Mala stared at the man, hard, as her heart freefell straight to her pelvis.

And her brain warped back twenty years to a time when nobody knew that Spruce Lake High’s senior class president had a secret crush on a bad-ass kid whose ice-chip blue eyes regularly sent chills of forbidden promises down her spine, even though he never—not once—returned her smile.

A boy with sinfully thick, caramel-brown hair and the sharply defined, beard-shadowed face of a man; a boy whose lean, muscled body had filled out his worn, fitted jeans and T-shirts like nobody’s business, whose direct, disquieting gaze spoke of innocence lost but not regretted. He had appeared out of nowhere, a month into their senior year, only to vanish six weeks before graduation. Mala hadn’t seen him since.

Until today.

Dear Reader,

A new year has begun, so why not celebrate with six exciting new titles from Silhouette Intimate Moments? What a Man’s Gotta Do is the newest from Karen Templeton, reuniting the one-time good girl, now a single mom, with the former bad boy who always made her heart pound, even though he never once sent a smile her way. Until now.

Kylie Brant introduces THE TREMAINE TRADITION with Alias Smith and Jones, an exciting novel about two people hiding everything about themselves—except the way they feel about each other. There’s still TROUBLE IN EDEN in Virginia Kantra’s All a Man Can Ask, in which an undercover assignment leads (predictably) to danger and (unpredictably) to love. By now you know that the WINGMEN WARRIORS flash means you’re about to experience top-notch military romance, courtesy of Catherine Mann. Under Siege, a marriage-of-inconvenience tale, won’t disappoint. Who wouldn’t like A Kiss in the Dark from a handsome hero? So run—don’t walk—to pick up the book of the same name by rising star Jenna Mills. Finally, enjoy the winter chill—and the cozy cuddling that drives it away—in Northern Exposure, by Debra Lee Brown, who sends her heroine to Alaska to find love.

And, of course, we’ll be back next month with six more of the best and most exciting romances around, so be sure not to miss a single one.

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

What a Man’s Gotta Do
Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KAREN TEMPLETON,

a Waldenbooks bestselling author, is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty diapers are not mutually exclusive terms. An Easterner transplanted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she spends far too much time trying to coax her garden to yield roses and produce something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasizing about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

This RITA® Award-nominated author loves to hear from readers, who may reach her by writing c/o Silhouette Books, 300 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10017, or online at www.karentempleton.com.

Dedication

To my mother—known these days as Grandma Kay—who has steadfastly supported whatever harebrained thing I’ve ever wanted to do. A mother five times over myself, I now understand just how much courage that sometimes took.

Acknowledgments

To Roger Huder, not only for his crash scene rescue team expertise, but because he also gamely helped me find a way to place my hero in the middle of things. And to Marilyn Pappano, who read an early draft of the scene in question and didn’t say, “You’ve got to be kidding.” Many thanks!

In memory of

Kathy McCormick, M.D., my steadfast advisor on all things medical for several years. You will always be remembered for your patience, generosity and kindness.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Eddie King never had understood what it was about him that seemed to shake people up. Not that the pregnant lady frowning at his résumé on the other side of the cluttered, pockmarked desk seemed particularly shook up, exactly. But Eddie was hard-pressed not to notice that Galen Farentino hadn’t yet quite looked him straight in the eye, either, even though she was the one doing the hiring.

He supposed a lot of people thought he was a bit on the eccentric side, if not at least worth keeping one eye on. For one thing, old Levi’s and cowboy boots didn’t fit most folks’ expectations of what a five-star-quality chef was supposed to look like. Then when you factored in his refusal to get riled up about much, his preference for keeping to himself, the way he kept flitting from job to job after all these years…hell, in somebody else’s shoes, he’d probably keep one eye on him, too.

Eddie linked his hands over his stomach, thinking how much the cramped office tucked behind the restaurant kitchen still looked pretty much like it had two decades ago. His peripheral vision caught the photo on one corner of the desk, a wedding shot of his prospective employer and some huge, dark-haired man in a tux. One of the man’s arms possessively encircled his bride’s waist, while the other supported a tiny blond girl on his hip. All three of ’em wore sappy grins.

Eddie glanced away, like the picture hurt his eyes.

He idly scratched his prickly cheek, thinking he needed a shave, bad, after that long drive from Florida. It was crazy, coming all the way up here when this job wasn’t even in the bag yet. And why he’d been led to come back to Spruce Lake, he’d never know. Molly and Jervis had both passed away years ago, so it wasn’t like he had any real ties to the place. And anyway, Eddie usually steered clear of small towns, much preferring the anonymity of the big city. But that ad in the trade rag on his former boss’s desk had just kinda leapt out at him, and since the thought of spending the winter someplace where they actually had winter was not altogether unattractive, he’d figured what the hell. Since it’d been years since he’d applied for a job he hadn’t gotten, he wasn’t too worried about getting this one. And if he didn’t? No big deal. He’d just move on.

He was real used to moving on.

“Your references are very impressive, Mr. King,” the redhead now said, more to his résumé than to him. He guessed her to be around his age, but she mustn’t’ve been in Spruce Lake back then, since he didn’t recognize her. Then she looked up, reluctantly almost, her face not much darker than that white turtleneck sweater she had on underneath her denim maternity jumper. She’d said on the phone that both her doctor and her husband had ordered her to go easy for the remainder of her pregnancy, and that she then intended to take at least six, possibly eight, weeks maternity leave after that. So the job would last four, five months at the outside. Which suited Eddie fine.

As if reading his mind, she said, “I couldn’t help but notice you’ve worked in—” she glanced again at the résumé, then back at him “—eight different states in nine years.”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s true.”

Her head tilted. “Yet every reference I contacted said they were sorry to see you go. In fact, the owner of La Greque in New Orleans told me he offered you quite a handsome salary to stay on.”

“He sure did.” Galen’s eyebrows lifted, encouraging an explanation. Eddie shifted in the same seventies-era molded plastic chair his butt had warmed during more than one lecture all those years ago. “They were all temporary jobs, ma’am. Fill-ins, just like this one. Which is the way I like it, seeings as I don’t like getting tied down to one kind of cooking for too long.”

The phone rang, cutting off further interrogation. Galen mouthed a “sorry” and took the call. Eddie crossed his ankle at the knee in the don’t-give-a-damn pose that Al Jackson, Eddie’s septuagenarian boss back when this had still been the Spruce Lake Diner, had seen straight through. An odd, rusty emotion whimpered way in the back of Eddie’s brain; he frowned slightly at the scuffed heel of his boot, concentrating instead on the early season snow snicking arrhythmically against the office’s tiny, high-set window. He hadn’t mentioned his former ties to the place to his prospective employer—what would be the point?—but now that he was here, this odd, unsettled feeling kept nagging at him, like maybe there were answers here to questions he’d never bothered to ask before. Never wanted to.

Galen hung up the phone, picked up a pen and started twiddling with it. Her plain gold wedding band glinted in the flat light. “If I hire you, can I trust you won’t leave me high and dry?”

He kept his gaze steady, almost sighing in exasperation as a telltale blush swept up the woman’s cheeks. All he was doing was looking at her, for God’s sake. And if it was one thing Al had drummed into him, it was that if you want respect—if you want folks to take you seriously—you had to look them in the eye when you talked to them, a philosophy only reinforced by four years in the Marines. “I may not be in the market for anything permanent, ma’am, but I don’t leave people in the lurch. I’ll stay as long as you need me to.”

After a moment, she apparently decided to believe him. “Glad to hear it,” she said, then awkwardly pushed herself up from her chair. Eddie stood as well, ducking underneath the still too-small door frame as he followed the woman back out into the immaculate kitchen, where a half-dozen assistants were preparing for the evening rush. The restaurant/pizzeria had taken over the building next door as well, making Galen’s twice the size of the original diner, but the kitchen didn’t look much different than it had. Oh, some of the equipment had been updated—a bigger, fancier stove, a pair of new Sub-Zero refrigerators—but otherwise, it, too, was just like he remembered. A shudder of déjà vu traipsed up his spine; it was right here that an old man had cared enough to show a displaced Southern boy with a two-ton chip on his shoulder how to channel all that resentment into making apple pie and hamburgers and beef stew and real milk shakes.

To do something with his life, instead of bitchin’ about it.

He realized Galen was looking at him, her smile slightly apologetic. “You know, we don’t have to do this right now,” she said. “I mean, you probably want to find someplace to stay first, get settled in?”

Eddie shoved back his open denim jacket to hook his thumbs in his pockets. “Already did that, as a matter of fact. Got a room in a motel right outside of town. Figure I’ll look for a furnished apartment or something, once you hire me.” When she didn’t take the bait, he added, “I can cook in my sleep, ma’am. So now’s as good a time as any.”

“Well, if you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, then. Well, we agreed on three dishes, right? Your choice, except that one of them needs to pretty standard—red spaghetti sauce, lasagna, ravioli, something like that. I don’t care about the others, as long as they’re Italian. If they pass muster—”

“They will.”

“—if they pass muster,” Galen repeated, “you can start tomorrow.”

Eddie stuck out his hand, quickly shook Galen’s. “Deal,” he said, then shrugged off his jacket, shoved up his sweater sleeves and slipped into the only world he trusted.

This morning, it had been nearly sixty and sunny. Now, at four-thirty, it was barely above freezing, and had been spitting snow for two hours already. And Mala Koleski, whose thirty-seven-year-old body’s themostat didn’t take kindly to sudden temperature changes, was freezing her hiney off. She wished.

“Come on, guys,” she said through chattering teeth as she hustled the kids down her mother’s ice-glazed walk and into Whitey, her ten-year-old Ford Escort, blinking against the tiny snow pellets needling her face. She usually tried to meet the school bus herself in the afternoons—a definite advantage to working from home—but it had taken her far longer than she’d expected to unearth last month’s receivables from the garden center’s new computer program after one of their employees decided to be “helpful.” So now she was running late. And freezing to death. And grateful she’d gotten away from her mother’s before the woman could scrutinize her for signs of physical and emotional decay.

“I need to stop at the restaurant for a sec,” she said, yanking open the back door, “then we’ve got to get home or else there’s gonna be a couple nekkid Pilgrims in the school play tonight. For God’s sake, Carrie—button your coat!”

“I’m not cold,” her seven-year-old daughter announced through a toothless gap as Mala practically shoved them both into the back seat.

“Why can’t I sit up front?” Lucas whined.

“B-because it’s not safe,” she said to Lucas, clutching her sweater-coat to her chest. Her nipples were so rigid, they stung. “Carrie. Now. Button up.”

Underneath a froth of snow-kissed, coppery curls, a pair of big blue eyes blinked back at her. “No.”

“Fine. Freeze.” Mala slammed shut the door and scurried around to the driver’s side, hurtling herself behind the wheel. Yes, she knew the child would moan about how cold she was in five minutes, but tough. Mala had more pressing things to occupy her pretty little head about. Like finishing up those damn costumes. Thawing out her nipples. Figuring out how to finance Christmas without putting it on plastic. Again. Finding a new tenant for the upstairs apartment before the first big heating bill came. One who maybe wouldn’t just up and leave, stiffing her for two months’ back rent—

“Mama?” Lucas said behind her. “I gots to pee.”

“Hold it until we get to Galen’s, ’kay?” She gingerly steered the car onto Main Street, tucking one side of her hopelessly straight pageboy behind her ear. The bright red hair, the kids had clearly gotten from their father, but Carrie’s curls were a total mystery.

The car’s rear end shimmied a couple inches to the right; silently cursing, Mala carefully steered with the skid, pulled out of it. New tires—ones with actual treads—had just officially been promoted to the top of the priority list. Tires she might’ve had already if that jerk hadn’t—

“I’m gonna wet my pants!”

