off her talents.

A gaggle of shrieking, laughing children swooped past them, tossing huge armfuls of curled, crinkly leaves in a hundred shades of brown at each other, as Galen and Cora waded through the arboreous debris up to the house, a dusty-blue-trimmed white Victorian with a wide wraparound porch on three sides. The house was set far back on a large lot over-flowing with lush evergreens and the graceful skeletons of a dozen or more deciduous trees, slashes of charcoal against the sharp blue sky; a few blocks to Galen’s left, she could see the glint of water sparkling at the end of what looked like a park. She inhaled deeply, delighting in the pungent-sweet scent of moldering leaves and fireplace smoke, even as a strange, inexplicable mixture of contentment, apprehension and regret swirled around her heart.

“Cora!”

A laughing woman’s voice cut through Galen’s thoughts. They’d just about reached the porch steps; she looked up to see a petite blonde standing in front of the open door. Slung on the woman’s trim hip was a toddler in pink overalls and flyaway blond hair, guzzling something in a Sippee cup. This was one classy lady, Galen decided at once, feeling downright dowdy in her brown sweater and slacks, her hair pulled back in its standard clip. A finely knit, obviously expensive, heathery blue turtleneck sweater hugged the woman’s slender figure, dipped into matching wool slacks. She wore her pale hair pulled into a neat twist at the back of her head, a few wisps floating around her delicately featured face. Simple pearl earrings glinted in her ears; her makeup was understated, perfectly applied. Her lightly glossed lips, however, were pulled up into a broad, welcoming smile. She held out her free hand…which is when Galen spotted the Popsicle stick turkey, enthusiastically and messily painted, pinned to one shoulder.

“You must be Galen,” she said, her handshake firm and warm. “Welcome to the funny farm. I’m Elizabeth, and this is Chloe, my daughter, and I’m not even gonna try to introduce you to everyone else! It’s each person for him-or herself today.”

Just then, a dark-haired man with the brightest blue eyes Galen had ever seen poked his head out the front door, a single gold stud gleaming in one ear. “There you are,” he said to the blonde. “Wondered where you went.”

“I escaped,” Elizabeth announced. “Between your mother, my mother and Rod, that kitchen is way too crowded. Galen…Granata, isn’t it?” Galen nodded, impressed she remembered. “My husband, Guy Sanford. Well, come on in,” she said, sidling through the door, the baby beating on her shoulder with the empty cup. “We’re still waiting on a few stragglers. In the meantime, we’re setting everything up on the dining table.”

The scent of roast turkey and spices and just-cleaned house washed over Galen as they walked through the high-ceilinged entry hall, the ivory walls splashed with splinters of sunlight from the cut-glass panes in the transom over the front door. Elizabeth glanced at Cora’s foil-covered dish. “Green beans?”

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you, Miss Nosybody?” And with that, she tromped off, leaving Galen standing alone with Elizabeth, feeling abandoned and awkward. Guy had also disappeared; Elizabeth lowered the fussy toddler to the floor, who headed toward the living room, a warm, cluttered collection of leather furniture and antiques in shades of golds and dark reds. The baby was making fast tracks toward the largest, scruffiest dog Galen had ever seen.

“Chloe?” The baby pivoted around, her mouth tucked into a “who, me?” expression. “Be nice to Einstein, okay?”

Chloe babbled something completely unintelligible, then resumed the pursuit of her quarry, who seemed not the least bit concerned he was about to be attacked by twenty pounds of unbridled affection.

Elizabeth watched for a moment as the dog slowly rolled to his back so the little girl could pat his stomach, sighed, then turned her attention back to Galen. “I know he’s ten times bigger than she is, but those cute little hands of hers can be lethal. Come on back,” she said, her low-heeled pumps soundless on the Oriental-patterned runner leading back to the dining room, then glanced back at the dish in Galen’s hands. “More green beans?”

“Uh, no. Spinach and prosciutto pasta.”

Brows lifted, Elizabeth stopped in her tracks, lifted a corner of the foil covering the dish. “Ooooh…that smells absolutely wonderful.” She took the dish from Galen’s hands, carrying it over to the lace-covered dining room table herself. “Hey, you two!” she said to a pair of little boys, one blond, one dark-haired, black olives tipping all their fingers. “Go on, scoot! It’s not time yet—”

“Mama,” the darker-haired boy said, stuffing three olives in his mouth, then tugging on her sleeve. “Look what Micah did to the pumpkin pie—”

“I did not!” the blond kid shot back. “It was already like that!”

“Oh, yeah? Then how come your breath smells like pumpkin pie?”

“Boys?” They both looked up at their mother. “Go away.”

