“Why are you weeding in the dark, Rianne?”

“It soothes me when I feel hemmed in.”

“Something happen at work today? The kids?”

She looked toward the hedge. Her shoulders drooped. She shook her head.

He didn’t know why it hurt, but it did. He wanted her trust. Trust. Belief. Support. Yeah, he wanted the combo. He wanted to offer comfort. Which would mean touching more than her hands. Not wise, Jon. Except, wisdom and want were at a draw and he was all out of referees.

“Come here.” He tugged her forward until her shoulder leaned into his chest. For her comfort, he told himself, and wrapped his arms around her. “Shh. We’re okay,” he murmured into the crown of her hair. Holding her loosely, waiting until the tension left by degrees.

She felt great in his arms. Small, warm, soft.

A surge to claim her rushed up, stunning him….

Dear Reader,

Well, we hope your New Year’s resolutions included reading some fabulous new books—because we can provide the reading material! We begin with Stranded with the Groom by Christine Rimmer, part of our new MONTANA MAVERICKS: GOLD RUSH GROOMS miniseries. When a staged wedding reenactment turns into the real thing, can the actual honeymoon be far behind? Tune in next month for the next installment in this exciting new continuity.

Victoria Pade concludes her NORTHBRIDGE NUPTIALS miniseries with Having the Bachelor’s Baby, in which a woman trying to push aside memories of her one night of passion with the town’s former bad boy finds herself left with one little reminder of that encounter—she’s pregnant with his child. Judy Duarte begins her new miniseries, BAYSIDE BACHELORS, with Hailey’s Hero, featuring a cautious woman who finds herself losing her heart to a rugged rebel who might break it…. THE HATHAWAYS OF MORGAN CREEK by Patricia Kay continues with His Best Friend, in which a woman is torn between two men—the one she really wants, and the one to whom he owes his life. Mary J. Forbes’s sophomore Special Edition is A Father, Again, featuring a grown-up reunion between a single mother and her teenaged crush. And a disabled child, an exhausted mother and a down-but-not-out rodeo hero all come together in a big way, in Christine Wenger’s debut novel, The Cowboy Way.

So enjoy, and come back next month for six compelling new novels, from Silhouette Special Edition.

Happy New Year!

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

Silhouette Special Edition

A Father, Again
Mary J. Forbes

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Karen, for loving Jon Tucker the way I did.

Thanks to Tom Lindmark for his descriptive e-mails

on the geography and history of the Clatskanie area.

Any errors are entirely mine, not his.

MARY J. FORBES

grew up on a farm in Alberta amidst horses, cattle, crisp hay and broad blue skies. As a child, she drew and wrote about her surroundings, and in sixth grade composed her first story about a lame little pony. Years later, she was an accountant and worked as a reporter/photographer for a small-town newspaper and attained honors degrees in education. She has also written and published short fiction.

Today, Mary—a teacher by profession—lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two children. A romantic by nature, she loves walking along the ocean shoreline, sitting by the fire on snowy or rainy evenings and two-stepping around the dance floor to a good country song—all with her own real-life hero, of course. Mary loves to hear from readers. You can contact her at www.maryjforbes.com.

May 4

Certain moments in life go beyond the casual flickering of memory in your mind’s eye. I call these moments “crystals.” They let your palm and fingers relearn the cool curve of the doorknob. They let your bare soles recall the comfort of the mat’s ragged braids. They let your nose remember the difference between the oatmeal cookies in the oven behind you, and the sap in the trees across the yard. But above all, you see, again, how shadow and light stroke cheek and jaw. And you recognize the hurried cadence of your heart.

Today I embraced a crystal moment.

—Journal entry of Rianne Worth

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter One

Damn the woman and her cat.

Jon Tucker trotted down his back veranda steps and strode across his weed-blooming yard. Under his arm, the cardboard box rustled. It wasn’t that he resented cats. He didn’t like them touring his yard, was all. He didn’t like anyone on his property.

What he did like—prized—was his solitary life.

That’s why he’d bought this quiet, street-end property with its decrepit Victorian and two acres of woods.

His brothers knew the score, even though they didn’t relish it, even though they had tried to change his mind more than once. Heck, after his twenty-two-year absence, who could blame them?

He could forgive Luke and Seth.

He wouldn’t forgive his neighbor.

The woman just didn’t get it. Cats roamed. The orange lady in the box was an expert. He’d chased her off his land time and again since moving back to Oregon’s Columbia County two weeks ago. Now, she’d had the gall to birth three kittens on his shirt. His favorite shirt. The last of his police-academy attire, the last tangible link to the force that had been his life, his blood, for two decades.

The last link to his memories.

His nightmares.

The neighbor woman would pay. Damn straight she would.

He sidled through the narrow gap in the ten-foot juniper hedge dividing their backyards. Most likely, when it was planted years ago the owners had been on more friendly terms. Their kids, dogs—and cats, no doubt—had beat this path through it. Well. He’d call the local greenhouse the instant he dumped off the wailing felines and order another shrub to fill in the spot. What did it matter, his mounting costs?

Shifting the box, he climbed the three back steps of the cottage’s porch. His boot heels rapped the slats of its deck. His knuckles rapped the door.

The place needed an overhaul. A big paint job. In contrast, the yard would scoop the blue ribbon at the local fair. Dethatched turf; daffodils and tulips nodding from borders; the apple tree blossoming in the May sunshine; bedding frames in a porch corner.

He knocked again.

Where was she? He’d seen her old red Toyota in the carport.

The door cracked open.

A woman stood in a rectangle of muted light.

He stood tongue-tied, impassioned rants gone.

She was tiny. Lower than his shoulder. Auburn hair. Ratty blue sweatshirt. Small, bare feet. Maroon-stained toenails.

“Yes?”

One word. It locked his gaze to her caution-filled, flax-brown eyes; an instant later, she blinked and sucked in a quick breath.

A small meow tore through his trance.

C’mon, Jon. You’re here for a reason. Thrusting the box forward, he said, “Your cats.”

She grabbed the unwieldy carton; the door swung wider and he saw a child, a girl a bit younger than Brittany, hovering near the kitchen table, big-eyed behind round lenses, pinky in her mouth.

“Cats?” The woman frowned. “We only have one. Sorry. We try to keep her in the house, but sometimes she slips out the door behind us.”

“Now you have four,” he said gruffly. “Kitty had a litter.”

Her eyes widened. She peered under a flap. “Oohhh,” she exclaimed softly. “Sweetpea… No wonder you were so fat.”

Sweetpea?

His neighbor looked up. His throat tightened. Hers was an honest face, a gentle face. Life’s not honest, he wanted to tell her. It’s cruel. Callous. Unjust.

A shy half smile. “My daughter Emily—” she glanced back at the child “—found her in an old tub of dried sweetpea vines inside our garden shed a month ago, thin as a rail and shaky with hunger. I don’t think she’d been fed in two weeks. We put ads in the paper, but so far no one’s claimed her.”

Jon stared at the woman. Green and gold dappled her irises. He turned on his heel.

“Wait—” She followed him across the porch. “Where did you find Sweetpea?”

“On my shirt.” In the shadiest corner of his back deck, to be exact. Where he’d tossed his sweatshirt on the Adirondack chair when the temperature broke the eighty-degree mark while he’d been hammering in a new railing. He trotted down her steps and headed for the chink in the hedge without a backward look.

“Sweetpea,” he muttered. More like sourpuss. The claw marks on his hands proved it.

He’d get that extra juniper in before the sun went down.

Rianne Worth watched the broad back of her visitor disappear.

Jon Tucker.

Heavens, when had she seen him last? More than twenty years ago, at least. She hadn’t recognized him. Not until he’d looked directly at her, demanding she keep her cats off his land. Those eyes, oh, she’d remember them in any decade! Eyes she still saw every so often in her slumbering dreams. Inscrutable, more than a little perilous.

“Who was that man, Mommy?”

Rianne turned to the child at her side. Her shy angel-girl. One day—soon—Emily would shout and laugh and charge into rooms like any normal eight-year-old. You will, Em. I promise. “Our new neighbor, pooch.”

“He looks mean.”

Rianne couldn’t deny it; he had looked mean. And angry.

What had the years done to shroud him in that aura of arctic barrenness? The Jon Tucker of her youth flashed across her mind. Rough-and-tumble black hair, leather jacket, souped-up yellow pickup. Tough and grim. Kind in heart.

“Is he like Daddy?”

God forbid. “No, honey he’s not like your father.” At least not the Jon she remembered. “He doesn’t like to be bothered, that’s all,” she said, trying as always to look for the good, the decent. She knelt and held open the box flaps. “Come see what he brought.”

“Oh, Mom-meee!” Emily breathed reverently. “Sweetpea’s got babies!” She reached in a tiny finger.

“Careful, honey. Don’t touch the kitties for a week or so.”

“I know. We learned that in science.”

Rianne touched her daughter’s hair. “Smart girl to remember.”

“They’re so cute.”

“They are,” she agreed. Sort of. Three mouse-sized creatures with awkward heads, squashed ears and closed eyes clambered over one another to nurse.

Emily stroked Sweetpea’s back. The cat yielded a purry meow, sniffed daintily at the girl’s fingers. “When’d she have them?”

“Today, it seems.”

Brown eyes centered on Rianne. “Did the man take her to the vet’narian?”

“No. She birthed her kittens at his house. Em, once the kittens are weaned, Sweetpea will have an operation so she can’t have any more babies—”

“Is that why he talked so mad?”

“Who?”

“The man.”

“He wasn’t mad, honey. Just a little concerned.” All right, prickly as a chained dog. When she’d opened the door, his big, strong body had blocked out the day—similar to another muscled body—and her heart had stumbled.

Then she’d seen his eyes, his beautiful, ink-blue eyes.

