All it had taken was a minute

Gabe had always thought part of Josie’s allure was her lack of complication. That men saw her spunk and realized she’d be fun and then gone.

But here she was, complicating his life all to hell.

He kissed her back.

He slid his hands beneath her coat, treasuring the sensual curve of her waist. He moved his fingers up her rib cage, stopping just below those voluptuous breasts.

He wanted to touch her there. He wanted to caress her to moans, then tear off her clothes and love her.

He wanted to tell her to stop looking for a father who hadn’t wanted her. She had him. He loved her.

He’d protect her.

Even from himself…

Dear Reader,

This last heroine in the HEARTLAND SISTERS trilogy is my husband’s favorite. Josie Blume is all tomboy, gutsy and feisty and not a lot like ultrafeminine me. I don’t worry about hubby’s preference, however. I think he might just see a hint of his own orneriness in Josie. And perhaps there’s a smidge of me in Josie’s hero, Gabe.

My favorite part of writing is the characters—always. When people ask me how I come up with different story ideas (surely they’ve all been done, they explain) my answer is simple: I start with two characters. We might try to put people into categories (see tomboy, above) but we are all so wonderfully different when it comes right down to it. Why else would my best friend still feel like my best friend after over thirty years? Surely I’ve met other only-child, Scorpio, mother-of-two intellectuals in a three-decade time span.

Maybe. But she’s the only one who responds to me as she does. (Hi, Lis!)

And that’s why Josie and her sisters were so much fun to write. The three siblings grew up under a special set of circumstances, without a lot of contact with the world beyond their rural Kansas home. Their personalities changed how that past affected them. Except for a common hope for a happily-ever-after, their goals were different. I hope you enjoy Josie’s quest for her heart’s desire.

I always enjoy hearing from readers. Write to me via my Web site at www.kaitlynrice.com.

Happy reading!

The Third Daughter’s Wish

Kaitlyn Rice

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my Tiger Lily cousins: LaDonna, Debbie, Sheri, Karen and Joni, Rhonda, Connie, Dani and Julie

You are all wonderfully unique, wonderfully fun. Wonderful.

Thank you for sharing yourselves, for the support, and especially for the courageous tributes you gave to my mother.

Most of all, thank you for keeping me in the loop.

Books by Kaitlyn Rice

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

972—TEN ACRES AND TWINS

1012—THE RENEGADE

1051—TABLE FOR FIVE

1085—THE LATE BLOOMER’S BABY *

1104—THE RUNAWAY BRIDESMAID *

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

The man in the Wisconsin sweatshirt was eyeing Josie’s butt. Gabriel Thomas was sure of it now as he watched his good friend Josie Blume approach the pool table. She analyzed the break of the pool balls, then walked around to the far corner of the barroom. She grinned when she found the angle she liked.

Glancing sideways, Gabe noted that the other man’s attention shifted to Josie’s chest when she leaned over the cue stick. Of course he would look there. Guys did. Despite her diminutive stature, Josie hadn’t been short-changed up top. Those sexy assets curved inward to a well-toned waist, then flowed back outward to lean but feminine hips.

The woman was stacked.

She also had stylishly short brunette hair, kissably full lips and the biggest hazel eyes Gabe had ever seen. So yes, guys noticed her, Gabe included. Not that Josie would ever suspect. She thought of him as the big brother she’d never had, he was certain.

Which was for the best.

Josie must be unaware of Wisconsin’s interest, or she’d have called him on the carpet for his boldness. If she was receptive to the idea of a Wednesday-night hookup, she’d have told her admirer directly that she didn’t respond to drooling. If she wasn’t, well, she’d have told him directly to get lost.

Josie didn’t hint at what she wanted; she demanded it. And she didn’t hide her thoughts behind societal expectations or womanly wiles. If you had broccoli in your teeth or conceit in your behavior, she told you about it. Yet she greeted you with such an affable enthusiasm it would be hard to dislike her, even with that sometimes blunt honesty.

Obviously, Wisconsin found her agreeable.