Exchanging half-hearted jabs, they did. Bracing Galen’s casserole against her hip, Elizabeth scanned the table, already smothered in assorted baskets and casseroles and plastic bowls. “Here—move those rolls over there—yeah, that’s right—and that bowl of…whatever it is, to the right of the Jell-O mold—” Galen smiled at the ill-concealed grimace “—there!” Elizabeth set the casserole down, clearly pleased with herself.

“Okay, where you want the ice?”

Galen whipped around to run smack into Del Farentino’s startled smile.

“Oh, great!” Elizabeth said. “There’s an ice chest…” She peeked around the corner of the table. “Ah. Right here. Just plop it on in there.” She looked up, then from one to the other. “Oh, uh…you two already met?”

Galen folded her arms against her ribs, quickly taking in Del’s unbuttoned, untucked plaid shirt casually framing a torso-hugging T-shirt disappearing into the waistband of a pair of worn jeans. “Del picked me up from the airport the other day,” she said, silently pleading for him not to say anything else.

“Oh, that’s right. Cora told me.” Elizabeth snatched an olive herself, then headed toward the swinging door which Galen assumed led to the kitchen. “Where’s Wendy?”

Del grinned. A little unsteadily, Galen thought. “God only knows. She saw the kids playing in the leaves, took off like a shot.” Galen saw his glance swerve toward the table, after which he let out a long, low whistle. “Man oh man, that’s a lot of food.”

“Nobody’ll leave here starving, that’s for sure,” Elizabeth agreed, then vanished through the door, leaving it swinging in her wake.

Leaving Galen alone with Del. She was gonna kill Cora when she saw her again. She laced her hands together, only to immediately unlace them. Then she turned to the table, fiddling with the pile of plastic flatware dumped on the corner. Ridiculous, the way her heart was pounding. Like she was interested or something. Jiminy Christmas.

“Wonder where everyone else is?” she said through a scratchy throat.

“Oh, that’s easy. Kids are all outside, men are all in the family room watching a game and the women are either in the kitchen or upstairs criticizing the decor.”

She smiled. But not at him.

He stepped closer, smelling of cold air and aftershave and some indefinable unique scent that made her want to smell more. That made her want to run away. She shut her eyes, reminding herself it was a trap, making men smell good. Nature’s way of derailing a woman, making her believe in things that weren’t real. Of making her miss the point. Not to mention the boat.

“Which one’s yours?” he asked, looming over the table, his hands braced on his hips. “And please don’t tell me it’s the Jell-O mold.”

Her own laugh surprised her. She’d really have to watch that. Letting him make her laugh. Because then, see, she might discover she really liked him. And even that was too great a risk. “No. It’s the one over there, by the cranberry sauce. Oh! What are you doing?”

Del had made an exaggerated show of peering over his shoulder before snitching one of the individually sliced rolls, holding it over the palm of his other hand as he munched. “Sampling,” he said around the bite, then groaned.

Galen shrugged, trying not to take it personally. “It’s not to everyone’s liking, I know—”

“Are you kidding?” Del stuffed another bite into his mouth, promptly speared another piece with a plastic fork. “You made this from scratch?”

She nodded, feeling a blush of pride sweep up her cheeks.

“God, I haven’t had anything this good since I was a kid at my grandmother’s house.” Then he gave her a smile, all goofy and wonderful and warm.

With a little cry, she ran from the room.

Chapter 4

What the hell?

Still chewing, Del stared in the direction Galen had fled. Great. Five minutes with the woman, she either throws up or runs away. Real boost for the old male ego.

Not that it mattered one way or the other what Galen Granata thought of him, especially since she was leaving in three days. Especially since he felt downright…unfinished next to her. No, she didn’t exude the studied perfection of Maureen or Elizabeth, or even the casual stylishness of Nancy Braden, Elizabeth’s best friend. But there was something about Galen’s naturalness, her quiet reticence, that just knocked him for a loop whenever he saw her. She was, quite simply, flawless.

Del was, equally simply, not.

“What was that all about?”

He hadn’t heard the kitchen door open, or seen Guy, armed with two cans of black olives, head in his direction. His head humming, Del turned to his step-brother-in-law. “Damned if I know. I complimented Galen on her contribution to the groaning board, and she lit out of here like I’d insulted her.”

“Huh.” Guy dumped the olives into the almost empty crystal dish, his layered, shoulder-length hair swishing over a bold, geometric-patterned sweater in shades of black, purple and bright blue. “Women are strange beasts, no doubt about it. Forget it, dog,” he said to Einstein, who’d wandered into the room on the off-chance someone had called him to dinner. With a groan, the shaggy beast slunk out again, head and tail hanging. Guy set down the empty cans on the corner of the table, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Good-looking woman,” he said, too casually.

