The Couple Most Likely To
Lilian Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Lilian Darcy for her contribution to the LOGAN’S LEGACY

REVISITED miniseries

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Coming Next Month

Chapter One

The January darkness had already begun to gather outside as Stacey Handley came into the day-care center. The misty drizzle of rain blanketing the region would have reduced visibility on I-5 almost to zero. John was a cautious driver, thank heaven, but the weather conditions on this first Friday of the new year meant he’d probably be late. That and the demands of his job with the Washington State government.

Taking a deep breath, Stacey accepted the inevitable. Even with his usual quick turnaround, her ex-husband would be making the two-hour drive back from Portland to Olympia in full darkness, in slippery conditions, with their precious two-year-old twins strapped in their seats in back.

It wasn’t his fault.

It wasn’t hers.

It was the fault of their divorce, for sure, and all the mistakes they’d made—including the fact that they’d gotten married in the first place.

In contrast to the gloom outside, the day-care center attached to the Portland General Hospital felt bright and warm. Children’s artwork hung on the walls and on colored yarn from the ceiling. Creative imagination buzzed in the home corner, the dress-up area, and the block space.

The place drew Stacey in, giving the usual lift to her spirits. She always loved dropping in here to see Max and Ella during her breaks, and picking them up at the end of the day. In her anticipation at seeing them, she forgot temporarily about the lonely weekend that lay ahead. But for now, she was happy to spend some precious minutes with the twins before John collected them.

Max saw her almost at once and catapulted into her arms. She returned his hug and inhaled the clean smell of his wheat-blond hair, noting that Ella, as usual, was too busy to have noticed her arrival. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said to her little boy. “Did you have a good afternoon?”

“Did paintin’.”

“Did you? Can I see?” She tried to put him down, but he kept his arms tight around her neck, accidentally pulling on hair that needed a fresh cut.

At this age, he was more clingy than Ella. She always became so absorbed in her play that Mommy often had to join her in an activity for several minutes before she could slowly coax her daughter to let it go. The two were so different in both looks and temperament. Strangers were astonished to discover that they were twins.

Once more, Stacey felt the usual uncomfortable kick of her heart at the thought of letting them go for a whole weekend. Somehow it hadn’t seemed so hard last spring after John had first moved to Olympia. Max hadn’t yet been walking. They’d both been taking longer naps. When you’d said to them, “Time to get out of the bath,” they hadn’t thought to protest.

But now, nine months later, they were such a handful. John was a good father and tried his utmost. He usually took them one weekend in three, sometimes one in two, and their divorce had been amicable enough to avoid any dispute over custody or access. Could he really be as watchful as she was, though? Did he fully understand just how fast they could get into trouble?

She glanced toward the window again, and already it looked much darker out there, although it was only just after four. The rain hissed and spat against the glass.

Not rain anymore.

Sleet.

How were those roads?

She needed to get back to work—but she reminded herself that with the twins away she could work late tonight in order to catch up if she was away from her desk for too long now. She could spend a little more time with her children, and coax some hugs from busy Ella, who’d only just seen her and called out, “Hi, Mommy!”

Her heart kicked again.

And then, just when it was the last thing in the world she was thinking about, she heard the voice and saw the face she’d lately been remembering so vividly. Remembering, and trying so hard to prepare for, since she’d dealt with certain employment formalities in the Portland General administrative offices several weeks ago.

Jake Logan.

He stood right there in the day-care center doorway. Gorgeous, ambitious, wide-horizoned Jake. The man she hadn’t married seventeen years ago. The man she’d once expected would share the daunting tasks and incomparable rewards of parenthood right along with her. The man who’d left Portland way before she was ready to let him go.

Jake threw her a shocked glance, his recognition instant and obvious. Max had settled himself on her hip as if he planned to stay there all night. Ella trotted toward her for a hug. Stacey would have her arms full by the time Jake reached her.

The relationship between herself and the two small children must be written in every gesture. He would have to realize that they were her kids. In seventeen years she’d been through all sorts of changes, and her emotions had run the gamut. So had his, no doubt. Seventeen years was a long time.

Had he noticed her signature on a couple of the administrative letters he would have received from the hospital? She’d kept her maiden name for work and had gone back to it in her personal life after the divorce. Had Jake realized that coming back to Portland would mean seeing her again?

From his expression, apparently not.

It all seemed too significant.

The burden of being a parent…of caring that much…of risking and losing and hurting…of dealing with two sets of feelings that didn’t match…was such a large part of what had separated herself and Jake all those years ago, when they were both still in their teens. She didn’t know whether she should still be angry about things he’d said and done. She’d moved on, hadn’t she?

Now, trying to keep Max anchored to her hip while she simultaneously scooped Ella up before she began to cry, Stacey muttered under her breath, “It’s just the same. I’m carrying the weight. And he’s free. Just as he wants to be.”

She already knew he wasn’t married. Dealing with Portland General Hospital’s personnel files had its advantages, sometimes. And when a man like Jake wasn’t yet married at the age of thirty-five, it could only be by his own choice.

He looked so good. With Ella’s smoochy kiss warm on her cheek, she took in all the ways he’d changed…as well as the ways he hadn’t. If he’d been good-looking in her own eyes back then, he would turn any woman’s head now. He was thirty-five, the same age as Stacey herself, and while many of his contemporaries had begun to lose their hair and gain at the waistline, Jake looked fit and strong and confident—a man totally in his prime.

He’d filled out since the age of eighteen, but all of it was muscle, tamed a little—but not much—by the dark tailored trousers and gray-and-white cotton sweater he wore. His dark hair was cut short enough to be neat but long enough to remind her of the way she’d once run her fingers through it. As he passed beneath the beam of a recessed light in the ceiling she saw just the faintest smattering of silver around his temples and behind his well-shaped ears.

He’d entered with Jillian Logan who was a social worker at the adjacent Children’s Connection and spent a lot of time here in the hospital, as well. Stacey didn’t know if the shared last names were just a coincidence. Logan wasn’t uncommon, but anyone with that name around this place tended to be related. From the way Jillian had caught her eye, smiled and turned in Stacey’s direction, it seemed as if she might soon find out.

“Stacey, hi,” she began briskly. She was a very pretty woman with her long brown hair and brown eyes, but usually dressed to give off an impression of professional competence rather than personal warmth. She favored tailored clothing and classic colors, such as today’s suit in pale sage green. “I dropped into your office at the wrong moment and discovered my cousin.”

Well, that answered the question about their names. The Logan family was very prominent around Portland General Hospital and the adjacent Children’s Connection. Jillian’s parents had donated an enormous amount of financial and practical support to the fertility clinic and adoption center over the years.

Odd, actually. Stacey had known Jake so well, but she didn’t remember any mention of his prominent Logan cousins—not even when she and Jake had been planning their wedding and talking about the guest list.

Jake and Jillian had thrown each other a slightly self-conscious glance, too, as if the word cousin didn’t feel quite right to either of them.

“He’d like a tour, if there’s time, to meet a few people and get his ID card, that kind of thing,” Jillian went on, as Stacey lowered both twins out of her arms. “You’re starting Monday, Jake?” He nodded and she turned back to Stacey. “Oh, I haven’t actually introduced you. Stacey, this is—”

“It’s all right,” Jake cut in quickly. “Stacey and I already know each other.”

He put out his hand to shake hers. Ella had scampered back to the Play-Doh table. Max clung to Stacey’s leg, distracting her. She felt the brief squeeze of Jake’s hand, warm and dry. The moment bewildered her. Outwardly so ordinary, yet so significant given their history together.

“We’ve been in touch over his employment contract,” she explained quickly to Jillian. Jake had become a successful ob-gyn, specializing in infertility, and Portland General Hospital was fortunate to have him coming to work here.

She caught a flash in Jake’s green eyes as he took in the way she’d avoided any reference to their high school days, let alone their acknowledged status, back then, as a couple madly in love.