Since the sold sign had disappeared next door, she’d seen him off and on, laboring on that century-aged house. He hadn’t waved, nodded, said hello. But, then, neither had she.

And now?

He hadn’t recognized her, nor was he inclined to friendliness, and he seemed to dislike animals. She would need to keep close tabs on Sweetpea, plus make a spaying appointment with the veterinarian ASAP.

Hoisting up the carton, she stood. “Let’s take the kittens inside, Em. Sweetpea’s probably hungry and needs a clean bed for her babies.”

Rianne carried the box into the kitchen and positioned it beside the cat’s food dish. Sweetpea lifted herself away from her wriggling offspring, then hopped out of the box to lap at the fresh water Rianne brought.

“She’s thirsty, Mom.” Emily squatted inches from the little family. “Hungry, too,” she added when the mother cat meowed her gratitude for the canned food.

The back door slammed. “I’m starving, Mom! What’s to eat?”

Sam, Rianne’s thirteen-year-old son, flung himself into the kitchen, cheeks red, brown hair mussed from the bike ride home.

“Hey, suhweeet!” Slinging off his backpack, he dropped to his knees beside his sister. “Sweetpea had kittens? That’s so cool.”

Rianne’s heart swelled. Every moment of joy was like a gift; she vowed to keep them coming.

“Whose shirt?” Sam eyed the faded, navy-blue cotton bunched in the bottom of the box.

“It belongs to our neighbor. Jon Tucker.”

“The biker guy? The one with the long hair and the tattoo here?” He patted his left forearm.

“Yes.”

“Oh, man, this is major cool. Now that you’ve met him, maybe I can go over and see his Harley.”

“Don’t, Sammy,” Emily piped up. “He talks really mean.”

Sam’s grin vanished. “Mean?”

Okay, Rianne thought, let’s iron this out right now. “Mr. Tucker isn’t accustomed to having animals around, Sam. It seems Sweetpea’s been visiting regularly.”

“But she’s just a cat!”

“Some people are afraid of cats. They may’ve had a bad experience with them as a child or they might have allergies. Like Em with pumpkins. You know how she breaks out in a rash whenever she eats pumpkin pie?”

Emily nodded; Sam simply stared.

She went on. “As you know, people can have reactions to cats and other animals. Sometimes,” she paused for effect, “they get upset. Em cries because the rash itches and hurts. But a man like Mr. Tucker doesn’t cry. Instead, he may get worried or anxious.”

“Why doesn’t he cry?” Emily asked.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Haven’t you learned anything? Men don’t cry.”

Rianne crouched between her children. “Some men do cry. It depends on the person and the circumstances.”

She didn’t believe it of Jon. Not with his flat voice. His ice eyes.

“Dad never cried,” Sam spat. “He just…just…”

“As I said, it depends on the person, honey. Either way, it isn’t a fault. Just because you don’t see someone cry, doesn’t mean they don’t hurt inside.”

“Is our neighbor hurting?” Emily asked.

“I think he had a bad day.” She gave both kids a quick hug. “We need to put Sweetpea and her family into her basket.”

They replaced the shirt with an old blanket and decided to transfer the basket to Rianne’s sewing room where it was quieter, where southern sunshine warmed the small space for most of the day. Safe and snug, the mother cat stretched beside her brood. Her rough, pink tongue reassured each mewling kit.

Sitting back on her heels, with Jon’s shirt in her lap, Rianne watched the new family. And her own.

Sam stroked Sweetpea with the back of his right hand, his deformed hand. He’d been born with a normal left hand, but a finger and thumb were its right counterpart. Her son had learned early in life to hide his handicap. His father hadn’t wanted to see it, to admit it existed. In the fifteen months since Duane Kirby’s car crashed and killed him, Sam was slowly transforming. Rianne encouraged him; his school counselor coached him. At home, using his right hand had become second nature.

Around strangers he remained shy about his handicap.

Soon that, too, would change.

Nothing would keep her from giving her children what they deserved: a loving, happy home. With friends and cats and all things normal. Everything she’d grown up with, here in Misty River.

“Are you taking the man’s shirt back to his house, Mom?” Emily asked.

“I need to wash it first.”

Sam reached over, tapped the slim, curved edge of a capital S. “What’s the logo?”

Rianne pressed back the folds of the material, careful to hide any bloody smears. An oval seal came into view, its gold letters arcing above a shield. Seattle Police. Jon was a cop?

Sam leaned over. “What’s it say?”

Rianne bundled the shirt into a ball and climbed to her feet. “It’s a bit messy from the birth. Could you take out those brownies I baked yesterday, Sam?”

“Can I have two? I’m starving.”

“Me, too.” Emily got up.

“Fine, two each and pour some milk. I’ll be back as soon as I get the washing machine going.”

She went down the basement stairs, headed for the cramped laundry room. Maybe Jon wasn’t a cop. Maybe he’d received an SPD sweatshirt from a friend.

And if he was?

If he is, it’s got nothing to do with you.

It simply meant that tough, bad-boy Jon Tucker of Misty River, Oregon, had become an officer of the law dressed in blue, with thirty pounds of weaponry strapped to his body. If there was irony in that, so be it.

The Jon Tucker today is not the man you remember.

No. At fourteen, she’d been enthralled. A little in love. And, unable to make sense of her English class. Who cared that Robert Browning wrote love sonnets to his wife, Elizabeth? That Alfred Lord Tennyson saw “a flower in a crannied wall”?

Twenty-year-old Jon Tucker had.

Sitting on the worn vinyl seat of his old Ford pickup, Rianne had listened while he interpreted the rich beauty of poetry and the classics. That year, she got her first A in English. And Jon, treating her with the ease of a big brother, got her heart. He’d left Misty River a year later, and she’d tucked him into a quiet corner of her soul where he hovered like a tiny, bright spot all through high school.

All through her marriage.

“Mom?” called Sam.

“Be right there!”

She eyed the sweatshirt in her hands.

Water under the bridge.

She shoved the garment into the washer’s barrel. Several socks, another shirt, softener, and the lid clunked down.

What was he doing back in Misty River?

And what had he, standing on her porch in faded jeans and white T-shirt, thought of her?

Doesn’t matter.

Your tummy is doing little spins.

It is not.

Of course it is. You know why, don’t you?

Oh, yes, she knew why.

Jon Tucker lived next door. And she was no longer a childish fourteen-year-old with braces on her teeth.

“You figure June is the earliest we can dig up this mess, put in new brick?” Jon asked. He and his brother sat on Jon’s porch steps surveying his ragged driveway in the evening light.

Seth lifted his cap, raked back his shaggy hair and gave the lane another thoughtful study. Tall weeds sprouted at its edges. Grass tufted through spider-web cracks in the concrete. “Wish I could fit you in before, J.T., but you know how it is.”

“Yeah.” Jon did know. Seth and his crew had been booked nearly six weeks ahead since March. Seemed everybody and his dog wanted some type of contracting work done this spring.

Jon figured the driveway would take a week or so. Situated last on the narrow tree-lined street, his parcel of land was the biggest. And the shabbiest. Great for the price, not great for renovations.

Checking the sky, Seth commented, “Looks like we’ll be held up another day as it is.”

Over the Coast Range mountains, rain made a dull approach into the valley. Terrific. Another day’s delay to the house’s exterior changes. Jon wanted them done by mid-June when he could concentrate on the inside—and Brittany’s bedroom.

“Well,” he said and grinned. “Considering the price you’re charging me, I suppose I can wait for the driveway.” Besides, it wouldn’t do for his brother to bump a paying customer because his long-lost kin had hit town and wanted instant curb appeal.

The red, dented Toyota rolled up next door. His neighbor, Ms. Kitty Litter. The one he’d dubbed Ms. Sex Kitten in the past twenty-four hours.

“You talked to her yet?” Seth drawled, watching what Jon watched—slim, black-hosed legs swinging from the car. Gold skirt above feminine knees. Clingy black sweater. Small shapely curves.

“Yesterday. For about sixty seconds. Seems like a nice enough woman.” It didn’t matter one way or the other; he wasn’t into congeniality, especially with the neighbors.

“She’s single again.”

“Huh.” Jon figured as much. Mr. Kitty Litter had been visibly absent since Jon had moved into the vicinity. “Didn’t get around to the small talk.”

The woman held a brown bag. Her eyes found his across ninety feet of ratty grass. She didn’t move, didn’t open her mouth, just stood and looked back at him.

A dark-haired boy, about twelve, entered the carport from their backyard. She slammed shut the car door, the sound hollow in the quiet dusk.

“Hi, sweetie.” Her smile could liquefy a steel girder.

The kid hauled up the mountain bike propped against the house. “Can I go over to Joey’s for a half hour?”

“Where’s Emily?”

“With the kittens. Can I go?”

Lightning crinkled the navy sky and thunder growled, closer now. She looked west, past Jon and Seth, as if they were transparent. “Not tonight, Sam.”

“Aw, Mom… I’ll pedal real fast,” he added eagerly.

“No, Sammy. It’s after eight and I don’t want you coming home in a downpour.”

“Pleeease.”

She veered another look Jon’s way. “I said no.”

Without a word, the kid shoved the bike back into place, spun toward the rear of the house and vanished behind the junipers. Shoulders squared, she skipped a third look their way. Jon almost smiled. She had grit, this woman.

With her son. With him and Seth as an audience.

She hadn’t run off. That point alone was enough to jack up his admiration about two hundred notches. Offering the slightest of nods, he conveyed what he felt. Deference in the slant of her chin, she returned the gesture and walked out of sight.

Sparse drops of rain fell. Seth set down his empty soda can. “Well. This town hasn’t seen anything that pretty in a while.”

“That a fact?”

“Uh-huh.” A measured look at Jon. “You really don’t remember her, do you?”

“Should I?”