Del shrugged, refusing to take the bait. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Bet she doesn’t think she is, either.”

“I couldn’t say.”

Silence.

Guy rubbed his index finger under his lower lip, surveying the spread. “So. What’d she bring?”

Del bit back a smile at the way Guy had just backed down. For the moment, at least. “I don’t know the real name. Pasta rolls, stuffed with cheese and ham. My grandmother used to make it when I was a kid. Go ahead—try one.”

Guy picked up a piece, opened his mouth. Shut it again, his brow wrinkled. “What’s the green stuff?”

“Spinach. Least, that’s the way my grandmother made it.”

Incredulous blue eyes met his. “And you liked it?”

“Hey—you ain’t tasted spinach until you’ve tasted what an Italian can do with spinach.”

Guy squinted. “I thought Cora said Granata was Galen’s married name.”

“Close enough.”

Still, Guy took a cautious bite, chewing slowly at first, then more quickly, his expression changing from skeptical to “wow” within three seconds.

“Was I right or what? Good stuff, huh?”

Guy shoved in another piece. “Any woman who can do this to spinach…” Still chewing, he grabbed the cans and went back into the kitchen, leaving Del to finish the sentence any old way he pleased.

Her heart pounding painfully inside her chest, Galen ducked outside, hoping maybe a few breaths of fresh air would clear her head. She strode across the porch, down the steps, sinking onto the bottom one, her head clamped between her hands.

This had to stop.

Too many thoughts were stampeding through her brain for her to sort them all out, to make enough sense, even, of them to get control. She felt dizzy, off-balance, as if someone had tilted the floor underneath her feet. For heaven’s sake, all Del had done was compliment her cooking and smile at her. Period. He wasn’t flirting, coming on to her, or otherwise threatening her in any way. He probably wasn’t even attracted to her. Not really. Not in the I’d-like-to-get-to-know-you-better sense, at least.

Heat seared her cheeks, again.

Okay, so it had been a while since a male-type person had even looked at her, let alone been nice to her. Other than the occasional bag boy at the Giant Eagle, maybe. And she was feeling a bit odd woman outish, in this house filled with people she didn’t know. Refined, classy people. Oh, sure, Elizabeth and Guy were friendly ‘n’ that, and it wasn’t like their house looked like a museum or anything. But even with four kids, from what she could tell, it still looked like something from one of those home decorating magazines. Like grown-ups lived there, too.

Galen hooked her hands around one knee, listening to the cacophony of children laughing and calling out to each other from the other side of the house. She knew she wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t that. But not having gone to college or pursued a career put her at a definite disadvantage. She simply didn’t fit in with these people.

As much as she ached to be like them.

She frowned, thinking about that. She’d never envied anyone before, not that she could remember. Not even when the other girls in her class got to date or wear makeup and she couldn’t. She guessed she’d always been one of those types who just accepted her lot in life. Her chin found its way into her palm as she let out a long, bewildered sigh. When had that changed? When had she changed? And what was it about the people inside that house she envied?

The answer came almost immediately: confidence.

She sat up straight, as if she’d been prodded. It wasn’t their clothes or education or the material trappings of their lives, but the self-confidence they all radiated. They knew who they were, what they were about, what their purpose was in life. And it didn’t matter, she realized, what that purpose was. Just that they had one. A purpose of their own choosing, whether it be family or career or whatever.

At that moment, Galen didn’t know whether it had been family interference or just plain old-fashioned circumstances that had robbed her of the drive and focus all those people inside that house had in spades. But without it, she was faceless, a non-entity.

With it, she’d never have to run from a man’s presence again, would she?

She got up from the steps, hugging herself as she walked toward the sound of the children’s voices. The wind snatched at her hair, tugging it out of its clasp; she pushed it back as she watched the impromptu game of tag in front of her. A couple of the older children, particularly a tall, spiked-haired blond girl of about eighteen, kept watch over the toddlers while the middle-aged children raced away from whoever was “it,” their voices shrill and clear. Galen recognized Elizabeth’s and Guy’s two boys in the pack, their shirts untucked from their pants, their faces flushed with cold and laughter. She folded her arms against her ribs, pushing back the pang of melancholy that still, no matter how hard she fought it, swept through her from time to time. She’d told herself, when Vinnie died, it was for the best they never had those babies they’d planned on.

But then, she’d at least have that purpose, wouldn’t she?