The couple madly in love, in fact.

They’d gotten the official vote from their classmates: The Couple Most Likely To Marry Right Out Of High School, but then life had gotten in the way and it had all fallen apart.

She tensed.

Would he challenge what she’d said? Had Jillian herself been around at that time? Stacey knew she had grown up here. She would have been a couple of years below them in school, however, and Portland was no country town where everyone knew everybody else.

Since Jake had never mentioned his Logan cousins in the past, it seemed likely that the two branches of the Logan family hadn’t been close. It seemed equally clear that Jillian had no idea of the tension Stacey could feel between herself and Jake—like the zing of an electric current down a wire.

“Someone said you were over here, Stacey, collecting the twins,” Jillian went on easily. “Does that mean you’re heading out early today? Because I have a client to see in the I.C.U.—” she looked at her watch “—yikes! Ten minutes ago!”

“It’s okay. I’m not heading out early. The twins are going to their father’s for the weekend. He’s picking them up from here, but I always stop in to say goodbye before they go.” Belatedly, she considered Jillian’s reference to her client appointment and added, “So go ahead, get up to the I.C.U. I’ll finish giving Dr. Logan the tour. After all, it’s my job far more than it is yours.”

From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw his body tighten. Apparently he’d never noticed her signature on those letters. Not so much of a surprise. They ’ d only been cover letters for enclosed paperwork. He’d probably tossed them in the wastepaper basket without even looking. In that area, she’d had an advantage. She’d known for weeks that he was coming back into her life.

But she hadn’t known how she would feel about it when the time came. Already she realized it was going to be a heck of a lot harder than she’d expected.

“Thanks, Stacey. Jake, I’ll see you on the weekend.” Jillian touched his arm, but it was a tentative gesture, confirming Stacey’s impression that the two of them didn’t know each other very well.

As Jillian left, Nancy Allen Logan closed the story she’d been reading to a group of children in the book corner and came over to Stacey, sparing only a faint, uncertain smile for Jake. “The Cat in the Hat always goes on longer than I remember. Did you put their overnight bags in Robbie’s office, as usual?”

“Yes, with a snack for the ride.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “If John doesn’t get here soon, it won’t be enough for them and he’ll need to stop for a proper meal.”

“Uh-oh, junk food alert.”

“I know, when you try so hard to give them good food here, and so do I, at home.”

Nancy and Robbie Logan ran the day-care center together. He was Jillian Logan’s brother, but again the connection wasn’t as close as you’d expect. Jillian was one of the Logans’ three adopted children, while Robbie had been abducted before Jillian came into the family, when he was just six years old. He hadn’t been reunited with his family until just a few years ago. Stacey suppressed a shiver. How did any parent survive something like that? Thinking about it brought out her worst fears.

“Do you need to talk to John before he leaves with them?” Nancy asked.

“No, everything’s under control. I’m showing Dr. Logan around the hospital and taking care of some personnel issues he needs in place before Monday. Um…” She hesitated. Did these two know each other? Should she introduce them?

Nancy solved the dilemma with a smile at the man. “You’re Jake. Of course. We’re meeting you officially on the weekend. I’m looking forward to it.”

“It’ll be interesting,” Jake answered, sounding a little more reserved on the subject. “Jillian made a good case, that it was up to our generation to heal the family rift.”

“She must have! Good enough to bring you to live and work in Portland, and with a close professional involvement with Children’s Connection, too.”

“We’ll see how it works out,” Jake said. “I’m a bit of a wanderer, and I’m just renting a place. I can move on in a couple of years if being back here doesn’t feel like the right thing. Jillian’s the brave one, pushing for this, when it’s likely that she’ll bear a lot of the consequences if the rift doesn’t heal.”

“Jillian is always determined to practice what she preaches.” Nancy’s tone contained the suggestion that sometimes she didn’t succeed.

The sound of sudden angry tears from one of the children stopped the cryptic conversation in its tracks. Nancy glanced over to where a junior staff member was trying without success to resolve a conflict between two four-year-olds. She gave a resigned exclamation. “I’d better deal with this one.”

Stacey took a breath and turned back to Jake. “ID card first, then the tour?”

“It’s your call.”

“Let’s do it that way. The laminating machine acts up sometimes, and it’s already after four on a Friday afternoon. If we have to call the maintenance department to—” She realized she was papering over the tension between them with a level of tedious detail he didn’t remotely need, and stopped.

What were Ella and Max doing?

They were absorbed in their play, she saw. She resisted the need to give them another hug and a whole lot of I-love-you-I’ll-miss-you messages. She always tried to let them leave without too much fuss when they went for their weekends with John, because it wouldn’t be good for them to guess how reluctant she was to have them go. But, oh, it was hard.

What had Jake seen in her face?

“Are you finding this a little harder than you expected?” he asked quietly, opening the day-care center door for her. “Meeting up again, I mean.”

“Yes,” she admitted honestly. “You haven’t changed, and yet…”

“We must be reaching middle age. That’s when people start telling each other that they look exactly the way they did in high school, even though it was half a lifetime ago. You do, though, Stacey. You look really good.”

“Thanks. So do you.”

Her movement past him brought them close. For a moment, she felt his body heat. His male strength seemed to pull on her like a magnet. Her ex-husband was slighter in build, and Jake himself had been slighter seventeen years ago. This close, she wasn’t used to such a powerful contrast between a man’s body and her own. It unsettled her way more than she wanted, as did the faint scent of spice and musk that hovered around him.

“It has been a long time,” she added. “H-how are you doing?”

“Good. I’m doing great. I’m real good. I’m good.”

Jake heard himself repeat his answer to Stacey Handley’s simple question not once but a full three times and wondered what the hell his problem was.

Stacey seemed rattled, too, although less rattled than he felt. Her reference to being in touch over his employment contract told him that she must have known he would be starting here, while he’d had no clue that he would be seeing her. Filling in short-term for a colleague in Seattle, he’d landed in an overworked ob-gyn practice. When he’d applied for the position at Portland General he’d thrown most of the necessary paperwork at one of the practice’s admin staff, merely scrawling his signature a few times.

Encountering Stacey in the day-care center felt like an ambush. His heart still beat faster. His head still spun.

By mutual unworded agreement, he and Stacey had lost touch with each other years ago. He wasn’t surprised to find she was still in Portland but it was a definite jolt to learn that they’d be working under the same roof. They’d been through too much together to dismiss each other as long-ago high school classmates after a couple of polite questions about kids and careers. They’d defined each other’s lives through the choices that had driven them apart, with anger and guilt on both sides.

It was a jolt to see her, all right.

As if he didn’t have enough emotional stuff to grapple with, thanks to Jillian Logan’s determination to heal the decades-long rift between her family and his. He remembered almost every word of Jillian’s approach to him at the medical conference in Seattle several months ago—that stuff about healing and forgiveness, about doing what was right, not what was easy—but was she being naive? Theory could be a lot easier than practice.

Accepting an ob-gyn position at Portland General would be seen by Jillian’s parents as an incredibly provocative gesture on Jake’s part if he and the other members of the younger generation couldn’t convince Uncle Terrence and Aunt Leslie that his intentions were good. Lawrence and Terrence Logan had turned their differing approaches to life into a chasm that had divided the two branches of the family for thirty years. The long-ago kidnapping of Uncle Terrence and Aunt Leslie’s eldest son Robbie had only made the chasm wider.

“Let’s go to my office and get it all sorted out,” Stacey said, and for a horrible moment he thought she was proposing to go over the old ground from their own emotional past, and confront each other with all those things they’d never said to each other at the time.

Then he realized she was still talking about the damned ID card.

They passed through a couple of corridors, a lobby, an elevator. He didn’t take any of it in. Had the vague impression of new paint smell and pristine decor which told him the place had very recently been redecorated and remodeled, but realized as Stacey opened her office door that he’d have no idea how to find the departments he needed on Monday.

