“You got any idea what you’re so scared of?”

Tears bit at Carly’s eyes. “All of this. The town…my options. You.”

Sam’s eyes flashed as he quietly said, “I don't suppose you’d care to explain that.”

“I don’t know that I can. It’s just that this all seems so real. And I’m—” she met his gaze, sadly shaking her head “—not.”

Sam’s face hardened. “That’s crap, Carly.”

He withdrew his hands from his pockets, then took three or four slow, deliberate steps toward her. “Funny thing,” he said, “but I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on the difference between illusion and reality, And as far as I’m concerned, you are one of the most real women I’ve ever met. So deal with it.”

He headed for the door, only to turn back and say, “By the way, I’ll be picking you up for the dance tomorrow night around seven. I’d appreciate it if you’d wear something to make every male in the room regret not being me.”

Swept Away
Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KAREN TEMPLETON,

a Waldenbooks bestselling author and RITA® Award nominee, 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.

She loves to hear from readers, who may reach her by writing c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279, or online at www.karentempleton.com.

Thanks to Debra Cowan, Pam Martin, Teresa Harrison, Kari Dell and Leta Wellman, who patiently answered all my farming questions—I trust I gave you guys a good laugh or two along the way. Trust me, I’ll never look at bacon the same way again!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 1

In the three years since his wife’s death, Sam Frazier had prided himself on not tumbling into the abyss of helplessness common to many widowers, especially those with young children. Whether his refusal to let chaos gain a toehold stemmed from his wanting to do Jeannie proud or just plain stubbornness, he had no idea, but he thought he’d been doing okay. Until this bright and sunny September morning when his teenage daughter tried to sneak past him wearing more makeup than a Las Vegas showgirl and not a whole lot more clothes, and he realized he had one foot in that abyss, anyway.

Not that Libby was having a good morning, either, having attempted her little maneuver when the kitchen was filled with her five younger brothers, several of whom thought girls had cooties as it was. Girls who were related to you and who had suddenly taken to looking like women were clearly the embodiment of evil and hence to be thwarted at every opportunity. Or at the very least greeted by a chorus of disgusted gagging sounds, which even Sam—inured as he generally was to such noises—would be hard put to ignore.

Sam caught Libby’s hand and spun her around on her army-tank shoes, the ends of her long, dark hair stinging his bare arm. Silence shuddered in the room, broken only by one of the dogs lapping at his water dish, as something damn close to terror shot through him, that his little girl—especially in that skimpy, midriff-baring top and dark lipstick—was no longer “little” in any sense of the word. And he knew damn well exactly how every teenage boy in the county was going to react to that fact.

“More fabric, less makeup,” Sam said calmly, his gaze riveted to Libby’s defensive light brown one. He felt a twinge in his left leg, an old ache trying to reassert itself. “Go change.”

“No time, Sean’s already here—”

“He can wait.” Sam dropped her hand, nodding toward her room, an old sunroom off the kitchen he’d converted so she’d have more privacy and because five boys in two small bedrooms upstairs was no longer working.

“I’m not changing,” she said, chin out, arms crossed, in a pose that would have been the picture of defiance but for the slightly trembling lower lip. Sam felt for her, he really did: teenage angst was bad enough without the added indignity of being the only girl in a houseful of males. “All the other girls wear makeup, everybody’ll think I’m a total loser if I don’t.”

“First off, baby girl, all the other girls don’t wear makeup. Or wear clothes that look like they outgrew them four years ago.” Since Sam substituted up at the high school on a regular basis, Libby knew better than to argue with him. “And anyway,” he added before she could load her next round of ammunition, “I didn’t say you couldn’t wear any makeup. Just not enough for three other girls besides you. And you know the school dress code won’t allow a top like that—”

“Well, duh, I’ve got a shirt in my backpack to put on over it when I’m in school. This is just for, you know, before and after.”

“And this is, you know, not open for discussion. Go change. Or,” he added as the black-cherry mouth dropped and an indignant squawk popped out of it, “Sean goes on to school and you take the bus. Or better yet, I’ll drive you.”

A fate worse than death, Sam knew. “This is so unfair!” she yelled, then stomped away, only to whirl around and lob across the kitchen, “You’re only on my case because you don’t like Sean!”

“Has nothing to do with whether I like him or not,” Sam said mildly, even though hormones poured off the boy like sweat off a long-distance runner. Locking Libby away in a tower somewhere for ten years or so was becoming more appealing by the second. “I don’t trust him,” he said, just so there’d be no mistake.

Eyes flashed, hands landed on hips. “What you mean is, you don’t trust me!” Four-year-old Travis snuggled up to Sam’s flank and asked to be picked up; behind him, he could hear muted clanks and clunks as Mike and Matt, his oldest boys, went about making sandwiches for lunch. “God!” Libby said on a wail. “I wish you’d find a girlfriend or get married again or…or something so you’d stop obsessing about us all the freaking time!”

Five sets of eyes veered to Sam as he idly wondered where the sweet little girl who used to live here had got to, even as he tamped down a flash of irritation that would do nobody any good to let loose. Smelling of Cheerios, Travis wrapped his arms around Sam’s neck, while eight-year-old Wade and first-grader Frankie, still at the breakfast table, silently chewed and gawked.

“You’re entitled to your opinion, Libby,” Sam said levelly. “But you’re upsettin’ your brothers, you’re keeping Sean waiting, and you’re gonna be late for school. So I suggest you keep those thoughts to yourself until a more appropriate time. Now get moving, baby girl.”

“Don’t call me that!” she shrieked, then clomped out of the room.

Letting Travis slide back down to the floor, Sam turned to the boys and said, “It’s gettin’ late. Time to get a move on. Wade, is it my imagination, or is that the same shirt you had on yesterday?” He frowned. “And the day before that?” At the kid’s sheepish shrug, Sam swallowed back a smile. “Go change before your teacher makes you sit outside, okay?”

The eight-year-old trooped off as, with a time-honed precision that was truly a thing of beauty, breakfast dishes were cleared, lunches distributed, assorted arms shoved into jacket or sweatshirt sleeves, and Sam felt a little of his hard-won peace return. Farming was a challenge, no doubt about it; raising six kids by himself even more so. But it was amazing how smoothly things could run—or at least, had run up until the Attack of the Killer Hormones—by simply establishing, and enforcing, some basic parameters, making sure everybody did their fair share.

As all the boys except Travis filed out to catch the school bus, Sam shifted his weight off his complaining leg, deciding there was no reason at all why the method that had stood him in good stead since Jeannie’s passing shouldn’t continue to do so. Not that it hadn’t been hard at first. Lord, he’d missed her so much those first few months he’d thought he’d go crazy, both with grief and unfulfilled longing. But the pain had passed, or at least dulled, as had the collective ineptitude. Jeannie hadn’t meant to make them all dependent on her, Sam knew that, but it had simply been in her nature to do for them. She hadn’t wanted anyone else messing in her kitchen; there was no reason for the kids, or Sam, for that matter, to remember where anything was because Jeannie had a photographic memory. But when she died, of a freak aneurism that nobody could’ve predicted, let alone prevented, and it became clear exactly how useless they all were in the house….

Well. Never again, was all Sam had to say. And now that everything was running more or less smoothly, he saw no need to go mucking it all up by introducing another human being into the mix. He’d had his one true love. Maybe it hadn’t lasted as long as he’d hoped, but there’d be no replacing Jeannie, and he had no intention of trying. No matter how much Libby thought otherwise.

No matter how bad the loneliness tried to suffocate him from time to time.

His daughter clomped past again, her midriff now covered, her makeup more in keeping with what Sam considered appropriate for a girl who didn’t turn fifteen for another month. He grabbed her again, this time to inflict a one-armed hug, which she patiently suffered for a moment or two before grabbing her backpack and sailing out the back door. Now alone in the kitchen, except for a dog or two and a cat who must’ve slipped inside when everybody left, he silently reassured his wits it was okay to come out of hiding.

Like his mother used to say, it was a great life if you didn’t weaken.

He found Travis in the living room, on his stomach in front of the TV, watching a faded Grover through a scrim of wiggly lines. One of these days he was gonna have to break down and get a satellite dish, he supposed, except he couldn’t work up a whole lot of enthusiasm for making TV even more appealing to a houseful of kids.

“Hey, big stuff—you make your bed?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then go pee and get your jacket, we’ve got supplies to buy, fences to fix.”

A half minute later, the little boy returned to the living room, trying to walk and straighten out his elastic-waisted jeans at the same time and not having a whole lot of success. Underneath a pale blond buzz cut, big blue eyes the exact color of his mother’s met Sam’s as he squatted to fix the boy’s twisted waistband. “C’n Radar come, too?”

Sam glanced over at their most recent acquisition, who looked to be part Heeler, part jackrabbit. Biggest damn ears he’d ever seen on a dog. Mutt had shown up during a thunderstorm a month or so back and didn’t seem much interested in leaving. Despite Sam’s regular declarations of “No more animals,” every homeless cat or dog in Mayes County seemed destined to land on their doorstep, although Sam told himself this was not because he was a pushover.

“Don’t see why not,” Sam said, and boy and dog practically tripped over each other on their way out the door. Seconds later, they were all in the pickup, headed into Haven and Sutter’s Hardware. Granted, you could find bigger, fancier, and probably cheaper home improvement centers in Claremore and Tulsa. But what with gas prices being what they were these days, and the fact that Abe Sutter carried only what the local farmers needed and not a whole lot of stuff they didn’t, thus drastically reducing the temptation to spend money they didn’t have to begin with, most folks found Abe’s more of a bargain than you might think.

The sun had pretty much burned off the morning chill, leaving behind one of those nice Indian Summer days that could make a man feel in charge again, even of headstrong teenagers who craved their freedom right when they needed the most watching. Never mind that the thousands of black-eyed Susans bobbing in the breeze on either side of the road seemed to be laughing at him, that the golden fields falling away as they crested each rolling hill stirred up memories of another teenage girl, her face flushed with newly discovered sexual passion during some hot and heavy necking sessions with a certain teenage boy who’d ached to take them both to places they’d never been, even as he knew the time hadn’t been right for either of them, not yet.

Sam had respected Jeannie’s wish to remain a virgin until marriage, but waiting had nearly killed both of them. Especially as “waiting” had meant until after they’d both finished college and Sam was sure he could support a family. Was it any wonder that Jeannie had gotten pregnant on their wedding night? Or that Libby was the way she was, being the product of all that pent-up passion?

Considering how good his and Jeannie’s sex life had been, doing without all this time hadn’t been nearly the struggle he’d thought. The farm, though, was in better shape than it had ever been, leaving Sam to consider, as he crested a hill to find himself trailing a camper-shelled pickup with an Ohio plate, that he probably was the only farmer in existence who actually liked repairing fences.

His musings disintegrated, however, when, with a great deal of squealing, the truck suddenly swerved like a spooked elephant, lurched off the road into the shallow, weed-tangled ditch, then shuddered to a stop as if grateful the ordeal was over. Adrenaline spiked through Sam as he pulled up behind the listing vehicle, squinting in the glare of sun flashing off white metal.