“Hell, I thought every guy from sixth grade up, living to a hundred, would remember the way that red hair used to hang past her—Hell,” he said again, clearly disconcerted about the direction of his musings.

Jon stared at the carport. “She’s…Rianne Worth?”

“Bingo.”

Clueless fool. She knew you. He took in the weathered little house. “Husband?”

“Dead, what I heard. She showed up one day early last summer from California somewhere, rented a motel for a week, then moved in there. She’s a part-time librarian or some such at Chinook Elementary. Hallie knows her. Says she subs now and then at the high school as well.”

Jon kept silent. He wondered what Seth’s daughter thought of Rianne Worth as a teacher. Jon knew what he used to think of her, as a teenager.

Too many years ago, way too many years.

The rain increased. Drops mottled the driveway. Seth got to his feet and pulled the bill of his cap low. “Okay, I’m off.”

“Yep.” Jon rose. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

Shoulders hunched against the rain, his brother headed for his green pickup. Moments later, Jon stood alone.

A steady drizzle pelted the earth like buckshot. Thunder tussled in the heavy, dismal sky. He made no move to go inside, instead allowed the storm to soak him. Harder, faster it came, collecting in puddles where the aged concrete had sunk over time. The budding trees fronting his yard glistened in a tangle of shiny, black prongs.

Since he was a kid, he’d enjoyed rain, would walk hours in it when his mother was on an extrarotten binge. When her drunken cursing defiled their home, and his father escaped out back to the shed and his brothers hid in their bedrooms or the basement.

Listening to the rain, feeling its blunt, wet needles cool his skin, helped him forget some of life’s uglies. Of course, no matter how hard it rained, how far he walked, one of those uglies would never fade.

A sound to the left drew him. Rianne Worth, still in heels, skirt and clingy top, was piloting a giant purple umbrella while lifting two bags of groceries from the trunk of her car. Success evaded her; the trunk was loaded. She, on the other hand, kept dodging a sheet of rain baling through the tattered roof of the carport directly above the bumper. She had to move the car forward another two feet, which was impossible, or back it up, which would put her smack into the rain.

He could help.

Don’t get involved.

She struggled another minute, gave up and carried a lone bag around back.

Ah, damn it.

Crossing his soggy mess of lawn, Jon stepped over the pruned shrub roses edging her drive. Behind the car, the cold stream from the roof caught him full across the neck and shoulders, drenching his ponytail and T-shirt. Five plastic bags in one hand, six in the other, he shook his head, blinked water from his eyes and rounded the rear bumper.

She stood ten feet away. A petite gold and black silhouette under a purple mushroom. Rianne.

Twenty-two years, and what could he say?

You’ve grown up damn pretty?

You’re someone I don’t recognize?

Hell, most days he barely knew himself.

“Shut the trunk,” he ordered, shouldering past her and heading for the back of the cottage. He bowed his head to the striking rain while her shoes clicked behind him.

Under the porch overhang, she flipped the umbrella closed, parked it against the wall, then held open the door, waiting for him to proceed into the warm house.

In a minuscule entryway, he stopped. “Where?”

“To the left.”

A whiff of her scent mingled with the damp air.

Rain on woman.

He turned into a kitchen about the size of his bedroom closet and set the bags in front of the stove and refrigerator. When he straightened, she stood near the door, hands clasped in front of her, little-girl fashion.

“Thank you,” she said in that same soft tone he remembered.

“You’re welcome.” He looked at his grubby harness boots. Sprigs of dead grass clung to the toes. “I’ve dirtied your kitchen.”

“Don’t worry about it. Would you like some coffee?”

He ran a hand down his dripping cheeks, scraped back his soggy hair. He could stay, get to know her as a neighbor—the five second Hi-how’s-it-going? type—or he could leave.

Seth’s comments pitched both options. “You remember me.”

Her eyes didn’t waver. “Yes. I do.”

He flinched. She would. Two decades ago, every kid from first grade up knew the Tuckers. Not hard in a town of a thousand souls. Not hard when, on any given day, the mother of those Tuckers stumbled down the sidewalk, drunk.

“Well,” he said, disgruntled she undoubtedly recalled those days. “I’ll go then.”

“Jon.” His name was a touch. “I’d really like you to stay for coffee. You were kind enough to help, and…” The half smile from yesterday returned. “I feel responsible for what Sweetpea did to your shirt.”

“Forget it. Cat needed a spot, shirt fit the bill.”

“I’ve washed it. Wait a second.” She disappeared down a short hallway.

He took a breath. Fine. He’d stay for a cup. He went to the door, took off his boots, set them on the outside mat with its white scripted Welcome to Our Home.

Her footsteps returned. “Jon?”

“Here.”

“Good. You stayed.” She smiled and placed his neatly folded shirt on the table, then began scooping coffee into a maker. He approached the end of the counter where she worked.

Abruptly, she faced him. “Are you a cop?”

“I was. I quit a month ago.”

He’d been asked to take stress leave and had opted for retirement. After Nicky’s death, his work had suffered. Hell, after the loss of his son life became an abyss—where he still floundered.

Rianne set the coffee on.

“Where are your kids?” he asked. The boy with the bike?

“Downstairs, watching TV.” She checked a sunflower clock on the wall above the stove. “It’ll be Emily’s bedtime in fifteen minutes. We’ll have time for one cup before the nightly whining begins.” She sported another of those sweet smiles. He sported fantasies that were way out of line.

Not wanting to hear about kids, tooth-brushing or bedtime rituals, he asked, “That decaf?”

“I’d be wide-eyed as an owl with the real stuff. Please. Sit.” She motioned to the table with four ladder-back chairs, then opened a tiny pantry to shelve the groceries.

He stepped beside her and placed three cans of spaghetti sauce on an upper shelf. Before he could reach for another tin, she said, “Would you please sit at the table?”

“I don’t mind a little kitchen duty.”

She took the tin from his hand. “I’d rather you sat.”

It took two seconds for irritation to plant itself. Good enough to play pack mule and carry groceries, but apparently lacking the aptitude to see where they belonged.

Just like Colleen. “Go do your man thing and stay out of my kitchen. I don’t need you here.”

In the end, had she needed him anywhere? As her husband? As the father of their kids?

“Thanks, but I really don’t have time for coffee,” he said, stepping over three bags. “Got a ton of work that needs doing.” Grabbing the shirt she’d laundered, he headed for the door and his boots. So much for neighborly ways.

“Jon. Don’t go. It’s…”

A sitcom’s cackle drifted up from below. Rain drummed on the roof above.

“It’s not you,” she went on, throat closing. “It’s me. I…” Her heart thrummed. Men in general make me edgy. Logically she knew Jon was not “men in general.” Still… He defeated her own height of five-four by almost a foot. And in that soaked navy T-shirt his chest appeared unforgiving.

She avoided looking at his arms, his hands. She’d seen them lift the groceries like a spoonful of granola. Powerful. Dusted with dark, masculine hair, right to the knuckles on his work-toughened fingers. A wolf tattoo prowled along rain-damp skin above his left wrist. Once the town rebel, now a man of dark secrets and possible danger.

But look at him, she did. Straight into eyes as indifferent as a tundra windchill. “I’m not used to having company.” Purposely, she kept her hands loose. “You took me off guard.” Because she hadn’t expected to see him again for at least another week or two, except maybe across the distance of their yards.

Then out of the wet, dark weather he’d loomed…black ponytail plastered to his neck…frown honing every determined angle of his face… And her breath…

She hadn’t breathed calmly since.

He said nothing, but neither did he leave. Just looked at her. Waiting.

“I’m sorry,” she offered finally.

“For what?”

“For how I must sound. As I said—”

“You’re not used to company or want it. That makes two of us.” The words were sensitive as winterkill.

He turned and stepped out onto the deck, pushing wool-socked feet into his boots. Without bothering with the laces, he walked down the steps, into the rain.

She wanted to call out. Invite him back. Wanted to explain it wasn’t him, but another that had her fluttering worse than a nervous house wren. Silent, she went to the edge of the porch. Self-control was difficult to teach, arduous to learn. At the moment, she needed strength. If it looked cowardly, she didn’t care. She clasped her hands in front of her.

Halfway across her lawn, he stopped. Rain lashed his heavy shoulders and skimmed from an implacable chin.

“Good-bye, Rianne.”

Securing the laundered shirt under an arm, he shoved his hands into his pockets and disappeared through the hole in the juniper hedge. He had known who she was. Why hadn’t he acknowledged her yesterday? Or had Seth sitting on those steps confirmed it today?

“You remember me.”

She’d never forgotten.

She listened to the downpour on the roof. Heard it gush in the eaves. Watched a mini waterfall at the side of the porch.

Chilled, she went back into the house, where she finished the groceries, working efficiently, rolling up the plastic bags and tucking them into a drawer. From the skinny broom closet, she hauled out the mop. After wetting the sponge under the tub tap in the bathroom down the hall, she set about tidying up puddles left by big, work-battered boots. He means nothing to me. Nothing.

Then why did you put him in your journal?

She clenched her jaw to an aching point.

God help me, I’ll erase it tonight.

But she heard again her name, submerged in a deep quiet timbre.

Chapter Two

Phone to his ear, Jon propped a hip on the counter in his spacious kitchen and stared absently at his reflection in the dark glass shielding the wet night. Three rings.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Pick up.”

Five rings. “Hi,” said a familiar, breathless voice.

“Hey, Colleen.”

A pause. “It’s you.”

Who were you expecting? “It’s me,” he acknowledged. “Brittany around?”

“She’s busy watching TV.”

He tamped down a flash of ire. “Could you get her please? I’d like to talk to my daughter.”

Muffled tones told him his ex-wife had covered the mouthpiece. Then, “Brittany would rather not tonight. She’s not feeling well.”

To hell with it. “Just get her, Colleen. If she doesn’t wanna talk she can tell me herself. Or should I drive up this minute and see what the problem really is?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Again silence, again the muffled conversation. “Fine, I’ll get her.”