They were taking a tour in a few minutes, of course, so it didn’t matter.

This would mean more awkward time to spend in each other’s company, which mattered more.

“Okay, photo first, so if you want to freshen up a little…I mean, you look fine. No spinach between your teeth.” Stacey fiddled nervously with the digital camera, and in the enclosed space of her office the awkwardness bounced back and forth between them and seemed to magnify itself.

He had a sudden memory of the time they’d gone to one of those automatic photo booths to get pictures taken for their passports. They’d been planning to spend a year in Europe between high school and college, using a couple of different exchange programs to see places in more depth. They’d both been excited about it.

Imagine. Three months digging up Roman ruins in Italy, as volunteer interns on an archeological site. Six weeks of intensive language lessons in Spain. Picking grapes, staying in cheap hotels, eating where the locals ate, making new friends. They’d gotten the passport pictures, then gone back into the booth to take some more, just for fun. They’d made faces into the camera, standing with heads close together, arms around each other, big, wide smiles.

Oh, lord, it seemed like so long ago!

Was Stacey Handley in any way the same person now?

Was he?

When she’d gotten pregnant with Anna she’d abandoned all those plans and dreams as if they’d never existed, and had revealed a hometown-girl side to her personality that had stifled and frightened him.

He’d wanted Stacey.

He wanted to go off into the sunset with her, hand in hand forever.

But the going off part was important. He didn’t want to settle into marriage and a baby and spend the rest of their dull, suburban lives in Portland. They planned their wedding, but he had to hide how trapped he felt.

And then they’d lost Anna at twenty weeks’ gestation. The doctors had called it a miscarriage, although having gone through labor and delivery on the maternity floor right here at this hospital, both he and Stacey had felt it was a stillbirth. No baby could live when it was born at twenty weeks. They didn’t know why it had happened. Sometimes, things like this just did.

Distraught, Stacey had wanted to name the tiny baby and he had agreed. It was important. It was necessary.

To this day, he thought of her as Anna. Little Anna. He never helped a patient through the loss of a baby without remembering. Anna Handley Logan. Their lost daughter.

She would have been almost seventeen by now if she’d lived.

But she hadn’t.

So Jake had gotten what he wanted. The burden of a settled, responsible future in his hometown had suddenly lifted from his shoulders, but the mix of guilt and grief had been terrible. He’d known he didn’t deserve Stacey after this. He’d definitely known he didn’t want kids. Not ever. It was too hard. Too frightening. Too horrible. How could she already have begun to talk about “trying again”? He’d started to pick fights with her and push her away and…

Yeah.

Hardly a surprise that their relationship hadn’t survived, despite the chemistry and the sense of two souls entwined. “If you could stand in front of the wall…?” Stacey said.

He stood in front of the wall.

“And smile…?”

He stretched his lips. She took the shot and showed it to him on the little screen.

“Oh, hell!” he muttered. He looked like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of a car. “Could we try that again? I mean, I don’t want to scare my patients.”

She laughed unsteadily. “I think it was my fault. I’ll give you more time.”

He shouldn’t need more time. It was an ID card photo, for heaven’s sake, not the front cover of People magazine. “It’s fine. I’m ready.”

“Um, I’m not. This little green light has to come on. Just a sec.” She fiddled again and he watched her while she was unaware.

She looked incredible. Older, of course, but better. Way better. He’d never understood men who couldn’t see the beauty in a woman once she passed thirty. Stacey’s beauty had a ripeness to it now, an emotional depth behind it that couldn’t have been there at eighteen, even though she’d already been mature and grounded back then.

Her figure had grown a little more womanly, with soft curves in all the right places and a grace to her movements that said she knew who she was and was happy with herself. Above her deep blue eyes, her eyelids had tiny, curved creases at their outer corners, as if she had plenty of reasons to laugh and smile. She wore a pleated silk skirt with a pattern like watercolor painting and he could hear the faintest swish of fabric when she moved.

As she examined the uncooperative camera, her honey blond hair fell forward to brush and then mask her face and out of the blue he had another flash of memory, this time about the night they’d conceived Anna, in the backseat of his car after the senior prom. Stacey had had her hair professionally piled on top of her head…it had fallen down as they’d made love…longer back then…tumbling in the dark…glinting with gold…brushing his chest…brushing his—

“Okay, one more time,” she said. “Smile!”

He did, and this time when she showed him the photo he thought the whole world would be able to track the erotic direction of his thoughts. “This one shouldn’t scare them,” he blurted out.

“No.” She took a quizzical look at it. “They might want your phone number.” She grinned suddenly, making her eyes widen and her arched eyebrows lift higher. Again he remembered. Her smile had always shone at a million watts. The grin didn’t last. “Sorry, that was inappropriate.” She raked her lower teeth across her top lip.

“It’s fine. Forget it.” He watched her go to the computer to enter his name and set the machine up for printing and laminating the card. He found the sudden silence unbearable, because it gave him too much time to feel astonished at the fact that all the chemistry was still there. “Back at the day-care center, those were your kids?”

Something to say.

Small talk, in any other situation.

Between the two of them it was anything but.

She nodded, still looking at the screen. “Max and Ella. Uh, the marriage didn’t make the grade, though. You probably worked that out.”

“Mmm, yes. I was sorry to hear it.”

More than sorry, but he couldn’t identify the feeling at first.

When he did identify it, he was shocked at himself yet again. At some primal male level, he was basically ready to find out if Stacey needed the man killed—preferably by burying him in the fresh concrete foundations of a large building. Sleeping with the fishes had a certain ring to it, also. How come he’d never thought to cultivate a few useful mob connections for exactly this kind of occasion?

“John has them this weekend,” she said. “John Deroy. My ex. He’s good. He wants to stay involved. He lives in Olympia, now.”

He could see how much she struggled with this, and it didn’t surprise him. She would be the kind of mother who found it difficult to spend any time away from her children, especially since they were so little. He wondered what had gone wrong with the marriage, so soon after what presumably had been a joyful birth.

“So at least when they’re with your ex, you get some time to yourself,” he said. Too gently. She probably wouldn’t be happy to know how easily he’d read her emotions.

She didn’t seem to want his empathy or understanding. “Yep, and I par-tay!” she said, mocking herself. “Woo-hoo!” She shimmied her hips and did some moves with her hands.

“I have to tell you, your imitation of a party animal is pathetic, Handley.”

“Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be, Logan, if I was wearing the right shoes.” She did a little Charleston dance kick in his direction, as if spiking him with a deadly heel.

They laughed.

And looked at each other.

And stopped, mutually appalled.

Handley and Logan.

Sheesh, had they hit a time warp? How could they have dropped so quickly into the hard-edged teasing routines they’d enjoyed so much back in high school? That was half a lifetime ago. They’d gone in such totally different directions since then. They should have forgotten all of it. The chemistry, the connection, everything.

“Anyhow…here it is,” she said, producing the freshly laminated ID card, complete with holographic security logo. She gave it to him, and it still felt warm from the machine. He noted how carefully she avoided touching his fingers during the transaction, as if she didn’t dare to risk the burn.

“On to the tour,” he said.

They both behaved impeccably.

Mechanically.

Dishonestly.

She showed him the O.R. suite, the maternity floor, the outpatient clinic rooms, the E.R., staff cafeteria and gift shop. “If you need a newspaper, or to mail something.” They encountered the head of the ob-gyn department on his way to a C-section delivery, and he and Jake exchanged quick greetings. Stacey spoke to several more people on their journey through the hospital, always with a smile or a question about their day. He could tell that she was both respected and liked. Relied upon, also, judging by the queries she fielded and the cheerfully efficient answers she gave.

“Leave it on my desk…Call me or Hannah next week…Put something in writing—just a few lines—and I can look into it.”

Then she took him to the adjacent Children’s Connection building, where he would see infertility patients and sometimes supervise the prenatal care of women who planned to give away their babies through the center’s highly regarded adoption program.