“You stay put while I make sure everybody’s all right,” he said to Travis, unbuckling his belt and climbing out just in time to hear a female voice let loose with a very succinct cussword, followed immediately by a man’s admonition to watch her language. Which in turn resulted in an even more succinct cussword.

The driver’s side door popped open, slammed back shut—which resulted in a loud “Dammit!”—then opened again, this time to stay put long enough for the skinniest woman he’d ever seen to push herself up and out of the truck like a frantic, if emaciated, butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Pinpricks of light flashed from a series of earrings marching up her ear.

“You okay?” Sam asked, not realizing she hadn’t seen him. She jumped back with a startled “Oh,” one hand pressed to her flat chest, her long fingers weighted down with so many rings Sam wasn’t sure how she could lift her hand. Especially considering her wrist looked like it would snap in two if a person breathed on it hard.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said on a pushed-out breath, swiping one hand over dark hair yanked back from her face to explode into a surprisingly exuberant, curly ponytail on the back of her head. “Just pissed.” Startlingly silver-blue eyes glanced off Sam’s for a split second before, her forehead creased, she returned her attention to the still-open truck door. “Dad? Can you get out?”

Forget the butterfly image. The set to her mouth, the way her nut-colored skin stretched across her bones, brought to mind the kinds of insects that cheerfully devoured their mates after sex.

Sam moved closer to lend a hand, if needed, just as a pair of chinoed legs in lace-up walking shoes emerged from the truck, followed by a white head and wide shoulders. With a grunt, the tall man levered himself out onto his feet.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he said to the gal, then turned back to glare at the listing truck. “Although my state of mind pretty much echoes my daughter’s.”

Reassured that nobody was hurt, Sam chuckled, then extended his hand. “Sam Frazier. I’ve got a farm a couple miles up the road.” The older man’s grasp was firm, his ramrod posture bespeaking a military background. As did his direct, blue gaze, only a degree or two warmer than his daughter’s.

“Lane Stewart,” he said, then nodded toward the woman, his expression a blend of exasperation and amusement with which Sam was all too well acquainted. “My daughter, Carly. To whom a certain squirrel owes its life.”

That got an indignant roll of those clear blue eyes, the gesture not unlike Libby’s. Her outfit, too, was straight out of the Young and Reckless catalogue, complete with baggy, low-riding drawstring pants—revealing a small tattoo above her left hip—the filmy overshirt billowing out behind her in the breeze doing little to hide the expanse of midriff visible underneath her cropped tank top. But this gal was no teenager: telltale age lines fanned from the corners of her eyes, had begun to dig in on either side of a full mouth glistening in one of those no-color lipsticks. And whereas most teenagers seemed to think good posture somehow violated their right to free expression, Carly stood as though tied to a ladder, shoulders back, practically nonexistent—and unconfined—breasts thrust forward. Her feet—knobby, used-up looking things in lime-green, ridiculously high-heeled sandals—pointed simultaneously to the north-east and south-east, as if undecided which way to head. And yet, pissed though she was, bony though she was, she moved with an almost hypnotic grace that had Sam thinking things not normally associated with helping out strangers with car problems.

Right. Car problems.

“Think you can move your truck?” he asked Carly’s father, as Travis and Radar hopped out of Sam’s, the dog bounding off into the weeds to chase something or other. That squirrel, most likely.

“Have no idea,” Lane said, which Sam took as an invitation to join the older man in the ditch to check underneath the vehicle. A minute later, having agreed that, yep, the axle was bent, all right, Lane called Triple A on his cell phone as Sam took in Carly and Travis standing four feet apart, sizing each other up. Neither one seemed quite sure what to make of the other.

Since apparently nobody’d yet answered, and to distract himself from staring at the man’s daughter as much as anything, Sam said, “Mostly likely, they’ll send out Darryl Andrews. Since he’s the only mechanic in town.”

“And what town might that be?”

“Haven. Oklahoma,” he added, since you could never be too sure with tourists. Then Lane said “Hello, yeah, I’ve got a broken down vehicle here, I need a tow” into the phone and Sam went back to watching Carly and his son, who appeared to have started up something resembling a conversation.

The kid was kind of cute, Carly supposed, if you were into that sort of thing. Like the way the sun glinted off his hair, fine and white blond like peach fuzz, the pudgy little tummy pooching out his sweatshirt, his scuffed Spiderman sneakers. He was subdued but not shy, which she found nearly as disconcerting in the preschooler—when did kids start losing their baby teeth, anyway?—as she did in grown men.

Like the lanky one with the honeyed gaze currently talking to her father.

“That’s my daddy,” the child said, and Carly forced herself to look away from whatever she found so fascinating. Because other than a slight hitch in his gait which raised the question How? there was nothing remarkable about the man. Just a country guy in jeans and plaid shirt worn open over a T-shirt, sun-baked features shadowed by the brim of a Purina ball cap. Nothing noteworthy at all. But her eyes would keep moseying back over there, wouldn’t they?

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t had breakfast.

“I kind of figured that,” she said to the kid, thinking maybe she should smile or something. “What’s your name?”

“Travis. How come you got so many earrings?”

Carly’s hand lifted to one ear, touching the dangling strand of beads hanging from her lobe. A pair of studs kept it company, while farther up a small gold loop hugged the rim. “’Cause I like ’em,” she said. “And this way, I don’t have to narrow it down to a single choice every morning.”

Travis seemed to consider this for a minute, then said, “My sister, Libby, has holes in her ears, too. But only one set. Does it hurt?”

“No,” Carly said as the dog—a mottled gray and black thing with enormous ears and a toothy grin—exploded out of the weeds in front of them, dancing around the boy for several seconds before realizing he’d been remiss in not acknowledging the other human standing there. The beast plopped his butt down in the dirt, his wagging tail stirring up a dust cloud as he woofed hello.

“His name’s Radar,” the boy said. “He likes everybody. Daddy says he’s nothing but a big ol’ pain in the butt.”

The dog woofed again, and Carly laughed, which the dog took as an invitation to jump up and plant his paws on her thighs.

“Radar! Down!” “Daddy” said, striding over to grab the dog’s collar, even as Carly said, “No, no—it’s okay, really,” and then she looked up into his face and damned if she didn’t forget to breathe for a second or two. Because there was a substance behind those brandy-colored eyes that she hadn’t seen in an extraordinarily long time. If ever. Something that went beyond the surface friendliness, or even the shrewd intelligence that masked—barely—a simmering sensuality that made her slightly dizzy.

It was honesty, she thought with a start. The completely ingenuous openness of a man with no hidden agenda, with nothing to hide.

Or to lose.

“Shouldn’t be more’n ten, fifteen minutes before Darryl gets here with the wrecker. Hey,” he said when she swayed slightly. “You sure you’re okay?”

“What? Oh, yes, I’m fine. Just, um, hungry. I skipped breakfast,” she hastily added, thinking, Oh, brother.

The crumples now rearranged themselves into a grin, one which created not a few wrinkles around his eyes and mouth and made her realize this was not a man in his first—or second—blush of youth. Either.

“Well,” she said. “Thanks for stopping. But there’s no sense in your hanging around any longer, since you said the tow truck would be here pretty soon….”

“And only one of you can fit in Darryl’s cab for the ride into town, so I guess that means the other one gets to ride with me.” Despite the man’s grin, Carly got the weirdest feeling he wasn’t all that happy about this turn of events.

Travis tugged on Sam’s shirttail. “Did you see all her earrings, Daddy?”

“Yeah,” he said, staring hard at the side of her face. “I saw ’em.” Then his gaze swept down and she realized that wasn’t all he’d seen. Or, she guessed, approved of. Well, that was his problem, wasn’t it?

Travis and Radar wandered over to watch her father assess the damage to the camper’s interior. Brave souls, the pair of them.

“You really swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel?” Sam asked.

She looked back at Sam. “I really did. Although my guess is he probably darts out in front of cars on a regular basis, just for the hell of it. Squirrel ‘chicken,’ or something.”

“Dangerous game.”

“Guess he figures what’s life without a little danger to make it interesting? Crap,” she said on a wince as her knee tried its level best to give out on her.

Sam’s hand instantly cupped her elbow, followed by a heart-piercingly gentle, “What is it?”

“My knee. Or what’s left of it. I need to sit.”

“Can you get up into the truck?”

She nodded, and Sam put an arm around her waist and helped her over to his truck, then boosted her up into the passenger seat. It smelled very…male, although she couldn’t have possibly said what she meant by that.

“I’m not playing the damsel in distress, I swear,” she said, lifting the hem of her pants to massage the muscles around her Ace-bandaged knee.

“Didn’t figure you were.” Standing by the door, he nodded at her knee. “What happened?”

“Repetitive stress injury, basically. I’m a dancer. Was a dancer,” she added with a rueful glare at the offending joint.

“In your case, I’m guessing that’s not a euphemism for stripper.”

Despite pain bad enough to make her eyes cross, she laughed. “No, I don’t exactly have the equipment for that line of work.”

His grin managed to be both slightly devilish and very dear. And he was giving off this amazing, basic masculine scent of clean clothes and sun and that indefinable something that makes a woman’s mouth water, and she thought, Oh, God, just shoot me now.

“I was a ballerina,” she said, refusing to believe her dry mouth was due to anything other than a craving for orange juice. “In Cincinnati.”

“No fooling?” Sam leaned one wrist on the truck’s roof. “I always wondered how you gals danced on your toes like that.”

“Painfully.” His low rumble of amusement made her mouth even dryer. “What about you?” she said, nodding toward his right leg.

He grimaced. “Had a run-in with a bad tempered cow, Thanksgiving Day, a couple years ago. They tell me it healed perfectly, but corny as it sounds, I can definitely tell when it’s going to rain. So…what brings you to these parts?” he said over her chuckle.

She pulled her pants leg back down over her knee, then nodded over to her father, who was showing something or other to Travis. Seemed a shame, really, to waste such great grandpa material on a daughter who had no interest in being somebody’s mother.

“Road trip,” she said.

“Now, why do I get the feeling there’s a story behind this?”

She smiled, then shifted in her seat, trying to find a comfortable position for her knee. “My mother died a couple years ago,” she said softly over the ache of loss that still hadn’t quite dissipated. “Dad insisted he was okay—and here’s the part where I blow any chance I had of making a good first impression—and I chose to believe him because it made my life easier. Except then when I suddenly didn’t have a life, I took a good look at my father and realized I didn’t like what I was seeing. So I suggested we hop in the camper and drive until we got bored.”

“Is it working?”

“My dad, you mean?” She squinted over at the man. “Hard to tell. He’s a master at putting up a front. I suppose twenty years in the Army will do that to a man. Oh! Is that the tow truck?”

Sam glanced over. “Sure is. So what do you say I take you into town, and your father can ride with Darryl in the wrecker?”

“Sounds good to me,” she said, even though it didn’t sound good at all. What it sounded, was dangerous.