“Do and you die,” Carrie, ever the diplomat, cooly replied.

“Carrie,” Mala said in her Warning Voice, despite feeling pretty much the same way. “Two more blocks, Luc—cross your legs or something.”

Lucas started to whimper; Carrie started in about wussy, crybaby brothers, and Mala turned on the windshield wipers, thinking of all the joy Scott had missed by walking out of their lives three years ago. Okay, so maybe Mala had given him a push, but still.

She eased the car through a four-way stop, then glided into a parking space in the alley behind the restaurant, casting a brief but appreciative glance at the snow-speckled, pepper-red Camaro parked a few feet in front of her. Lucas was out of the car before she’d turned off the engine, hauling his bony little butt toward the propped open kitchen door.

“Lucas! Don’t run—!”

“I told him to go before we left Grandma’s,” Her Supreme Highness intoned from the back seat, “but would he listen to me? Noooo—”

Splat! went the kid on the icy asphalt.

With a sigh, Mala hauled herself out of the car and toward the heap of now-sobbing-child lying facedown in the alley, her flat-soled boots slipping mercilessly in the quickly accumulating snow. Considering Lucas had on at least four layers of clothes, she doubted he was hurt, but she’d long since learned that the decibel level of his screams was in direct and inverse proportion to the seriousness of the injury. A stranger, however—like the tall man now darting out of the restaurant’s kitchen door, snowflakes clutching his thick, wavy hair and heavy sweater like crystalized burrs—might well think the child had been set upon by ravening wolves.

“You okay, kid?” the man asked as Mala reached them both. In fact, he’d already helped the child to his feet, thereby proving that nothing was broken, although you sure wouldn’t have known that from the Lucy Ricardo wail emanating from her son’s throat.

“Yes, I’m sure he’s fine,” Mala said in the guy’s general direction as she squatted down in front of her howling son. “Lucas! Luc, for heaven’s sake…” She tried to keep her teeth from knocking as she dusted dry snow from the child’s face and spiky hair. At least his glasses hadn’t fallen off, for once. “It’s okay, sweetie—”

“I falled dooooown!”

Mala tilted the child’s face toward the light spearing from the partially open door. Nope. No blood. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Carrie’s approach, the child’s expression even more serious than usual underneath the fake-fur rimmed hood of her coat. Which was done up, surprise, surprise.

“Mama told you not to run, dork-face,” she began, but there was genuine concern threaded through the otherwise imperious tones. Her daughter could be a pain in the patoot at times, but she was a protective pain in the patoot. Especially toward her younger brother, and especially since Scott’s vanishing act. Just ask Josh Morgan, the third-grader who’d gotten Carrie’s loaded backpack in the groin last year when he’d reduced her son to tears by calling him “Lucas Mucus.” Still, the smart-mouth comment earned her Mala’s glare. Carrie sighed. “Is he hurt?”

“Other than his pride, uh-uh,” Mala said, straightening Lucas’s wire-rimmed glasses and planting a quick kiss on his cold little lips before allowing herself the luxury of breathing in the warm, garlic-laced air beckoning from the noisy kitchen. Her stomach rumbled; she’d skipped lunch, and the thought of the canned chili she’d planned for tonight’s dinner made her very depressed.

Lucas glanced up at the man standing silently a few feet away—oh, right, an audience—then back at Mala. “I wet my pants,” he whispered on a sob, and she got more depressed. Especially when Carrie groaned.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Mala whispered back, skimming tears off the mortified little face. “There’s dry clothes in the trunk.” With all the stuff she carted around in that trunk, she could outfit an emergency storm shelter for a month.

She finally hoisted herself upright, fighting the urge to groan as her joints popped—that extra twenty pounds she was still lugging around from Lucas’s pregnancy wasn’t doing her any favors—trying to get a good look at the man who’d come to Lucas’s rescue. Except, between his skulking in the shadows in the darkening alley, as if not quite sure what to make of her kids—an understandable reaction—and the snow pinging into her eyes, all she got was a vague impression of angles and clefts and lashes no man should be allowed to have, dammit.

Along with a subsidiary impression that those angles and clefts and long lashes were somehow familiar.

“Thanks,” she said, guiding the still whimpering Lucas toward the door.

The man nodded, muttering “S’okay” in a soft, Southern accent.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Mala whipped around so fast she nearly knocked Carrie over. Oblivious to her daughter’s affronted “Mama!” she stared at the man, hard, as her heart free-fell straight to her pelvis and her brain warped back twenty years to a time when she could still get into jeans that didn’t have elastic at the waist, a time when nobody knew that Spruce Lake High’s Senior Class President had a secret crush on a bad-ass kid whose ice-chip blue eyes regularly sent chills of forbidden promises down her spine, even though he never—not once—returned her smile.

A boy with sinfully thick, caramel-brown hair and the sharply defined, beard-shadowed face of a man; a boy whose lean, muscled body had filled out his worn, fitted jeans and T-shirts like nobody’s business, whose direct, disquieting gaze spoke of innocence lost but not regretted. He showed up at school every day, yet never spoke to anyone, never carried around any books, neither got involved in any activities nor caused any trouble. Not that Mala knew of, at least. He had appeared out of nowhere, a month into their senior year, only to vanish six weeks before graduation. Mala hadn’t seen him since.

Until today.

She stood there, hugging herself against the cold, barely aware of Lucas’s entreaties to get inside as she let Eddie King once again ensnare her gaze in his.

Then it dropped, unerringly and unapologetically, to her breasts, and she thought, Hold the phone—somebody noticed. Damn, she’d just about forgotten what it felt like to have a man look at her with a little Hmmm in his expression. God knew, Scott sure hadn’t. Not once she’d gotten pregnant with Lucas, at least. Yeah, yeah, so she was a feminist turncoat. Tough. Rushes of sexual awareness didn’t often happen to single mothers with two kids and too many pounds plastered to their butts. It was kinda nice, having her nipples tighten for some other reason than being cold.

Even if it was just a passing thing.

At seventeen, she’d been the quintessential good girl, while Eddie King had been the quintessential good girl’s fantasy. At thirty-seven, not a whole lot had changed on that score.

But she had. At seventeen, she’d still believed in “one day…” At thirty-seven, that day had come and gone. But not before taking a healthy chunk out of her ample butt on its way out the door.

Eddie had no use for memories. The bad ones—and there were plenty of those—he’d ditched years ago. And the few good ones…well, that’d be like refusing to throw away a pair of shoes you’d outgrown, wouldn’t it? No matter how cool they were, if they didn’t fit, no sense hanging on to ’em.

Mala Koleski had been a pair of shoes that’d been the wrong size from the get-go. A pair of shoes he’d never even bothered trying on.

Not that he hadn’t been tempted.

In any case, he hadn’t thought about her in years. Yet all it took was one chance meeting, a split second’s worth of a connection that was startlingly and unmistakably sexual, to haul those memories of her front and center, boy, all shined up and ready for inspection.

Whether he liked it or not.

The kids annihilated the moment, as kids tended to do, and they’d all stumbled back inside, where he and Mala did this dumb so-wow-how-are-you-doing-fine-and-you? number until she’d shepherded her babies into Galen’s office and Eddie’d gone back to the stove.

Where the sizzling sausage and peppers now taunted him. Galen had more or less left him to his own devices, and instructed her staff to do the same, even though they’d been helpful enough about showing him where everything was. Still, he could feel them all watching him as they went about their chores, like they were wondering how he was gonna pull this one off. Not from meanness, nothing like that. Just…curious. Probably as much about why he didn’t join in their jawin’ as about his cooking skills.

Well, if he got the job, they’d figure out that one soon enough. He was into doing his job, period, not getting overly chummy with his co-workers. It wasn’t that he had anything against being friendly. And that chip he used to cart around had pretty much disintegrated years ago. He’d tell the occasional joke, put up his two bucks for the football pool or pitch in for somebody’s wedding present, stuff like that. He just had no use for getting involved in people’s personal lives.

Just like he had no use for anyone getting involved in his.

Eddie grabbed the bottle of wine set to one side, dashed some into the pan, reveling in the fruity steam that billowed up. From the office, he heard Mala’s laugh.

Soft. That had been the only word to come to mind the first time he saw her, dashing between classes, surrounded by a half-dozen giggling girlfriends. Everything about her—her full figure, her velvet-smooth voice, even her perfume, which hadn’t been overpowering like most of the other girls’—had made him think of being someplace warm and comfortable and…soft. She’d glanced at him, just for a heartbeat, as she whizzed past on her high-heeled sandals, and all the air just whooshed from his lungs at the sight of those vaguely curious green-gold cat’s eyes. A smile, genuine and just this side of devilish, erupted between round, dimpled cheeks, but he wasn’t completely sure it’d been for him. He remembered standing stock-still in her wake, watching the ends of her dark, gleaming hair twitching across the top of a generous bottom unabashedly displayed in snug designer jeans. An achy sense of longing that he never, ever allowed himself—not then, not now—had damn near knocked him over.

Eddie chuckled to himself as he turned down the heat under the pan. Oh, he’d ached, all right. Hell, his physical reaction at the time had embarrassed the life out of him. While it had been hardly the first time the sight of some girl had gotten him hot, it had definitely been the first time he’d feared for the buttons on his 501’s. And while he was way beyond getting embarrassed about things like that these days, he wasn’t beyond being startled. Because damned if those buttons weren’t being put to the test again.

Her hair might be shorter, and that pretty face attested to the fact that she was a woman in her late thirties. But the eyes still held that note of devilment, and the dimples were still there, and her voice had ripened into a huskiness that both soothed and excited. And she was still soft as a hundred down pillows all piled on top of each other.

And still out of his reach.

Behind him, he heard a minor commotion as Mala apparently ushered the boy through the kitchen to the bathroom in order to change his pants. Mama-mode suited her well, he decided, although he also decided not to think too hard about the man responsible for those kids. The man who got to snuggle up to all that softness every night.

Dimly, he heard the boy start crying again.

He dragged over a bowl of already cooked rigatoni, dumped out the sausage-pepper mixture. Damn, those kids were something else, weren’t they? The girl, especially—whoo-ee. She’d put the fear of God in King Kong. And the boy—what was up with the crybaby routine? Kid had to be, what? Five, six? And still bawling from a tumble in the snow? Shew, Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. Being the new kid on the playground every year or two kinda knocks that right out of you—

“What’s that?”

He looked down into a pair of challenging blue eyes underneath an explosion of red curls that didn’t look real. Long legs in white, lacy tights or whatever you called them peeked out from underneath a purple jumper with flowers all over it, incongruously ending in clunky pink-and-silver sneakers. Kid was skinny, but not fragile. Probably one of those girls who liked to beat up boys. And did, regularly. “Italian sausage and peppers. Wanna taste?”

That got a wrinkled nose. “No, thank you. Peppers don’t agree with me.”

Cocking one brow, Eddie opened one oven door to remove the baked ziti. Instantly, the temperature in the kitchen rose another ten degrees. It wasn’t that he didn’t like kids, even though the idea of having any of his own never even made the playoffs. He just never quite knew what to make of them, was all. “Who told you that?”

“Nobody told me,” came the indignant reply. “I get all burpy when I eat them. What’s your name?”

Eddie straightened, set the ziti on the prep table behind them, then grabbed a towel from the bar on the stove, wiped his hands. Where the hell was the kid’s mother? “Eddie King. And yours?”