Highly regarded, but he knew there had been some problems two or three years ago. He’d been working in Australia then, and couldn’t remember a lot of detail, nor where his information had come from. Something about babies being kidnapped, IVF mix-ups and adoptions that had emerged as shady. At his job interview, he’d been assured by the Children’s Connection’s Director of Adoption Services, Marian Novak, that the problems had been sorted out.

If Stacey had more detailed information, she didn’t mention it, and he asked her on an impulse, as they crossed back to the hospital, “How long have you been working at Portland General?”

“Since I went back to work after the twins were born. I used to work at Portland University Medical Center, but this position was a step up. It’s only part-time for the moment, but I’ve been told I can upgrade to full-time at some point. For now, it’s two days a week, and the occasional evening.”

“You probably prefer that anyhow, with the twins.”

“It’s a good balance,” she agreed. “I get to spend quality time with them…but I don’t go completely nuts.”

The grin came again, practically knocking him off his feet. He liked that she could admit her toddlers sometimes drove her crazy. He found the perfect-mother act that some women put on a little unconvincing.

Again, the more personal direction of their conversation led to awkwardness on both sides and they fell silent.

Jake just didn’t get himself into situations like this. He’d traveled so much, had deliberately chosen career steps that gave him variety. He favored relationships that were monogamous and multidimensional and quite passionate while they lasted, but when they were over he moved on.

His previous lovers didn’t come back to haunt him.

They moved on, too.

He couldn’t remember ever encountering a former flame in a professional context before this. How did you handle it? How did you resolve the massive disconnect between the practical small talk and the fact that you’d had this person’s naked body entwined with yours, and her moans of release hot and breathy in your ear?

Stacey Handley wasn’t just any ex-lover, either. She’d always been different.

Because they’d been so young, he told himself quickly.

A moment later, they reached the hospital lobby and she slowed. “You’re all fixed up for Monday. You have your parking authorization.” She checked off a couple of other details, indicating the printed Portland General Hospital personnel folder she’d given him back in her office. “You’re parked in the visitors’ lot today?”

“That’s right.”

“Then you’ll want to take that elevator over there.” She gestured toward it, helpful and courteous, as if the disconnect wasn’t happening for her.

Yeah, but he wasn’t fooled.

He obeyed her unstated leave-me-alone-now-please message, said thank-you and goodbye, and headed for the elevator, knowing that there was way more awareness between them than either of them would have expected or wanted, and that she felt it every bit as strongly as he did.

Chapter Two

When Stacey reentered the day-care center, Max and Ella had already left with John.

Dumb of her, really.

She should have returned directly to her office instead of detouring this way in the hope of a final hug, or the chance to see John face-to-face. If she had seen him, she would only have repeated the kind of instructions that always made his hackles rise. Yes, of course he would encourage Ella on the potty, of course he would remember that Max was completely in love with pouring things at the moment, and he’d childproofed his house months ago, so she could give the subject a rest.

“You okay, Stacey?” Nancy Logan approached her. Although the two women didn’t see each other away from the hospital, they got on well together. Stacey considered Nancy a friend, and it showed in the other woman’s concerned question.

“I’m fine,” she answered. “I just hate to think of him driving on the interstate with the kids in this weather after dark.”

Nancy patted her arm and gave a wry smile. There was a wealth of understanding in her hazel eyes. “You’re like me. You worry too much. It’s because of working in hospitals. We never see all the kids who get home safe every night, we only see the ones who don’t.”

“Stop! Don’t even say it!”

“Yes, because I’ll scare myself, too.” Nancy shivered suddenly. “It’s crazy. Is it the dark winter days? I’ve been worried about Robbie lately, too…” She frowned and glanced over at her handsome husband, who was working in the day-care center office. She didn’t explain her reaction. Looked as if she regretted letting anything slip at all.

To change the subject, Stacey said quickly, “Tell me about Dr. Logan. He’s your husband’s cousin. We—we knew each other in high school but haven’t seen each other in almost seventeen years. I didn’t like to ask him too many questions about what he’s been doing since.”

“Mmm, I wish I had more to tell you, but it was only pretty recently that I found out he existed. He’s single, he’s traveled a lot. You’d know what a successful doctor he is because you’ve seen his résumé. My in-laws never—but never!—speak about that branch of the family, and Robbie and the other kids have learned not to, also. It gets my father-in-law too upset.”

“There’s obviously some major grievance from the past.”

“Which Jillian is determined to heal. She feels like a fraud as a social worker, I think, urging families to work together, when there’s such a rift dividing her own. She persuaded Jake to come back to Portland, and I get the impression that wasn’t easy. I think we all support her in theory, but it’s going to be an emotional business. Speaking of Jillian, here she is again.”

Just as had happened an hour ago, Jillian came briskly in Stacey’s direction. This time, she didn’t have Jake Logan with her.

“We have a child with behavior problems that she’s looking into,” Nancy explained quietly. “He’s a sweetheart but very hard to manage.” She said to Jillian as the social worker reached them, “You’re here for Aidan’s assessment?”

“Almost not late, this time!”

“I’ve been telling Stacey about what you’re trying to do to bring the Logan cousins back into the family fold. She knew Jake in high school—”

“Stacey, you didn’t mention that before,” Jillian cut in, her face showing added interest. “Were you good friends?”

“Um…”

Yes, the very best, until we got to the point where we couldn’t even be in the same room without anger and hurt overflowing in a huge mess. That’s not friendship. Only lovers work that way.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” Jillian said, apparently reading too much in her face. “It’s just that there’s a Logan family potluck dinner happening tomorrow night at his new place, and we both agreed we wanted to dilute the atmosphere by inviting some other people.”

“It’s a good idea,” Nancy agreed.

“Please come!” Jillian urged her.

“Because my last name’s not Logan?” Stacey smiled.

“Exactly!”

“Do come,” Nancy said. “You don’t have the twins this weekend. And you know Jake. It would be nice for him to see a familiar face since he’s newly back in town.”

“Give me the details,” Stacey said, and she saw from the reactions of both women that they really did want her to come. They were obviously nervous about the event, and she wondered just what had happened long ago to keep the two branches of the family so estranged from one another. “And what do you need me to bring?”

They agreed on a chicken casserole, and Jillian said again that it would be nice for Jake, nice for all of them, because the event should turn into a party, it shouldn’t be some dry, sparsely attended family confrontation.

Going back to her office at last, Stacey admitted to herself that her own thoughts about the potluck dinner were far more selfish. She never knew what to do with herself when the twins had gone to John’s.

Tonight she would relax with a glass of wine, get a spicy take-out meal that the twins wouldn’t have enjoyed, take a hot bath uninterrupted, read a book with soft music playing in the background. Tomorrow she’d run errands without the need for hauling two kids in and out of car seats. She’d do the house cleaning chores she never had time for during the week, then maybe she’d drop in to see a friend.

And by late tomorrow afternoon she’d have gotten all of that need for freedom out of her system and she’d start missing Max and Ella the way astronauts missed gravity, or cave explorers missed light. Her love for them was so powerful and fundamental, it provided the anchor point for her whole universe.

She almost had vertigo when the twins went to John’s.

She’d felt an alarming and unexpected degree of vertigo seeing Jake this afternoon, also, but since they were inevitably going to run across each other around the hospital, they both might as well bite the bullet and get used to it now. She would definitely go to the potluck dinner at his place tomorrow night.

“I did as we agreed and invited a few extra people,” Jillian told Jake on Saturday evening, at just before six.

She’d arrived at his newly rented house a little early, as she’d promised to do, bearing not only the agreed-upon chocolate mud cakes for dessert, but wine, napkins, extra silverware…most of the party supplies, in fact. She had to send him out to her car to bring in two more bags.

“Great place,” she told him, when he returned.

He’d rented a modern log home on a generous acre of land on the hilly outskirts of the city. The property had peace and space and warmth, as well as the easy freeway access to the hospital that he would need when racing to a delivery in the middle of the night.