She should have reacted by now.

What the hey! The man’s interest in Josie was no more Gabe’s business than her response to it. He and Josie were merely buddies. Unless she was taking up with a conspicuous drug dealer or abusive jerk, Gabe generally kept his mouth shut about her love life.

After waiting for Josie to make a series of shots—she missed the third by a fraction of an inch—Gabe walked around to stand next to her. He lowered his mouth to her ear and murmured, “He’s not your type, kid.”

Josie stood up straight and looked around. “Who?”

“Wisconsin.” Gabe turned to study the table. After pocketing his first solid ball, he scanned Josie’s perplexed expression. “The guy behind us in the ball cap. He’s enjoying those tight jeans of yours a little too much.”

She scowled. “These aren’t tight.”

He raised his eyebrows as he perused the table again. “The outline of your driver’s license is showing through your right hip pocket.”

He nearly cackled when he heard the slap of her palm against her bottom.

“You were looking?” she asked.

Oops.

“Not in that way,” he fibbed. As though he hadn’t noticed the query in Josie’s eyes, he strolled around the table and pretended to find the conversation a bore.

“I certainly hope not,” she chastised. “Anyway, so what if some guy’s noticing me?”

Gabe scrutinized the man against the wall behind her. After he’d bent to hit a great ricochet shot that sent his six ball into the corner pocket, he explained, “As I said before, he’s not your type.”

Josie stood very still, and Gabe knew she was trying not to crane her neck around to see her admirer. “I don’t have a type.”

“Sure, you do. This one’s too young, I think.”

She snorted. “If he’s in Mary’s Bar, he’s old enough.”

“You started sneaking in here at sixteen.”

“How would you know? We met when I was nineteen.”

Oops again.

Gabe had heard about Josie long before the day they’d officially met. The Blume family had been different enough to cause talk, even among the Augusta cliques who considered themselves too refined for small-town Kansas gossip. Gabe’s mother included.

But until he’d met Josie, Gabe had doubted the tales of little girls hiding in the attic or magazine salesmen chased off by the barrel of their mother’s shotgun. Even of the boldhearted youngest daughter, who’d had the grit to defy her mother’s edicts.

“We’ve been friends for a long time, kid,” he said. “You must’ve told me most of your wild-and-crazy youth stories at some point.” Gabe missed his next shot and moved out of her way.

Apparently, she bought his explanation. She walked around the pool table again, surveying the balls, and snuck a peek at Wisconsin on her way past.

“That guy has to be twenty-five at least,” she said a few seconds later, after she’d made her shot and returned to Gabe’s side. “He doesn’t have a noticeable excess of tattoos or jewelry and he’s gawking at me, a female, and not you, a male.”

Gabe bit his tongue. Josie’s standards weren’t exactly celestial when it came to boyfriends. She said it all the time. The guys had to be fun, straight and un-attached. That was it, she swore.

“So he’s my type,” Josie said, as if Gabe had voiced some argument.

“Right, kid. If you have as few restrictions as you claim, why haven’t we hooked up?”

Josie stared at him.

Damn it, he’d done it again. What was wrong with him? He forced a laugh. “I only meant you have more requirements than you think.”

Gabe’s question had bewildered him, too. The idea of hooking up with Josie sounded dangerous—and exciting. She was young, though—even younger than his twin sisters. It took on a forbidden air.

No. He wasn’t the guy for Josie. Besides, if she grew bored with him in a month, as she did often with her lovers, where would their friendship stand?

Josie remained silent as she concentrated through another couple of shots, but as soon as Gabe had leaned over the table and posed his cue stick, she said, “You think you know everything about me, don’t you?”

He gazed at her. “I know a few things, especially about your love life. Remember? I’m the guy you’re usually with when you meet your dates.”

Her eyes slid to his hairline. “Okay, do I prefer my men tall and dark or tawny and brawny?”

Gabe shot and missed. Then he made a quick study of the tuck of hair beneath Wisconsin’s ball cap. Dark blond, he believed, and curly. The guy was only slightly shorter than Gabe. Josie’s last boyfriend had been Hispanic. Squat and muscular, with thinning dark hair. “Guess anything goes in the looks department.”