Unaware of her rampant ambivalence, Sam shut her door before starting to walk away, only to twist back around and say, “Just so you know…as far as impressions go, you did okay.”

“Oh,” she said as blood rushed gleefully to her skin’s surface. “Is this a good thing?”

He stared at her harder than a stranger had any right to, then shook his head. “No, ma’am, it most definitely is not,” he said, then strode off toward the beeping wrecker, leaving Carly feeling as tilted as her father’s truck.

Chapter 2

“My, my, my…wouldja lookee there?”

Having just attended a protracted birth that ended up getting transferred to the hospital in Claremore anyway, Ivy Gardner wasn’t sure how much of anything she could see. Or cared to, frankly. At the moment she was beginning to think she was getting too damn old for this foolishness, never mind how much she loved her work. She could also do without Luralene Hastings’s poking her before she’d had a chance to finish her first cup of coffee. But since the redheaded proprietress of the Hair We Are would only bug the hell out of Ivy until she responded, she peered blearily across the diner at the unfamiliar couple sitting in the far booth, both frowning at the twenty-five-year-old laminated menus that nobody local ever used.

Except then her vision cleared for a second or two and her brain managed a Huh of interest. Might’ve been more than that if she hadn’t been sleep deprived. Then again, maybe not—she was long past the age where her heart fluttered at the sight of a good-looking male. Which this definitely was, she wouldn’t deny it, with those good-size shoulders and thick, snowy hair. Ivy shifted uncomfortably in her seat, feeling very doughy, just at the moment.

“Wonder who they are?” Luralene said, poking Ivy again.

“Does it matter?”

Exasperated green eyes—which clashed with the turquoise eye shadow—met Ivy’s. “You know, you have turned into a regular stick-in-the-mud. I remember when you used to be fun.”

“And I remember when you used to be subtle.” Except then she took another sip of coffee and shook her head. “Strike that. You were never subtle.”

“Damn straight. Oh, oh—don’t look now—” this in a stage whisper you could hear in Tulsa “—but he’s lookin’ at you!”

And of course, Ivy lifted her eyes and yep, ran right into a pair of baby blues that set things to fizzing that hadn’t fizzed in a long, long time. And even as she wondered if maybe the man needed glasses, a suggestion of curiosity wormed past the fizzing, dragging a tiny speck of feeling flattered along with it. Then the man returned his attention to the younger woman with him, it all went poof, and Luralene was asking Ivy how her mayoral campaign was going and Ivy found herself entertaining the idea of stuffing one of Ruby’s blueberry muffins into the redhead’s mouth.

She still wasn’t quite sure how she’d gotten hoodwinked into running for mayor, although she seemed to recall the Logan brothers, the youngest of whom was her son-in-law, had a lot to do with it. But when eighty-something Cy Hotchkins decided not to run for reelection—it would’ve been his sixth term, but term limits were not a big issue in a town of a thousand where most people were just happy somebody was willing to do the job—who should throw her forty-year-old pillbox into the ring but Arliss Potts, the Methodist preacher’s wife known more for her culinary eccentricities than her leadership qualities. And before Ivy knew it, her daughter Dawn, the town’s only attorney, had gotten a petition going and amassed enough signatures to get Ivy on the ballot, and suddenly she was a political candidate. She, an aging hippie who’d had the nerve to raise her illegitimate daughter in a town not known for its liberal leanings. At least, not three decades ago.

But then, the reasoning went, a woman who believed in the town enough to stick around despite all that early censure was the perfect person to head its admittedly skeletal government. And besides, the reasoning went further, since more than half the people who’d looked down at her all those years ago were dead, and she’d delivered a fair number of all the younger voters, her chances of victory weren’t too bad, considering.

Whatever. If nothing else, if she was elected, city council meetings would be spared an endless parade of deviled eggs made with ginger and horseradish and Cheez Whiz canapés topped with anchovy stars. But since she figured her winning was unlikely—Arliss was a good person at heart, even if she couldn’t cook worth spit, and this was a picayune Bible-belt town, after all—she was basically only going along with the whole idea in order to make her deluded but well-meaning friends and family happy.

“Campaign’s goin’ fine,” she finally lied, but Luralene had already moved on, her beady little eyes scanning the diner like radar. You could practically hear the bleep…bleep…bleep from underneath her bomb-shelter hairdo. Jenna Logan came in with her niece Blair, who was smiling like a goon at everybody until finally Ruby said, “Well, look who got her braces off!” and the out-of-towners—father and daughter, she was guessing—glanced over and smiled, which is when Ivy got a load of all the earrings marching up the outer rim of the gal’s ears, the number of rings on her long, thin fingers. She seemed a little old to be dressed that way, to tell the truth, but then, Ivy supposed she had no room to talk with her long, gray braid and embroidered East Indian tunic. Not to mention the Birkenstocks.

Hey. Being a cliché took a lot of effort. Just ask Luralene.

The man’s cell phone rang. He dug it out of his shirt pocket, said, “Uh-huh” and “I see” a few times, then clapped it shut (it was one of those fancy flip-up numbers) and frowned at the gal, mumbling something that made her mouth twist all up. She leaned over to get her purse off the floor while the man paid the bill and praised Ruby’s cooking, which earned him the black woman’s brightest smile. The two of them passed by Luralene and Ivy’s booth on their way out, the man surprising the living daylights out of Ivy by meeting her gaze directly, then nodding.

Luralene poked her. “Didja see that?”

But Ivy barely heard her for all the blood rushing in her ears.

Sam had promised the Stewarts he’d check in with them after he’d run his errands to see how things were going, so that’s what he was going to do. Because he was a man of his word, for one thing, and because it didn’t seem right, abandoning them if they were going to be stranded—which he suspected they were—for another. However, to say he wasn’t altogether comfortable with the prospect of seeing Carly Stewart again was one of the bigger understatements of the year. Why, he couldn’t say, exactly. Other than the obvious, which was that something about her was tickling awake things he’d just as soon stay asleep, thank you. He always had hated being tickled. However, by the time he got back to Ruby’s, they’d already left.

“And not lookin’ particularly happy about things, would be my take on it,” Ruby said, ringing up the breakfast burrito he and Travis were going to share. Setting foot in Ruby’s without ordering something violated a basic law of nature. Then the white-haired woman frowned. “How’d you know about them, anyway?”

“We were right behind them when their truck landed in a ditch. Axle’s shot, looked like.” He pocketed his change. “I didn’t have the heart to tell ’em it’s probably unlikely Darryl’s got a replacement lying around, which means they might be here for a while.”

Ruby gave him a speculative look, the kind that preceded a comment he doubted he wanted to hear, so he was more than grateful when Blair Logan suddenly appeared at his side, grinning up at him.

“Well, hey, Blair,” Sam said with a grin of his own for Libby’s best friend. Her calm, rational, normal best friend who, in jeans and a long-sleeved top that skimmed her slender figure rather than strangling it, wasn’t showing signs of going over to the dark side. At least not yet. “You got your braces off, huh?”

“This morning, yeah,” she said, handing the check and a twenty to Ruby, then scooping Travis up into her arms to give him a hug, her cinnamon-colored hair glimmering in the streak of sunlight angling through a nearby window. “So,” she said, setting his son on his feet again, “you know those people who were in here earlier?”

“Not really, no. I only stopped to help them out on the road.”

“Oh. The woman looked kinda cool. For someone that old, I mean.”

Then again, the dark side took many forms, he thought as Ruby handed the teenager her change.

Once back in the truck, now loaded down with enough fencing supplies to circle the state, Sam drove the three blocks to Darryl Andrews’s garage, turning a blind eye to Travis’s sharing his half of the burrito with the dog in the back seat. Sure enough, Carly and her father were standing out in front, backpacks and duffels strewn at their feet, looking like they weren’t quite sure what to do next.

A vague feeling of impending doom came over Sam, coinciding nicely with the sharp ping of sexual awareness as he took in a scrap of her springy hair toying with her long neck. And he thought of Libby and the hormone riots she was no doubt inciting these days and how Blair thought Carly was “cool” and how Libby would no doubt see in this woman a kindred spirit, and Sam marveled at his brain’s ability to produce so many thoughts simultaneously, not a single one of them reassuring in the slightest.

Except maybe for the briefly entertained idea of getting the hell out of there.

However. He pulled up beside them, and Carly leaned in the passenger-side window like she’d been expecting him and said, “Darryl said it’d take a week to get the axle, so it looks like we’re stuck,” and now he noticed just how full her bottom lip was and he thought This is nuts. He also noticed she wore that resigned expression of someone who was actually ticked but knew giving vent to those feelings would serve no useful purpose. “So I guess we need someplace to stay for a few days. Is there a motel around here?”

See, this is the part he was dreading. Because he’d known before she’d even opened her mouth what the options were, and what the outcome was likely to be, both of which tied nicely in with that impending doom thing. “There’s the Double Arrow out by me,” he said as if reading a script, “but it’s closed for the next couple of weeks while the owners finish up remodeling it.”

“No place in town, then?” her father put in from over her shoulder. “A rooming house or something?”

Here’s the funny thing: Any number of people could have been behind Carly and her father this morning when their truck went off the road. And any number of people would have made the offer he was about to make. But it hadn’t been any number of people, it had been him. He could practically hear Jeannie saying, “Nothing happens without a purpose,” although her voice wasn’t nearly as clear as it used to be.

Still, Sam shook his head, a gesture which apparently rattled loose the words he knew he was going to say all along. “No, the Double Arrow’s it. But if you don’t mind family living, you could bunk with us. Libby, my girl, has an extra bed in her room. And there’s a fold-out couch in the living room.”

“Oh, now,” Lane said, as Carly—Sam noticed out of the corner of his eye—simply stared at him as if not quite sure what to think, “we don’t want to put you out—”

“It’s no bother,” Sam said, because logistically, it wasn’t, really. “And besides, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of choice, does there?”

Father and daughter regarded each other for several seconds; then Lane said, “We insist on paying you for putting up with us, though,” and Sam laughed.

“You’re talking about a ninety-year-old farmhouse, six kids and one bathroom. Somehow, it wouldn’t seem right to take your money.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to take it out in trade,” the older man said. “If you need some work done around the place, stuff like that.”

Sam sensed an eagerness behind Lane’s offer which surprised him. “Thought you folks were on vacation?”

“Believe me,” Lane said, “if it was a vacation I wanted, traipsing around the countryside with this pain in the backside—” he jerked his head toward Carly “—would not be my first choice.”

“Hey,” she said, gently smacking him. But since nobody seemed to be taking anybody else too seriously, Sam figured he didn’t need to, either. So they tossed all their gear into the back seat next to the kid and the dog, and Carly and her father climbed up onto the truck’s bench seat and they took off. Within seconds, the truck was filled with conversation. And the faint scent of coconut, which Sam would swear he’d never in his life found arousing before now.

Six kids?