“Caroline Sedgewick, but most people call me Carrie. My mama’s Galen’s accountant. That’s why we’re here, so she can get some papers or something so she can take them home and work on our computer. After she finishes our costumes for the play tonight. Galen’s gonna have a baby pretty soon. That’s why her belly’s so big. Are you the new cook?”

Figuring the question signaled a break in the onslaught, Eddie said, “That’s what I’m hopin’. You know, you sure got a lot to say for such a little thing.”

“I know.” Unaffected, the child hiked herself up onto a nearby stool, making something sparkle on the sneakers. “I’m in first grade, but I can read better’n anybody in my class. Better’n some second graders, too. Lucas can’t even write his name right yet, and he’s only a year younger’n me. But he’s a boy. And everybody knows boys are slower’n girls.”

“Oh?”

“Uh-huh. Well, ’cept for my uncle Steve, who lives out on a farm. He just got married last summer and we all got to go to the wedding, which was all the way over in Europe because Aunt Sophie’s a princess. But I heard Grandma Bev tell Pop-Pop one day when they didn’t know I could hear ’em talking that my daddy was dumber than…well, it’s a word that rhymes with ‘spit’ but I’m not supposed to say it.” Then she pointed. “What’s that around your neck?”

Feeling slightly dizzy—what was that about somebody marrying a princess?—Eddie felt for the chain that was always there, then slipped it out from underneath his sweater. Had to admit, the kid was kinda entertaining. If you were into bossy little girls with egos the size of Canada. And one thing he’d say for someone who talked that much: it made his part in the conversation much eaiser. “It’s a cross. Used to belong to my mama.”

Carrie leaned over to inspect it. He half expected her to whip out a jeweler’s loop. “It’s pretty. How come you have it?”

“My mama gave it to me right before she died, when I was real little. About your age, in fact.”

She looked up, her expression melting into what Eddie could only surmise was genuine sympathy, tugging something in his chest he didn’t want tugged. “Are you sad? That your mama died?”

“It was a long time ago. Like I said.”

“Oh. Where’s your daddy?”

With a shrug, he slipped the cross back inside his sweater, his emotions back inside their little box. “I have no idea.”

Eddie realized the child was scrutinizing him like she was trying to decide whether or not to admit him to the club. “My daddy left us when I was four,” she said at last, showing a sudden interest in the way the flowers were arranged on her jumper. “We don’t know where he is, either—”

“Carrie—for heaven’s sake! Stop pestering the poor man!”

Eddie turned around to see Mala, Lucas in tow, jerkily shrugging back into her long tweedy sweater. The two spots of color sitting high on her cheeks kinda clued him in that she’d overheard.

“It’s okay,” he said, surprised to discover he meant it. At least, for the moment. Not that he wanted to make it a habit, mind, of having heart-to-hearts with little girls.

“Yeah, well…” Downright humming with nervous energy, Mala tugged a strand of electrified hair out of one gold loop earring as she dangled a red-and-black car coat in front of her son. Although she looked good—damn good—she’d put on a few pounds since high school, which she’d done her best to cover up with a baggy ivory sweater over a straight, beige skirt that came nearly to the insteps of her flat-heeled boots. Too bad, ’cause he’d bet she’d look real fine in a pair of those tight jeans like she used to wear. “She can talk your ear off, if you let her. C’mon, Luc…get this on—”

The strain in her voice tore another memory loose, of him and his mother walking down some street, somewhere, his hand tightly clamped in hers as she hurried along, as if trying to outrun her tears. He’d been four, maybe five, afraid to ask his mother why she was crying in case he was somehow at fault.

“I’m real sorry to hear about your husband,” he said.

Mala glanced at him, clearly as startled as he was, then away. “S’okay. It’s ancient history now. But thanks. I guess. Lucas, now. We’ve got to go—”

“Not until you help me with a taste test!” Galen said as she waddled over to the prep table. She planted her hands on her swollen belly, either ignoring or oblivious to the tension sputtering around her. “Wow, it smells absolutely fantastic!” She picked up a fork from the tray on the end of the table and went after the sausage and peppers. “C’mon, Mal—dig in. You know you want to.”

“Galen, really, I’d love to—” Mala wrestled the coat onto the boy, who kept craning his neck to stare at Eddie like he couldn’t figure out what he was “—but I’m so far behind now—”

“Oh, my God!” Galen pressed her hand to her chest, her expression downright rapturous, then dug into the ziti. Two seconds of chewing later, she said, “You can start looking for that apartment, because mister, you are hired! Mmm, Mal—” she swallowed “—what about yours?”

“What about my what?”

“Your upstairs apartment. Didn’t you say you were looking for a tenant?”

The words bad and idea came roaring out onto the field from opposite sides of Eddie’s brain and collided right at the fifty-yard line. It was one thing dealing with tight jeans for fifteen minutes, another thing entirely dealing with the prospect of being permanently—and hopelessly—erect for the next four or five months.

Because that’s what living anywhere near this woman would mean. He didn’t understand any more now than he did twenty years ago what it was about Mala Koleski that turned him on so much, but the fact was, she did. However, what he did understand was that—even allowing for the mutual consideration of such an eventuality—women with kids were bad news, not unless the idea of long haul was at least sitting on the sidelines. Hell, in Eddie’s case, they weren’t even in the stadium.

And judging from Mala’s expression, she apparently thought the idea held about the same appeal as lying naked on hot coals. He wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or flattered. Or what to do with the image of her lying naked on anything, which was now stuck to his brain like a piece of Scotch tape you can’t shake off. “Oh, uh…eventually, sure,” Mala said, then waved her hands. “Wait a minute…what about the apartment over the restaurant?”

“Not available. I promised it to Hannah Braden a few days ago.” Galen turned to Eddie, her nose wrinkled. “College kid, wants a little independence, you know how it is.”

“Well, my place isn’t available, either. I mean, not yet.” Cheeks blazing, Mala knelt down to zip the kid’s coat. “It’s not fixed up. The other tenants left it in a real mess and—”

“Oh, get over yourself. What did they do…leave crumbs on the counter? Besides, you just said yourself you needed to get someone in there soon.”

Shew. That glare Mala was giving Galen could broil steaks.

“Hey, look, it’s okay,” Eddie interjected before somebody spontaneously combusted. “Besides, I need to find someplace furnished—”

“Oh, it is,” Galen said, a tiny frown nestling between her brows, like she was wondering why everybody was making this so complicated. “And it’s just a few blocks away, too.” Then she leaned over and stage-whispered, “And she’s a real pushover. Bet she’d let you have it for next to nothing.”

“Galen! Honestly! Would you mind letting me negotiate my own deals?”

A triumphant smile spread across the redhead’s face. “Be my guest.”

Mala opened her mouth, only to immediately shut it again.

A short person tugged on Eddie’s sleeve. He looked down into Lucas’s blue eyes, fought the urge to straighten the kid’s glasses. “If you come live with us, I’ll let you borrow Mr. Boffin.”

“Lucas, for heaven’s sake—he wouldn’t be living with us! Just…oh, rats.” Mala forked one hand through her hair, which only added to her frazzled look. Then she said to Galen, “Mind if we use your office?” turned on her flat heel at Galen’s “Sure” and stomped to the back.

Chapter 2

Eddie followed, shutting the door behind him. Damn, but it was a small office.

“Open the door,” Mala said.

He did. It didn’t help.

As badly as he’d wanted to see if she was as soft as she’d looked twenty years ago, that was nothing compared with how much he wanted to find out now. And if it’d only been a certain part of his anatomy talking, he probably could’ve ignored it a lot better than he was doing. But there was something else going on here, something he didn’t understand and certainly didn’t like. Something that involved wanting to ease those worry lines in her brow and convince her that not all men were idiots even though Eddie wasn’t all that sure they weren’t.

Especially the ones in this room.

“We don’t have to let her bully us, you know,” she said, startling a grin out of him.

He slipped his hands in his pockets, wondering if it was just his imagination that Mala seemed to be having a real hard time focusing on his face. “No, I suppose we don’t.” And here’s where he could have said, without any trouble at all, “And I could just go find someplace else, so why don’t we just forget about it?” So nobody was more surprised than him to hear come out of his mouth, “But sounds to me like you got an apartment that needs a tenant. And it just so happens I need a place to live. So this could be a mutually advantageous proposition, when you get right down to it.”

Mala looked at him, wide-eyed, while he weighed the danger of getting down to…things and wondered when his mouth and libido had joined forces against his brain. She crossed her arms. “Do you smoke?”

“Not anymore.”

For a second, she almost looked disappointed. Except then she half smiled, just enough for him to see the dimples, and he thought maybe she was about to say something else. Only she didn’t, not right then at least, like her thoughts had tripped her up. He thought again about this business of him unintentionally rattling women the way he did, and it occurred to him that this one didn’t seem to be quite as rattled as most. At least, not in the same way. Even as a teenager, she’d had no compunction about looking him dead in the eye. And even now, while he could plainly see something like fear etched in those faint lines around her mouth, the fear wasn’t about him, he didn’t think, as much as it was about herself.

Although, the way he was thinking at the moment, maybe it should be about him.

And where did he get off guessing what was going on inside other people’s heads? Let alone worrying about it?

Then they both seemed to realize they’d been staring at each other for some time, which apparently provoked Mala into saying, in a rush, “Okay, here’s the deal. It’s a small one-bedroom apartment, separate entrance, on the top floor of my house. There’s a kitchenette and a full bath. Yes, it’s furnished, but we’re not talking the Hilton, here. Despite Galen’s avowals to the contrary, the tenants did leave it in a mess, and I haven’t had a chance to clean it yet, so don’t come crying to me if the toilet doesn’t sparkle. I normally charge four-fifty a month, plus utilities, but since you’ll be moving into it ‘as is,’ I’ll knock off two hundred bucks for the first month. It’s actually a pretty good deal, considering. And it’s close.”

“And you don’t want me there.”

“Smart man.”

“So why’re you giving me a sales pitch?”

“Because I need the money and prospective tenants aren’t exactly lined up around the block.”

Traces of what was left of her perfume wriggled through the cooking smells from the other side of the door. Something pretty, unfussy. Potent. He thought for a moment. Real hard. And not with the part of his anatomy that was.

“In other words, you can’t be picky.”

“You got it.”

“I’ll need a place for my car.”

“There’s a detached garage in the back. You can use it.”

“Well, then, it sounds good to me. As long as—”

“But you have to promise to stay away from the kids.”

Not that he’d planned on adopting the little buzzards, but still. His eyes narrowed. “Since I’m not much of a kid person, that shouldn’t be a problem. But what prompted this…condition?”

She let her breath out in a harsh sigh, then pinned him with her gaze again. “I can tell how much the kids already like you.”

That was not what he’d expected her to say. “I don’t—”

“Galen told me all about your not ever staying in one place very long. This is nothing personal, believe me…” She stopped, studied her hands for a moment. “They’ve been abandoned once already,” she said softly. “And to be perfectly honest…well, Carrie sees Galen with her husband, and my brother with his new wife, and I can see the wheels turning in her head. That they have a complete family and we don’t. Or at least, what she thinks of as ‘complete.’” In the split second between sentences, Eddie saw her eyes darken. “What kind of mother would I be, letting them become attached to somebody who’s only going to be around for a few months? So if you take the apartment, you have to promise me you won’t let them glom on to you.”

He thought that over for a minute then said, God knows why, “That philosophy must make dating kind of hard,” and she mumbled something about it not being a problem, and instead of letting it drop, like a smart man might’ve done, he heard himself say, “You tellin’ me you haven’t even gone out with anybody since your husband left?”