“Right. My two requirements for men are enthusiasm in bed and simplicity out of it. Commitment makes people fat and boring.”

One of Josie’s pet phrases.

Gabe wasn’t one to question her choices. He, too, intended to lead a single life. Commitment wasn’t a problem for him—it was the kids that most women set their sights on a few years down the road. A decade ago, Gabe’s father had died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly referred to as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, after a long and debilitating illness. Gabe couldn’t risk passing on those defective genes to any male children.

But at least Gabe stayed with a woman long enough to let her down easily when the time came. Josie tended to seek out guys who had no clue how to handle her. And she left before anyone cared.

Josie maneuvered around so her back was to Wisconsin again. Predictably, the guy leered. When Gabe caught the younger man’s eye, the corners of Wisconsin’s mouth twisted up in a sort of half simper, half gloat.

“Simplicity in the head, lack of skill in bed,” Gabe muttered. A favorite phrase of his own, if usually unvoiced.

When Josie missed her next ball entirely and paused to glare at him, her expression was almost comically disgusted.

Her problem wasn’t her pool game, however.

It was his big mouth.

He didn’t blame her. He couldn’t fathom why he was making the careless comments. Maybe because Josie had recently celebrated her twenty-seventh birthday. Their almost eight-year age difference didn’t seem titanic, as it had when she was that wild nineteen and he was twenty-six.

Gabe stepped forward and sank three balls as he reminded himself that he had no business interfering in Josie’s love life. No reason to warn Josie off Wisconsin.

And infinitely more reason to choke his attraction to Josie than to nurture it.

They’d ignite, explode and be done.

He liked her too much for that.

“You have to admit, the guy has a great smile,” Josie said.

Gabe studied the pool table and didn’t say a word.

“And if you really think I have a type,” she added, “think about that country music deejay I dated.”

“Chubby-cheeked, middle-aged wiseacre?” Gabe asked.

“Yeah.” Josie nodded, lifting a corner of her mouth at some memory. “He had a wicked sense of humor. Man, was he fun!”

Gabe maneuvered around for a likely shot. “That guy lasted, what? Two months? One of your longer stints.”

“Mmm-hmm. Now think of Jerry, the computer programmer.”

Gabe hadn’t liked that one, either, and Josie had dated him over the course of an entire summer.

“Remember him? Such an intelligent kisser.”

Was she trying to prove her point, or make Gabe jealous?

“So you see?” she said. “Those two had to be total opposites. I don’t have a type. Maybe this guy’s exactly what I need to get my mind off my worries.”

She swiveled to check out her admirer, dropping her scrutiny from his hat to his chest to his running shoes. Although she made a show of peering beyond him then, squinting at the clock near the bar’s television, the message had been sent.

She’d looked. Briefly, but directly.

“It’s getting late,” she said to Gabe in an obvious tone. “Guess we should finish this game and quit.”

That was when the guy approached.

Of course. Only a complete moron would have missed Josie’s invitation.

Gabe frowned at the pool table as he listened to her get-acquainted conversation with the other man. This was no big deal. Josie flirted all the time.

But tonight was a work night, and Gabe had only come out with Josie to pull her out of a blue mood. They really should be leaving soon.

After fumbling his shot, Gabe waited for a lull in the conversation so he could tell Josie it was her turn.

“I’m a student,” Wisconsin was saying. “I go to Butler County Juco over in El Dorado. I was on my way home and saw this place, so…” He shrugged.

Josie had nodded through the guy’s explanation. Apparently, she was still interested, even though the kid had just told her he was Juco-student age. Presumably, too young.

“Home…to Wisconsin?” Josie approached the pool table, sank her shot and then peered at the lettering on the other guy’s chest.

“Nah, I bought the shirt on vacation,” Wisconsin said. “I live in Wichita—Willowbend North.”

The subdivision he’d named was filled with pricey homes, and no student-type rentals that Gabe could picture.