Carly stared straight ahead as they bumped and squeaked over the road, trying not to stare at how the veins stood out on top of Sam’s hand cradling the gearshift. Who the hell has six kids these days? Thank God they weren’t alone, was all she had to say, although she wasn’t in much of a mood to thank God or anybody else for the situation as a whole. Her last relationship had ended just long enough ago to leave her dangling over that emotional hellhole between still stinging (she’d never been much good at being the dumpee) and really, really missing sex. Not that she hadn’t dangled over this particular emotional hellhole a few—okay, more than a few—times before, so it wasn’t as if she didn’t know she’d survive. It was what she tended to do to survive that could be the problem.

She caught a whiff of Sam’s aftershave and shut her eyes, drumming, Wrong, wrong, wrong into her head.

There. That should do it.

The men, having no idea of the horde of nefarious demons intent on colonizing her brain, had fallen into an easy conversation about sports or whatever, she wasn’t paying much attention, while her thoughts orbited around a single idea (and those demons), which was that this little sidebar to their trip went way beyond her original proposal to “go wherever the mood struck.”

Not that she was all that upset about the axle business. These things happen. And it wasn’t as if they were on any kind of set schedule or anything. Nor did she have a problem with whatever the accommodations turned out to be. God knows—although her father did not—she’d spent more than a few nights in some pretty seedy places over the years. Her ability to crash almost anywhere had not, she didn’t imagine, fallen into disuse simply because she’d been living more or less like an actual grown-up for some time. As long as she had a can opener and toilet paper (which she did), she was good.

However…turning back to the hellhole business for a minute: It was not exactly reassuring to discover that, at thirty-seven, her hormones were apparently every bit as out of control now as they had been at twenty. Or—her mouth pulled tight—fifteen. Now, Carly had long since accepted the fact that she clearly lacked whatever instincts steered other women to their life mates. And that, at this point, it was downright disingenuous to chalk up her inability to form a meaningful attachment to simply needing to mature a little more. So finding herself attracted to some farmer with a batch of kids—in all likelihood, a married farmer with a batch of kids, since that was one thing she did not do—was very depressing.

Wait. If Sam was married…

Carly cleared her throat and said, “Um…shouldn’t you have cleared our coming with your wife first?”

She saw the muscles in his hand tense as he shifted gears to climb a hill.

“Jeannie’s been gone for coming up on three years now,” he said softly, then twisted to give her what he probably thought was a reassuring smile. “Nobody to clear this with but me.”

Her first thought—a slightly panicked realization that the marriage thing had been her ace in the hole—collided with the most bizarre sensation of…wait, the word was there, somewhere…caring, that was it. Not that she never felt sympathy for anyone, because of course she did, it wasn’t as if she was cold-hearted. No, it was the intensity of the moment that knocked her off her pins, the overwhelming rush of compassion for this perfect stranger who was opening his home to them. The obvious love in Sam’s voice, the residual grief—something she understood all too well herself—somehow made her feel very, very humble. And shallow.

“I’m so sorry,” she finally said, even as her father put in about how hard it must be for Sam, raising all those kids on his own.

Indeed.

Sam wordlessly acknowledged their sympathy, then said, “That’s the farm up ahead. It’s just a small operation, but we call it home.”

But Carly barely registered the small grove of fruit trees, the corn-stalk-stubbled fields, the modest two-story farmhouse, white with blue shutters, proudly standing underneath a huge old oak tree, its leaves rust-tinged. Because she was too busy processing the newsflash that even though there was no Mrs. Sam in the picture, the six kids should work quite nicely as a libido suppressant. Because no way was she messing around with a man with six kids.

No. Damn. Way.

Sitting by herself on a patch of hot, prickly grass outside the school cafeteria, Libby glowered at her bologna sandwich, then took a bite, seeing as she was hungry and it wasn’t like it was gonna change, anyway. The “cool” girls—mostly juniors and seniors—sat in a cozy bunch under the massive cottonwood, their laughter drifting over on the breeze. Lunch—a trial on the best of days—really sucked when Blair wasn’t there. And Sean was no help, since he liked to spend every spare moment working on whatever car was up on the blocks in Auto. So it was just Libby and her bologna sandwich. Oh, and chips and an apple. Big whoop.

Actually, in some ways it wasn’t nearly as bad as she thought it would be. Most of her classes were okay, although she could do without Mr. Solomon, her English teacher, trying so hard to act like he was everybody’s best friend. The homework was no big deal, and she’d already gotten a ninety-three on her first biology quiz, so she felt pretty good about that, but lunchtime—the girls giggled again—was the pits. Why most of the kids she’d gone all through school with had suddenly decided it wasn’t cool to hang out with their old friends anymore, she had no idea. Not that any of ’em had anything to be stuck-up about—for the most part, everybody here was a farmer’s or rancher’s kid, just like her. When she’d bitched to Dad, he’d told her to sit tight, reminding her how hard her first weeks had been in middle school and how well that had turned out.

Like Dad had a clue how she felt. He used to be pretty cool, too, until he’d gone on this overprotective tear. Like showing two inches of skin or wearing makeup was going to turn her into a slut, for crying out loud. She was in high school, for heaven’s sake! Why didn’t he get that?

Libby glanced down at her breasts—36C and still growing—and sighed, thinking maybe he got more than she wanted to admit. Then she noticed Blair striding across the grass from the parking lot, her red hair looking like it was on fire in the sunlight, and felt a little better.

“Where were you?” Libby asked, knowing she sounded short. But Blair only plopped down beside her on the grass, not taking offense.

“I told you, I had to go get my braces off this morning.”

“Oh, yeah, huh. I forgot. So let me see.”

Blair bared her teeth, like a dog.

“It looks weird,” Libby said. “I guess because I’ve only ever seen you with braces.”

Blair and her aunt Jenna—who’d brought Blair to Oklahoma from Washington, D.C., in search of Blair’s father, Hank Logan, only to fall in love with him and get married, which Libby thought truly one of the most romantic things she’d ever heard—had only been living in Haven for a little over a year. Blair and Libby had become best friends practically within minutes of meeting each other. Libby had sometimes thought maybe their instant friendship had something to do with Jenna being so much like Jeannie, Libby’s mom’s name, but this was not a theory she’d voiced aloud to anybody for fear of being thought silly.

“It feels weird,” Blair said, running her tongue over her naked teeth. “But I got used to having ’em, so I guess I’ll get used to not having ’em.”

“So, you ate before you came?”

“Yeah, Jenna took me to Ruby’s. Oh!” She sat up, her blue eyes all excited. “I almost forgot—there were these new people there, an old man and his daughter, she was so cool, like obviously not from around here—” Libby had found Blair’s previous big-city experience to be pretty reliable when it came to pegging somebody as cool or not “—and I think your father took them out to your place.”

Libby looked hard at Blair, because this information was not sinking in.

“What are you talking about? Why would Daddy be taking two strangers out to the farm? And how the heck do you know this?”

Blair snitched one of Libby’s potato chips—it wasn’t fair, since Blair could eat as many chips and candy bars as she wanted and never gain any weight, while all Libby had to do was think about the stuff and her jeans got tight—and said, “I saw your dad at Ruby’s, too, and he said something about being behind them when their truck went off the road and landed in a ditch outside town—”

“Ohmigosh! Was anybody hurt?”

“No, I don’t think so. But I got the feeling their truck was going to be out of commission for a while. Anyway, then Jenna and I stopped by Darryl’s to get gas, and we saw them get into your father’s truck with their backpacks and stuff and take off.”

“Honestly, Blair, you’d make a rotten detective, you know that? Just because he was givin’ ’em a ride doesn’t mean Dad was takin’ ’em home—”

Blair plucked another chip from the bag. “And where else was he gonna take ’em? You know the Double Arrow’s closed until Dad and Joe get it finished.”

Well, she had a point. But still. One thing did not necessarily lead to another….

“Hey, babe!”

Libby nearly choked on her Diet Coke, but she recovered in time to give Sean a bright smile as he dropped onto the grass beside her. She could feel at least ten sets of dagger glares coming from underneath the cottonwood tree.

“Hey, Blair,” Sean said, “how’s it goin’?”

“Fine,” her friend said, and Libby swallowed a sigh—along with the Diet Coke—because Blair and Sean didn’t really like each other all that much. Libby wasn’t really sure why, although she had a feeling it had something to do with both of them wanting her—Libby—all to themselves. Well, they were just both going to have to learn to deal with it, weren’t they?

Libby smiled into Sean’s amazing coffee eyes and tried not to sigh. She knew he wanted to kiss her, but the school had a zero-tolerance policy about shows of affection, so that was out. It was so weird—Sean was easily one of the cutest boys in school, he could have had any girl he wanted, so Libby had been totally shocked when he’d started hanging around her. And she really couldn’t believe it when he’d offered her a ride home a week ago and had leaned in and given her this really sweet kiss right before she got out. They’d kissed some more—okay, a lot more—since then, and to tell the truth, what she felt when they were kissing kinda scared her. Like when she was little and she’d spin around and around until she got dizzy and would fall over. But she figured it was like being new in school—eventually, she’d start feeling more normal about it.

“Thought you were working on Dawn Logan’s old GTO?” People could bring in cars for the advanced auto students to work on. They’d been working on that GTO since the first day of school, with no end in sight, from what Sean said.

Sean grinned, a crooked thing that made Libby feel a little like she might throw up. “I was. Except then I remembered if I spent the whole hour in there, I wouldn’t get to see my girl for another three-and-a-half hours.”

Blair made a strange sound in her throat. Libby tossed her a “Don’t say it” look before smiling back at Sean. Nobody’d ever called her my girl before and she was determined to squeeze every drop of pleasure out of the moment as she could.

The bell rang, bringing a chorus of groans, understandable since it was hot as hell inside. But before Libby could haul herself to her feet, Sean was standing with his hand out. Libby flushed, both with pleasure at being treated like a lady, and with embarrassment that he might not be able to heave her to her feet as easily as he thought. She resolved this dilemma by getting on one knee so he wouldn’t do all the work, flushing all over again when, once she was standing, he placed a kiss on the inside of her hand, making her tingle all over.

Behind Sean, Blair rolled her eyes. Libby decided it was only because she was jealous. However, she was gracious enough not to hold it against her.

Showered and changed into her favorite voile blouse over a tank top and a pair of bold, floral capris too tacky to resist, Carly sat stiffly on Sam’s porch swing, staring mindlessly out toward a clump of fruit trees—apple, mostly, she thought, but there were a few pears, as well, their leaves blushing scarlet—while nursing a cup of coffee long since gone cold. Sam had insisted she and her father were welcome to anything in the house, but she’d already started a list of what they used so she could replace it before they left. Since both she and her dad were big coffee drinkers, a can of Maxwell House went to the head of the class.

She’d hoped the shower and coffee would clear her muddled head. Wrong. If ever a situation brimmed over with “I know, buts…” this was it. Despite how well the situation had resolved itself, despite the shower and the coffee and a surreally perfect day with a sky so clear she felt buoyed by it, despite the rush of fond childhood memories brought on by the soothing, honest scents of hay and earth and animal, the ominous feeling that she was about to be tested in some way kinda shot all the good stuff to hell.