He’d rented furniture and hired a professional interior designer to add some finishing touches, and in forty-eight hours the place had gone from bare and echoey to fully furnished, before he’d moved his personal belongings in here on Wednesday. Despite the designer’s expert eye and attention to detail, Jake wasn’t totally happy with the result, however. Something was missing.

“You didn’t have to bring all this,” he said to Jillian.

“Well, I did have to, with all the extra people.” She shrugged and smiled, laughing at herself a little.

“So just how many non-Logans did you invite?”

She ticked them off on her fingers. “Brian and Carrie Summers. They adopted through Children’s Connection and it went so well for them that the birth mother, Lisa, is still a big part of their lives. She’s become a real friend, so she’ll be here, too. And Stacey, whom you know. She and her husband…ex-husband,” she corrected quickly, with a regretful expression, “conceived their twins through IVF treatment at the center. That’s not a confidence I’m betraying because she’s very open about it. And Eric and Jenny asked if they could bring…”

But Jake didn’t hear who Eric and Jenny were bringing.

Stacey and John had conceived through IVF.

For some reason, he reacted to this news with a powerful surge of complex emotion. His thoughts whirled. He and Stacey had had no trouble conceiving by accident seventeen years ago. But then Anna’s birth had been so horrible. Stacey had bled too much afterward. They’d both been so upset and bewildered. She hadn’t realized her postpartum flow was greater than normal, and of course he had no medical knowledge at that point. Neither of them realized soon enough that she had an infection and needed antibiotics.

“Want to help set out the glasses?” Jillian asked, and he nodded absently and set to work, needing only a fraction of his concentration for the mechanical task.

Stacey had had to listen to some typically insensitive opinions from her mother after the birth—that the loss of Anna was “for the best,” that in future “maybe you won’t be so thoughtless.” He’d been rocked by the sense of a burden lifted warring with his genuine grief. They were both a total mess at that point. Had Stacey been scarred physically as well as emotionally by Anna’s birth and death? Was this why she hadn’t been able to conceive naturally with her husband?

How long had they been trying before they’d resorted to IVF? Treatment for infertility could put an enormous strain on a couple’s marriage. The divorce made more sense to him, now.

He looked up from the current task he was working on—arranging platters of crackers, cheese and dips; he didn’t even remember Jillian asking him to do it—and there was Stacey herself, following Jillian into the kitchen with a big, glass-lidded casserole dish in her hands. He wanted to confront her with a hundred questions about her marriage, the fertility treatment, the divorce, and almost had to bite his tongue to keep them back.

He’d never felt such a powerful need to make sure that someone was all right. It stunned him that he could still feel so protective toward her, that he obviously at some level considered he still had, oh, visiting rights to her heart, the way Dr. Jake Logan, specialist in ob-gyn, had visiting rights to Portland General Hospital.

“Hi, Jake,” she said, her eyes huge and bright and…yeah…aware. Nervous. It must show in both of them.

She wore a short-sleeved cream top in some silky, lacy fabric that clung to every curve on her body. A full skirt in a light, patterned fabric swished around her legs and emphasized the swing of her hips when she moved. Her cheeks were pink from the cold outside air between her car and the house, and her honey-toned hair glistened with drops of rain like diamonds scattered over gold.

“Hi.” His voice didn’t come out right. His body felt angular and awkward, and forbidden parts of it throbbed.

“In the oven?” Jillian asked her, talking about the casserole.

“Yes,” Stacey said, “because I made it this morning and it’s chilled from the fridge. Don’t make the temperature too hot, though.”

“Jake?” Jillian gestured at the sleek stainless steel front of the wall oven, with its row of control knobs.

“Do I know how to switch it on? No clue.” He stepped toward it just as Stacey put her casserole down on the countertop and did the same.

They stood side by side, studying the situation. He knew he’d swayed too close to her, but he couldn’t help it. It felt right, standing close, where he could smell her sweetness and glance down at her pretty profile. He noticed she didn’t move away. Her skirt brushed his legs.

Chemistry, again.

Memories.

Needs.

“Hmm,” she murmured. “Five separate controls, and none of them have words on.”

“This one?” He reached toward it.

“Maybe.” She seemed skeptical, and tilted her head. At thirty-five, the fluted line of her neck was still smooth. “But which setting? Do we want plain rectangle, or rectangle with horizontal line near the top, or rectangle with—”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “What happened to words? And what idiot designs these symbols?”

“I’m going out on a limb, here. I’m going with rectangle with horizontal line near the bottom and Mercedes-Benz symbol in the middle.”

“I think the Mercedes-Benz symbol must mean the fan, although I’m sure the car company is appreciative of the publicity.”

Stacey laughed, then turned the control to the setting they’d agreed on.

Nothing happened.

She shrugged at him and smiled. Not the million-watt smile, but the crooked one with the dimple in one cheek. Her sarcastic smile. He remembered it very well. Only Stacey Handley produced dimples along with her sarcasm. “Any new theories, Sherlock?” she asked.

Right now, he didn’t want theories. He didn’t care if it took their combined brainpower another hour to work out how to switch the oven on, as long as it meant they could keep standing close—flirting, remembering the good times instead of the bad—and he could watch her mouth as she spoke.

More people had arrived. What was it about parties that made everyone crowd into the kitchen, when he had that whole professionally decorated great room through the doorway, where they were supposed to congregate? He heard greetings, including the voices of his brothers Ryan and Scott, but didn’t turn around.

“This one must be the timer setting,” he said to Stacey, as if the oven controls also governed the whole solar system.

“And this is the temperature control. It does actually have numbers, if not words.”

They both reached for the remaining knob at the same time, and Jake’s hand landed on top of hers. They turned and looked into each other’s eyes. “I—I’m not prepared for this,” she said, breathy and gabbling. “I know I’m responsible for it just as much as you are. But I’m not prepared.” Still…she left her hand where it was, beneath his. He let the ball of his thumb make slow circles over her knuckles.

“Let’s assume it blows up Russia and go with the rectangles instead,” he said softly.

“I—I didn’t mean the control.”

“I know, and you’re losing yours a little, aren’t you?”

For an answer, she just closed her eyes.

“So am I,” he muttered, intending that she should hear, and she did. She pressed her lips together into two tight lines and he wanted to kiss them and soften them and make them part, using his own mouth.

Hell, what was he doing?

He couldn’t afford this. Neither of them could. They shared a past but there was no way they could share a future, which meant that following up on his instinctive, powerful, astonishingly familiar attraction just wasn’t on. There’d be nowhere for it to go. The attitudes that had separated them hadn’t changed. There were feelings they’d never talked about or dealt with.

“Turn it,” she said. He couldn’t even work out what she meant, for a moment. “I think the first setting has to be for the broiler plate, and the second is for the oven.”

“Right. Yes.”

“If we put the temperature at about 320…” She did so, and at last the oven responded. They heard a fan start up, and when Stacey picked up the casserole and Jake opened the oven door, they could already feel warmth spilling onto their faces.

“Bingo!” he said.

“Great things happen when two powerful minds work together, Lo—Jake.”

She’d almost called him Logan, the way she had yesterday in her office, but she’d read the same danger into those old teasing habits as he had, so she’d quickly changed course.

Changing course wasn’t enough. She was frowning now, as if playing out memories of the far darker times they’d shared. They needed to get this out in the open—the ongoing attraction, the sense of familiarity, and all the important things they’d never said.

“Let’s get a drink and go somewhere where we can talk,” he said.

But the timing was impossible. Jillian raised her voice right at that moment. “Everybody?” The kitchen and adjoining sunroom had filled with people and the noise level of numerous conversations had climbed. If the music he’d put on earlier was still playing, he couldn’t hear it anymore, and people hadn’t heard Jillian, either.

“Everyone?” she repeated, speaking louder this time. She sounded nervous, as if she didn’t want to do this but would do it anyhow, on principle. “Can I have your attention for a minute? Don’t worry, it won’t take long.” The room quieted.