Someone—a gangly boy with glasses, maybe fifteen or so—yelled out to one of Elizabeth’s boys, blindly headed toward a little girl with white-blond hair, a doll of a child in a rust-colored jumper and white tights. Del’s daughter, Galen realized, only a second before she also realized the child, who’d bent down to scratch the huge dog, now lying in the leaves, couldn’t see that Elizabeth’s boy had lost his balance and was about to land right on top of her.

“Hey!” Galen shouted, wishing she could remember the child’s name. Leaves flew in all directions as she took off toward her, yelling “Watch out!” at the top of her lungs. She dove for the child, snatching her out of the way a split second before the boy tripped over the dog. Both of them tumbled into a pile of leaves, the little girl landing, her mouth open in shock, on top of Galen.

“Hey, sweetie,” she said, more winded than anything else. “You almost got creamed. Didn’t you hear us calling you?”

She noticed the child’s gaze, riveted to her lips. Gently, Galen brushed back the little girl’s wispy hair, revealing a large two-piece hearing aid wrapped around the tiny, delicate ear.

Del had seen what was about to happen from the side living room window, nearly going straight through the glass in his panic. How many times had he told her not to get so close to large groups of children when they were playing rough like that? She was so impossibly little, built like her mother…it wouldn’t take much for a heavier kid to flatten her like a bug. He hit the side yard just in time to see Galen take that flying tackle, sweeping his daughter out of harm’s way.

Seconds later, the child was in his arms. “You okay?” he signed, one-handed.

She nodded, that wicked grin pushing up her cheeks. “The lady caught me,” she signed. She brushed the first two fingers of her right hand against the tip of her nose, twice. “Funny.”

“Yeah.” Del let his butt drop to the ground. “Hilarious.” Wendy angled her head, not understanding. He echoed her “funny” sign, then scowled at her. “I thought I told to you to be careful playing around the other kids?”

She scowled back, pointing toward the far side of the yard. “They were over there,” she signed. “I was being careful—”

“Really,” Galen said, apparently picking up on the gist of Wendy’s protest, “she wasn’t in the thick of things.” Del glanced over, his breath catching at the earnest expression in those clear blue-green eyes. Then she smiled, pushing a floating strand of hair from her face. “The thick of things found her.”

“Yeah. They usually do,” he muttered, then pivoted Wendy around to face Galen, hands on her slender waist. She looked back. “This is Galen,” he said, finger spelling Galen’s name. “Say ‘thank you’.”

Wendy turned around, touched her lips with the fingertips of her right hand, then extended her hand outward. “Thang you,” she said slowly.

“You’re welcome,” Galen said, her eyes darting from Del to Wendy, then back again. She’d gotten to her knees, her sweater and hair—which had come loose from its clasp, twin sheets of copper against fair cheeks—embellished with bits of leaves. “What’s your name?” she asked, pointing to Wendy, an instinctive sign that got the desired response.

“Wen-dy Fah-wan-dino,” she said with a huge smile. She’d just learned to say her last name a couple of weeks ago, in fact, and the glow of accomplishment hadn’t yet faded. Then she turned back to Del, whacking leaves off her bottom. “Can I go back and play?” she signed.

Del looked out at the raucous gang of kids hurtling themselves at each other with great abandon, then felt Wendy tug at his loose shirt. He looked down, wincing at the devilment in her dark brown eyes.

“I’ll be careful,” she signed, then touched her right index finger to her lips, opening the hand to bump her wrist against the top of her other hand. “Promise.”

He let out a resigned sigh. “Hold on…” He reached up to check that both aids were securely seated, then sent her off with a pat on the behind.

“She’s absolutely adorable,” Galen said at his elbow. “And I bet Daddy’s already plotting on how to keep the boys at bay.”

For several seconds, all he could do was stare at Galen, unable to breathe, let alone move. His daughter’s handicap was perfectly obvious—the hearing aids, the signing, the denasalized, almost mechanical speech. Yet, the first words out of this woman’s mouth were to remark on how adorable his daughter was. But what had him momentarily unable to function was not so much the words—politeness, an unwillingness to hurt his feelings, could just as well have produced the comment—but the ingenuousness of her statement. The sincerity. Heaven knows, he and Wendy had met enough well-meaning people since her birth, people who’d say “What a pretty little girl” with that catch in their voice, smiling at Wendy with eyes full of pity. Or fear. Or embarrassed gratitude that their child wasn’t “like that.”

Not this time. He knew, as well as he knew his name, that Galen Granata had looked at his child and seen…a child. The child he loved. Not the child that made so many people uncomfortable or nervous.

“I had a deaf friend, growing up,” Galen said quietly, looking back over the yard. “And the one thing she most hated was the way everyone always saw her as deaf first, a person second.” She turned those impossibly turquoise eyes to him. “That stayed with me.”