Her chin shot up, right along with her dander. Not to mention the color in her cheeks.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

He let out a sigh. “You’re right, and I apologize. Guess that’s why I’ve never been much good at conversation. Can’t seem to talk to anyone for more’n five minutes without pissin’ ’em off. Which is why I suppose I prefer to keep to myself. Less hurt feelings that way.”

After a moment, she said, “I don’t wound easily, Mr. King. Not anymore, at least. But if you prefer your own company, that’s fine with me. I’m only looking for a tenant, not a buddy.”

“Which I suppose means you’re not gonna answer my question.”

Her eyes narrowed. He chuckled. Why, he didn’t know, but something about this woman brought out the worst in him. Or the best, depending on how you looked at it. “No, I didn’t think so. Okay—you want cash or a money order for the first month’s rent?”

“Maybe…you should have a look at the place first?”

“Fair enough. Give me the address. I’ll be over tonight.”

“151 Mason. Three blocks east, one north. Two story house, white with blue shutters. Can’t miss it—the yard looks like a Little Tykes graveyard. Oh, but I won’t be there until after eight-thirty. The kids have a thing at school.”

“Got it.” He straightened up, started toward the door, then turned back. And this time, he saw a protective set to the lady’s jaw that he doubted had anything to do with her children.

Eddie considered several things he might say, only to decide anything he might come up with would only land him in a heap of trouble.

You wouldn’t think it would take so long to gather up a duffel bag, check out of a motel, then hit the grocery store for a few essentials, but it was nearly nine by the time Eddie got to Mala’s house. Being as her Escort was hogging the driveway, he pulled the Camaro up in front, smirking at the white picket fence bordering the toy-strewn yard. A pair of rangy, almost bare trees fragmented the lukewarm porch light, further littering the snow-dusted lawn with grostesque, undulating shadows. It had cleared up; he got out of the car, hauling in a lungful of sharp, metallic air as he swung open the screaking gate at the foot of the walk.

His boots seemed to make an awful lot of noise as he made his way up to her front door.

Still in the same skirt and sweater she’d been wearing earlier, Mala opened the door before he hit the steps, one finger to her lips. “The kids are asleep,” she whispered when he reached the top. Coffee-scented warmth beckoned from inside. “Come on in while I get the keys to the apartment.”

He wiped his boots on the doormat, then did as she asked, quietly shutting the door behind him. The old-fashioned entryway was dimly lit, but enough for him to take in the wide staircase hugging one photo-lined wall, the faded Oriental rugs scattered crookedly on the scuffed wooden floor. And Mala. Her feet encased in thick, slouchy socks, she stood with one arm hugging her ribs, the other hand fiddling with a small gold loop in her ear. Caution hovered like a mistreated pup in her light eyes, at odds with the directness, the generosity of spirit that he now realized was what had intrigued him so much all those years ago. A tiny, fierce burst of protectiveness exploded in his chest, scaring the very devil out of him.

“Want some coffee?” she asked. “I just made it.”

Eddie caught the automatic “no, thanks” before it hit his mouth. Fact was, a cup of coffee sounded great, and he couldn’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t take her up on her offer. Except one.

“I bet it’s decaf.”

“I bet you’re wrong.”

“Then I guess I don’t mind if I do. Black, please.”

“Gotcha. Be right back.”

She straightened up the crooked rug with the heel of one foot before she went, though.

Other than the muted sound of some TV drama coming from what he assumed was the living room, the house was astonishingly quiet. And on top of the coffee aroma lay a mixture of other scents, of clean laundry and recent baths and woodsmoke. Like what most people meant when they said, “Home.”

He grunted, looked around. He’d been in enough hacked-up houses to guess the layout of this one, although this seemed nicer than most. An office, looked like, in what had been the original front parlor to the right; through the wide doorway off to the left, he caught a glimpse of sand-colored wall-to-wall carpet, beige-and-blue plaid upholstered furniture, a warm-toned spinet piano, a brick fireplace, more pictures, more kid stuff. The kitchen would be out in back, most likely an eat-in, and there were probably some add-ons, too, maybe a couple of extra bedrooms or something.

“Here you go.” Mala came down the hall, handed him a flowery but sturdy mug of coffee, then plucked a heavy sweater off the coatrack and slipped it on, all the while watching him, her expression still guarded. Waiting for a reaction, he realized, even if she didn’t know that’s what she was doing. He took a sip, nodded in approval. Relief flooded her features; a stab of irritation shunted through him, that she should care that much what some stranger thought about her coffee.

“It’s real good,” he said.

“My mother taught me, when I was still little.”

Eddie lifted the mug in salute. “But you made it.”

A smile flashed across her mouth, followed by a low chuckle. “You can really lay it on thick, can’t you?”

He angled his head at her. “I’m no better at flattering than I am at conversation, Mala. The coffee’s good. So just deal with it.”

She blushed, nodded, then slid her feet into a pair of wooden clogs by the door. “The entrance is in the back,” she said, yanking open the front door. When he glanced at the stairs right there in the hallway, she simply said, “Blocked off,” and left it at that.

And here Mala had thought she was immune to things like slow, sexy smiles and the pungent, spicy scent of fresh-out-of-the-cold males.

Not to mention the sight of soft, worn jeans molding to hard, lean thighs.

Ai-yi-yi.

The thin crust of snow crunched underfoot as she led Eddie wordlessly around to the side, then up the wooden stairs leading to the apartment.

The key stuck.

“It does that when it’s humid,” she said under her breath, wondering, just as the damn lock finally gave way and the door wratched open, why every other sentence out of her mouth these days seemed to be an apology. She flicked on the living room’s overhead light, stepping well out of the range of Eddie’s pheromones as he followed her inside. She cringed at the faint tang of old pizza and stale beer still hovering in the air, even though she’d cleaned up the worst of the mess more than a week ago.

“If the lock gets to be too much of a hassle,” she said, “let me know. I’ll change it out.”

His face remained expressionless as he took in the room. She clutched the coffee mug to her chest, hoping the warmth would dissolve the strange knot that had suddenly taken root smack in the center of her rib cage. Her nerves lurched, sending her heart rate into overdrive. “Like I said, it’s not the Hilton.”

To say the least. Bare, white walls which needed another coat of paint, she noted. Beige industrial grade carpet. Ivory JCPenney drapes over the two large windows. The earthtone tweed sofa and two equally colorless armchairs had been in her parents’ den, once upon a time; Mala had scrounged the coffee table, mismatched end tables and black bookcase from yard sales, picked up the plain tan ginger jar lamps at Target. Not shabby—she’d seen shabby, this wasn’t it—just basic. And about as personal as a dentist’s office.

“Feel free to hang pictures or whatever, make it feel more like home.”

No comment. Just the buzz from that sharp blue gaze, silently taking everything in over the rim of the mug as he sipped his coffee. Mala swiped her hair behind her ear.

“Um, kitchen’s over there.” She pointed to the far end of the room where, behind a Formica-topped bar, the secondhand refrigerator sulked in the shadows. The living room light reflected dully off the grease-caked, glass-paned cabinets: she made a mental note to buy more Windex. Her mother would have a cow if she knew Mala was actually showing someone the place in the condition it was in. “I guess what they must’ve done was knock out a wall between the master bedroom and one of the smaller ones to make the kitchen area and living room, leaving the bedroom and bath the way they were.”

The hair on the backs of her arms stirred. She glanced over, caught Eddie watching her, his gaze steady, unnerving in its opaqueness, much more unnerving in its overt sexual interest. Over a frisson of alarm, she squatted, grimacing at some stain or other on the carpeting. Between his silence and his staring and her nerves, she was about to go nuts.

“Why do you keep looking at me?” she said to the stain.

“Sorry,” he said. Mala looked up. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, as much as his features had somehow softened. “Didn’t realize I was.” Then he added, “I just would’ve thought you’d be used to having men gawking at you.”

The slight tinge of humor in his words threatened to rattle her even more, especially because she realized he wasn’t making fun of her. She stood, her cheeks burning, then crossed to the empty bookcase, yanking a tissue out of her sweater pocket to wipe down the filthy top shelf.

“Like I said, I haven’t had a chance to clean, so it looks a little woebegone at the moment. But it’s a nice place when it’s fixed up. There’s lots of light in here during the day, and everything works. I’m afraid you’re at my mercy for heat, since the thermostat’s downstairs and I tend to think there’s nothing wrong with having to wear a sweater indoors in the middle of winter, but it’s automatic, on at six-thirty, off at ten. And the apartment has its own electric meter, so I’ll be passing along that bill to you separately—”

His chuckle caught her up short. She turned, her breath hitching in her throat at the sight of the smile crinkling his eyes. If he’d smiled at her like that when they’d been back in school…well, let’s just say her virtue might have gone by the side of the road long before it actually did.

“Now I know where your daughter gets it,” he said.

“Gets what?”

He held up his hand, miming nonstop talking.

She decided it wasn’t worth taking offense. “You should meet my mother,” she said, only to silently add, No, you shouldn’t as she started down the hall. “Bedroom and bath are right down here…”

“What’d he do to you?”

Mala turned, startled. “Who?”

“Your husband.”

“What makes you think—”

“You weren’t like this before. Nervous, I mean. Like you’re about to break.”

On second thought, things were a lot better when he wasn’t talking. “How would you know what I was like? You wouldn’t even speak to me back then.”

“Don’t always have to converse with somebody to know about them. In fact, not talking makes it easier to watch. And listen. See things about folks maybe they can’t always see for themselves.”

Anger, apprehension, curiosity all spurted through her. “And what is it you think you see about me?”

“I’m not sure. Someone who’s lost sight of who she is, maybe.”

The gentleness in his voice, more unexpected than the words themselves, brought a sharp, hard lump to her throat. For three years, she’d refused to let herself feel vulnerable. In the space of a few minutes, this man—this stranger—threatened to destroy all her hard work.

Her fingers tightened around the handle of her mug. “Do you make it a habit of going around analyzing people without being asked?”

He shook his head, his expression serious. Genuinely concerned. “No, ma’am. Not at all.”

“Then why do I rate?”

“Because it burns my butt to see how much you’ve changed,” he said simply, softly, waving the cup in her direction. “That the girl who didn’t seem to have a care in the world now seems like she’s taken on all of ’em.”

She laughed, although that was the last thing she felt like doing. “I’m twenty years older than I was then. I’m a divorcée with two kids and my own business. I have bills out the wazoo, a car that needs coaxing every morning to get going and parents who worry about me far more than they should be worrying about someone this close to forty. So, yeah, I guess I’ve got a little more on my plate than worrying about acing my trig exam or how many balloons to order for the senior prom.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Zing went her heart, thudding and tripping inside her chest. “I told you,” she said quietly, desperately, scrabbling away from treacherous ground, “I’m just looking for a tenant. Not a buddy. Or…” She shut her eyes, dragged the unsaid out into the open. “Or anything else.”

“Anything else?” he drawled on a slow, knowing grin.

Embarrassment heated her cheeks. Cripes, she was more out of the loop than she thought. “I’m sorry. I have no idea where that came from—”

“It came right from where you thought it came from,” he said, his voice low and warm and tired-rough. “From me.”

Oh, dear God.

“I can’t…I mean, we c-can’t—”

“I know that. Which is why I’m not really coming on to you, even though that’s how you’re no doubt reading it.” She frowned, thoroughly confused. He smiled, and her insides went all stupid on her. “What I mean is, I can’t help it if I’m sending out ‘I’m interested’ vibes. I am,” he said with a no-big-deal shrug. “But I get what you’re saying. And that’s fine with me. I’m not lookin’ for anything, either. Not now. Probably not ever. The idea of settling down gives me nightmares, if you want to know the truth. I just don’t have whatever it takes to be a family man, I guess. And like you said, the kids…” He let the sentence trail off. “But that doesn’t mean a few not-very-gentlemanly thoughts haven’t crossed my mind in the past few hours. About what things could be like if both of us weren’t so dead set on avoiding complications.”