All the males, as well as a small pack of dogs, had been gone for a good two hours—something about repairing a fence, she gathered. Her father’s enthusiastic offer of help had thrown Sam, Carly could tell, but he’d relented once Dad convinced him he’d helped fix plenty of fences as a kid growing up on his parents’ dairy farm in Iowa. So off they’d gone, Sam’s apparent lack of concern about leaving a stranger alone in his house unnerving her even further, tossing her own cynicism back at her like a hot potato. And like that hot potato, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with such no-strings-attached generosity. Except she knew if she held on to it for more than a second, she’d get burned.

Carly downed another sip of coffee, only to grimace at its bitterness. The swing’s chain jingled, startled, as she got up and tossed the dregs out into the yard. Then she stretched her arms over her head, hauling in a lungful of air before slowly swaying from side to side, then bending down to easily lay her palms on the floorboards in front of her feet, taking care not to hyperextend her bum knee. Almost more than giving up performing, the thought of losing her flexibility and control over her body gave her the willies.

Speaking of willies…she actually shuddered when she walked back into the house, it was so impossibly neat. Fancy, no—the blue and beige early-American sofa had a decidedly weary aura about it—but everything was stacked or shelved or hung up or otherwise relegated to its appointed place. Not a single cobweb dangled from the ceiling or clung to a lampshade, not a speck of grunge huddled in the corners of the bathroom, and the clawfoot tub had been as white as Miss America’s smile. Creepy. While Carly wasn’t prone to letting dishes pile up in the sink, her housekeeping philosophy generally ran along the lines of when she got grossed out, she cleaned.

And yet, how to explain the occasional wall painted bright blue or tangerine or lemon-yellow, the animals snoozing or lurking everywhere she looked, the exuberantly free-form artwork smothering one entire wall of the airy, teal-green hallway leading from the living room to the kitchen? Or the row of boots lined up with almost military precision in the mudroom, except for one tiny red pair, defiantly lying on its sides…the mad collection of family photos in mismatched frames, on walls, on shelves, on end tables?

Sam’s wife was in at least half of them, a round, pretty woman who’d been clearly in love with her husband, her children, her life. Carly’s chest tightened for the obvious hole her death must have left in this family. As generous as Sam was with his smiles, none of them even came close to the ones in these pictures.

She carried her empty mug back into the kitchen, where one of a dozen notes tacked here and there instructed whoever—in this case, her—to either wash it out or put it in the dishwasher. Smiling, she rinsed it out and set it in on the drainboard, then decided to see what she could throw together for lunch, since she imagined the guys would be back soon. Not that Carly was inclined to either domesticity or helpfulness, but it seemed silly to make lunch for herself and not go ahead and make it for everyone else at the same time.

A block-printed note on the refrigerator sternly reminded her to think about what she wanted before opening it, but since she didn’t know what was inside, she supposed she could be forgiven for browsing, just this once. She found many of the same staples she remembered from summers at her grandparents’: bologna and American cheese and lettuce and big, ripe, juicy tomatoes still fresh from the late summer garden, Miracle Whip and generic mustard, with loaves of IronKids and whole wheat bread in the large basket on the counter. The milk would be fresh, she knew—she’d heard the lowing of a cow or two while she’d been sitting on the porch—and nothing skim about it. And if you wanted water, there was the tap. Well water, she imagined, ice-cold.

A humongous ginger tomcat snaking around her ankles, she started slicing tomatoes on a wooden board she found by the sink, frowning at the wipe-erase board the size of a medium-size continent hanging on the only counter-free wall, divided into columns with chores listed under each name. Even little Travis was up there, with Feed Chickens and Collect Eggs as part of his duties. Although she did notice that there was always an older child listed with the same chores, so maybe the little guy was only in training. Still, this was a method that brooked no argument. And frankly seemed at odds with what she could have sworn was a laid-back demeanor on Sam’s part. But there it was, irrefutable evidence that Sam Frazier apparently ran his home like a military institution.

Or an orphanage, she thought with a pang.

She heard the growl of a pickup outside; the cat tore over to the back door. A minute later, amidst sounds of laughter and a hiss from the cat as Radar burst inside, Travis trooped into the house, followed by her father, then Sam, both men wearing the unmistakable glow of satisfaction for a job well done. Or at least done. Her father, especially…when was the last time she’d heard him laugh like that, seen a smile that big on his face?

“I made some lunch,” she announced, waving at the table. “Sandwiches, if that’s okay. Bologna or cheese, or both, if you’re feeling adventurous.”

Her father said, “I think I need a quick shower first. If that’s okay?” he directed at Sam, who said, “Sure, go right ahead,” and then Dad vanished, leaving Sam staring at the table as though she’d set up a tray full of live snakes.

Wordlessly he plucked off his ball cap and slapped it up onto the six-foot-long pegboard mounted near the door, the move revealing a ragged, dark splotch plastering his shirt to a chest more substantial than one might expect given his overall leanness. Several strands of hair that could have been either silver or blond fell across his forehead; he swiped at them, his gaze bouncing off hers before sweeping over the innocent sandwiches mounded on a plate in the center of the table. Travis’s grubby hand shot out to claim half a sandwich, but Sam grabbed him with a “Not before you wash your hands, pup.” Then, one arm around his youngest’s chest, he met her eyes again and said, softly, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“No problem,” she said with a bright, idiotic grin, trying desperately to lighten the inexplicably weighted atmosphere. “Wasn’t as if I had anything else to do. What would you like to drink?”

Again with the weird look. Full of lots of angst and undertones and all sorts of stuff Carly really didn’t want to deal with. “I’m all sweaty,” he said, his eyes still locked with hers. Uh, boy. Thank God her father was still out of the room, was all she had to say.

“Hey. You want to talk sweaty? Try fifty dancers in an unair-conditioned studio in July. At the end of a two-hour rehearsal. You don’t even rate.”

That, at least, got a small smile, like a crack in the ice on a warm day, and at least some of the undertones slunk away.

Some. Not all. Certainly not the ones that made her glad her father wasn’t around. And that she wouldn’t be around for more than a few days.

Sam carted Travis over to the sink, holding him up to wash his hands, then dousing a paper towel with the running water to mop the kid’s face for good measure before freeing the protesting child so he could clean himself up. Leaving Carly to ponder why—how?—after all the beautiful bodies she’d seen in motion over the years, she couldn’t seem to unhook her eyeballs from this one. All he was doing was washing his hands, for crying out loud.

Then she heard a dry chuckle and realized he was watching her, watching him, and she felt a whoosh of desire so strong she nearly lost her balance, followed by the calm, clear words, You are so not going there.

Well, hot damn—maybe, just maybe, she was finally growing up.

Chapter 3

It’d been a long time since a woman had made him lunch.

It’d been even longer since sex had tapped at the door to his thought and said, Psst…remember me? Okay, so maybe it had come a’knocking once or twice in the past three years, but for damn sure Sam hadn’t had the time, interest or energy to open the door. In any case, the problem with both of these events was that Sam didn’t need, or want, either one in his life.

On an intellectual level, at least. Which was the only level he was going to pay any mind, since listening to the alternative—which would be something not involving a whole lot of brain cells—was too darn scary to contemplate. Because right at this very moment, if he indeed removed his brain from the equation, he didn’t mind at all having somebody make him lunch. And he really didn’t mind that pleasant ache in his groin, if for no other reason than to be reminded that, hallelujah, brother, he wasn’t dead yet. But he very much minded not minding, because…well, because what was the point?

Although the way the gal was looking at him…

He heard the pipes shudder, then groan, as Lane turned on the shower. Meaning it would probably be a while before they had a buffer. One big enough to count, anyway, he thought with a glance at his youngest, wrestling on the floor with Radar and growling louder than the dog. So much for the clean hands.

“So—” The word popped out of Carly’s mouth like a blow dart, like maybe she’d been having similar thoughts. Sam realized he could see straight through that flimsy shirt she was wearing, and even though she had another shirt on underneath, the peekaboo effect was wreaking havoc on his common sense. “What’s with all the notes all over the place?”

Not what he expected her to say. But after a quick scan of the room, he could see why she’d asked. “Huh. Guess there are a few, aren’t there?”

“Twelve,” she said. “Not counting that.” She nodded toward the wipe-erase board.

Sam held one of the kitchen chairs steady so Travis wouldn’t knock it over as he climbed up into his seat. Kid was still too short to really sit at the table comfortably without a booster seat, but Sam had a better shot at getting him to eat worms than use the “baby chair.”

“Got tired of repeating myself, basically. And this way, nobody can claim they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.”

Carly took a seat at the table, her plate filled mostly with lettuce, it looked like. “And this doesn’t strike you as just a tad…autocratic?”

“Only way to go when you’ve got six kids. Unless you got a better idea?”

“Move?”

“Don’t think the thought hasn’t crossed my mind a time or two.” He handed Travis half a cheese sandwich. The kid gave him a wide smile, and Sam thought, with a little pang, This is the last baby-toothed grin I’ll see. “For what it’s worth,” he said, turning back to Carly, “your dad was impressed as all get-out.”

“He would be.” With a loud groan, Radar collapsed on the floor in front of the sink, clearly untroubled by his status as wuss dog of the family. “Although,” Carly was saying, “Dad never resorted to notes or lists. He tended to rely more on the bellow and glare method.” Then her mouth quirked up. “With good reason.”

Yeah, Lane had shared a few stories about his daughter. Stories he doubted Carly would appreciate being bandied about, Sam mused with a smile as Henry, an ancient, chewed-up-looking tomcat whose few waking hours these days were mostly devoted to tormenting the dogs, paused in his travels to sniff Radar’s butt. The startled dog leaped to his feet, only to immediately cower against the cabinet door, ears tucked against his skull, eyes wide with terror. Satisfied, Henry flicked his tail and stalked off. Travis giggled; Carly gave the little boy a smile softer than Sam would have thought possible, given the sharpness of her features.

“Yeah,” he said, unable to take his eyes off that smile, “Lane definitely gave me the impression that you were a bit of a handful.”

She smirked. “Are you kidding? I made his life a living…” She glanced at Travis, then back at Sam, her eyes glittering, defiant, like her makeup, which, while anything but subtle, ventured no where near tacky. This was simply a woman who had no qualms about making herself look good. “Let’s just say I took the concept of challenging authority to a whole new level. Which begs the question…” She swept one arm out, indicating the notes. “Does this work?”

“Mostly. Once everybody realized I meant business.”

“And how old’s your daughter?”

A cold, clammy chill tramped up his back. “Almost fifteen.”

All she did was smile. And change the subject, her smug expression clearly indicating her belief that she’d won that round. “So. You get that fence fixed?”

“You’re still doing it, aren’t you?” Sam said.

A bite of salad halfway to her mouth, her eyes shot to his. “Doing what?”

“Challenging authority.”