Josie let out a soft whistle. “You own a house in Willowbend?”

That grin got even more stupid. “Well, okay. I live with my parents,” Wisconsin said. “But only because they’re paying for my classes. As soon as I get a job that covers both rent and tuition, I’m outta there.”

At least Josie was scowling now. “You don’t work?”

“Sure I do. I make donuts. But my, er, responsibility eats most of my check.”

Josie pocketed her last striped ball. “A responsibility besides financing your own housing?”

“A little boy,” Wisconsin said. “A son. Guess he’d be about two now.”

Josie gaped at the younger man. “You don’t keep track of his age?”

“I don’t see him all that much.”

Ha! Wisconsin was starting to fidget.

“But I pay for his food and diapers. A man has to step up to the plate. I really believe that.”

Gabe hid a smirk behind his beer bottle, feeling as if he’d just won some big, dopey prize at the fair. He waited while Josie missed sinking the eight ball by a mile, then stepped forward, feeling wickedly victorious as he focused again on the game.

He knew what was coming.

Wisconsin had broken Josie’s biggest dating rule—and she might not acknowledge this, but she had plenty. She didn’t date single dads. Under any circumstances. Ever.

“Well, good luck to you, then,” Josie said as Gabe pocketed his sixth and seventh balls. “My boyfriend and I will finish this game, then get out of your way. You waiting to play, are you?”

“Your boyfriend?” Now Wisconsin gawked at Gabe. “Someone said you two were just buddies.”

“You didn’t ask us,” Gabe said. As he had dozens of times before, he looped an arm around Josie’s waist and pulled her close.

The poor guy stared, blinking a couple of times as if he was replaying Josie’s earlier interest in his head. Then he met Gabe’s eyes.

Gabe nodded.

“Oh, okay. Ah. I have to work in the morning. The donuts…Early.” He hesitated for a second, eyeing Josie, then headed toward the exit.

“Thanks,” Josie said, watching as Gabe sent the eight ball into the far corner pocket, ending their game just after she’d ended hers.

“No problem. I could tell you didn’t like him all that much.”

She started pulling balls from the pockets and returning them to the table. “I liked him fine until I heard about the baby he never sees.”

“Nah. I don’t think so.” Gabe replaced the cue sticks on the wall rack. “You didn’t even get his name.”

Josie snorted. “Who needs a name?”

“Even you need that much, Josie. Seriously.” He held her gaze.

A couple of regulars approached the table and set their beers on its edge, claiming it for the next game, so Gabe walked Josie to the parking lot.

“Sorry if I acted jerky in there,” Gabe said, hoping a simple apology would work in lieu of an explanation.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” she said. “That big-brother protectiveness has gotten me out of a few jams.”

She always returned their status to platonic, didn’t she? Except for her brothers-in-law, Gabe was the only guy Josie had been around for longer than a few months. She didn’t want the complications. She said that often enough.

So Gabe would ignore the desire. Pray it abated. Maybe find a new girlfriend to distract him.

“We still on for Halloween night, then?” he asked as they approached Josie’s truck.

“You bet.” After opening her driver’s side door, Josie reached inside the cab to grab her favorite sweater and slide into it. Then she leaned against the door frame, facing him. “I’m hunting for costume pieces this weekend. Want to come?”

“Nah. The twins helped with mine. I’m all set.”

She knuckled his shoulder. “Show-off.”

“Hey! I can’t handle artsy on my own.”

“I’ll catch up with you on Halloween night then. Call me if anything changes.” Her tone was affectionate, her expression soft. She’d forgiven his foolish comments.

But Josie didn’t crawl into her truck. She kept leaning against it, staring past Gabe’s head.

Uh-oh. Gabe recognized that expression. And he did know Josie. The explanation for her recent funk should spill out about…

“I think I’m going to contact my father soon.”

…now.

Whoa, this one was a doozy. Josie had never met her dad. He’d left before she was born and she’d never had a clue about why or where he’d gone. The jerk had never even sent a birthday card, and he hadn’t contacted the Blume sisters when their mother died.