He winced as the receiver slammed the light-green counter he knew so well. In the background, he heard a male voice comment, “Don’t let him hassle you, Col.” Jon pinched the bridge of his nose and counted to two hundred by fives. Finally footsteps, running ones, came closer. The phone scraped off the counter.

“Daddy?”

“Hey, peanut. How ya doing?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Not feeling so hot, huh?”

“No.”

“Got a cold or a tummy-ache?”

“Uh-uh.”

Pause.

“You can tell me, sweetheart.”

“Mom said I shouldn’t talk to you.”

Anger leapt, a fresh flame. He curbed the urge to bellow through the phone for his ex-wife. “Why not, Brit?”

“I dunno.” He imagined her tracing patterns along the countertop. “Mom said it gets me mixed up. Especially now that she’s gonna marry Allan.”

With effort Jon pulled in a calming breath. He didn’t give a flying fig who his ex married, but to play on Brittany’s feelings made his blood pump. He forced his fingers loose on the receiver. “Do you want me to stop phoning, honey?”

He felt her hesitate. His heart disintegrated.

“When I’m with you—” her voice was tiny “—I don’t want to come home. But I don’t want Mom to be alone either.”

“Aw, peanut…”

He heard her sniff. God, he wished he had Harry Potter’s broom to zip himself there. But what good would that do? Right or wrong, good or bad, he and Colleen were divorced. End of story.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, love.”

“I don’t like Allan,” she whispered.

Jon’s inner antennae shot up. “Why, Brit?”

“I dunno. Just that he pretends he’s you, and I don’t like that.”

He emitted a relieved sigh. If that was all—

“And Allan says things about Nicky.”

A chill spiked Jon’s skin. His son. His beautiful, dark-haired, blue-eyed son. Who at fifteen had attracted girls, gloried in the attention, but still found time to read his sister a bedtime story. Who would have grown into a fine, upstanding young man had his father been there to guide him.

He swallowed the burl in his throat. “What things, Brit?”

“Mean stuff. Like, if we’d had him for a father Nicky would still be alive. Stuff like that.”

Jon squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips together. The SOB was right. If they’d had anyone but Jon as a father, his son might very well still be kicking a football or slam-dunking baskets with his high school buddies. But then, if they’d had anyone else, Nick wouldn’t have been his son, and Brittany—with her little freckled nose and long, pale hair—wouldn’t be his daughter. The proverbial catch-22.

One totally unfair to play on his baby girl.

He opened his eyes and pushed a rough-padded finger above his right eyebrow where a headache festered. That Brittany wasn’t in some psychiatrist’s office with the mumbo crap being fed her by Colleen and the esteemed twit, Allan, was a wonder. “Sweetheart, I want you to listen real careful, okay?”

“Okay.”

“When Allan, and even Mom,” he added with a wince, “start saying things about Nicky that you don’t like, I want you to get up and walk out of the room.”

“But what if we’re in the car going somewhere?”

Ah, hell. “Ask them to not discuss Nick in front of you and if they continue, sing to yourself. Try to block it out as best you can. All right?”

“I’ll try.”

“You know I love you with all my heart.”

“I love you, too.”

“I’ll see you soon, all right?”

“When?”

“Summer…in a couple of months, like we talked about.”

“Allan says I should stay here for the summer.”

Jon bounced a fist on the counter. How he kept his voice from shaking, his emotions from screaming, was a miracle. “Peanut, that’s not going to happen. Now, I’m going to say good-night because I still need to talk to Mom before I hang up.”

“Okay. She’s in the foyer saying goodbye to Allan.” There was a shuffle on the line. “Gross. They’re kissing and I can see Allan’s tongue. Yuck!”

Damn you, Colleen. Not in front of my daughter. “Brit, honey, tell her I need to talk to her, pronto.”

“Right. Bye, Dad.”

“Bye, peanut.”

The phone met Formica a second before he heard her yell for Colleen. It took almost six minutes of long-distance time for his ex to pick up. She got right to the point.

“Just so you know, I don’t like being yanked away from an important matter.”

“The next time you want to do the tongue tango with your lover, do it without my daughter around.”

“How dare you. Al and I were discussing our wedding.”

“I won’t beat around the bush, Colleen. Brittany is staying with me when school’s out whether your boyfriend likes it or not. It’s what we decided on paper, and no one’s going to keep my daughter from being with her daddy. Understand?”

“Perfectly. Why should I expect anything different?” she said bitterly. “It’s always been you, hasn’t it? Whatever’s good for you. The kids and I were always last on your list.”

Pain lanced through him. “I can’t help what happened in the past. But I sure as hell can help what’s happening right now. If Brittany wants to be with me for two months, then she can. Neither you nor that jackass you’re marrying has a right to take that away from her. And—” his voice turned dark “—if you do, we’ll revisit this in court. Oh, and another thing. Brittany doesn’t like Allan playing dad around her. Tell him to lay off.”

“He does not play anything around her. He just wants to be a good father figure. Which is a lot more than her real daddy’s been over the last ten years.”

That stung. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve hurt you, but dredging up the past is useless. We can’t change it.”

“Tell that to your daughter when she cries at night for her brother.” The phone clicked off.

Jon had no idea how long he stood there with the receiver humming before he finally set it back in the cradle.

Blindly, he looked at the oak cupboards housing his few cracked dishes. He should go upstairs, take a long, hot shower. His clothes were sticky and cold on his skin from the rain, his hair knotted and damp. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be down with a bug and where would that get his plans to finish this house?

In a daze he looked around the room. Like you really need a place this size, Jon.

Where had his mind been when he’d bought it? Brittany was ten years old, a sprite with his blue eyes and her mom’s fair hair. A sprite who’d visit three times a year. Who required one bedroom, not five.

And when she went back to Seattle?

Here he’d be.

Lone wolf prowling inside four dozen tall walls.

Evenings, he’d sit out back. Sip a cool one as the sun dwindled. Day after day, year after year. He’d watch the grass grow, the trees spread wider, the hedge reach another ten feet toward the sky. All for what? Brittany?

In three, four years Seattle would be prime pickings for a teenager doing all the things young girls do at that age.

Misty River, Oregon, with its conservatism, offered piddly.

He didn’t fool himself into thinking she’d want to spend even a weekend with him when that time came.

Then why not let Allan-the-Great take over? Be the father figure she needs? A man home every evening, staying till morning. A family man. A man who could give Colleen another baby.

Another brother for Brittany.

Jon spun around and cursed. Stalking to the door, he yanked it open and stepped onto the back deck. The rain had quit and the moist night air struck like a frigid fist. Let him come down with SARS. Everything that mattered was lost already.

Job.

Marriage.

Family.

Nick.

The floorboards thundered under his socked heels as he paced from one side to the other.

Stopping abruptly, he gripped the new wood railing he had hammered into place two days ago. The rain slackened into a fine mist. He let it bathe his face, easing the pain. When he could think again, he hauled in a long breath and found himself staring across the dripping hedge. From behind frilly curtains, amber light glowed in the windows of the small house next door. A woman’s shape hovered in the closest window, then was gone.

Rianne.

Getting ready for bed? He checked the big, luminous digital on his wrist. Nine-forty-three. He fancied her changing into some cotton affair, cool for the upcoming warmer nights, but unadorned, unsexy, wholly feminine, wholly her.

He pictured himself there…her skin warm, soft like the down of the bed’s duvet…

He turned and strode into his barren house.

“Yo, Joe! Hang on a sec, man,” Sam called as his best bud passed him in the corridor of milling students and clanging lockers. They had five minutes before Friday’s last afternoon class started and Joey Fraser, Sam knew, was on his way to the upper level.

Slamming shut his locker, he turned and pushed through the crowd to where Joey waited near the outside doors. “What up, man? Aren’t you going to math?”

“Me’n a couple guys’re skipping,” Joey said.

“Skipping?”

Joey sniffed. “No big deal. I can catch up. Wanna come?”

Brown fuzz grew along his friend’s upper lip and on his pointy chin, and Sam had to raise his eyes an extra couple of inches to meet Joey’s. “Can’t, man. Gotta test. Old lady Pearson’ll have my butt if I don’t show.”

“Tell her you’re sick.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, like that’s gonna work. She just saw me two minutes ago in the library.”

“So?”

“So, if I don’t pass this lab, the witch is gonna phone my mom. I’ve already failed the last two.” He hadn’t really, but he might as well have. The marks barely skimmed sixty. Lately, his concentration was the pits. Studying was the pits.

He knew why. It was Joey. His pal. His best bud.

Who looked at Sam as if he had two heads. The way he was right now. What’s the matter, Joe?

His pal turned toward the doors.

“Want to do something after school?” Sam asked. Almost too eagerly, he realized, when Joey shrugged and looked away. Sam pressed on. “I have to baby-sit Emily till four. We can dunk some balls at my house.”

The week they’d moved in, Sam’s mom had bought a basketball stand for the driveway. Last summer, he and Joey had done a lot of one-on-ones and hung out at each other’s houses, watching movies, playing computer games, roller-blading.

Joey never saw Sam’s deformity as untouchable. In fact, the first time they met, Joe had given Sam’s hand its highest praise ever with his cool “suhweet.”

This last month, though, Joey acted squirmy whenever Sam suggested they do stuff together. When he called Joey’s house, Sam often heard other guys in the background. Twice he’d recognized Cody Huller’s voice. Cody with earrings, nose-ring and orange, half-shaved hair. What Joey saw in Cody was beyond Sam.

Joey said, “After school me’n the guys are hanging on Main.”

The guys. Did he mean Huller? Sam hitched a careless shoulder. “Sure, whatever.”

“Gotta go,” Joey said. “Later, okay?”