Her ears started to ring. “You’re attracted to me?”

There went that sin-never-looked-so-good smile again. “Didn’t I just say exactly that? Oh, Lord, lady,” he said on a chuckle. “For a bright woman, you are sure slow on the uptake about some things, aren’t you?”

Apparently so. Well, yes, there’d been that hmmm thing back at the restaurant, but she didn’t think that was anything personal. So now she stared at her coffee for a good three or four seconds, luxuriating in the idea of being found desirable. Realizing that, if she were smart, she’d tell him the apartment was no longer available. Instead she lifted her eyes and said, “Thank you, Mr. King.” You have just given me reason to live.

He lifted the mug in salute, his mouth tilted. “Anytime.”

She definitely caught that fast enough. Fighting back yet another blush, she mumbled something about seeing the rest of the apartment and clomped down the short hallway to the back. Eddie followed, slowly, as if he had no use for time.

Mala stopped in front of the white tiled bathroom, which was almost all tub, a wonker of a claw-footed number. A plain white shower curtain hung like a plastic ghost from a ring over its center. Eddie was standing very close to her as they both peered into the room. In fact, if she moved an inch to the right, she could…

…see that the tub had more rings than Saturn.

“And for what it’s worth,” she said, whacking her way through a jungle of hormones to get to the small bedroom, “there’s a walk-in closet. Cedar-lined, no less.”

But she could tell Eddie’s gaze had been snagged by the linens—sheets, blankets, pillows, towels—neatly stacked in the center of the fairly new double mattress. He walked over, skimmed one knuckle over the pillow. Mala tried not to shiver.

“I thought maybe you might not have any of your own,” she said from the doorway. “You know, since you just got here. And I have extras. Mostly stuff my mother pawned off on me. There’s dishes in the cupboards, too, and a couple pans and stuff. But that doesn’t mean you get maid service,” she added quickly. He twisted around, amusement crackling in his eyes. And she found herself fighting a twinge of disappointment that they’d already explored the outer limits of their relationship five minutes ago. “Washer and dryer are downstairs, in the mudroom. I do laundry on Fridays, usually, but you’re welcome to use them any other time.”

He studied her for a long moment, then said, “Sounds good to me. Where do I sign?”

She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or scared witless. “Come on back down. The receipt book’s in my office.”

He shadowed Mala into the office, pulling out his wallet while she rummaged through her desk for her receipt book. He wasn’t a particularly big man, not compared with her line-backer brother, or even Galen’s husband, Del, but sometimes there’s more to a man than his size. In Eddie’s case, it was his quiet intensity, she supposed, that seemed to infuse every molecule with his presence. Not to mention every molecule in her body. The book found, she glanced over, clearly saw four hundreds and a fifty in his outstretched hand.

“I said two-fifty for the first month, remember?”

“I know what you said. But you’ll find it’s real hard to argue with someone who won’t argue back.”

Irritation singed her last nerve. But at herself, not him. “I’m not a charity case, Mr. King.”

“The name’s Eddie. And what you are, is stubborn. Didn’t I just tell you you’ll get nowhere arguin’ with me?”

“Why?” she asked, just this side of flummoxed. First the man as good as says he has the hots for her, then he wants to throw away two hundred bucks. This was seriously messing with her entire belief system. “Why on earth would you voluntarily pay more than I asked?”

“I have my reasons,” he said. “Now you gonna take your money or not?”

She wrestled with her pride for about two seconds, then took the money. “Thanks.”

“See how easy that was?”

A quick glance caught the slight smile teasing that take-me-now mouth. Mala wrote out a receipt, annoyed to discover her hand was shaking, then handed it to him with the keys. “I’ll try to get up tomorrow sometime to clean—”

“I can clean my own bathtub,” Eddie said, slipping his wallet into his back pocket, then setting his empty coffee mug on the corner of her desk. “You have a nice night, now. I’ll see myself out.”

Mala sank into her desk chair after he left, only then noticing her answering machine was flashing. She really should get Caller ID one of these days, but right now it was ranked way on the bottom of a depressingly long to-do list. She halfheartedly punched the play button.

A hang up. Just as well, since she didn’t think she could conduct a logical conversation right now if she tried.

Eddie stomped up the stairs to the apartment, his forehead knit so tight, he thought it might stay that way. And he wasn’t breathing right, either. Doggone it—what had he been thinking? In the space of a half hour, he’d managed to break every single rule in his book, number one being, “Don’t get involved, bonehead.”

He batted open the door—nobody’d bothered to lock it, seeings as he was coming right back up, anyway—and went inside, jerking back the drapes and opening a living room window to air out the place some. Not that he hadn’t been in places that’d smelled a far sight worse….

Shoot, it must’ve embarrassed the life out of Mala, showing him the place in this condition. Women tended to get their drawers in a knot about stuff like that. And this one’s drawers, he imagined, thinking back to when he used to watch her scurrying from class to class, her arms always loaded with about a dozen books, had probably been knotted since she was three.

Those eyes of hers…damn, damn, damn. Fierce and questioning and scared and so incredibly honest, even behind that puny veil of control, it knocked him clear into next week.

Hell, Eddie was the last person to think about reassuring some woman he barely knew that things’d work out. About reassuring anybody. He didn’t much believe things did, for the most part. But he was at least used to dodging the crap life seemed determined to fling in his path. If Eddie didn’t like the way things were going, he could pretty much just up and walk away. Mala Koleski, though, wasn’t the type of person who could do that. Not with two kids, especially. He could tell that right off, and he admired her for it. Which was why Eddie couldn’t help thinking that here was someone who deserved whatever it was she wanted.

That she needed to know that.

Still, what the Sam Hill had come over him, getting all personal like that? And then, even worse, admitting he was attracted to her? Eddie rammed a hand through his sorry-looking hair, then just held it there, even though most of his brain cells had long since left the building. Sweet heavenly days, he’d never wanted to kiss a woman so bad in his life. And he sure had never wanted to take one in his arms and tuck her head against his chest and just…hold her.

He slipped off his jacket, threw it on the sofa, then went on back to the bedroom to make up the bed. It smelled much better in here, thank heaven. Like freshly washed linens.

And Mala.

With a groan of frustration, Eddie sank onto the edge of the bare mattress, scrubbing a hand across his face.

Okay, so he’d admitted his attraction because something told him it’d been a long time since anyone had let Mala Koleski Whatever-Her-Married-Name-Was know she was attractive. That a woman didn’t have to look like those emaciated Hollywood actresses for a man to get turned on. So he figured she should know that she was worth a man’s time and attention, doggone it. Even if he couldn’t be that man for more than about two minutes.

But that was okay, since he figured hell would freeze over before she’d take him up on his offer, such as it wasn’t. Women like her just didn’t do that, get involved with strays like him.

A weird, empty kind of feeling swelled inside him, vaguely familiar but definitely unwelcome. He got up, trying to shake it off, but it followed him right into the bathroom like an overloyal puppy.

“Go away,” he actually said out loud, but it didn’t. He looked over at the sink as he draped the thick, soft towels over the bar next to the john, saw the new bar of soap she’d left out for him.

The emptiness torqued into an sharp, nasty ache.

“You can’t,” he said to his reflection. “She can’t.”

He yanked open the cupboard door under the sink, found a whole mess of cleaning supplies. Dumping a thick layer of cleanser into the tub, he set to scrubbing it, thinking it’d been a long time since he’d entertained the idea of wanting something he couldn’t have.

Chapter 3

The Monday before Thanksgiving, Mala lay in bed, half-asleep, trying to fight off that itchy, icky feeling you get when Something Bad is about to happen.

“Mama! Guess what!”

She burrowed down farther into the pillows. “Unless there’s a van outside with balloons all over it,” she said, “go away.”

“Ma-ma!” Like Tigger, Carrie boing-boinged up the length of the bed, and it occurred to Mala that the only time her bed shook these days was when small children were jumping on it. Which, while a dispiriting thought, didn’t qualify as the Something Bad because that wasn’t something that was going to happen. It already had. “It’s a snow day!”

That, however, definitely made the short list. But after marshalling a few more brain cells, Mala decided that, nope, that wasn’t quite it, either.

Not that this wasn’t bad enough—if it were true—since that meant, being as the kids were already off for Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday…and Saturday and Sunday…she’d only have two kid-free days to do five days worth of work. Swiping her hair out of her face, Mala hiked herself up on one elbow, trying to get a bead on Carrie’s beaming, bobbing face. Her curls were a radiant blur in the almost iridescent glow in the many-windowed, converted porch she used as her bedroom.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Uh-uh. We got like a million feet of snow in the yard! You can go look! I already listened to the radio and they said the Spruce Lake schools were closed! We don’t have any scho-ol, we don’t have any scho-ol!”

Mala suppressed a groan as she glanced at the clock radio by her bed. Seven-ten. Far too early for so many exclamation points.

In footed, dinosaur-splashed jammies, Lucas unsteadily tromped across the bed, dropping beside Mala with enough force to rattle her teeth. “I’m cold,” he said, wriggling underneath the down comforter next to her, his beebee—as he’d christened his baby blanket at eleven months—firmly clutched to his chest.

“It’ll warm up in a few minutes,” Mala said.

Carrie skootched down on Mala’s other side, planting her ice-cold feet on Mala’s bare calf.

“Cripes, Carrie!”

“The heat’s not on.”

Damn. The furnace pilot must’ve gone out again. That made the second time this week. Not that it was that big a deal to relight it, but she supposed she couldn’t put off having somebody come out to give the ancient furnace a look-see any longer. Especially as she had a tenant. A tenant who, bless him, hadn’t yet complained about freezing his butt off in the mornings.

A tenant who, bless him, had made himself scarce since the night he moved in.

Except in her dreams.

Lucas snuggled closer, smelling of warm little boy and slightly sour jammies. Ah, yes…reality. As in, kids and clients and recalcitrant furnaces and laundry and meals to fix and mother’s and brother’s and well-meaning friends’ worried looks to dodge. And vague, itchy-icky feelings of impending doom.

Running away sounded pret-ty damn attractive, just at the moment.

Just at the moment, she wondered what it would be like to be able to come and go whenever you pleased, not having to answer to anyone, not be tied down to any one place for longer than a few months.

Carrie threw her arm around Mala’s middle, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

Not having a child—or two—to come get in bed with you on a cold, snowy morning and remind you that you were the center of their universe.

She hugged and kissed first one kid, then the other, then gently swatted Carrie’s bottom through the bedclothes. “C’mon, move over—I gotta get up.”

“C’n you make pancakes?”

“Maybe. After I get the furnace going.” Mala struggled out from underneath the covers, static electricity crackling as she yanked at her flannel nightgown to dislodge it from the bedding. Half hopping, half stumbling, she stuffed her feet into her old shearling slippers as she made her way across the carpet to the window to see just how generous Mother Nature had been.

Yup—she rammed one arm, then the other, into her terry cloth robe, glowering at the vast expanse of white outside her window—it had snowed, alrighty. Not a million feet, but at least one, gauging from the pile of the white stuff on the picnic table. Oh, joy.

It was still flurrying, although the faint blue patches in the distance meant the storm would probably break up before noon. But with this much snow already on the ground, Mala thought on a huge, disgusted yawn, nobody was going anywhere, at least not until some kind person took pity on them and plowed the street. Which could be Christmas, with her luck. Whitey was probably sitting in the nice dry attached garage, chuckling. Man, she’d sell her soul for something with all-wheel drive.