The pain of that rejection must be the reason Josie chose the minor-league partners she did.

“Did something happen since last time you girls talked about finding him?” Gabe asked. “Wasn’t that just a week ago?”

She peered at him, her eyes narrowed menacingly. “No. I haven’t told them yet, so don’t you go blabbing.”

Gabe shot a stern look right back at her.

She sighed heavily. “Callie might believe that finding our father won’t make Lilly better, but maybe if we had more information…”

The Lilly Josie was speaking about was her oldest sister Callie’s six-month-old daughter. Lilly had suffered a mild, fever-related seizure at four months of age. Three weeks ago, she’d had a second, more serious, one when she was rocking in her baby swing.

The entire family had been in turmoil as the tiny girl began neurological testing.

But the sisters had discussed the idea of searching for their father. Callie felt confident that the doctors would discover the cause without an investigation of their father’s genetics. She and her husband didn’t have any seizure disorders, nor did any of the siblings, so Callie suspected a physiological problem.

“Didn’t Callie say she thought a father search would just add stress to a tough situation?” Gabe asked.

“Mom forbade us from seeking him out. I told you that.” Josie lifted a shoulder, barely. “My sisters took her more seriously than I did.”

Gabe remembered Josie telling him, many times, that Ella Blume had described her husband as a weak-minded alcoholic who would taint their lives with his failures. She’d warned them to avoid contact.

Until now, they’d always heeded her advice.

Gabe also remembered pieces of gossip that gave him an inkling about why Ella might have chosen to cut off ties to that husband—whether he was actually an alcoholic bum or some sort of blasted royalty.

However, Gabe had never found the crassness or the courage to tell Josie the things he’d heard. For one thing, he’d be repeating old gossip. And he’d discovered for himself that most of the talk about the Blume girls was simply untrue. They were a family, not a clan or a coven. Despite the unlucky circumstances of their childhood, Josie and her sisters had turned out great.

Gabe didn’t want to see Josie hurt, and he feared that hurt was exactly where she was headed if she pursued contact with her father. “Josie, I think you should follow your sisters’ examples and forget this. Your mom warned you that no good would come of trying to connect with your dad.”

“Mother’s dead.”

“Haven’t you always said she was very strong in her advice? Very intelligent?”

“She was also very weird.”

Gabe had surmised that much.

“Don’t worry about it,” Josie said, before Gabe could sputter a response. “I’ll keep my first few meetings with my father a secret from my sisters. At least until I feel certain that he is all right. I’d protect my family with my life, Gabe. You must see that.”

Gabe did. He’d never met any siblings with a stronger bond, and that included his identical twin sisters. “If he’s as bad as your mother claimed, meeting him could hurt you,” he said.

Josie laughed. “He couldn’t be any worse than the man my mother described. If I expect a lazy bum from the outset, I can’t be disappointed, right?”

No. That wasn’t right. If the tales were true, she could be crushed. “Except you’ll have a real image to link with her words. As it is now, you can tell yourself that this spitefulness was just another of her eccentricities.”

“If we learn that he’s an epileptic, we could shorten the time it takes to get answers about Lilly.”

“Callie said—”

“Callie’s scared and tired,” Josie argued. “If I check things out before I tell her, she’ll be fine.” Josie wrapped her arms across her middle. “God, haven’t we talked genetics a million times? You won’t marry and have kids because of the Lou Gehrig’s. I won’t because of my mentally unstable mom. I’d have thought that you, of all people, would understand.”

Ah, but there was the rub. How many times had Gabe wished he could live life normally, ignorant of the knowledge that he could pass on the gene for ALS? Had his dad foreseen his future, would he have chosen not to have kids? Was it better to know or not know?

Impossible questions, surely.

“But Lilly’s already here, and so is whatever’s affecting her,” he said gently. “Proof that there’s a genetic predisposition probably can’t help now.”

Josie shivered. “It’s dang cold out here, Gabe. I’m sorry you don’t like my idea.” She hitched a breath as if she was going to say something else, but then she clamped her lips shut and climbed into her truck cab.