“Yeah.” Sam watched his friend push through the doors, toward the warm afternoon sunshine. “Later.”

Walking to class, Sam knew something had changed between them. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t describe it. Joey still looked like Joey, still walked like Joey, still talked like Joey. But there was a difference.

Like Sam was a big waste of time to his friend.

The cranky sputter of a lawnmower unwilling to catch grated on Jon. Tossing the crowbar he’d been using to rip apart the front veranda steps this particular Saturday morning, he considered his options. He could walk into Rianne’s yard and see about the problem, or he could jam in a pair of earplugs and pretend she didn’t exist.

Neither option appealed to his good sense.

But then, good sense had taken a hundred-year hike, so what the hell?

Scowling, he yanked off his battered leather gloves, shoved them into his right hip pocket and headed once more into her backyard. Four days and this would be his third visit. Soon, they’d be attached at the hip.

Was that as good as attracted to her hip—among other things? He scowled harder. “You’re depraved, Tucker.”

Adjusting the brim of his Seahawks cap over his brow, he rounded her road-weary car.

She was in pink cutoffs, bent over the machine.

Jon stopped. Shook his head. Blew a weighted breath. Hightailing it back to his house—or the Pacific—loomed like one grand invitation. The farther from this woman the better.

“Dang thing,” she grumbled, oblivious to all but the mean red machine squatting idle at her feet.

“Troubles?”

Her head jerked up. “Jon.” His name, a silken thread on the warm, sunny air.

He walked over, focused on the mower. “Did you prime it?”

“Yes, and probably flooded it.”

Hunkering beside the mower, he checked the carburetor. The Columbia River was in better condition. “Yup, flooded.”

She expelled air. “The thing’s been acting up ever since I started cutting the grass a couple of weeks ago.”

Grunting in response, he inspected the wire to the ignition. While the machine appeared adequate enough to work, it could do with a cleaning. A second scan and he found the problem. “The spark-plug cap is off.”

“It is?” Her shoulder came level with his chin as she peered at the tiny cup between his fingers. If he leaned sideways a little, he could bury his face in her hair.

“When’s the last time this thing had a tune-up?” he grumped.

“Don’t know. I bought it from a friend. It worked fine until…” She turned her head. Their eyes caught. “Now.”

She had brown lashes. Straight and thick as a baby’s toothbrush.

He shoved the cap on to the spark plug then climbed to his feet.

She moved to the opposite side of the mower.

Okay. You want the machine between us? Well, baby, so do I. He said, “It’ll need to sit ten minutes for the primer to drain before you can try it again.”

Checking the plain-banded watch at her wrist, she frowned.

“Running late?”

“No. Yes.” Exasperated fingers checked the green bandanna around her ponytail. “I had a number of things I wanted to get done this morning, that’s all.” She looked around her small yard. “This could wait, I suppose.” Her brown eyes found his. “Thank you. Again.”

He shifted, awkward with how the softness in her voice, her look, affected him. “Mower isn’t running yet.”

“It will be.”

Once more their eyes held. He looked away, zeroing in on the apple tree covered in white flowers. “If you need a hand, I’m working on my front steps.”

“Jon,” she said when he turned to go. “About the other night—”

“Past.”

Undaunted by his tough tone, she went on. “Nevertheless, I want to explain. When I said I wasn’t used to having company, I meant male company. Since my husband died, I haven’t been much into developing…friendships.”

“Understood.”

“Especially with men.”

Considering his own choice about women and involvements, he accepted her avowal. “I know the feeling. I’m divorced.”.

“Oh.”

For several long seconds, the morning held its quiet. A yellow butterfly flitted over the mower, bent on reaching the apple tree.

Then, because the thought had bugged him for two days he said, “You recognized me that first day on the porch with the cats.”

She smiled. “Yes. Ninth-grade English, how could I forget?”

“Ahh.” He’d wondered if she recalled sitting on her mother’s back step, him explaining Wordsworth and Whitman.

She went on, “And you used to hang with these guys. Once after school, one of them stopped me. He said things…and started handling my hair. It was very long at the time.” She looked to the hedge between their properties. Sunshine fueled flames into that hair now. “He scared me.” Her eyes were steady. “You told him to leave me alone.”

“Gene Hyde.”

“Yes, Gene Hyde.”

Misty River High’s class-A idiot. The guy had wrapped a strand of her hair around his hand—with lewd innuendoes.

“I remember. It was beside the gym and you were…” Wide-eyed and skittish as an alley cat. “Very young.”

“Barely fourteen.”

She’d been Seth’s age. A kid.

And Jon had wondered after all those trips he’d driven her and his little brother home from school—he wondered what she’d be like one day as a woman.

Now, he knew.

Except, now he no longer cared. Or so he told himself. Of course, his conscience wouldn’t allow him to veto his four-day fantasies. She was female—an alluring female—after all.

He bent, checked the primer. Free of gas. Taking hold of the starter cord, he yanked. The engine roared to life.

Rianne grabbed the handle. Her shoulder brushed his arm; her woman’s smell beguiled his nose. “Thank you,” she mouthed over the buzzing motor. A quick smile and she pushed forward, hips swaying with each determined step of her dusty sneakers, following the cutter’s path toward the edge of the yard.

He still had her image, her scent swirling in his head when he rounded the corner of the house and almost bumped into a tall, gangly kid chasing a runaway basketball. The same kid he’d seen the night he’d carried in her groceries.

In one swoop Jon anchored the ball against his body with an elbow. “You Rianne’s boy?”

The kid gave him a cautious look. “Yeah.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Shouldn’t you be helping your mother instead of playing?”

The teenager had the decency to scan the backyard. “You mean like mow the lawn?”

“That’d be a start.”

“Yeah, well, Mom doesn’t want me operating machines.”

“Why not?”

“She’s scared I might hurt myself.”

“Do you think you’ll hurt yourself?”

The boy looked as if Jon had broken a raw egg on his head. “No way. I can handle a stupid mower.”

Jon released a mild snort. Kid had guts, he’d give him that. “Lesson one. No machine is stupid. If you don’t respect it, it won’t respect you. Got it?”

The boy nodded.

“Good. Lesson two. Mothers tend to think their kids stay babies forever.” Jon lifted his eyebrows. “Up to you to choose.”

“Geez. Like that’s hard.”

“Thought so.” Jon handed him the ball. “Sam, right?”

The boy nodded.

“Think you can handle those two lessons, Sam?”

Something shifted in his dark eyes. “I can handle ’em, sir.”

Jon shook his head. “Not sir. Just Jon. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, go help your mother.”

The last thing she wanted, marching out of her house, was to confront Jon Tucker. Brutally masculine, with those polar eyes icing a person in a heartbeat, she suspected he wasn’t a man who would give one hoot about what she had to say.

But say it, she would.

Just as she had, in the end, to Duane.

No one—not now or ever again—would castigate her children or berate her mothering skills. Duane had discovered it the court-induced way. Jon Tucker would learn it in plain jargon.

He worked on a plank supported by a pair of sawhorses several feet from his front steps, marking out a distance with a thick carpenter’s pencil and tape measure. Clad in the same frayed jeans, blue plaid shirt and cumbersome work boots of an hour ago, he had her heart taking another boisterous tumble.

In the last sixty minutes he had rolled his sleeves to his biceps. Bread-brown muscles strained in the sun.

The wolf tattoo glistened within dark hair.

She chanced a furtive study of the man who had kept her spinning silly girlish dreams as a teenager. The harsh-crafted angles of his face, profiled against the bright day, showed an assertive nose, a bold ridge of brow. He’d switched the cap so its visor hid the five-inch bracket of ponytail. Pale skin peeked above the plastic band across his forehead. A silver ear stud flaunted wickedness.

She pressed down a corner of excitement. And guilt because of her mission.

After all, he’d taken time from his work to fix her beat-up, old mower.

At her approach, his long, powerful body unfolded with calm ease. Slowly she was acclimating to the way he didn’t smile, didn’t speak, simply looked at her with that impenetrable, intelligent expression. Acknowledging the latter, she took heart and stepped close enough to speak in a normal tone. “Can we talk?”

He shot a look toward her house. “The mower again?”

“No. My son.”

Those eyes conveyed nothing. Not curiosity, not amusement, not compassion. Two decades ago, a dozen expressions would have skimmed his rebel teenage features in mere seconds.

Why are you so empty, Jon?

She towed in a nourishing breath. She was here for Sam. “Please don’t persuade my son to do things against my will.”

His black brows sprang. “How’d I do that?”

“By telling him to mow the grass.”

Silence. In the woods a bird trilled a minimusical.

She pressed on. “You probably think he’s old enough, that he should be a man. Well, I’ll decide when the time is right and until then I don’t want my son handling machinery.”

He gave her another long look, picked up a compact saw, flicked a switch and notched one end of the plank. When it was done, he carried the wood to the steps.

It wasn’t so much a dismissal as disinterest.

Jon Tucker simply did not care one way or another.

In all her years with Duane, she couldn’t recollect feeling as detached as Jon looked. Alone, yes. Despondent, yes. But never detached to the point where life constituted meaningless mechanical movement from one day to the next.

She drew closer, watching as he fit the board in place. “Sam’s not like other boys.”

Would he quit working and look at her? Discuss this rationally? Or—the thought nipped her mind—was he like Duane after all, harboring an inner explosive rage while on the outside he appeared calm?

Ludicrous. Jon was nothing like her dead husband. She didn’t know how or why, but she sensed a deep, agonizing pain in the man working on his house.

She started back to her yard, weighing her suspicions.

“Rianne.”

She hesitated. “Yes?”

“What’s the real reason?”

“He has a deformed hand.” Lobster claw. An informal medical label for the fusing of all fingers into one, separate from the thumb. A hideous label. But a label, nonetheless.

Something stirred in his eyes. Interest? “I hadn’t noticed.”