“You’re right, Jillian,” said her brother Eric. “We should talk about why most of us are here.”

“Jake?” She turned to him. “Do you want to recap? Tell everyone what happened when we met up in Seattle?”

“I think you should do that,” he told her. “You were the one who approached me, and I know that took some guts, under the circumstances.”

He heard a tiny sound from Stacey, still standing beside him. She didn’t move, but she looked interested and curious—as well she might. He felt awkward about the fact that everyone—his brothers, his cousins, their partners, spouses, dates and friends—would see the two of them standing like a couple at such a significant moment.

Jillian nodded. “All right,” she agreed quietly, then raised her voice again. “Many of you know this part. I saw Jake’s name on a conference program in Seattle a few months ago, and realized from his looks and his age and his biography in the conference program that he had to be one of those Logans. You know the ones, Robbie, Eric, Bridget? The ones we never speak about? The ones we never see? The ones who might as well not exist?”

They nodded. The family knew. Some people didn’t.

“I listened to Jake give his presentation on infertility and emotional well-being, and at first I thought I’d just sneak out afterward and not say anything—the way we’ve not said anything to or about Lawrence Logan and his family almost our whole lives. But then I thought, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ Here I was, a social worker, listening to a doctor talk about family dysfunction and family healing. And the doctor was my own cousin. And I hadn’t met or spoken to him ever, because my father couldn’t forgive his father for things that had happened twenty and thirty years ago.”

“Thirty years?” murmured his brother Scott’s date, as if dinosaurs had still roamed the earth.

“So when the session was over, I went up to him,” Jillian continued. “My legs were shaking. I had no idea what kind of a reception I’d get.”

“But you came up to me anyhow, Jillian.” Jake picked up the story. “For those of you who don’t know this—”

He threw a brief glance at Stacey, but there would be others, he knew. His brother Ryan’s girlfriend, Brian and Carrie Summers, their friend Lisa. There were several more unfamiliar faces, also. His stepsister Suzie was here and had brought a date, as had Scott. His cousin Eric’s wife, Jenny, had brought her brother Jordan, a high-power corporate attorney.

“Thirty-one years ago, our cousin Robbie was kidnapped.” He saw Nancy squeeze her husband’s hand and frown at his words. “It was a devastating event for my uncle and aunt, as you can imagine. My parents wanted to help, but Uncle Terrence couldn’t accept that kind of support from them. As brothers, their life choices and priorities had always been at odds, and I know my uncle was racked with a belief that if he’d been a better father, Robbie would never have disappeared.”

There was a murmur from the listeners.

“My father was hurt by the repeated rebuffs,” Jake continued, “and when he went on, a decade later, to write his two bestselling books on family values he was careless in the case studies he chose. One of them was strongly based on his brother, Terrence, and if there had been any chance of reconciliation before the books were published, there certainly wasn’t once they achieved their stellar success. Hardest to Forgive stayed at the top of the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List for forty-three weeks.”

Beside him, Stacey made another sound. She’d read it. Millions of people had. It had surpassed even the sales of his dad’s first book, The Most Important Thing.

“There were some crucial sections in the second book which Dad intended as an attempt to reach out to his brother, but unfortunately the timing was bad.”

“With both books the timing was bad,” Jillian said. “A false lead had come up regarding Robbie’s whereabouts. I know my parents received several fresh blows over the years. Although we all shared their anguish, we were just kids. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like.”

At the back of the room, Robbie nodded, while his wife, Nancy, squeezed his arm. Jake had only been four years old at the time, but the suffering on both sides of the Logan family had been fierce for years afterward. He still had some distant memories of phone calls and police cars and angry confrontations—of his parents trying to help his aunt and uncle, his mother bringing casseroles, his father wanting to hand out fliers, and all their efforts being rebuffed.

“In his anguish over Robbie,” he continued, “Uncle Terrence took everything Dad had written in the opposite way to what he’d intended—as a further indictment of my uncle’s choices, his marriage, and the way he was raising his kids. I can understand my father’s message. The thousands of letters he’s received over the years from around the world attest to its value. I’m proud of him and what he achieved, but my uncle and his family did suffer because of that book.”

“We all did,” Eric Logan said. “Word got around. I’ve seen copies of both books with the fictional names Uncle Lawrence gave us footnoted by hand with our real names. Our friends’ parents passed the book around the way people used to with dirty magazines in high school.”

Bridget picked up the story, while Jillian stayed significantly silent, Jake noted. He had the impression she’d reached her personal comfort threshold and was ready to leave the emotional revelations to others. “Kids would ask us if he beat us,” Bridget said, “and what was wrong with our mom, and why didn’t they just get a divorce, and was my dad the worst father in the world, if it said so in a book that millions of people had read.”

Eric put his arm around his sister. “People willfully took the book’s message in the wrong way, when it referred to our family. A lot of people were very happy for us to prove single-handed that money can’t buy happiness. I heard whisperings that Robbie hadn’t been kidnapped at all, that he was buried in our basement and our parents had put him there.”

Nancy clicked her tongue in distress and she and Robbie held each other more tightly.

“I was the youngest, which spared me the worst treatment,” Bridget said, “but as I grew older I could understand why Dad was angry.”

“And yet we’ve all lost out, over the years,” Jillian came in. Her tone edged toward clinical. “I think people always do, when there’s that level of family conflict. I want to heal the rift—in this generation, and hopefully even between our parents. Over coffee at the conference, I convinced Jake to come back to Portland. This potluck supper is our first attempt at reconciliation.”

“I’m glad it’s happening,” said Scott. “I’m glad to be a part of it. Jillian and Jake, thanks.” He put his hands together and began to applaud, and soon everyone had joined in.

“Your parents aren’t here,” Stacey said beside Jake, when the applause died. The story had drawn her in. He could see the troubled emotion in her face. Because she’d never felt close to her own parents or her sister? Jake wondered. He knew they’d moved to San Diego some years ago.

Jillian pulled a wry face in answer to Stacey’s question. “No. Well. First things first. We’ll have to work up to it.”

“Were they asked?”

“My father and stepmother are in New York for a few days,” Jake said, “Visiting my brother L. J.”

“And our parents didn’t want to know,” Jillian put in. “Especially Dad.”

“I think it’s his problem, Jillian. Time heals, but he won’t let it do so in this case.” Bridget hugged her older sister. “I agree with Scott. I’m so glad you’ve done this.”

The formality began to fragment and the noise level rose again. Stacey remained at Jake’s side. “I had no idea about the rift in your family,” she said, when no one else was close enough to hear. “You never told me.”

“It didn’t seem important to me back then.”

“But it does now? It must, or you wouldn’t have come back to Portland.” She stayed silent for a moment as she thought, then her face changed suddenly. “No. That’s right. Yesterday you told Nancy if family tensions run too high, it’s very easy for you to leave. Portland might be your hometown, but it’s a way station for you, just like any other place, just as you always wanted.”

He couldn’t mistake the anger in her voice, or the shift in her attitude. She didn’t think highly of the way he ran his life, and she took it personally.

“Stacey—”

Stacey gave a mechanical smile and didn’t let herself meet Jake’s eye. “Excuse me, Jake, I’m going to grab some food now and say hi to Nancy.”

“Hey, look, don’t you think we need to—?”

No. She didn’t think they needed to do anything.

She knew she needed to find some space. She was furious with herself.

And, yes, as Jake had picked up, she was angry with him, too. He hadn’t changed…and she should have understood this at once. She should never have flirted with him over the oven controls, letting the old attraction show so openly.

She found it disturbing enough that the attraction still existed. To act on it in any way would be asking for trouble. He stood close, a little threatening in the way he confronted her. What did he want? Honesty? To dig up the past?

“Let me breathe, Jake. It’s a mistake, thinking we have anything left for each other after all this time. Anything except anger and regret.”