Gabe stepped forward so she couldn’t close her door. “Have you found him already, Josie?”

She lifted her chin.

Which meant yes. She’d located her father.

“How? Through an Internet search?”

“Yep. It took some doing, but I found him, and he’s not that far away,” she said, sounding pleased with herself.

Damn.

“When are you going?” Gabe asked. “You said he’s nearby. I’ll go with you.”

She sighed as she leaned backward to fish her truck key from a front pocket. “You think my old man’s going to attack me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, but you might appreciate having someone to talk to about it all. I could offer another perspective. Play that big-brother role.”

She put the key in the slot, then met his gaze. “You’re intense about this, Gabe. Why?”

If he told her his suspicions, he’d risk revealing secrets she might never learn for herself. Secrets best left hidden.

“You take on too much alone sometimes.” He softened his voice to lessen the blow of his next words. “Shades of your mother.”

“Don’t worry. I’m a big girl. And you’re not really my brother. Goodbye.” She started her truck.

“Call me when you’re going, Josie,” he said over the engine noise.

She shook her head, her expression incredulous, then closed the truck door between them. She zipped out of Mary’s lot and onto the street. She’d be home in two minutes.

On his sensibly slower way home, Gabe vowed to keep a close eye on Josie. They were not only friends, they were also business colleagues currently working on separate contracts within the same housing development.

He knew what she was doing a lot of the time.

Perhaps he could show up unexpectedly at her place on a regular basis and make sure she didn’t meet her father on her own.

If she did it at all.

Chapter Two

Josie’s truck tires spun up a cloud of dust as she traveled a lonely road in the middle of Kansas. When she approached a rise thick with spindly red cedars and yellowing cottonwoods, she spotted a mailbox tilted hopefully out toward the road. Slowing quickly, she read the boxy black numbers adhered to its side. “Nine fifty-four,” she murmured, then glanced into her passenger seat to check her printout. The numbers matched. This had to be the house.

After turning into the drive, she weaved the truck through a succession of dry potholes, then parked behind a dingy white van and yanked her keys from the ignition.

Abruptly, the bold curiosity that had kept her foot heavy on the pedal from her house to this one failed. She opened the bottled soda she’d bought at a highway service station, tipped it high against her lips and winced as the soda went down. It was too warm to quench thirst. Too sugary to satisfy. Josie craved the bitter snap of a cold beer. Just one, for courage.

But she was driving and it was early—she’d had to sneak out at the crack of dawn to avoid Gabe, who’d been wanting to hang out more than usual lately. Besides, she never drank alone, thanks to a nagging worry that her taste for brew meant she was on her way to alcoholism. Like her father.

Josie had her mom to thank for most of that worry. But Ella Blume wasn’t around anymore, to check Josie’s refrigerator for beer bottles or her life for stray men. Despite Ella’s clean, simple living, she’d died of ovarian cancer when she was barely into her fifties.

Her mother hadn’t been wrong about everything, of course, but she hadn’t been right about a lot. All men were not worthless. The outside world was not an evil place. Josie hoped her mother had been wrong about her father, too.

How could a man be completely uninterested in his own children? Would the knowledge that he had grandchildren draw him closer to the family? Would he be concerned about Lilly’s well-being?

Josie had a thousand questions. He’d answer some of them, she was certain. After recapping the soft-drink bottle, Josie set it in her cup holder and eyed the shabby two-story a dozen yards ahead.

For some reason, she’d always envisioned her father in a sprawling ranch. This smallish house had the flat, no-nonsense lines of the Prairie-style architecture prevalent in the Midwest over a century ago.

If someone spent a little time out here with a paintbrush and hammer, the structure could be gorgeous. The patchwork yard of cracking mud and weedy, dormant grass could also use some TLC. Josie’s theory about her father’s destination after his departure was also wrecked. Apparently, he hadn’t fled small-town life to seek fortune in some distant metropolis. Woodbine was little more than a scattering of homes. Tiny even when compared with Augusta’s population of eight-thousand.