“He usually hides his right hand in his pocket.” When he’s around strangers.

“Do you want him to be like other boys?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I want him to be like other boys.”

“Then let him mow the lawn.”

“That has nothing to do with—”

“It has everything to do with it. Let him be normal. He doesn’t have a disease. He has an individual hand, is all.”

An individual hand. Such an unfeigned term. Her annoyance evaporated.

He came toward her, the hammer in his tool belt softly bumping one strong thigh. Stopping within her space, he reached out and stroked her cheek with a heavy knuckle. The touch shot heat clean to her toes.

She wanted to lean toward it.

Toward him.

His hand dropped and she stood, heart thrumming, unable to move. His lips were masculine, the bottom one more supple. A corner of his mouth hitched—a smile?—then vanished.

“Boy has your eyes.”

“He looks like his father.” Abashed by her outburst, she glanced away. She didn’t want Jon Tucker assuming Duane Kirby meant anything. Anything at all.

“Still has your eyes. Same color.”

“I thought you…” What? Had no interest? Didn’t care?

“Don’t give a damn?”

Her cheeks burned.

He moved closer.

The warm morning and the heat of his body drifted over her. She wanted to scurry under the shrubbery, hide from those intense blue eyes.

“What are you really afraid of, Rianne?”

She stared at him. “Who said I was afraid?”

His eyes darkened. Without a word, he returned, lax-limbed and indifferent, to his tools and wood.

Chapter Three

“Nope.”

“Just like that—no?” Luke Tucker set down his early-morning coffee, fresh from the pot of Kat’s Kitchen. “This town needs a new police chief, Jon. Pat Willard’s let the department corrode for years. You going to sit there and take the chance one of his prodigies,” the word edged on acidic, “will slide into his shoes in September?”

Jon paused, knife and fork hovering over his open Denver sandwich, Kat’s dawn-riser special, and looked across the booth at his eldest brother. “Police work and I don’t mix.”

“Aren’t you taking this a little out of context?”

“Not as I see it.”

Luke’s mouth relaxed. “You’ve got to let go, man.”

Jon stared at his plate. The hunger grumbling in his gut dissipated. Damn. He looked forward to eating breakfast with Luke and Seth. Since he’d moved back, this was one ritual he relished, meeting with his brothers every Wednesday—hump day—for an early bite. It had started because Jon’s kitchen was a shambles. The second week they’d come because he’d needed their company. All those years away…he’d missed his brothers.

And today… Today, Seth couldn’t make the six-fifteen meet because of a job. Or, had it been a setup? Luke charming Jon into taking up the feeble torch Pat Willard would pass on?

No, Seth had too soft a heart. Especially when it involved his brothers or their alcoholic mother who still lived in the same 1920s house on the outskirts of town where they had grown up. Seth wouldn’t know an ulterior motive if it knocked him in the nose.

Nor would his little brother interfere in how Jon handled his pain.

Not like Luke. Who never wasted words or time. Good lawyer.

Jon swallowed the bite he’d been chewing before taking a sip of coffee. “I don’t need you giving me a quickie psych review on how to deal with my kid.”

“If you’re talking about your daughter, I wouldn’t dream of it. If you mean Nicky… That’s another story.”

“And none of your business.”

Hurt flickered in Luke’s eyes before he concentrated on scraping up the last of his scrambled eggs.

Jon set down his utensils with a clatter. “Look, I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it. But I’ve got to find my own way with this.”

“You need to talk to somebody.” Luke held up a hand. “I know. I haven’t forgotten Seth and those school counselors. But this thing… You’re not responsible for what happened to your son, J.T.”

“Yes, I am, dammit.” At the rise of Jon’s voice, several nearby customers glanced their way. He gave them a hard look. Facing his brother, he said quietly, “Bottom line? I wasn’t there for my family. Colleen had to handle Nick’s rebelliousness alone. When I realized there were problems, I should’ve gotten off Drug Squad. But I didn’t. I liked busting down doors and grabbing bad guys too much. I wanted the rush too damn much.” He shook his head, miserable. Should’ve been there for you, Nicky.

“More coffee, boys?” a grandmotherly waitress asked. Kat, owner of the café, held a steaming carafe.

Jon shook his head, caught up in his brother’s inquisition. Caught up in memories of Nicky.

“Thanks, Kat,” Luke said and held out his cup.

Jon studied his brother. Eleven months older, he had the same rangy build as his siblings—a feature they’d inherited from their father. While Jon stood tallest at six-five, Luke didn’t seem any shorter at six-two. The man had shoulders wider than a toolshed and arms that could put a wood-framer to test. While all three brothers had received a variation of their father’s dark coloring, Luke was the only one who’d been blessed with their mother’s aesthetic, straight nose and gray eyes.

Those same eyes settled on Jon. “What?”

“How come you never married again?”

Luke looked away. “Never found the right woman.”

Ginny Keegan had been the right woman. Once. She and Luke had married in college. And divorced eight years later. Three Tuckers, three divorces. Not good odds.

“Okay,” Jon said. “Here’s the deal. I don’t ask you questions, and you butt out of my problems.”

“Circumstances are entirely different. I didn’t lose a son and blame it on my job.”

“Your job wouldn’t lose you a son,” Jon said testily.

“You think defense lawyers don’t work long hours? However, if I’d had a son—” Luke stared into his cup “—he might’ve rebelled just as well to make a point against what I stand for.”

Touché. Teenagers of men in Luke’s position were known to buckle under peer pressure. Hell, teenagers in general were considered a rebellious lot. Hadn’t he, Luke and Seth done the same once? Done whatever it took to be accepted by their pals, despite their deplorable home life?

“Look. You were a good cop, J.T.,” Luke went on. “The best. I’ve checked. You can be again.”

Jon set down his half-finished coffee, dug out some bills and tossed them on the table. “Not gonna happen. I’m setting up to make furniture for the next thirty years.”

Luke’s mouth tightened and Jon quelled a chuckle. No mistaking they were brothers. Both were face pullers when the chips toppled.

He shoved out of the booth. His house waited. “Same time next week?”

“Yeah, sure.”

He gave his brother’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “Take care, bud.”

Outside, he took a long breath of warm, sunny air. Living in Misty River felt damn good. It had to. Where else could he go?

Rianne turned the ignition of her Toyota again. Click.

Of course. The old thing would have the nerve to die when she was running late for the first day of work this week. Well, bemoaning the fact wouldn’t start the car either. Thank goodness Sam had gone ahead on his bike.

“What’s the matter with the car, Mom?”

Emily wasn’t so lucky. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the three days Rianne taught in Chinook Elementary’s library, they rode to school together. A comforting ritual after they’d moved to Misty River a year ago, when her children hadn’t established friendships yet. Then Sam met Joey Fraser who lived up the street and, for her son, going with Mom became “uncool.” But Emily still rode with Rianne.

“The battery’s probably dead, Em.” Rianne sighed. Darned old car. There goes another chunk of budget. Laughing yet, Duane?

“I thought gas made the car go,” Emily said.

Rianne patted the child’s hand, hoping to ease the disquiet she knew churned inside her daughter when things went slightly off kilter. “They both do, pooch.”

“Can you get a new one?”

“Yes, but I need to go to the Garage Center for that.”

Emily followed Rianne out of the vehicle, dark eyes big behind her glasses. “Are we gonna be late? Can I take my bike? Please? I don’t want to be late, Mom.”

“Hang on, honey.” Rianne popped the hood. “Maybe it’s something else.” Something simpler. She could hope.

Other than caked-on grime and grease, the engine appeared the same as the last time she’d seen it. Were the battery terminals more corroded? She couldn’t remember. The car was thirteen years old and, during their marriage, Duane had looked after its mechanics. How long did a battery last? Five years? Ten? The life of the car?

Why hadn’t she asked the mechanic when she’d bought new rear tires last fall?

Because you didn’t want to admit a lack of car sense to a man. Now, look where it’s got you. Late for work and Emily late for school.

She checked her watch. Eight-forty. Fifteen minutes before first bell. If they walked fast they’d make it just in time. “Get our lunches out of the car, Em. We’re walking.”

“But Mo-om, we’ll be way late.”

Rianne surveyed the engine again. “I’ll call Mrs. Sheers and tell her our problem.” Cleo Sheers was the secretary. She’d pass the message on to the principal and Beth Baker, Em’s teacher.

Emily tugged Rianne’s sleeve. “Mom,” she whispered.

“Hmm?” Looking at this mess, she knew she needed a whole new car.

“Troubles?” a low, rusty voice said.

Rianne jackknifed up, almost batting her head on the hood.

He stood by the driver’s door, hands jammed in hip pockets. She should have guessed by Em’s behavior that her big, moody neighbor hovered nearby. What did he do, keep her under surveillance?

“Good morning.” Ungrateful thoughts weren’t her style, although hot stuff appeared to be his in those worn black jeans and that snowy T-shirt. She couldn’t take her eyes off his damp hair caught in a loose tail. Like a settler, traveling the Oregon Trail in a prairie schooner.

Clipping a nod, he stepped forward and closed the hood with a flick of the wrist.

“What are you doing?”

“Driving you and your daughter to school. The battery’s done for.” He pointed his chin at the front seat. “Why don’t you get your things and I’ll start the truck.”

Not a question, a subtle command. Cops, she knew, issued directives to maintain order and stability. She, however, was not a felon nor an obnoxious bystander nor, for that matter, a wife whose independence and self-worth had been boxed into the dirt.

She was a woman standing securely on her own two feet.

About to say as much, she opened her mouth—except he was already striding for the black truck in his driveway.

“Are we going with him, Mommy?” Emily asked, pinky disappearing into the corner of her mouth.

Rianne squelched the urge to raise a fist to her dead husband. “It’s okay, sweets.” Carefully, she adjusted the girl’s glasses on her freckled nose. “We won’t be late now. Come on.” Hand in hand they stepped between the barren rose bushes and headed for the grumbling diesel truck.