He gave a tight nod. “You’re probably right. I just wanted to talk.”

“Well, I don’t.” She turned away from him and looked for Nancy across the room.

She’d been captured by all the wrong memories, yesterday and this evening. The good memories. Memories of how she and Jake had once connected to each other with humor, and through the sizzle of teasing laced with awareness. Nothing’s funnier than a joke between two people who want each other, no matter how lame the actual lines. She and Jake used to laugh all the time, while their blood sang with wanting.

So help her, her blood still sang with wanting, but she had to forget about that and focus on all the ways he’d hurt her, and all the signals that he hadn’t changed. She spent the next hour talking to other people, helping to serve the hot food.

Anything to avoid getting too close to Jake.

Chapter Three

The situation was ironic, Jake decided.

He’d come back to Portland to heal one rift, only to face another one. And to be honest, in his adult life he’d been affected a heck of a lot more by what had happened between himself and Stacey than by the fact that his father and his uncle didn’t speak to each other.

Am I going to let this happen?

Am I going to let us go the whole evening without talking about what we went through together, and how we feel now? I want to say Anna’s name out loud, to the one person who’ll understand how sweet and sad it sounds.

No. He wasn’t going to let it slide.

He couldn’t.

They had to talk.

He looked across the room at Stacey. He’d been tracking her the whole evening, for a good two hours at least, although he’d tried not to let anyone see it—especially Stacey herself.

To his eyes, she was the star of the whole gathering. The prettiest. The warmest. The best listener. The one who set up the most unlikely conversational pairings—such as the one between his brother Ryan’s supercilious, bored-looking girlfriend and his cousin Eric’s quiet wife, Jenny.

“Anitra, Ryan tells me you’re studying for a law degree, part-time, while you model,” Jake had heard her say, while pretending he wasn’t listening. “Jenny, you’re an attorney and I know you were juggling a lot of commitments at one stage. Any tips for Anitra?”

Now Anitra was laughing with Jenny, in the middle of one of those very female conversations where they’re both nodding like crazy and going, “Oh, I know! Oh, absolutely! Oh, I totally understand!” the whole time.

Jillian and her friend Lisa Sanders were talking together very earnestly. Stacey had been a part of their conversation for some minutes, also. Lisa seemed a little upset and agitated. Stacey had listened intently to what she’d said, nodding and frowning. Now Jake heard Jillian say in a decisive way, “You cannot have something like this hanging over you, Lisa, and neither can Carrie and Brian. Get the legal situation checked out. If there’s any chance that your ex could invalidate the adoption…”

Lisa chewed on her lip. “My ex. I can’t believe we were ever involved. It seems a lifetime ago. And I can’t believe he would try to mess with all our lives like this, just because he thinks there’s something in it for him.” She shook her head, sounding distressed, and Jake realized he should move farther away from what was obviously a very personal conversation.

Meanwhile, Stacey had retreated to his kitchen to load the dishwasher, which unfortunately matched the oven and had similar cryptic controls.

His cue, he decided, heading in that direction. “Try the Mercedes-Benz symbol, Stace.”

“Yeah, I would,” she answered, straightening. If her cheeks had been a faint, pretty pink before, they were flushed now. It suited her, hinted at her emotional nature. “Only there isn’t one.”

“Leave the dishwasher,” he growled at her. “I want to talk to you.”

“The feeling isn’t mutual, Jake, right now.” She hunched her shoulders, and hugged her arms across her front. “We—we flirted before, and we shouldn’t have. It was irresponsible and meaningless and just dumb. If you think I’m backing off fast…you’re right! I don’t want to talk.”

“Don’t you think this is the best time?” He stepped closer, because he didn’t want people to hear this. “When seeing each other again has brought our emotions so close to the surface?”

“Why do we have to talk at all? We haven’t, for seventeen years, and we’ve done okay.”

“Have we? Have we really done okay? I think it’s all still there, underneath. I think it’s still affecting us.”

“Well, of course.” Her voice dropped low. “There’s still barely a day goes by that I don’t think about Anna….”

There it was. The sad sound of her name that he’d needed to hear, and that reproached him every single time. In his mind, he could see her, the tiny, tiny form, the black silky hair, the paper-thin translucent skin, those brief, fluttering movements she’d made before—

Stop.

Just stop.

“…especially since I had the twins,” Stacey was saying.

“Not just Anna,” he forced himself to argue. “The choices we made afterward. The things we turned our backs on.”

“You turned your back on.”

“You, just as much.”

“I don’t see it that way.” She sounded very stubborn, with a good bit of bravado in the mix.

“No?” he challenged her. “We always talked about seeing the world, and yet you’re still here in Portland with a failed marriage, stuck in a dreary suburban rut….”

She flinched, and he wished he’d chosen his words better.

Then she lifted her chin and returned the attack, which shouldn’t have surprised him. “So making a family means being in a rut, does it, Jake? What about you? Some people wouldn’t call what you’ve done with your life widening your horizons, they’d call it running away.”

“They’d be wrong. I like my life very much.”

“Good for you.” She blinked back sudden tears. “And I like mine. There. We’ve talked. We’ve told each other we’re happy. We’ve defended our choices. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Stacey…”

“It’s enough,” she repeated. “Thank you for this.” She waved vaguely at the gathering, which was still going strong after two or three hours. “I like your family. I’ve had a good time. I’m glad Jillian invited me. But I’m going home.”

He didn’t try to argue, but only because he’d already decided to tackle their talk a different way.

The worst part about Stacey’s rare evenings out when the twins were away was that she had to come back to an empty house. She’d left the heating turned up and a couple of lights on in strategic places, so the space was cozy enough. Her garage opened directly into a mudroom off the kitchen, which meant there was no interval of cold and vulnerability as she walked between the car and the house, but still it felt lonely and wrong.

So much in her life was right. Her children, her job, her house, her friends.

This part of it wasn’t.

She’d never planned for a life in which she had to come home at night alone. She liked the warmth of people around her, and found it nourishing. As a poor substitute for actual human contact, she checked the answer machine and found a message from her sister, Giselle, which was unusual. Stacey was the elder by five years and they’d never been all that close. Giselle had only been thirteen when she and Mom and Dad had moved to San Diego.

On the machine, she sounded perky and busy. “Hi-i, Stacey! Just calling. No reason. Talk to you soon. Bye-ee!”

No other messages.

Which was good, because it meant that everything must be running smoothly for John with the twins.

Stacey looked at the clock on the microwave—9:42. “What?” she complained to the green numbers. “You leave me with an hour between now and bed, and no suggestions about what I should do? You couldn’t have made it 10:25?”

No reply from the clock.

She made herself some hot chocolate, lit the gas fire—more for the companionship of its cheerful blue and orange flames than for its warmth—and put on a DVD.

About twenty minutes later, she’d gotten comfortable when her doorbell rang, which spooked her a little at this time of night—until she looked through the peephole.

She should have known.

Jake.

Heart sinking, she opened the door for him, with a brief, “Hi,” then stood back in silence for him to walk past her into the house. Clearly, he’d meant what he said about needing to talk. Even outside of rush hour, his place was a solid twenty-minute drive from here. He must have left his guests with Jillian to act as hostess. What kind of excuse had he made?

He didn’t intend to waste any time getting to the point, it seemed. She offered several beverage options, hot and cold, but he waved them all away. She ushered him toward the fire, but he ignored her and paced up and down the patterned Persian rug instead.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did about you being in a rut. It wasn’t exactly the best start I could have made.”

“Start to what?”

“We have to say this stuff, Stacey! We’re going to keep seeing each other around the hospital. Nancy and Jillian both think of you as a friend, and I’m working on thinking of them as family. The connections are there, and ongoing. We ended in such a mess seventeen years ago. We’re a lot older now. You know I loved you—”

“Did you? You loved me? You’d claim that?”

“Do you doubt it?”