Josie wondered if her father had left Kansas and returned, or if he’d always been here—just ninety miles north of home on highway seventy-seven. Close enough to pop by once or twice in twenty-seven years to say, “Hi, I’m your dad. How are you?”

As soon as she stepped down from her truck, the sound of barking dogs caught her attention. Stuffing her key into her jeans pocket, she swiveled to peruse the end of the drive. Five or six big dogs stood enclosed in a row of chain-link pens beneath the cedars. They must have been hidden from the road.

She hadn’t pictured her dad as a dog owner. Her mother hadn’t allowed pets.

Perhaps the man had always wanted a dog. Maybe it was one of several things that had caused such a furious schism between husband and wife. Josie didn’t know. Callie was the only one who remembered their father, but her memories were sketchy. A trip to a carnival, where their father had lifted her onto a white carousel horse. Coins emptied from his pockets and scattered on the back porch step while he taught her to count the pennies.

A man who cared for dogs now would be curious about that little girl he’d loved then, wouldn’t he? He’d wonder about all three of his little girls. Even the one he’d never seen.

The pain in that thought struck. Josie couldn’t decide if she was here for Lilly’s sake or her own. She hesitated, motionless for a moment while she tried to decide whether to approach the house or forget it.

A breeze soothed her neck and hands, diverting her attention long enough to calm her fears. After removing her sweater, she folded it over her arm.

The worst that could happen was that her father would be the drunken fool that Ella had described. If he was, Josie would ask about any seizure disorders and go away. She hadn’t driven all this way to chicken out. Not without resolving a single question.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered, and strode up the drive.

The square, concrete porch was inviting enough. Clay pots of orange chrysanthemums flanked the metal storm door, and the wooden angel plaque hanging next to it proclaimed visitors welcome in gold stenciled lettering.

Before Josie had located the doorbell, a movement in the front window caught her eye. She paused with her hand outstretched and resisted another urge to run. She had probably been seen by now, anyway.

She pressed the button, then dropped her hand and waited for someone to greet her. A single bark sounded, louder and closer than the others, but the door remained closed.

Could someone be spying on her through the window? Could he be watching her?

Stepping backward, she peered through a sagging set of miniblinds and caught a glimpse of a large, black nose and a wagging tail.

Her watcher was a dog. Just another dog, thank heaven. Man, she was flustered. Idly, she puzzled over why this pooch merited indoor status, when the ones out at the road were surely as lovable. And then it hit her that her father could have other children. Kids he valued more dearly, for some reason, than Josie and her sisters.

Why on earth hadn’t she contacted him before making this trip?

She was impetuous, that was why. Gabe told her that often enough. But if she didn’t think well on her feet, she wouldn’t survive as an interior designer. Clients changed their minds all the time.

That was what she told Gabe in response to his lectures. The man drove her insane sometimes. Lord help her if he ever learned she had a thing for him. Clearly she was confusing her feelings—craving the attention of a strong man.

But Gabe was her good friend, and not boyfriend material for Josie. He couldn’t find out about her crush. That was all there was to it.

And she’d never tell him that her mother would have agreed with him about her impulsiveness. Ella had always encouraged Josie to follow her sisters’ examples, and think long and hard before she acted.

That was another reason Josie was here. Their isolated childhood had made all three of the Blume sisters feel different. Within the family, however, Josie was the only oddball. Her sisters were reserved and thoughtful; she was loud and reckless. They excelled at math and science; she’d had to work to conquer those subjects.

But whenever something in the house had broken, Josie had been the go-to girl. She didn’t even look like her family. They were tall, slim and fair-skinned. She was short, buxom and dark.

Did she take after her father? Did she act like him?

She’d sought out her father for Lilly’s sake. Truly she had. But Josie was also here for herself.

She wouldn’t bother with ringing the doorbell again. The dog stood at the window, wagging tongue and tail, but there were no noises from within. Obviously, no one was home.