She shrugged, the gesture setting the dangliest of the earrings to shimmering. Her hair, a rebellious tangle of not-quite curls swarming around her neck and shoulders, strained against the single bright blue clip jammed impatiently at one temple. “Can’t say as I’ve ever been real big on following the rules, no. So. The fence?”

Sam found it curious that, for someone so intent on being a badass, she sure didn’t seem interested in discussing it. But no matter, especially as it was none of his concern, anyway. “All done,” he said, loading up his own plate with several sandwich halves before turning back to the refrigerator. Carly’d already poured Travis a glass of milk, but Sam wanted iced tea. Preferably dumped over his head. “Thanks to your father. Can’t remember the last time I saw anybody get such a kick out of replacing fence posts.”

“Yep, that’s Dad.” Sam noticed how cautiously she was eyeing the four-year-old, giving him the feeling she didn’t spend a lot of time around little kids. Then she picked up a napkin and wiped a dribble of milk off Trav’s chin, which earned her a shy smile. She smiled back, sort of, then forked in a bite of lettuce and said, “So I guess that means the two of you didn’t spend the whole time discussing my errant ways.”

“Not the whole time, no. Just on the ride there. And back. And whenever we got close enough to hear each other.”

She reached out to move Trav’s cup of milk back from the edge of the table. “I wouldn’t’ve thought there was that much to discuss.”

“And here I was thinking it sounded like he’d barely scratched the surface.”

That got another moment’s stare before she said, “Anyway…I think Dad’s missed working with his hands.” Sam checked out hers—long fingers, smothered in all those rings, but no nail polish. “Mom was convinced he’d bought an old house on purpose so there’d always be something to fix. And believe me, there was. The kitchen alone took the better part of a year.” She smiled. “I swear, all the clerks at Home Depot knew him by name.”

“Sounds like a man after my own heart,” Sam said, and she rolled her eyes, making him chuckle. But her smile dimmed as she stabbed at a hunk of lettuce.

Travis asked for another sandwich half. Carly beat Sam to it. “Doing nothing makes him crazy. After he retired from the Army, he started his own security business. Except when Mom got sick, he sold it so he could spend as much time as possible with her. Then after she died, he got rid of the house right away and moved into an apartment. I understand why he did what he did, but he’s been at loose ends ever since.”

Sam waited out the twinge of sadness, faded more than he would have ever believed possible three years ago, but not entirely gone. For a moment, he almost envied the other man, being able to cherish what he had, to say goodbye. Losing Jeannie so suddenly had been like being shoved off a cliff into an ice-cold waterhole—there was no time to get your breath before you had all you could handle just to keep from drowning. But as hard as Jeannie’s unexpected death had been on him and the kids, at least she hadn’t suffered. Watching somebody you loved dwindle away…he could only imagine how hard that must have been. “Too many memories in the house?” he finally said, as his own echoed softly from every nook and cranny of the one they were sitting in.

“That’s what I figured, but he never really said.”

“I’m done,” Trav piped up. “C’n I be ’scused?”

Sam said, “Sure,” and the kid slid down from his seat, his feet hitting the floor with a thump before pounding out the back door, Radar—having recovered from the cat’s brutal attack—hot on his heels. The screen door whined shut, leaving him and Carly alone. Together. With the water still humming through the pipes and Sam well aware that voicing Lane’s probable motivation for selling his house could possibly let Carly more into his own head than he might like, especially since a few of those memories now whistled through his brain like wind through a canyon. With some difficulty, Sam swallowed the bite in his mouth and said, “Your dad must be bored out of his mind. In an apartment, I mean.”

She gave him one of those looks that women do when they’re trying to translate what you just said into their own language, then nodded.

“You have no idea,” she was saying, taking another bite of lettuce, her posture bringing to mind the deceptive strength of a sapling.

“So you decided what he needed was a road trip to jump-start him again.”

“Both of us, actually. Although when I brought it up, Dad definitely pounced on the idea.”

“How long’ve you been on the road?”

“About a month.”

“Since you lost your job?”

“That happened about three months ago, actually. Which is when the sports doctor told me I could have surgery, with no guarantee I’d ever dance again anyway, or quit dancing altogether and the problem might clear up on its own.”

“Some choice.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

Her bravado wasn’t doing a particularly hot job of masking her disappointment. “And how long until you go back home?”

“We hadn’t decided that. One of the perks of being in limbo,” she said with a grand wave of her fork. “I’ve got a half offer from an old dance school friend who’s married with munchkins and the minivan and the whole nine yards in a Chicago suburb, she wants to open a dance school and wondered if I’d be interested in teaching.”

“Are you?”

That bite of lettuce finally found its way into her mouth. After several seconds of chewing, she shrugged. “It’s an option.”

The pipes groaned again, this time from the water being turned off. “But…not one you’re very excited about.”

“Hey. I’m thirty-seven. Even without my knee sabotaging me, I only had maybe five good years left, anyway. Eight if I didn’t mind pity applause,” she said with a short, dry laugh. “Still. Somehow, even though most dancers turn to teaching after they retire, I somehow never saw myself doing the Dolly Dinkle Dance School routine. Teaching a class full of everybody’s precious darlings in pink leotards and tutus… I can’t see it, frankly. I’m not really into kids.”

Sam thought of her wiping Travis’s chin and smiled to himself. “Yeah. I can tell.”

“It’s not that I don’t like them,” she added quickly. “Exactly. I just never quite know what to say to them. How to relate to them. I mean, my biological clock’s merrily ticking away and I’m like, ‘Fine, whatever.’ Shoot, it’s all I can do to take care of myself.”

Chuckling, Sam polished off his last sandwich, then chased it with the rest of his iced tea. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair. “You always this up-front with people?”

She shrugged. “Pretty much. Does it bother you?”

“It’s a mite unnerving, but no. Not particularly. Actually it’s kinda nice to be around someone who has no trouble saying whatever’s on her mind.”

“Most men wouldn’t agree with you.”

“That’s their problem,” he said mildly. “So tell me about your dancing.”

Brows lifted. “This isn’t a date. You’re not going to win any points by pretending to really be interested in what I do.”

“Humor me. It’s not every day I have an honest to God ballerina sitting in my kitchen. And I’d add ‘eating my food’ but that would be stretching it.”

Her eyes followed his to her plate. “Ah,” she said, with an understanding smirk, before her shoulders bounced again. “I’m not anorexic, if that’s what you’re thinking. I ate like a pig at breakfast, that’s all.”

“What? A piece of toast and a grapefruit half?”

“Hah. Three pieces of French toast, sausage and two scrambled eggs.”

“I’m impressed.”

“So was what’s-her-name. The woman who runs the place?”

“That would be Ruby.”

“Ruby, right. She wanted to know where I’d put it. Anyway…you sure you want to hear this? Okay, okay,” she said when he let out an annoyed sigh. “Not sure how much there is to say, really. I’ve been dancing literally since I could walk, even though I didn’t start formal training until I was ten and Dad retired, so we weren’t moving every five minutes. I went to dance camp as a teenager, then on to North Carolina School of the Arts for high school. After I graduated, I danced with a major New York company for a couple of years, which for anybody else would have been a total dream job. Except I realized that staying there would have meant basically dancing in the chorus of Swan Lake for the rest of my career. So I decided I’d have more opportunity in a smaller regional company, even if it meant a cut in pay. Never expected to end up back in Cincinnati, but there you are.”

On the surface, her words seemed straightforward enough. And yet, something about the way she wouldn’t look at him, the fingers of her left hand constantly worrying the edge of the plastic placement the whole time she was talking, led Sam to wonder if that part of her life had really been as straightforward as she was making out.

He took another bite of his sandwich before saying, “You ever regret your decision? To leave the bigger company?”

“No,” she said immediately. “See, dancing isn’t something I do, it’s who I am. Not that I expect anyone else to understand that. I mean, how much sense does it make to be so passionate about something that pays squat, that leaves you in virtually constant pain, and offers zip job security?”

“Sounds an awful lot like farming.”

She grinned. “Hadn’t thought of it that way. But hey—at least farming feeds people.”

“Who’s to say what you do doesn’t feed people, too?” he said, and a rich, startled laugh burst from her throat. “What? You think a country boy can’t appreciate the arts?”

Her laughter died as another blush crept across her cheeks. “Well, no, but—”

“Hey, the tradition of farmers letting loose with music and dancing goes way back. Why is it you suppose that whole wall out there’s covered in the kids’ artwork? And why else would I put myself through the torture of listening to a twelve-year-old murder the violin for a half hour every day? Or scrape together a few extra bucks so one or the other of ’em can take a special art class or music class after school? Maybe it’s not ‘art’ in the way a lot of folks define it, but whatever it is, it’s not something tacked on—it’s just the way people are wired.” He allowed himself a second or two to stare into those wide eyes, then said, “Not what you expected, is it?”

She blinked. “No. Not by a long shot.” Lowering her eyes, she poked at her salad for a couple beats, then looked at him again. “So. Do you dance, Sam Frazier?”

“I’ve been known to do a mean two-step in my day.”

Again, that wonderful, rich sound of her laughter filled the room, like something that had been let free after being confined for far too long. Then their eyes locked and need kicked him in the gut, swift and hard, and man, was he ever glad to see Lane.

“Well,” Sam said, rising, “I reckon I’ve goofed off long enough. Still got a ton of work to do before the kids get home from school. Thanks for lunch,” he said with a nod, grabbing his hat off the rack and screwing it back onto his head. “And if either of you need to go into town or want to go sightsee or something, feel free to take the Econoline. Keys are on the rack over there.”

A week, he thought, striding out to the barn. Surely he was strong enough to last a week.

Only then a little voice in his head said, Don’t bet on it, and he thought, Oh, hell.

She could make it through one lousy week, right?

A single week. Seven piddly days. Maybe less, if the axle came in earlier…

“You sure your knee’s okay?”

Which made at least the sixth time her father had asked her this since they’d set out on their walk around the property. His idea. One her knee actually hadn’t been in total agreement with, but she knew she’d be okay as long as she took it easy. Staying in that house, however, was another matter entirely.

“This isn’t exactly like running the marathon, Dad. I’m fine.”

A loud, obnoxious cackle sounded inside her head.

“And I know you,” Dad said. “Used to drive your mother and me nuts, the way you wouldn’t admit defeat if your life depended on it.”

Well, maybe not out loud. Because she was definitely feeling, if not defeated, certainly poleaxed.

By a quiet, soft-spoken farmer with six kids. And how messed up was that?

She simply wouldn’t think about it, that’s all.

Carly laughed, the sound maybe a little shriller than it should be. Her father gave her a funny look. “You know me well. But really, it’s okay. Actually,” she said, realizing with moderate panic that attempting to not think about Sam was like trying to get gum out of her hair, “I’m kind of surprised you suggested this. I would have thought you’d be all worn out from this morning.”

Eyes like deep ice cut to hers; chagrin toyed with his mouth. “Because I’ve got one foot in the grave, you mean.”