Jon leaned across the seat and shoved open the door. “Give me your bag, Bo Peep.”

A timid smile crept along Emily’s mouth. In that instant, Rianne forgot her woman’s right to independence. A warmth spread from her heart outward. Jon Tucker, man of few words, had baited a smile from her little girl.

A precious, rare smile.

Emily climbed onto the high seat. While Jon strapped her in, Rianne climbed beside her. Why hadn’t she chosen slacks today or one of her loose, ankle-length skirts? No, silly woman that she was, she’d selected her favorite: black, slim and short.

The truck smelled of tools. And Jon. Over Emily’s head, Rianne caught his regard—flame-blue and intense. Her heart pinged. She faced the windshield and worked on her seat belt.

Calm down.

Five minutes of speed and silence got them to Chinook Elementary. He parked near the entrance. Children hung in clusters up and down the sidewalk. Across the playground smaller ones dashed between older students, chasing balls, playing tag. A group of boys, a few years younger than Sam, rough-housed near the gym exit.

Rianne climbed from the cab. Emily slid to the ground with a “’Bye, Mom” and drifted toward some girls skipping rope.

Jon rounded the nose of the idling truck. “Got a minute?” His gaze lingered on the skin below her hemline.

She looked toward the school doors. “If it’s quick.”

“What time are you finished?”

“I’ll get one of my colleagues to drive us home.”

“What time?”

Another take-charge man.

He’s different.

How so?

She relented. “Three, but I usually don’t get out of here until four.”

“Your daughter stays with you?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be here at four.” He started for the driver’s side.

She went after him. “It’s not necessary. We can get home on our own.”

He stepped from the curb. Even with the added height of the sidewalk, she still had to tilt her head.

“It’s not a contest, Rianne. I’d like to pick you up after school, okay?”

His quiet “like” did it, had her tongue powerless. “Fine.”

A softness she hadn’t seen before touched his eyes. “See you then,” he said.

Without another word she walked into the school. She would not watch him drive away. Not with this warmth in her cheeks.

The day crawled. Although four different classes came into the library throughout the morning, the clock was glued to one spot for endless, interminable minutes at a time.

Midmorning she made a call to the Garage Center and requested an attendant put a new battery in her car. The house call would be an added expense but she’d manage it.

Shortly after one she received a call that her battery had been looked after—not by the attendant. By a neighbor.

She didn’t need to ask which neighbor.

The rest of the afternoon Rianne fumed.

At quarter to four, she looked through the library’s tall, wide windows. Luckily, the room took up the better portion of one corner facing the street, where she could watch who entered the grounds and who parked along the curb.

Jon arrived at five to the hour, stopping the pickup exactly where he’d dropped her off. Rianne held her breath. Would he come into the building?

He elected to wait outside his truck, leaning against it the way he had for Seth over at the high school twenty-two years ago. Long, strong legs braced, hiney affixed to the front fender, arms folded over that chest. Dark glasses masking those blue, blue eyes.

Tingles clustered deep in her belly.

Pull yourself together. The last thing you need is another man in your life—especially one who’s used to taking charge.

But he’s a good man, one you’ve never forgotten.

He’s also changed.

She didn’t know if she liked the change. Unfortunately, no matter what she told herself while she typed up a staff memo about new book arrivals, her breathing quickened and her palms dampened. Finished, she stuck the memo in tomorrow’s agenda and rose from her chair.

“Ready?” she called to Emily who was seated at a work center.

Pushing at her glasses, her daughter tossed several pencil crayons into a shoe box. “Are we riding with that guy again?”

“Mr. Tucker, Em. He does have a name.”

No comment. Emily set the shoe box on a shelf Rianne had designated specifically for student accessories. “Do you like my science title page?” her daughter asked.

Beth Baker, Em’s third-grade teacher, was doing a unit on the water cycle. Studying Emily’s work—a wreathed shape of earth, water and sky in various co-existing forms—Rianne smiled. “Great stuff, Em. Did you think this—” she traced the circle “—up yourself?”

“Uh-huh. I still have to color the rivers and lakes. See?”

“Yes, I see, and the sky, too. And the border. Don’t want any white space left.”

“No, and Mrs. Baker said we can hand it in soon’s we’re all done with the unit.” The picture went carefully into a Duotang.

Rianne shut off the library’s lights. “Let’s go home, love.”

The moment they stepped through the entrance doors, Jon came away from the truck in an expeditious move.

“Hi,” he said, voice low, quiet. The sunglasses went into a shirt pocket.

Catching his look, Rianne had the odd feeling that, conditions permitting, he might have set an intimate hand at the back of her waist. But then, he was opening the door, taking Emily’s bag. “Hey, Bo Peep. How was your day?”

“Fine.”

“No nasty ole boys snitchin’ a kiss or two?”

A tiny giggle erupted. “No-ooo! That’s yucky.”

“Good,” he said. He took Rianne’s bag as well and set both on the floorboard of the crew cab. “Wouldn’t want you running off and getting married.”

“Mr. Tucker!” Emily covered her mouth in shock, but her eyes danced behind the round-rimmed glasses.

Oh, Jon, Rianne thought. She was blindsided by his kindness, his goodness. Do you know what you’ve done?

In less than eight hours big, beard-shadowed Jon Tucker had Emily smiling. Giggling. Laughing. Emily who never tittered with a grown man. Duane had seen to that. “Can’t you read yet, Emily Rose? Can’t you add? Come on, get with the program.”

Rianne shuddered. Why hadn’t she left years ago? Because you were afraid. Afraid you’d lose custody of the kids.

No matter. She should have found the fortitude, the courage. For Em and Sam she should have—

Jon cupped her elbow with a work-roughened palm. “Rianne?”

“I can manage the step, thank you.”

“Hurry, Mom. I’m starving.”

“Hang on, short stuff. Your mom doesn’t want to rip her stockings getting in.”

“I can manage,” Rianne repeated and held his gaze until he stepped back.

Another quick, silent trip home. Jon pulled in behind her Toyota. Rianne and Emily climbed from the truck.

“’Bye, Mr. Tucker.” Her daughter ambled toward the backyard, book pack swinging from her skinny little arm.

“See you, Bo Peep.” Shoving the sunglasses onto his head, he slammed the truck’s door, then came around to Rianne, scowling.

Now what? His moods changed quick as the weather.

She said, “Bill Martins at the Garage Center said you were responsible for fixing my battery. Thank you. And for the rides.”

“That why you were ticked at the school? Because I fixed your car?”

“No.” She wasn’t about to explain Duane. “It’s been a long day, that’s all.” She dug into her purse, began writing out a check on the hood of the truck.

“What’re you doing?”

“Paying you what I would’ve paid Bill.”

Her heart fluttered when he snatched the pen out of her hand. “Forget the damned money. I didn’t do it for a reward. The battery was one I had lying around.”

Slowly, carefully, Rianne turned. “If you won’t take payment for the battery I still owe you the cost of installing it.”

“I don’t want your money, Rianne.”

For a long moment his eyes pinned her. Her heart thumped like a drum. She took back the pen. “How much?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

She choked. “Two hundred—”

Not a muscle moved in his hard face. “Take it or leave it.”

She studied her car. A used base model, bought the year she married Duane, the year she’d had Sam. Dented, decrepit, dying.

Jon remained motionless, thumbs hooked in his front pockets, feet planted. Let your eyes warm a little. Just a tad, like they did with Emily. They continued their cool scrutiny.

“Fine,” she snapped. “Two hundred.”

Where she’d get the money, she didn’t know. But she would. As sure as God made apples and pears, she would prove to Jon Tucker and every man like him that she could navigate life’s bites with the best of them.

Finished, she held out the check.

Without a glance, he stashed it in a pocket. Tilting up her chin with a knuckle, he said, “There’s nothing wrong with being a woman, Rianne. Remember that next time a man wants to help you into a vehicle.”

They’d never been this close, inches close. Black rings surrounded his irises, pools of wishes and dreams and fantasies into which she could dip her heart.

Her mouth moved, as if to speak, as if to—

He strode to the driver’s door and leapt into the cab. Full-throttle, the truck backed out of the lane. He didn’t go home. Instead, he gunned it all the way down the street.

She didn’t move. Couldn’t.

Around her silence dropped like a shackle.

Chapter Four

After school, Sam headed for the bike racks at the east door of Misty River High. Unlocking the safety chain from the front tire of his Schwinn, he contemplated asking Joey to sleep over Friday night. With a couple of sleeping bags downstairs, they could watch videos, eat popcorn, talk girls.

Ashley Lorenzo was kind of pretty. He’d caught her looking at him a few times. Once, in study hall, she had even given him a smile. And she never looked at his hand.

Pulling his bike from its stall, Sam saw his friend walk through the doors. “Hey, Joe-man. You riding today?”

“Nah. Bikes’re for little snots.”

“You rode yesterday,” Sam pointed out.

“Yeah, well, yesterday’s history. ’Sides, walking’s better. You get to talk to girls.”

Sam considered that. Across the street he saw Ashley, bag on her shoulder, strolling off with a couple other junior-high girls. Tomorrow he’d leave his bike at home.

“Wanna double anyway?” Sam asked.

Joey debated. Shrugging, he ambled over and perched himself between the handlebars.

Sam peddled out of the school yard. It was tricky balancing a guy twenty pounds heavier on the bike, but Sam wanted muscles and muscles came when you worked up a sweat. “Got much homework?” he asked, peering around Joey’s sturdy frame.

“Nah.”

“Want to do something after?”

“Dunno.”

They were coming up to the intersection leading away from school property. Sam brought the bike to a crawl, checking both ways before striking off across the pavement.

“Hey, Joe!” a thick voice called.