“You pushed me away! You picked fights. I was the one who finally said It’s over, yes, but you made me say it, Jake. You didn’t rest until you’d goaded me into it!”

He stopped pacing in the middle of the rug, pinned by her words. They’d hit home. She could see it.

“You manipulated me into saying it,” she went on, “as the punch line to a massive fight, and you left me with the guilt when I did. We conceived Anna together, and we lost her, and then you manipulated the relationship so that I was the one who couldn’t let the loss bring us closer. It took me a long time to see all of that, but I know it’s the way it was. The only thing I don’t understand is why. If you’re telling me you did love me…”

“Of course I did.”

“But you stopped loving me after Anna died? Because you wanted to be free?”

“After Anna died, I was never going to be free,” he muttered, so low that she wasn’t convinced she’d heard him right.

“Well, it’s the only reason I can come up with.” She turned toward the gas fire, needing to look at those leaping flames, instead of Jake’s frowning face.

“Is it?” he said.

“The evidence is there in the life you’ve lived since, Jake.” She didn’t turn to face him again, but felt him move closer. “I’ve seen your résumé. No wife. No kids. You don’t stay in one place for longer than two or three years. You’ve worked all over the world. Clearly that need for newness and change and movement runs deep. And it angers me that you couldn’t be honest about it. You wanted your freedom, but you couldn’t say so. You had to turn me into the bad guy, instead.” She shook her head. “I had the same thing from my mother my whole life, growing up. I was the disappointing daughter, the one who messed up, while Giselle was perfect. I can fall into the role of bad guy sooo easily, Jake. Very convenient for you. And yet—you didn’t put me there on purpose? If you did—” she shook her head again “—then we really have nothing to say.”

“You weren’t this angry yesterday, or earlier tonight.”

She laughed. “No, because believe it or not, in a rut or not, I do have a life—one that I find very satisfying, by and large.”

“Tell me.”

“My job, my kids, my friends, my house, my hobbies. I haven’t spent the past seventeen years dwelling on grievances. I’m a pretty positive person. At first, when I saw you and talked with you, I remembered the good times. The connections.”

Oh, boy, did she remember the connections! He’d moved to stand beside her now, and they both watched the fire. Every cell in her body seemed to pull toward him. What was it about this one man? She had to take a breath to steady herself before she could continue.

“Now, though, when you tell me that I’m in a rut, and say that you did love me…Yes, I’m angry. It’s confusing and upsetting. And I really don’t understand.”

She had to wait a long time for his reply. The fire purred faintly, and the room was so quiet that she could hear the whir of the DVD player, which she’d left on the pause setting. Finally, he spoke. If that DVD player had been any louder, she wouldn’t have heard.

“I pushed you away because I felt so damn guilty, Stacey.”

Jake heard the words that came out of his mouth after the long silence and didn’t know if he could follow through with the full truth, even now. Was this what he’d meant by talking? Had he intended to make this much of a confession?

He’d driven here without rehearsing his lines, without much rational thought at all. He’d just known he needed to see her again tonight, not wait for some awkward moment when they ran into each other at the hospital.

As soon as he’d entered her house he’d felt the old attraction flare once again. He’d barely taken in the decor, just a vague impression of warmth and color and quirkiness, the kind of detail you promised yourself you’d take a closer look at next time.

And then the first thing he’d done was apologize, because there was so much he regretted when it came to Stacey and their shared past. But could he talk about it?

“Guilty?” she echoed. “Because Anna came too soon? How was that your fault? The doctors told us—”

“Because it let me off the hook. It opened the door to the original plan, the one we’d had to let go of when we found out you were pregnant. You know the saying. Be careful what you wish for.”

Tears filled her eyes. “You wished for—”

He swore harshly. “No! Of course I didn’t wish for us to lose Anna! But I would never have chosen at that age to get married and be a father and settle down in Portland, Stacey. I wanted you, but I didn’t want the whole traditional package. Not then. Not at eighteen.”

“And now?”

“We’re not talking about now. But, no, I don’t see myself ever going that route, I have to say.”

“Because it’s boring? Narrow?”

“Because it’s…”

Too scary, and too hard.

Anna had taught him this. Most men—boys—have pretty simplistic attitudes to life at eighteen. Love is love. Grief is grief. Freedom is freedom. You want what you want. No ambivalence. No excuses. Until Stacey’s pregnancy he’d never imagined you could tear yourself in two with such conflicting, opposing emotions—emotions that simply had no way to coexist. Loving Stacey became a burden. Loving Anna was a burden, also, and every bit as heavy.

“Because it’s just not for me,” he finished after a moment. “It’s still not. And it definitely wasn’t for me back then. There were times—a lot of times—when I just wanted the whole situation to go away. Like for some superhero to fly up into space—” he mocked himself with words and tone “—and reverse the rotation of the earth so that time would spin itself back to the moment before I didn’t pick up a pack of condoms the night of the prom, or something. It wasn’t logical. It was never logical or rational or thought out, Stacey. I just wanted the situation to go away,” he repeated.

“And then it did.”

“And then it did.”

“And I was racked with grief, while you—”

“I was, too. Never doubt that! Only I didn’t have the right to be, I only had the right to feel guilty, because at some level I’d made it happen. Again, not rational. We were both in a mess. For a while, I tried to pick up the idea of us traveling, going to college together somewhere different. Like New York.”

“I remember you talked about New York.”

“You weren’t interested. You didn’t want to know. You wanted me to stay at Portland State.”

“I needed time, for heaven’s sake!”

“I know,” he answered quietly. “I just couldn’t see it then. Of course you did. But even if I’d given it to you, I’m not sure that it would have helped, because I wasn’t ever going to let myself be happy with you after we lost Anna.”

“Because you didn’t think you deserved to get what you’d always wanted—the two of us and the wide horizons.”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, Jake…” She didn’t sound angry anymore.

“I picked the fights. I did push you away. I’m so sorry about that, Stacey, believe me. When you told me we were finished, it hurt like hell, but I felt like it had to happen. It was inevitable. There was a relief, too. Cosmic justice had been served.”

“Jake…”

“I was eighteen. We were eighteen.” To both of them, it sounded so impossibly young.

He put his arm around her and she leaned in, not away. Her head dropped to his shoulder. They stared at the flames. He felt a cloak of peace settle over his shoulders. Peace and trust.

“Tonight, when I said her name…” Jake revealed. “You’re the only one I can say her name to, Stacey. My mom and dad, maybe, but it’s still not the same.”

“No. It wouldn’t be.”

Her bare arm felt warm beneath his hand. Her hip bumped his and he realized their thighs were pressing together, separated only by the fabric of his jeans and her frothy skirt. None of this was about sex, though, it was about shared pain and mutual support.

“I said something about her to my mother, once,” she said quietly, after a minute. “Maybe five years ago? I used her name. After Anna died. Do you know what Mom said?”

“Tell me.”

“‘Who’s Anna?’ Mom had forgotten that we ever named her.”

“She’d forgotten? The name of her own lost granddaughter?”

“I know. It felt like a punch in the gut.”

He turned her into his arms and said against the softness of her hair, “You are a miracle, Stacey.”

“Because I’m not like my mother?” she whispered.

“Yes!”

He couldn’t speak.

He had more to remember.

Those awful moments when they’d had to break the news to their respective parents that Stacey was pregnant. They’d announced their plan to marry at the same time. He knew his parents had had doubts and concerns, but they’d expressed them in the context of their love and support, and they’d swallowed a lot of their fears, ready to just be there, rather than preach.

Stacey’s mother had been far more vocal, all of it a variation on the theme of, “How could you do this to me?” How could Stacey and Jake embarrass Trisha Handley with a teen pregnancy in front of her friends? How could they make her a grandmother, when she was only forty-three? And if they thought they’d be able to dump the baby on her for free child care whenever they felt like it, it wasn’t going to happen, because Bob Handley’s company was transferring him to San Diego in the spring, thanks very much, so she wouldn’t be around.

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