“No, of course not—”

“I’m only sixty-three, Lee. Not ready for the home yet.”

She smiled. True, the morning’s outing seemed to have done her father a world of good, provoking a pang of guilt that she hadn’t been pushier about getting him out and doing long before this….

Did you see the way Sam kept looking at you?

Shut up, she said to…whoever. The spook squatting in her brain, she supposed. Except the spook cut right back in with some annoying observation about how Sam was like some innocuous-looking Mexican dish—wasn’t until you’d taken several bites before you realized your hair was on fire.

Of course, this is not a problem if you like spicy food.

“Lee? Are you okay?”

“Yes, Dad,” she said with a bright smile, because whatever this craziness was, talking it over with her father wasn’t gonna happen. Actually, up until this little trip, it had been years since she and Dad had talked about much at all. Not because they didn’t love each other, but because they did. At some point several years ago, after what Carly assumed was a mutual revelation that they came from different planets, and that they’d both grown weary of every conversation degenerating into an argument within five minutes, she’d simply stopped bringing up touchy subjects. Which mostly involved her vocation (he tolerated it, but had clearly hoped it was a phase and that eventually she’d come to her senses and pursue a “real” career), her lifestyle (enough said), and her love life (about which, for everybody’s sake, her father knew far less than he thought).

Fortunately her mother had been more inclined to take Carly’s side—the natural outcome, Carly supposed, of Dena Spyropoulos Stewart’s having been brought up in a strict Greek-American family with a father who exerted an iron-fisted control over his wife and children. And since Lane was totally besotted with his wife, he usually lost the battles with his hardheaded daughter. Without her mother to run interference, however, Carly frankly hadn’t been as inclined to seek out her dad’s company. Realizing you simply weren’t the child your father always thought he’d have had tended to have that effect on a person. In fact, part of her problem with Sam—aside from the farmer with the six kids business, which was a deal-breaker in any case—was how much he reminded her of Dad. All those notes and lists brought back way too many memories, most of which involved her father expecting her to do things one way and Carly’s determination to do exactly the opposite.

So it had been easier, especially after Mom’s death, to simply stay out of each other’s way rather than enduring visits that neither of them really enjoyed very much. Not something she was proud of, but there it was.

And only the threat of either, if not both, of them disintegrating into pajama-clad blobs spending their days watching game shows and infomercials had spurred her—in a moment of pure insanity—into suggesting they take this trip. Especially considering the odds of their killing each other within the first forty-eight hours. What they’d discovered instead was that, somewhere along the line, they’d both mellowed. Not that they now shared a brain or anything, but at least enough to enjoy each other’s company.

Especially during those long, lovely periods that people referred to as “companionable silence.”

The countryside in this part of Oklahoma tended to be hilly, nestled up against the Ozarks the way it was, and Sam’s farm was no exception. The spread wasn’t particularly large, her father said, fifty acres or so—but Sam was determined to wring every drop out of the land he could. Dad explained that the larger fields were devoted to wheat, alfalfa, and corn, with a large vegetable garden that yielded not only plenty of produce to feed the family, but enough left over to sell at a local farmer’s market as well. Then there were the fruit trees—three kinds of apple, not to mention pear and cherry—the chickens, the cows, the two pairs of hogs that produced several litters a year…and plenty of pork in the freezer, he added.

Carly shuddered, which got a chuckle. “That is what farming’s all about, you know.”

“Yes, I do. It’s just all a little too hands-on for me.”

“You loved it as a kid.”

“Gram and Gramps had a dairy farm. They milked the cows, they didn’t eat them.”

“No, they ate somebody else’s. And where do you think those fried chicken suppers came from? KFC?”

“Dash my idyllic childhood memories, why dontcha?”

Her father laughed, a good sound. The sound of someone on the mend, she decided.

They’d come to a fallow field smothered in late season grasses and wildflowers. A lone oak alongside another farmer’s post-and-rail fence, its side scarred from a long-ago lightning strike, beckoned them to rest a while. Carly’s knee was more than ready to take the tree up on its offer. They lowered themselves onto a patch of cool dirt, both taking long drinks from their water bottles. At a comfortable distance, a pair of cows munched, their ears flicking, tails swishing. One of them disinterestedly looked in their direction.

“Your mother would have loved it here,” Dad said. “The mountains, the trees…she used to say there was nothing finer than the smell of country air.”

“If you like earthy.”

“You’re too young to be so cynical,” her father said mildly, twisting the cap back on his water, and she thought, Young, hell. I feel as old as these hills.

And very nearly as worn down.

But truth be told, some of her best childhood memories had come from summers spent on her grandparents’ farm. Except that was then and this was now, and that little girl had up and taken off some time ago.

Leaving in her place a cynical, lame woman destined to become a dried-up old prune of a dance teacher with dyed black hair and too much eye makeup who still wore gauzy, filmy things in an attempt to fool herself that she was still young and lovely.

There was a heartening thought.

“I’m glad you suggested this,” Dad said.

“The walk was your idea, remember?”

“Not the walk. The trip.”

Drawing up her legs to lean her forearms on her knees, Carly angled her head at her father. “Even though I drove the truck into a ditch?”

“Especially because you drove the truck into a ditch.”

“You know, you might be more ready for that home than you think.”

Dad laughed. “What I mean is, this gives us an excuse to stay put for a few days. Absorb some of what we’re seeing. Get to know the people who live here.”

Oh, yeah, a definite selling point. Carly turned around to stare at the cows. They stared back. Sort of. “I suppose,” she said, mainly because she didn’t want to argue.

“Guess we’re both at a sort of crossroads, aren’t we?”

Since that sounded a heck of a lot better than dead end, she said, “Yeah. Guess so.”

Her father took another swallow of his water. “You got any idea yet what you’re going to do when we go back?”

A logical question from a man who’d—logically—expect his thirtysomething daughter to, you know, have a plan? Since she no longer had a job? Never mind that it now struck her, like the proverbial bolt of lightning, that she’d apparently suggested this trip in order to avoid thinking about The Future. And now here The Future was, planted in front of her like a used car salesman, refusing to go away until she at least sounded as though she’d made a decision.

But she’d gotten real good at faking out her dad over the years. Goading him was one thing. Worrying him was something else, she thought as a surprisingly cool breeze sent a shiver over her skin. Dad had no idea how much about her life she’d chosen not to let him find out. A situation she had no intention of changing.

“I thought I’d see about teaching at the company school.” Actually she hadn’t, not yet, but it sounded good. “And you know Emily offered me a job.”

“That’s in Chicago, right?”

“Right outside. Lake Charles.”

“Gets damn cold up there.”

“Oh, and like Cincinnati’s so tropical?”

“I’m just saying.”

Saying what was the question. But, as she was so good at doing, she turned the tables on him. “What about you? Planning on going out for canasta champion at the Senior Citizen center?”

Lane blew out a half laugh, then shifted to lean against the tree trunk. It seemed strange, seeing her father so relaxed. Not bad, just strange. “Actually bumping along on all these back roads the past month must’ve jostled something loose in my brain, because I’m thinking of starting up some sort of consulting business. Something I could do from home, mostly, by computer.”

Well, hell—this was the first positive thing to come out of her dad’s mouth since Mom’s death. “Seriously?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a terrific idea, Dad.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

His gaze sidled to hers. “You could help me, you know.”

“Oh, right. Doing what, for God’s sake?”

“Haven’t figured that part out. But I’m sure we could think of something.”

“Dad. What on earth do I know about business?”

“You’re a smart cookie. You’d catch on.”

“Man, you weren’t kidding when you said you knocked something loose.”

“I’ve always thought you were smart, Lee. It was just your common sense I had issues with.”

“A subject I gather you brought up to Sam,” she said before she even knew the words were in nodding distance of her brain.

Dad skimmed a palm over his short hair, looking everywhere but at her. “Your name might’ve come up once or twice.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t remember, actually. What difference does it make?”

“None, I suppose. Except I’m not sure I appreciate being described as a ‘handful’ to a total stranger.”

“As if the man wouldn’t have figured that out on his own after five minutes in your company. Besides, don’t tell me you’ve haven’t always prided yourself on being a pain in the can.”

This was true. Except she was beginning to wonder how, exactly, this had benefited her in the long run.

She got to her feet, prompting a “You ready so soon?” from her father.

“My butt’s going to sleep sitting on the hard ground. And I’m getting cold.”

Her father rose, as well, slipping off his lightweight overshirt and handing it to her. “Thanks,” she muttered, poking her arms through the sleeves. The shirt fluttered around her, cocooning her in his scent, and she felt, just for a moment, like the little girl who used to love cuddling with her daddy before she turned into the big bad pain in the can.

Back when she still let people all the way in.

They started back toward Sam’s house, both lost in their thoughts. It had been a long time since she’d wanted to let anybody in, she realized. She wasn’t sure she knew how, anymore. Or even if it was worth it. But there had to be something more than this chronic emptiness, an emptiness that seemed to yawn wider with every affair, every pointless relationship. Yeah, she’d lived life her own way. And still would, hardheadedness being definitely a chronic disease. But perhaps it was her definition of things that needed tweaking.

Maybe.

Through a stand of pines, Carly spotted a pair of buildings, apparently belonging to another farm. Although she had the feeling nobody lived there, the barn—an old-fashioned number in soft grays—appeared fairly sturdy. The house was something else again. To Carly’s dismay, she realized she felt a lot like that house—old, abandoned and half-eaten up with decay. Terrific.

They returned by way of the front road, right as the big yellow school bus pulled up, its hydraulic brakes letting out a groan like an old woman taking off her girdle. The doors slapped open, belching out four buzz-cutted boys of assorted sizes, all in jeans and T-shirts and sneakers, still-new backpacks slung by a single strap across a skinny shoulder or dangling from one hand as they hurled good-natured insults back at their buddies still on the bus. The doors squealed closed; the bus let out a fart of exhaust and continued on, as the boys turned up the road leading to the farm, totally oblivious to being followed. Not surprising, since they were far too busy swinging their backpacks in a wide arc as they spun around, or bumping each other off balance, or yelling, “You take that back!” and “Nuh-uh!” and “What do you care, he’s stupid, anyway,” their soprano voices still high and clear and—God help them all—shrill as nails on a blackboard.

Then, like a turbocharged beetle from a fifties sci-fi flick, a metallic green Mitsubishi Eclipse roared past, kicking up a cloud of peach-colored dust and provoking the older boys’ taunts of “Libby’s got a boyfriend, Libby’s got a boyfriend!” Carly caught a glimpse of long dark hair, sucked out of the window along with some remark or other, which turned the taunt into “Oooh, I’m gonna tell!”

They were close enough to the house by now to have alerted the dogs, who streaked down the road to greet the dusty, noisy little group with blurred tails and sharp barks, one or two dashing back and forth from house to boys to house to boys, as if not trusting the boys to find their own way home. The seen-better-days Eclipse screeched to a stop in the yard; a teenage girl got out, her gaze longingly following the car as it did a three-point turn and zoomed back up the road, past Carly and Lane again. The boy inside spared them a brief, curious glance, just long enough to understand the reason behind the girl’s pining look.