The ceiling creaked slightly under the pressure of Eddie’s heavy, deliberate footsteps overhead. She heard the upstairs door slam shut, followed by the sound of boots clomping down the outside stairs. She edged back from the window and watched him plod through the soft snow toward the second garage out back in just his jeans and that denim jacket of his, and she felt her brow furrow in concern that he wasn’t dressed warmly enough.

Lord. She was such a mother.

He had the day off—the restaurant was closed on Sundays and Mondays—and she found herself wondering what he’d do, since his Camaro wasn’t any more snow-worthy than her sissy little Escort. Not that it was any of her business. She just wondered.

Mala suddenly realized he’d come back out of the garage and was looking in her direction through the light snow, his gaze steady in an otherwise expressionless face. She doubted he could see her, not from that distance and with it still snowing, but it was as if he knew she was standing there.

Heat dancing across her cheeks, Mala backed away, just as a sudden shaft of sunlight turned the flurries into whirling, glittering confetti. And as if in a dream, Eddie began trudging across the yard toward her window, the sparkling flakes settling onto his thick, curly hair and broad shoulders like fairy dust, at such odds with the serious set to his mouth. When he got to within a few feet of the window, he stopped, then mimed shoveling.

Mala raised the window, the brittle cold instantly goose-bumping her skin. Lucas crawled out of the bed and wedged himself between her and the windowsill. One little hand arrowed into the soft drift. “Honestly, Lucas—” Mala snatched back his hand, then wrapped him in her enormous robe and hugged him to her stomach, like a mother hen enveloping her chick. “You could just come around to the door, you know,” she said to Eddie, her breath a cloud.

His gaze snapped back to her face. “Waste of time, seeing’s as you were already standing there. So, you got a snow shovel?”

“You don’t have to—”

“I need to dig out my car.”

“Oh, of course.” She shivered. “Yeah, there’s one in the shed.”

He turned, glanced at the wooden shed huddled against the back fence, then angled his head back to her. “It locked?”

She shook her head. He nodded, then trooped away.

A half hour later, she was standing in her living room after her shower, staring at the TV and contemplating the possibility of being sucked into the perpetual springtime of Teletubbieland—but only if one could exterminate the Teletubbies first—when she heard the rhythmic scraping of metal against cement outside and realized she’d been had.

Eddie hadn’t exactly planned on shoveling the entire walk when he’d gotten up this morning. After all, he was just the tenant. Wasn’t his responsibility. But then he got to thinking about it, and it just seemed like the right thing to do. And since not too many opportunities to do the right thing crossed Eddie’s path, he figured he might as well take advantage of it. You know, just in case St. Peter asked him for a list or something down the road.

Didn’t hurt that the exertion had the added benefit of taking the edge off his run-amok libido.

It didn’t make a lick of sense. There she’d stood, no makeup, her hair every-which-way, wearing some kind of sack with a bigger sack thrown over it, and his blood had gone from frozen to boiling in about ten seconds. And she was just as close to forty as he was, to boot. In fact, in the stark light, he’d even seen a few strands of gray in her dark hair. Yet she opened her mouth, and that morning-gravelly voice of hers spilled out of the window at him, and all he could think was, whuh. He’d been trying to put a finger on just what it was about her that turned him inside out for the past half hour—okay, for the past week—but he was no closer now than when he’d started.

The sidewalk was looking pretty good, though.

Eddie straightened, letting his back muscles ease up some, then wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve before it froze to his forehead. Underneath the denim jacket, he had on three layers of clothes, and now he was overheated. His breath misted in front of his face as he squinted in the snowfall’s glare, taking in Mala’s neat little neighborhood, a conglomeration of one-and two-story houses, some frame, some brick, most with porches. Yards were small to average, tidy, liberally dotted with snow-flocked evergreens. Fireplace smoke ghosted from a few chimneys, teasing the almost bare limbs of all the oaks and ashes and maples, slashes of dark gray against the now crystal-blue sky. A few blocks off, a small lake, embedded in a pretty little park, twinkled in the sunlight.

It was a nice town, he supposed. If you liked that sort of thing.

From the back, he heard the kids yelling and laughing; Mala must’ve just let them out. Eddie went back to work, listening to them whooping it up over his shoveling, trying to ignore the ache of pure, unadulterated envy threatening to crush his heart. Still, it was a good thing Mala was doing, giving them the freedom to be happy in spite of what their daddy had done.

She was a good woman, he thought, almost like it was a revelation. And his thinking that had nothing to do with his breath-stealing sexual attraction to her. It had everything, however, to do with why he needed to stop thinking about sex every time he thought about Mala Koleski.

The front door opened. He bent farther over the shovel, but not before he noticed she was wearing baggy blue sweats over a gray turtleneck. She clunked down the steps in those clogs of hers, something clutched in her hand.

“Here. You might as well use these.”

Eddie looked over, noticed her hair was still damp, like she hadn’t taken the time to dry it properly. Then he saw the gloves in her hands. Turned away. “Those your husband’s?” Down the street, someone else came out of his house, shovel in tow.

“I would’ve burned them if they had been. No, they’re a pair of my father’s. He left them here a year ago. We couldn’t find them, so he got another pair. Of course, then they turned up. So, anyway…” She pushed them toward him.

They were good gloves. Pigskin, maybe, lined in fur.

He shook his head. “I can’t take those.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. What am I going to do with them?” When he didn’t reply, she added, “Borrow them, then, if I can’t dislodge that bug from your butt. But in case you haven’t noticed, this is Michigan. In November. It gets cold.”

Eddie lifted his gaze. “Says the woman standing out in twenty-degree weather with wet hair.”

Stubbornness vied with amusement in those cat’s eyes of hers, softened by the breath-cloud soft-focusing her just-washed face.

“Who’d be back inside by now if you’d stop arguing with me.”

He took the gloves, put them on. They fit perfectly.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“You’re welcome. And thanks for shoveling. I appreciate it.”

Eddie grinned. The gloves felt real good, he had to admit. “I take it this isn’t one of your favorite chores?”

She smiled back. “You might say that—”

A child’s scream blew the moment all to hell. They both turned in time to see Lucas—at least, Eddie thought that’s who it was, it was hard to tell with all the clothes the kid had on—barreling through the side gate, bellowing his head off. Carrie followed, her hatless curls fire in the sun, yelling nearly as loudly.

Mala’s hands flew up. “Geez, Louise…what now?”

“Carrie hit me in the face with a snowball!”

“I did not! It hit your shoulder!”

“There’s snow in my eyes!”

“That’s ’cause it bounced! But I didn’t throw it at your face!” She whirled around to her mother. “I swear!”

“You’re lyin’! An’ it hurt!”

Carrie stomped her foot, her rage-red face clashing with her hair. “It did not, crybaby! The snow’s too soft to hurt!”

“All right, the both of you,” Mala said, her hips strangled by a pair of snowsuited arms, “that’s enough. Okay, honey,” she said to Lucas, cupping his head as he hung on to her for dear life. “You’ll live. But honest to Pete, Carrie, how many times have I told you not to throw snowballs at him?”

“He threw one at me first!” the girl shrieked, her arms flying.

“Did not!”

“Did so!”

“I t-told you to stop and you wouldn’t! You jus’ kept throwin’ ’em and throwin’ ’em, an’ I ast you to stop!”

Her mouth set, Mala glared at her daughter. “Carrie…?”

The ensuing silence was filled only by the sound of someone else’s shovel rasping against their sidewalk. Then, “You always take his side! Always!”

In the space of a second, Eddie saw weariness add five years to Mala’s face. “That’s not true, Carrie—”

“Yes, it is! He’s the baby, he always gets his way! Ow!”

All three faces turned in Eddie’s direction, as Carrie wiped the remains of a half-assed snowball from her shoulder, her mouth sagging open in shock as bits of snow dribbled down one cheek. “Hey! Why’d you do that?”

Eddie leaned on the shovel handle. “Did that hurt?” he asked quietly.

“N-no,” the child said, tears cresting on her lower lids. “But it wasn’t very nice.”

“No, I don’t suppose it was, was it?” he said, then straightened, tapping the shovel on the sidewalk, just once, before he said to Mala, “You got any salt? I might as well lay some down so this won’t freeze up on you all over again tonight.”

“What? Oh, uh…in the shed,” Mala said, her voice brittle, her eyes glittering. Then after a couple of beats of looking like she was going to pop, she gathered her chicks and hustled them back to the house.

In the sunlight, her drying hair was fire-shot, too.

By the time Mala got back to Eddie, a good twenty minutes later, she was downright bristling. And yes, she knew she was overreacting, but tough beans. At least she was fired up enough to be able to march into the garage and light into him before he had a chance to do that thing with his eyes that threw her so much. “What the hell’s the big idea, throwing snowballs at my kids?”

In the process of putting oil in the Camaro, Eddie raised his head and cocked one eyebrow. “Is this a delayed reaction or what?”

Unfortunately, she’d had a momentary brain cramp about the drawl, which was nearly as bad as the eye thing. Mala raised her chin. “I couldn’t say anything in front of them. Then I got tied up on the phone. Well?”

He calmly wiped the end of the funnel with a paper towel. “As I recall,” he said, twisting the car’s oil cap back on, “it was one snowball, at one kid. And it was soft as cotton, I swear.”

“That’s not the point. The point is—”

“The point is—” he slammed shut the Camaro’s hood “—their bitchin’ at each other was obviously about to drive you crazy, it was driving me crazy, and that girl of yours needs to learn it’s not all about her.”

Then he did do the eye thing and her heart knocked against her ribs. Mala crossed her arms, forced herself to stay focused. “So you decided to take matters into your own hands?”

“It worked, didn’t it? Although, I have to admit, she’s right about one thing. You definitely baby the boy too much.”

“Excuse me?” She sucked in a breath, hoping it would keep her voice steady. “He’s barely six, for the love of Mike. And what makes you an expert on raising kids?”

“Oh, don’t go getting all riled up,” Eddie said with a half grin, wiping his hands on a rag. “All I’m saying is you’re not doin’ the kid any favors by coddling him the way you do.”

“And what would you have me do? Smack him every time he cries? Punish him for something he can’t help?”

“Dammit, woman—” He’d removed his jacket, even though the garage was unheated; now Mala could see every muscle tense underneath a flannel-lined denim shirt hanging partially open over a sparkling white T-shirt. He tossed the rag onto a nearby workbench, then looked back at her, his darkened gaze searing into hers. “Of course not! Okay, so maybe I don’t know anything about raising kids, but I sure as hell know how mean they can be. And if Lucas cries as much at school as I hear him when I’m around here, life must be hell for him on the playground.”

Oh, dear God. It wasn’t irritation with a whiny kid that had prompted his unsought advice, she suddenly realized, but something far deeper. And far, far too complicated for her to deal with right now, if ever. Especially with someone who wouldn’t be around, who was more than willing to tell her where she was going wrong but who couldn’t be bothered with putting his theories to the test in a real-life situation. She waited a beat, then said, “You know what you said about keeping to yourself? Maybe this is a good time to remember that—”

“Mama!”

Mala whirled around to the garage opening, hugging herself against the cold. “What?”

“Grandma called,” Carrie yelled through the barely cracked open kitchen door. “She’s coming over.”

Just what she needed. Then she looked back at Eddie, whose now shuttered features set off an alarm in her brain that somehow their exchange had shaken him as much as it had her. But hey—who’d started this, anyway? Not only that, but in the week since his return, Mala had learned nothing more about Eddie King than she’d known before. By mutual consent, true—she was no more inclined to pry than he was to divulge—but the point was, since she had no idea what, if any, his sore spots were, she refused to be held accountable for accidentally hitting a bull’s-eye or two.