“Code-myster. What’s up, man?” Joey jumped from the handlebars, forcing Sam to stop midway in the street. Cody Huller swaggered up with Mick Lessing. Sam avoided both boys when possible.

A car, waiting for them to cross, honked at the idle group.

“Yeah, yeah,” Huller grumbled with an arrogant glance. “Don’t get your tail in a knot.”

A woman poked her head from the driver’s window. “Come on, you guys, I’m late for an appointment.”

“Hey!” Huller barked. “Chill, okay? This is a school zone.” He ducked his head and flung out his arms in a sarcastic winging of the entire surroundings. With a salute Sam wouldn’t have dared offer in a hundred years, Huller moved toward the opposite curb. Joey snickered. Sam hoped the woman didn’t recognize him.

Huller said, “Claw-man, let Lessing here see your hand. He’s never had a close-up of a cripple before.”

Both laughed. Three girls walking by made tsking noises. Red splashed Joey’s cheeks. His effort to grin failed.

Sam’s chest tangled with a snake. Claw-man. He looked at Joey. His friend looked away. O-kay. Thanks, dude.

Readjusting his bookpack, Sam pushed his bike back to the street and hopped on the seat. “See ya around, Joe.”

“Yeah.”

“Running, wimp?” Huller singsonged. “Can’t take the heat?”

Sam skidded to a stop. A year older than Sam, Huller stood six inches taller and reminded him of a weed his mother yanked from her flower beds last year. Skinny and ugly. “I’m not afraid of you, loser.”

Joey’s jaw dropped. Lessing hooted.

Huller stepped into Sam’s face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

With one hand, the kid shoved Sam back against his bike. Hard. He stumbled, went down, the bike twisting clumsily under him on the pavement. The rear wheel axle caught him in the lower part of his spine, arrowed pain straight up to his skull and down to his toes. Tears pricked his eyes.

Lessing giggled.

Joey stepped forward. “Hey, Cody, take it easy, man.”

The bigger boy swung around. “Who’s side you on, Fraser?”

Joey backed off, flashing a what-can-I-do? look at Sam.

Ignoring the sting in his back, Sam scrambled to his feet, left fist clenched at his side. A hot ball of rage coiled in his stomach. “You sonuva—”

Huller leaned forward. “Say it, cripple. I dare ya.”

Sam spat on the ground between them. Fury blinded him. Through the red haze he saw his father sneering at him. He saw his mother cowering on the floor. He hauled back and rammed his fist into Cody Huller’s gut.

The older boy staggered, surprise glittering in his slitty eyes. He rushed Sam. Together they hit the pavement. No time to consider pain or bruises. Huller slammed a fist into Sam’s face and his left cheekbone sang with pain. Then all he could do was cover his head while Cody Huller had his way.

To Sam it felt like hours, though it probably lasted no more than five seconds. Suddenly, Huller was snatched away.

“What’s going on here?” Mr. Kosky boomed. “You boys got nothing better to do?”

The high school principal helped Sam off the pavement. Dirt ground between his molars. He touched his tongue to a lip split like an over-ripe grape. His left eye dripped water worse than the leaky tap in the bathroom at home. Around them students gathered, gawked. Street traffic slowed to a crawl.

“He started it.” Huller pointed at Sam. “He punched first.”

“That right?” Kosky asked.

Sam looked away. Right or wrong, he wasn’t saying. Let the principal think what he wanted.

Trouble was, the man had the body of a compact engine. Muscled forearms, solid thighs, a barrel chest. Hard to ignore a guy like that training his hawk eyes on Sam. “You need to get some antiseptic on that cut, son.”

To the other three standing on the sidewalk, gazes shifting everywhere, Kosky ordered, “Cody, Joey, Mick. I want you all in my office. Immediately. You, too, Sam.”

“I didn’t do nothing!” Huller cried. “It was his fault!”

“We’ll deal with it in the office, Cody.” The principal scanned the crowd. “The rest of you go home.”

The crowd of students began splitting up. By suppertime, the whole school would know. By tomorrow, half of Chinook Elementary would have heard from their older brothers and sisters.

Shame washed over Sam. Emily. He imagined her big eyes brimming with panic again. He’d bet every cent he had in the meager savings account his mom had opened for him that tonight his sister would sleep with her blankey and for the next week gnaw her pinky until it resembled a raw breakfast sausage.

As for his mother’s reaction…forget it.

Rianne unlocked the back door and waited for Sam and Emily to proceed into the house. Barely half over, the week was turning into a spiel to rival CNN news. First, her car battery, then Jon and his outrageous installation fee, and now Sam played action hero and reaped a two-day school suspension.

Pointing to the kitchen table, she said, “Sit, both of you. We have some things to discuss.”

Sam dropped his bag and threw himself onto a chair. “What for? Everything was said in Mr. Kosky’s office.”

Hugging her bookpack, Emily sat across the table, myopic eyes on her brother.

“What I need to say is private.” Rianne leaned against the counter. She couldn’t sit, not while anger churned her blood. Sam’s eye looked awful. Beneath it, puffy half moons pushed the lids to a slit. Yellow antiseptic—which Greg Kosky had applied—colored the boy’s thin cheekbone.

A ringing quiet fell. Sam jiggled the toe of one dusty sneaker. He refused to look at Rianne.

Emily stuck her little finger into the corner of her mouth.

On the floor by the corner window, Sweetpea lounged on a small flowered mat with her two-week-old offspring tumbling playfully around her. The animal gave Rianne a squint-eyed look, licked the face of Squeak, a scruffy-tailed, dappled kitten that walked with its hips to one side.

Rianne took a deep breath. “Sam, I understand why you hit Cody. He said some cruel things.”

Sam looked out the window. “He called me a cripple.”

“Yes, he did,” she conceded, wondering if her heart could shred further. In Greg Kosky’s office, with students and parents present, the Huller boy had admitted to the fact.

“Just like Dad used to.” A tear dripped from Sam’s wounded eye. He swiped it with the heel of his hand and winced.

“Yes, just like your father,” she echoed, wanting to hold her son, shield him, protect him from all abhorrences in the world.

Sam lifted his head, fighting not to cry. “When Cody pushed me all I could see was Dad and—and you. I had to stop him.”

Without delay, Rianne knelt in front of her child and clasped his dirt-stained hands. “Sam, don’t let your father’s behavior influence your emotions when someone hurts you verbally. It isn’t right.”

“What Dad did wasn’t right either, but you let him do it.”

She squelched a cry. Oh, Lord, she had to make him see. She had to show him that fists, foul words and rages were not the way to solve problems or get what he wanted, when he wanted it.

“Do you think I’m proud of that? I kept forgiving your father, hoping he’d change, hoping I could change him. It took me a long time—years, in fact—to realize he never would, that what he did was not a demonstration of love, but a weakness of spirit.” She squeezed Sam’s hands. “Honey, you are not weak of spirit. You’re strong, good, beautiful. Inside and out. If someone can’t see that, it’s their loss, not yours.”

He jumped up. “I hate who I am! I hate that I don’t have normal hands like every other kid! Why was I born this way?”

Battling tears, he ran down the hall. Seconds later, his bedroom door slammed hard enough to slip the pictures on the walls. The kittens wrestling with the mat wobbled hurriedly to their mother’s comforting body.

“Mommy?”

Emily slid from her chair and came around the table. Wrapping her arms around Rianne’s neck, she straddled her lap and hugged her close.

“It’s okay, honey.” Rianne stroked the child’s hair. “Sam’s just upset about what happened today.”

“Will we have to move away?”

Her heart constricted. “No. Sam likes it here, and so do you. This is only a little bump in the road.” She hoped.

“Then why did he say those things about his hand?”

“Because he’s hurting right now.”

“That boy wasn’t nice,” Emily murmured.

“Some people aren’t.” Life fact number one.

A hush fell. Sweetpea purred reassuringly to her family. Emily snuggled closer. “Mr. Tucker wouldn’t say those things.”

“He doesn’t have a disease. He has an individual hand, is all.” No, Jon would never hurt Sam. Jon was a man. Not a coward.

A good man.

A decent man.

A man—two hundred dollars be damned—she could fall for. If she was interested. Which I’m not.

She kissed Emily’s hair. “Let’s scrounge up some supper.”

“Mom?”

“Yes, sweets?”

“I think Mr. Tucker would beat that kid up, don’t you?”

Rianne cupped her child’s face and willed the kink in her stomach to loosen. “Emily, Jon would not lay a finger on Cody Huller. Ever.” Perhaps her certainty had to do with what had happened more than twenty years ago with Gene Hyde.

The corners of Emily’s mouth lifted. “Me, either. Not really.” She settled a cheek against Rianne. “I like it when he calls me Bo Peep,” she said shyly.

Rianne gave her a hard hug. “I do, too, sweetheart.”

“He’s nice.”

“Mmm.” And handsome. And kindhearted. And… Oh, Rianne, do not go there.

The flashlight beam flickered a third time on the other side of the juniper border. Edging along the wall of his unlit kitchen, Jon felt the hair at the back of his neck climb.

Someone was in Rianne’s backyard.

He checked his wristwatch. Ten fifty-four. Who the hell was skulking around on a night swarthier than sin? On a Wednesday night, no less. A school night. Except for the dim wash of yellow in her kitchen window—the stove light he guessed—Rianne’s house had been dark since ten o’clock. Again, he checked the time. Two minutes.

Three.

He waited. Peered through the black pane. Five minutes.

Whoever it was hadn’t moved more than four feet, or lifted the flashlight higher than six inches off the ground.

Twenty years on the force spurred him into action. Silently, he went through his dark house to the front door. He’d ambush the bastard from her carport. Face to face.

Slipping into a pair of chewed-up sneakers, he went out the door, crept down the veranda steps. The day had closed with a bank of dirty, gray clouds; night prevailed in starless slumber.

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