Then Sam came out onto the porch, and Carly was defenseless against her stomach’s little whoomp at seeing him again, this unassuming, unremarkable farmer who moved with the unconscious ease of a person who has far more pressing things to think about than his own body. Or the crazy woman gawking at him, Carly thought with a sigh as a sharp whistle knifed through the air, bringing all shenanigans to an immediate halt. She couldn’t hear what he said, but five heads swiveled in her and Dad’s direction. When she and her father got closer, the boys all said, “Hello,” with various degrees of interest and enthusiasm as Sam introduced each one in turn. As if she’d remember all their names.

“And this is Elizabeth, my only girl. But everybody calls her Libby.” He put an arm around the pretty girl’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “I told Carly she could bunk with you for a couple of days, since you’ve got an extra bed and all. Didn’t think you’d mind.”

With a smile, Carly turned to Libby…and nearly lost her breath.

Never mind that she and Libby Frazier looked nothing alike, not in body type or coloring or stature. And yet, a single glimpse into those warm brown eyes, and Carly felt as though she’d been slammed back more than twenty years…

…to meet her fifteen-year-old self.

Somehow, Carly doubted it would be a joyous reunion.

Chapter 4

As if they weren’t crowded enough already, jeez.

Libby stormed around the house and up the back steps, dumping her backpack with a thud on the royal-blue carpet remnant she’d picked out when they moved her in back here. She’d thought the color had been so cool in the store, but now she knew it attracted every piece of dirt and lint in the county, which was a real pain because who the heck had time to vacuum every five minutes?

She caught sight of what she guessed was Carly’s stuff—an oversize backpack and a bright red duffel bag—and irritation sucked the breath out of her. Where’d Dad get off telling some stranger she could stay in Libby’s room? And for a week? Okay, yeah, so maybe Carly did look kind of cool—certainly not like most of the women around here, that’s for sure—but that was beside the point. It was like everything else these days—Dad simply didn’t get it. Get her.

Not that she got herself much these days, either. Sometimes she felt as if somebody else had taken over her body, because she kept getting pissed off about stuff that never used to bother her before. Like there was a constant storm going on inside her head, only occasionally interrupted by blue skies and sunshine.

Libby yanked off her “good” jeans and top and struggled into an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, her bedroom doorknob bouncing off the wall as she tromped back out through the mudroom to haul on her boots. It hadn’t rained for a couple of days, but Jasmine, one of the sows, had recently figured out how to push down the float to her water tank to flood the pen, much to the delight of her penmates. Sure enough, when Libby got there, the sow—blissfully stretched out in a mud puddle—grinned up at her.

“Nobody can accuse you of being a priss, that’s for sure.” The sow grunted contentedly and flopped back into the ooze, and Libby’s bad mood backed off a little.

Until she saw Dad headed her way.

She stepped into the feeder pigs’ pen—there were nearly sixty of them, about half of which would be ready for market in a few weeks—and flipped open the top to the automatic feeder to knock down the finely ground grain packed against the sides and in the corners, as a sea of young pigs swarmed around her calves, nosing open the metal lids to the trough to eat.

“Thought you just did that yesterday?” Dad asked softly over the bang, bang, bang of the feeder lids dropping. He hardly ever yelled, at least not at Libby or her brothers. He didn’t have to.

“Did I? I don’t remember.” She shut the lid again; her father chuckled.

“You remembered that, though.”

Her cheeks warmed. “Honestly, Dad, it was only the one time. And two years ago at that.”

“Some things,” he said, grinning, “a father doesn’t forget. Like the disgust on your face when you had to clean out all the moldy feed after it rained and rotted it all.”

“Not an experience I want to repeat, believe me.”

“I imagine not.”

Libby dusted off her hands on her jeans, then came back out of the pen, leaving her snorting, snuffling charges behind, eating their butts off. Or on, in this case. She folded her arms and met her father’s calm, but firm, gaze.

“What?”

“You know what. You didn’t exactly give our guests a warm welcome.”

She blew out a sigh, contemplating the cows in the pasture beyond. For a moment, she wished she was one of them. “It’s not like I was rude or anything.”

“Exactly.”

She looked back at her father, noting with a start how much older he suddenly seemed. In the sunlight, the lines around his mouth and eyes were more noticeable, as was the gray in his hair. No matter that for their sake, Daddy had kept his grief over Mama’s passing mostly to himself, Libby still knew how hard it had been on him, dealing with the farm and everything all by himself. How hard it must have been to smile and laugh for Libby and her brothers when there were times when he couldn’t have felt much like it. So she felt bad, she really did, about all this weirdness churning inside her, making her feel like somebody else. And if she knew how to make it go away, she would.

But she didn’t.

“It just…irritated me, is all, to come home and find out some stranger was stayin’ in my room with me. Without my even having a say in it.”

“I know. And I understand. But it was just one of those unforeseen things, you know? And, hey, Carly’ll be somebody for you to talk to. You know, another woman.”

Libby’s eyes widened a little that Dad had implied that she was a woman, too, but that didn’t change the situation. “I have other ‘women’ to talk to. Like Blair. And April. Who I’d planned on having spend the night on Friday. Now I suppose I can’t.”

Dad leaned one hand on top of the pen, his other hand fitted halfway into his jeans’ pocket. “And I would’ve thought if you hadn’t learned anything else by now, it was how to roll with the punches. Be flexible. I’m sure we can figure something out.”

Libby nodded, because it was true, what Dad was saying, and she knew she was just being hardheaded, but it wasn’t her, it was this itchy feeling inside her making her feel like this, act like this.

“You coming back inside?” he asked.

“Not yet. Thought maybe I’d check to see what needs to be picked from the garden. The tomatoes are still growing like gangbusters.”

“I’m seeing a lot of spaghetti sauce in my future.”

That pulled a smile from Libby. Mostly they had an arrangement with some of the ladies in town to do their canning and freezing for them in exchange for eggs and meat and some of what they’d put by. But spaghetti sauce, from one of Mama’s recipes, was Libby’s specialty.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

Daddy gave her one of those long, assessing looks that made her nervous, gave her a wink, then walked away. Libby watched him, then crossed to the garden shed for a bushel basket, hoping like hell her nerves would settle down some once she set foot inside the garden.

But she wasn’t counting on it.

Carly was waiting for Sam out by the back door, her arms crossed over some lacey little sweater that seemed kinda pointless, if you asked him. Funny the way she managed, even when she was completely covered, to still allude to what was underneath. Not that there was much underneath to allude to, but Sam had long since realized that sexiness had little, if anything, to do with a person’s body. From inside the house he heard the comforting roar of his sons, working out the kinks from being stuck inside a classroom for six hours.

“You left your dad alone with them?” he asked, and a slight smile touched her lips.

“Are you kidding? You’re talking about a man who coached Little League, soccer, football. He can’t get enough of kids. Especially boys.”

“And let me guess.” Sam hooked one foot on the porch’s bottom step. “You’re an only child.”

“Yep. And then I had to go and be a ballerina at that.”

“And he didn’t approve?”

“It was more that he didn’t understand. Who I was, what made me tick…” Under the holey sweater, her shoulders bumped. “That sort of thing.” Her eyes shifted toward the barn, then back to him. “Did you just talk to Libby?”

“Uh-huh.”

Worry—and understanding, Sam thought—crumpled her features. “You know, I don’t have to stay with her, if it really makes her uncomfortable. I’ve got my sleeping bag, I don’t have a problem with crashing in the living room with Dad. Or even the barn, for that matter—”

“Like I’d let a guest sleep in my barn.”

“I’ve slept in a lot worse places.”

Sam thought maybe he heard a touch of regret mixed in there with the defiance, but he hadn’t had enough practice to be sure. “By choice?”

After a moment she said quietly, “Most of the time.”

“Well, it’s my choice where you’re sleeping now,” he said, even as he thought whatever this woman had done in her past, it was none of his business. “And sure as hell it’s not in my barn.”

“But if Libby feels I’m encroaching on her space…”

“You’re not. And Libby will just have to deal with it.”

To his surprise, she laughed. “Because you say so?”

“Because she’s normally the most laid-back kid I’ve ever known. And the friendliest. Why she’s suddenly acting like this, I have no idea.”

Pure pity sparkled in her eyes. “She’s acting like this because she’s fourteen and her hormones have jammed her brain cells and somebody she’s never met is about to violate her private space. Right now, she’s probably out there wondering if her dad’s totally lost his marbles. I mean, I sure am, so I imagine she must be.”

It took a second. Sam lowered his foot and crossed his arms over his chest. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not many people would offer their home to two complete strangers. For all you know, we could be on the lam from the law. Or out to steal you blind.”

“You’re not serious.”

His certainty—that Carly and her father were neither—seemed to catch her off guard, her expression making Sam speculate on how long it had been since she’d felt able to really trust another human being. He supposed she figured that made her tough. Emotionally impenetrable. Sam—despite more than a nodding acquaintance with emotional defenses—didn’t see it that way. An inability to trust might make you safe—in some ways—but as far as Sam could tell, it didn’t make you strong.

So he smiled and said, “Well, seems to me that deliberately breaking your axle so you’d get stuck in one place for a week isn’t the kind of thing someone on the run would do. And as you’ve probably noticed by now, there’s not a whole lot to steal, so no worries there. Although if you decided to take an extra cat or dog when you leave, I wouldn’t have a problem with that.” That got a little laugh, enough to make Sam feel it was okay to add, “So why don’t you relax and not worry about anything more pressing than if the hot water heater can handle an extra two showers every day?”

“Deal,” she said, but something in those damn eyes of hers told him she was lying through her teeth.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” Carly said to Libby as she quickly crossed the dark blue carpet to get to her duffel bag, lying expectantly on the floor by the extra twin bed. The girl sat at her computer, her dark hair shimmering down a back which stiffened at Carly’s entrance. “I’m just getting a few things so I can change in the bathroom, so I won’t bother you when I come to bed.”

“Fine, whatever.” Libby resumed typing. In a chat room, Carly noticed when she glanced over. She hauled the bag up onto the bed, unzipping it to get to a sleep tee and her toothbrush, Libby’s annoyance humming between them like a pissed off bumblebee.

“Dinner was great, by the way,” she said, moving to the door, the shirt and brush clutched in her hand.

Libby’s hair shuddered from her shrug. “Just chicken and corn, no big deal.”

“Been a long time since I had fresh corn, though. Not since I was a kid.” She hesitated, then said, “I take it you knew the main course, um, personally?”

She could easily have gotten a God-what-a-dork eye roll for that one, but to Carly’s surprise, the girl only said, “Can’t say as how we were on a first name basis, no.” She tapped out a response, then added, “I learned a long time ago not to get attached to anything that would eventually become dinner.”

“That makes sense.” A beat or two passed, then Carly said, “Look, I’m really sorry about this. I told your Dad I’d be happy to camp out in the living room. Or even the barn…”

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