She also refused to apologize for who her children were.

“Look,” she said, “I know Lucas is overly sensitive. I know sometimes Carrie could give Imelda Marcos a run for her money. And God knows there are times when I’m tempted to believe I’m the worst, most ineffectual mother in the universe. But you know what? Lucas is one of the kindest children I’ve ever known. And as for Carrie…well, at least I can sleep at night knowing that nobody, but nobody’s ever gonna walk all over my little girl.”

Without waiting for a response, she stomped out of the garage, her arms tightly crossed over her ribs as she plowed across the snowy yard to the house.

Some four hours later, Mala glowered at the computer screen, willing her head to stop throbbing. The day had not gotten any better after the snowball incident. Not for her, at least. Oh, the kids had made up, per usual, which would have been fine except that, since they decided it was too cold to stay outside and the snow was too “mushy” to make a snowman, anyways, they’d been chasing each other around the house for the past three hours, shrieking with laughter at the tops of their extremely healthy lungs. Which meant she’d straightened up the house at least three times, not counting lunch, since she kept expecting her mother to arrive at any minute, which she hadn’t yet done. And which meant Mala hadn’t gotten an ounce of productive work done the entire day.

Especially as her mind simply would not let go of the Eddie King Quandary. The more she thought about it, the more confused she got. About the way her heart was still doing a boogie and a half at that raw, vulnerable look in his eyes. About the fact that she had to admit, now that sufficient time had passed for her to get over herself, that he’d been right, dammit. Especially about Lucas.

Still, the man had no business sticking in his nose like that. And if he ever did it again, he was gonna find himself looking for a new place to live, boy.

Maybe.

She thought of her shoveled sidewalk and sighed.

God knew, people butted into Mala’s life all the time. She was hardly raising her kids alone, not with her parents living barely ten blocks away and her brother and Sophie taking the kids off her hands at least once a week to hang out with their adopted brood of five. But they were family, part of a unit whose members were SuperGlued together; this guy wasn’t, and never would be, part of anything. Eddie King was the kind of man who might be dependable, in his own weird way, but there was no getting around the fact that he was still a baggage-laden commitment-phobe who substituted charm for sincerity.

He was also the kind of man who’d spend a good two hours shoveling her sidewalk, her driveway and a fair portion of old Mrs. Arnold’s sidewalk next door as well. Without being asked.

Who’d say he wasn’t a kid person, yet would care enough to show concern for a little boy’s self-esteem, even though he had to know he was taking his life in his hands by confronting said child’s mother about the issue.

But who wasn’t the least bit afraid to confront said child’s mother, either.

And then there was the little sidebar dealie of his being the first man since Scott who made her skin sizzle when she got within ten feet of him.

Her hormones strrretched and yawned and said, groggily, “You rang?”

Yeah, well, she knew all about sizzling skin and where that led.

Mala lobbed a pencil across the room, then sank her chin in her palm and stared out the window, watching the sun flash off the icicles suspended from her next-door neighbor’s eaves as she admitted to herself that the one hitch in her decision not to put herself through the dating/courting/marriage wringer again was that, contrary to popular belief, she wasn’t dead. In fact, if recent physical stirrings could be believed, she was a helluva lot more alive than she’d thought. However, she had far too much sense—

Another roar of shrill laughter shot down the far-too-short hall.

—not to mention children, to let herself be bossed around by a few clueless hormones. Loud and insistent though they might be.

“Ooooh, Lucas—you are gonna be in so much trouble!”

Mala shut her eyes and the hormones hobbled back to their cold, airless cell. To the casual observer, the downstairs apartment was more than big enough—besides the living room, there were three bedrooms, two baths, the eat-in kitchen and the office. Today, it seemed about as big as a matchbox. And four times as suffocating.

Something thudded out in the living room. The doorbell rang. The phone rang. Lucas screamed. Carrie remonstrated. Lucas screamed more loudly, the sound escalating as he approached the office, which meant he was ambulatory at least. The phone rang again; Mala picked it up.

“Grandma’s here!” came Carrie’s yell from down the hall.

“I slipped and bumped my head!” Lucas wailed. “Kiss it!”

“Lucas, shush!” She kissed his head, said “hello?” but got nothing for her trouble except a dial tone.

“Ma-ma! Grandma’s here!”

Her headache escalated to nuclear proportions.

Like a dog burying its bone, Bev Koleski wiped her booted feet about a hundred times on Mala’s doormat before stepping inside, chattering to the kids. Mala glanced out at the curb. No car.

“You walked?”

“Well, of course I walked,” her mother said as she began shedding layers of clothes—scarf, gloves, knit hat, down coat, cardigan, a second sweater and, at last, the wiped-to-death boots—neatly placing each item on or by the mirrored coatrack next to the front door. Then she tugged down a rust-colored turtleneck that she’d been swearing for ten years must’ve shrunk in the wash over fearsome, polyester-ized hips. The women in Mala’s family were not petite. “Carrie, honey—go put on the kettle for me. Yes, you, too,” she added to Lucas, whose ten-second old boo-boo had already been consigned to oblivion, then said to Mala as the kids bunny-hopped down the hall to the kitchen, “You don’t think I’m gonna risk gettin’ in a car with the streets like this, do you?”

No, of course not. Out of the corner of her eye, Mala spied somebody’s wadded up…something draped over the banister. She sidled over, snatched up whatever it was as Bev frowned in the mirror at her somewhat lopsided hairdo, which, thanks to better living through chemistry, had been exactly the same shade of dark brown for thirty years. With a resigned sigh, she swatted at her reflection, then dug in her aircraft carrier–size vinyl purse for a pair of pink terry cloth scuffs, which dropped to the wooden floor, smack, smack. Then she squinted at Mala as she shuffled her feet into the slippers.

Oh, Lord. Here it comes.

“You look tired.”

“I’m fine, Ma.”

“Don’t lie to your mother.”

“Okay, I have a little headache. It’s nothing.”

Golden brown eyes softened in sympathy. “Kids making you nuts?”

“Not any more than Steve and I did you. And you lived.”

“Barely.” Then the eyes narrowed even more. “You doin’ okay, money-wise?”

“Yes, Ma. Picked up two new clients this week, in fact. But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“This has nothin’ to do with confidence, and don’t get smart with me, little girl. I’m not stupid. It’s hard, raising two kids on one income. Bad enough you won’t let your father and me help out—”

“Ma. Stop.”

Bev pursed her lips. “Then why don’t you let us at least hire someone to go after the scuzzbag. Wring child support out of him if you have to.”

“And I’ve told you a million times, I don’t want Scott’s money. He’s gone, it’s over, and I don’t want anything to do with Scott Sedgewick, ever again.”

“The kids deserve a father,” her mother said.

“Not that one, they don’t.”

“Oh? You got somebody else lined up for the job?”

Mala laughed, a sound as dry as the heated air inside the house. “Damn, you’re good. I didn’t even see that one coming.”

“Took years of practice. You should take notes.”

Yeah, like maybe she should’ve taken notes on what to look for in a life partner before she let a charming smile and pretty words delude her into thinking, after years of fizzled-out relationships, that Scott had been The One. That he’d fall in love with his children, once he saw them. Managing a smile despite the fact that her heart suddenly felt like three-day-old oatmeal, Mala turned away, starting for the kitchen. Her eyes stung like hell, but damned if she was gonna cry in front of her mother. She didn’t get it, why the pain seemed to be getting sharper, not duller, as time went on.

Especially in the past week. Ever since Eddie King and his damned, vulnerable eyes and his damned, sexy-as-hell drawl and his double-damned good-enough-to-eat body moved in upstairs.

The itchy-ickies started up again.

“Hey—” Her mother snagged her arm and turned her around, then lifted one hand, gently cupped her daughter’s cheek. Mala bested her by a couple inches, but the instant she felt that soft, strong touch on her skin, she felt like a little girl again. Except, when she’d been little and innocent and trusting, her mother’s touch had always held the promise that, sooner or later, everything would be all right.

“Your father and me, we are so proud of you, baby. You and Steven both. Sometimes, Marty and me just sit at the table and talk about how lucky we were, to get a pair of kids like you two. You know that, don’t you?”

Afraid to speak, Mala only nodded.

Bev went on, now skimming Mala’s hair away from her face. “The way you take care of these kids all by yourself, run a business on your own… God knows, I don’t think I could’ve done it. But sometimes, we worry about you. That you’re lonely, y’know?”

“Ma—”

Bev’s hands came up. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t come all the way over here to upset you.” She started toward the kitchen. “Anyway,” she glanced back over her shoulder, “I figured it probably wouldn’t hurt to have someone around to keep the kids out of your hair for a couple of hours, so you could get a little work done. We’ll bake cookies or somethin’. Oh, hell—you haven’t had a chance to clean the living room in a while, huh?”

Oh, hell, was right. Mala dashed into the living room right behind her mother, snatching up whatever she could from the most recent layer of kid-generated debris before her mother got a chance. She just didn’t get it—she and Steve had never dared dump stuff all over the place the way her two did. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t get after them. It just never seemed to take.

“So. Is he here?”

Slightly out of breath, Mala glanced over at her mother, who was about to vanish behind the free-standing sofa. Oh, crud…now what do you suppose was back there? “He, who?”

“Your new tenant.”

“Uh-uh. He went out a couple hours ago.”

Like a bat out of hell, actually.

Bev stopped, her arms full of assorted sweaters, books and a two-foot tall inflatable dinosaur. “In this weather?”

“He’s a big boy, Ma. He’ll manage.”

Her mother gave her a look, then swooped behind the sofa. Then Mala heard, “He’s real good, let me tell you,” followed by her mother’s reddened face as she struggled back up.

“Good?”

Bev gave her a “keep up” look. “Yeah, good. As in, cooking. Your father and I were up to Galen’s Saturday night, figuring we should give it a try, although your father wasn’t all that sure he wanted to, since you know how crazy he is about Galen’s ravioli. Where do you want these?” she said, holding up a bunch of socks. Mala grabbed them out of her mother’s hand. A good half dozen, none of them matching. “Anyway,” her mother went on, “I had the lasagna, but I made your father have the grilled tuna, since the doctor told him he needed more fish in his diet, and they were both out of this world. Between you and me, maybe even a little better than Galen’s.”

“Really?”

“Okay, maybe not better, but just as good. He uses slightly different seasonings or something. But when we told the waitress—it was Hannah Braden that night, you know, Rod and Nancy Braden’s girl? I mean, isn’t that something, with all that money they have, she doesn’t think she’s too good to wait tables to earn her own pocket money.”

“Ma-aa? Geez.”

Bev swatted at her. “So, anyway, when we told her we wanted to thank him personally, she said she was sorry, but he wouldn’t come out front for anybody. Can you imagine that?”

Mala bent over the coffee table to clear away the same assorted cups and plates she’d already cleared twice today. “Eddie prefers to keep to himself. That’s all.”

“Still?”

The thin, annoying whine of the teakettle pierced through the whoosh of the heat pumping through the floor vent. Mala straightened, swiping back a hank of her hair with her wrist. “What do you mean, still?”

“Nana Bev!”

“I know, honey,” Bev called over her shoulder. “And don’t you dare touch it—I’ll be there in a sec.” Then to Mala, “From when he was here before, when you were still in high school. Mind you, I only saw him the one time, but the way he hung back, that stay-away-from-me look on his face…” She shook her head.

“I had no idea you even knew who he was.”

“Which just goes to show there’s a lot about your old mother you don’t know,” Bev said. Mala rolled her eyes. “Anyway, he was staying with Molly and Jervis Turner, y’know—”

Yes, that much she knew.