Del got to his feet, held out a hand to help Galen up, which, not surprisingly, she refused. “Did you learn to sign, then?”

Hugging herself, Galen shook her head. “Her parents wouldn’t let her. She was being taught by the…Oral method, I think it was called. Actually, I think she picked up signing later, after she got out of school. But we lost touch soon after that. After I got married.”

For a long minute, they both stood with their arms crossed, watching the racing, shrieking children. And he saw the longing in her face. If he had any sense, he wouldn’t ask. Since he didn’t, he did.

“You…don’t have kids of your own?”

She flicked a glance in his direction, shook her head. “I can’t have them,” she said quietly. “Damaged goods and all that. Oh! Look—I think they’re telling us the food’s ready!”

She started toward the house; he grabbed her hand, twisting her back to him. “There’s nothing damaged about you, Galen Granata. You got that?” There went that scared-doe look again, intensified by the plain brownness of her outfit. Her hand was smooth, but strong. A hand that rolled out pasta, chopped ham. Brushed the hair from a little girl’s eyes.

He longed to do the same for her, to touch that soft, shimmering mass floating around her shoulders, firestruck in the shaft of late afternoon sunlight angling through the bare trees. “You got that?” he repeated.

He saw the tears gather in the corners of her eyes, but she nodded.

“Good.” He gave her hand a brief, gentle squeeze. “Thank you for coming to the rescue.”

She slipped her hand from his, tucking it, with the other one, against her waist. “It was nothing,” she murmured, then turned and walked quickly away.

Odd how, not a half-hour before, she’d been leery of being with so many people she didn’t know. Now she was grateful for the crowd, for being one of a herd, swarming around the feeding trough. Shyly, she introduced herself to various smiling middle-aged men in cabled pullovers and flannel shirts and the occasional sport jacket and turtleneck, as well as to their wool-skirted or denim-jumpered or designer-jeaned wives. Most of them were Sanfords, she realized, as were the vast majority of children. And other than Cora—and Del—she was the only unattached person over eighteen there.

This person or that tried to draw her into conversation, but since they all knew each other, talk quickly centered on what this or that kid was doing, who got a new car or house, who was expecting a new baby. They didn’t mean to leave her out, she knew. They just had a lot to catch up on. At one point, she searched out Cora, who looked up, waving her over to the handsome older couple at her side. The man’s sharply-honed features looked vaguely familiar, his hair that dark pewter when black hair goes gray; he stood possessively close to a small, fine-boned blonde who looked familiar, too. Galen shook her head “no,” however, indicating she’d meet up with her friend later. Actually, after twenty minutes of being buried in a dozen overlapping conversations, she’d had enough. Besides, cutting turkey with the side of a plastic fork, standing up, was the pits.

She slithered through a knot of laughing Sanfords, filched a plastic knife from the table, then slithered back out to the far less populated entryway, settling with her plate on the next-to-bottom tread of the wide, carpeted stairway hugging one wall. She carefully set her cider-filled plastic “glass” between her and the wall, letting out a long, heartfelt sigh.

“Yeah, that’s about my reaction, too.”

Her head snapped up at the low voice, as her heart simultaneously did an erratic pool-shot number in her chest. She jabbed at a small pile of green beans, trying for nonchalant. “Amazing, the way we keep running into each other.”

Balancing his own plate in one hand, Del awkwardly slid down onto the step beside her. But not too close, she noticed. Next to the banister. Leaving a good four feet between them. “And why do I get the feeling the phrase like a bad penny is in there somewhere?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Joke, honey. Just a joke,” Del said, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Oh. Yes.” She glanced around. “Where’s Wendy?”

“Couldn’t pry her away from the other kids.” He took a sip of the cider. Grimaced.

Galen couldn’t help but smile. “There’s beer out in the garage, I hear.”

“Ah. I wondered.”

He was watching her. She wished he wouldn’t. Was flattered that he was. Well, unless she had marshmallow on her nose or something. She casually lifted her hand to her face to check.

Nope.

On a soft sigh—of relief? terror?—she poked at a chunk of sweet potato, then looked out toward the still-swarming dining room. “So,” she managed over a suddenly trembling everything, “I’m here because of Cora. Obviously. From what I can tell, though, nearly everybody else is family. So how’d you wrangle an invitation?”

“Because I’m part of the everybody else.”

Puzzled, she shook her head, a sweet potato hovering six inches from her mouth.

“I’m family, too. Elizabeth’s mother married my father.”

The couple with Cora! No wonder they both looked familiar. Then, on a soft gasp: “You’re Elizabeth’s step-brother?”

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