“—and Jervis occasionally did some work for your father, when he got more calls than he could handle. He couldn’t handle the complicated stuff, but he was fine when it came to switching out plugs or installing new ceiling fans, things like that. Anyway, this was when I was still going into your father’s office a couple days a week to do the books. Jervis came by for his paycheck, and he had Eddie with him. Jervis wasn’t much of a talker, either, but he said the boy was staying with them until he finished out school, that his mother had died when the kid was six, and that the kid’d lived with various and assorted relatives down south since then. And that Molly and him might’ve taken the kid on sooner if anybody’d bothered to ask. Since you never said anything about him, I figured he wasn’t part of your group.”

Mala forced her knotted hand to relax, then shook her head. “By his own choice,” she said, remembering how Eddie had rebuffed everyone’s overtures. Not rudely, exactly. But it hadn’t taken long for everyone to get the hint. For a while, Mala had regretted not trying harder—even as wrapped up as she’d been in her own hectic life, she’d sensed Eddie’s hanging back was actually a challenge, seeing if anyone would care enough to work for his friendship. But he’d scared her, she realized, even then. So she hadn’t met his challenge.

He still scared her, she realized.

He was still challenging her, too.

She sucked in a quick little breath, then said, “I don’t suppose you know why Eddie left before he graduated?”

Bev shook her head. “No. I rarely ran into Jervis or Molly. I’m not sure I even knew he had. But whaddya suppose possessed him to come back?”

A question that had nagged at Mala for the past week. “I have no idea. Galen says he could probably find work anywhere, at a top restaurant if he wanted.”

“Well, he’s sure not back because of Molly and Jervis, since they both passed on years ago….”

The doorbell ringing made them both jump. Before Mala could answer it, both kids came roaring out from the kitchen, each one claiming whoever it was on the other side. Mala opened it to find Eddie standing there, a huge sack of salt slung on one hip. He glanced at the kids, sort of the way one might regard last night’s still unwashed dinner dishes, then up at her.

“Hey,” he said without preamble, his voice just slightly laced with contrition, she thought. “I used up most of what you had out there in the shed, figured I may as well pick up some more while I was out. Heard there’s another storm predicted for the weekend.” The kids, clearly bummed it was only Eddie, retreated down the hall, halfheartedly calling each other names. Her mother, however, had eagerly taken their place. In fact, Mala noted with a slight twinge of dread, the woman was one step removed from panting.

“Mom, Eddie King. My new tenant. Eddie, Bev Koleski. And yes, she bites.”

“For godssake, Mala, where you get that mouth, I have no idea.” Bev reached out to meet Eddie’s already extended hand as Mala grabbed her purse off a hook on the rack. “We met, when you were here before,” Bev said, “but I doubt you’d remember me.”

“No, ma’am, I can’t say that I do.”

Her wallet clamped in her hand, Mala wedged between them before her mother bonded for life. “Okay, how much—”

“Forget it,” Eddie said. “I’ll take it out in trade.”

Mala blushed. Her mother chuckled, low in her throat. Mala sent her a brief but lethal glance, then forced her focus back to the deadpan expression in those ice-blue eyes. “Excuse me?”

The eyes thawed, just a little. Just enough to poke at the snoring hormones. Then he grinned, all bad and little boyish, and she nearly lost it. “For the occasional use of your washer and dryer, is all I meant.”

“Oh. Um, yeah, that sounds fair to me.”

“I thought it might.”

The phone rang. “You want me to get that?” Bev asked.

“Please,” Mala said, sending up a prayer of thanks. Bev shuffled away; Mala looked back at Eddie, who shifted the salt to his other hip, which of course caused Mala’s gaze to likewise shift before she snapped it back up to his face. “Well, I guess I’ll just go on and put this in the shed,” he said.

Mala sucked in a breath, let it out sharply. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Eddie angled away, only to turn back, a combination of regret and defiance shining in his eyes. He glanced into the house over her shoulder, as if to make sure nobody else was in earshot, then said, his voice low, “I apologize if my directness earlier upset you. I didn’t mean to criticize your mothering, even if that’s the way it came out. It’s just that…” He looked away for a moment, then back at her, his mouth pulled taut. “When you live alone as long as I have, you tend to forget about things like being tactful. Or how to put across what you’re thinking without—”

“—pissing people off. Yeah, I got it.”

There went that half smile again. Mala’s heart stalled in her throat. “It’s okay,” she said softly, leaning against the door frame. Leaning into that I-can-see-straight-through-you gaze, wanting to reach out to him so badly, her teeth hurt. “As it happens, you gave me some things to think about.”

One brow lifted. Skeptical. Amused. “Really?”

A smile tugged at her mouth, even as a little voice said, “Watch it, sister.”

“Yeah. Really.”

One Mississippi…two Mississippi…

“Well. Okay. That’s…good, then. Well…uh, tell your mama it was nice to meet her, okay?” He turned around and trudged away, his strides long and purposeful.

“Nice butt,” Bev observed behind her. Mala jumped.

“Oh, geez, Ma. Besides, what can you see under that shirt he’s wearing?”

“A wealth of possibilities, missy. And what was that all about?”

“You heard?”

“Enough.”

“Well, it was nothing. Just a little misunderstanding.” Mala managed a nonchalant shrug. “All cleared up now.”

“Oh?”

The woman could pack more meaning into a two-letter word than Webster’s in the whole flipping dictionary.

“Don’t even go there, Ma,” Mala said, shutting the door a bit more forcefully than necessary and heading back toward the kitchen.

“What? What did I say?”

“You don’t have to say anything.” She went into the kitchen, pulled a mug out of the dish drainer, a box of tea bags from the cupboard. “What you’re thinking’s written all over your face.”

“Like you know what’s going on in my head, little girl. Well, for your information, Miss Know-It-All, what I was thinking is that Eddie King turned out okay. Not many men can find it in themselves to apologize for anything. Give me that,” she said, snatching the box from Mala’s hand. “I can make my own tea. Anyway, he’s a nice boy.”

“Ma, he’s a year older than me. He’s hardly a boy.”

“So he’s a nice man. Even better. You know if the restaurant’s open for Thanksgiving?”

Mala frowned. “It isn’t. Why?”

“I just wondered if he’s doing anything, that’s all.”

“Oh, dear God,” Mala said, raising her eyes to the heavens. Well, okay, the ceiling, but it was close enough. “What have I done to deserve this?”

“So you should ask him if he’d like to have dinner with us.”

Us. Meaning her parents and Mala and Steve and Sophie—whose first Thanksgiving this would be, since they didn’t do Thanksgiving in Carpathia—and their five kids and her two.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not that mean. Besides, he has other plans.”

“You know this, or you’re only trying to get me off your case?”

“Yes.”

Footsteps creaked overhead. “You know somethin’?” Bev said, “I’ve got half a mind to go up there and ask him myself.”

Mala opened her mouth to protest, when suddenly, she didn’t care anymore. What the hell did it matter to her if Eddie King accepted her mother’s invitation? He certainly didn’t need her protection. And with all those people around, it wasn’t as if they’d even see each other. Probably. Besides, her parents had been inviting strays to holiday dinners for as long as she could remember. So big fat hairy deal.

“Fine,” she said. “Go ask.”

Which Bev did. Mala listened, heard faint voices upstairs, then her mother’s slow, steady descent on the outside stairs.

“You’re right,” Bev said when she came in. “He can’t make it. Says he’s got plans.”

So how come she felt disappointed rather than relieved?

And what kind of holiday plans could a man have who didn’t know anybody in town? And how was this any of her business?

Mala shook herself, yanked open the dishwasher to stack another half dozen dishes inside. “So who was on the phone?” she asked her mother.

“The phone?” her mother said from the kitchen table. “Oh, right. Nobody. A hang up. Which is so rude. Geez. I mean, if you get a wrong number, the least you can do is say ‘sorry’ or something, y’know? And when the hell you gonna get Caller ID, anyway?”

Mala just sighed.

Chapter 4

“So,” Mala said to her sister-in-law as she scraped leftover mashed potatoes into a plastic store ’n’ save bowl, swearing softly when a blob landed smack on the front of her new fur-blend sweater, “how’d you enjoy your first Thanksgiving?”

Amazingly, it was just the two of them in her brother’s kitchen. Sophie and Mala had combined forces to convince Bev, who’d done most of the cooking, to go play grandma and let them clean up; the living room reeked of football-crazed testosterone; and the kids were…elsewhere. The old country house was cozy and filled with laughter and leftover feast smells, and for the moment, Mala could almost believe she was as content as she would have everyone believe.

Raking one hand through her short, ash brown hair, Sophie chuckled. “I think I’m bloody glad it only comes once a year,” she said in her almost-English accent, ripping off a length of aluminum foil to cover what was left of the auxiliary ham. Her square jaw and angular features prevented her from being pretty in any traditional sense of the word, but her quick smile and the love that constantly radiated from her gentle gray eyes made her as appealing as anyone Mala had ever met. “Otherwise, I’d be big as a house from overeating. Not that I won’t be that in a few months, in any case.”

She patted her slightly bulging belly underneath the floppy red sweater, then wrinkled her nose, obviously tickled with her condition. Sophie and Steve had only been married since July, but having just turned thirty, the princess was thrilled about her pregnancy.

“And with those hips you don’t have,” Mala said pointedly to her skinny sister-in-law, “you’ll look like you swallowed a torpedo.” She opened the refrigerator, frowning at the already jam-packed interior. The ceiling shook as many small feet stormed down the upstairs hallway, accompanied by shrieks of varying degrees of intensity. Neither woman so much as glanced up. “I hate to break this to you, honey, but you can either get the rest of the turkey in here, or everything else. Not both. And no, that wasn’t a call for help, bozo-hound,” she said to the grinning oversize mutt wagging his entire rear end at her feet. She gently shoved at the dog with her knee. “Go away, George.”

“Oh, come here, you big goof,” Sophie said, collapsing into a kitchen chair. Wearing an expression that could only be translated as, “Yes!”, the dog pranced across the linoleum floor to gobble down whatever it was his mistress was offering. “You should really get the kids a dog,” Sophie said, making kissy noises at the beast.

“Uh, no, I really shouldn’t.” Mala stacked the homeless containers back on the counter, then leaned against it. “So how’re you feeling these days?”

“Oh, fine. The morning sickness only lasted a week or so, thank God. So I’ll be really up for when Alek and Luanne bring the children after Christmas.”

“Really? I can’t wait to meet them.”

“They feel the same way, I gather.” Sophie smiled down at the dog, who’d plopped his muzzle in her lap. “I know it seems a bit precipitous, but Alek’s quite keen to introduce Luanne to Steven and your parents. I think he hopes it will relieve her mind somewhat about marrying into a royal family.”

“If it doesn’t frighten her off completely,” Mala said wryly.

But then, the circumstances surrounding the reunion of Sophie’s older brother, Prince Aleksander Vlastos, and the Texan born-and-bred Luanne Evans Henderson was the stuff of soap operas, involving a secret baby and a marriage-of-convenience gone wrong, a tragic race-car crash that had taken Luanne’s husband’s life, a love denied for more than a decade. Due to the delicacy of the situation, Mala knew the couple weren’t planning on a wedding for some time. But just a few weeks ago they’d agreed, for both their son’s sake and the simple fact that they couldn’t stand the thought of being separated a minute longer, to live under the same palace roof with Sophie’s and Alek’s octogenerian grandmother and Carpathia’s reigning monarch, Princess Ivana.

Next to all that, Mala’s family seemed excrutiatingly dull.

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