Josie was both disappointed and relieved. As she returned to her truck, she determined to follow proper procedures the next time she attempted to meet her father. If she tried again. She’d send a letter and follow it up with a phone call.

The outside dogs started a frenzied round of barking that caused Josie to glance toward the road. A shiny red pickup had just pulled into the drive.

Oh, God. That must be him. Man, she was scared!

Clutching her sweater to her chest, Josie watched the pickup window. A sober-faced man lifted a hand off his steering wheel in greeting, then the woman passenger waved, too.

Her father had never divorced her mother, so new questions arose.

In that instant, Josie envisioned how tough it would be to approach that front porch Welcome sign and announce, “Hi, Dad and Whoever. I’m the daughter you never bothered to meet. Aren’t I clever to look you up? Now, let’s discuss your health.”

Maybe such a jarring proclamation wasn’t necessary. Before she identified herself, she could acquaint herself with him in a safe way. If she offered a bogus name and reason for being there, she could simply talk to him. If he behaved decently enough, she’d tell him the truth: that she was his third daughter, here with questions about any seizure disorders.

That was plan enough for now.

The man steered the pickup to the opposite side of the drive to park, allowing her the space to get her truck turned around. The woman got out first. She was about Josie’s height and stocky, with rust-colored curls and solemn brown eyes that filled the frames of her purple-rimmed glasses.

When the man stood up, Josie noticed he was very tall and thin. The woman had already climbed the porch steps, but he approached the house with a more cautious gait.

He was older than Josie had imagined—perhaps in his seventies. His blue buttoned shirt and tan pants hung loosely on a gaunt frame, and his head was saved from total baldness by a low fringe of wiry hair. He reminded her of someone…some celebrity—Art Garfunkel! Except that this man wore bifocals and his hair was snowy white.

He stopped beside the woman, peering shyly at Josie. “Gonna introduce us, Brenda?”

Josie felt a heaviness in her chest, and it took a second for her to realize the source of her disappointment. She’d hoped to have her father’s eyes or his hair or his build. She’d dreamed that her father would take one look at her, recognize who she was and pull her into a hug.

She’d prayed for that easy connection.

Before the woman could announce that their visitor was a stranger to her, Josie offered her hand. “Hi, I’m Sarah. Sarah, ah, Thomas.” She’d used her middle and Gabe’s last names. As she turned to grasp her father’s hand for the first time, she said, “If you’re Roderick Blume, I’m here to see you.”

Lying about her name didn’t feel half as strange as saying his. Her mother had always referred to her father as him, that fool man or Rick. Josie’s Internet search had been lengthened by days, until she had followed yet another wrong path and discovered she should be searching for a Roderick and not a Richard.

“I’m Rick Blume and this is Brenda,” he said. “Can we help you with something?”

“Invite her inside,” Brenda urged. “You’re late taking your pills and I’m too hungry to keep dinner waiting tonight.” After unlocking the door, she pushed it open and spoke gently to the dog as she made her way inside.

The man…Rick…her father—Josie wasn’t even sure how to think of him—knit his brow. “You’re not selling anything, are you?”

“No, I—”

“You’re not from the county? The dogs get fresh water three times a day, and Brenda feeds them an expensive, high-protein food she buys online.”

“I’m not here about the dogs. I’m visiting from Augusta,” she said, deciding to stick to a version of the truth. “I know your relatives there.”

Her father backed up a step. Josie got the impression that he’d prefer dealing with the dreaded salesperson or an animal welfare worker, rather than someone snooping around about his past. “You mean Ella?” he asked, studying Josie. “Or the girls? They’d be ’bout your age, I guess.”

“All of them.” Josie forced a calm expression.

Rick’s eyes grew dark, and she waited patiently while he wrestled with the worries or regrets he should have dealt with a long time ago.

After a moment, he opened the door. “Down, Gracie!” he told the dog as he waved Josie inside.

Gracie sniffed Josie’s hand, then trotted to a floral armchair near the window and stood, as if to communicate that this was the preferred spot for guests.

“Have a seat,” Rick prompted.

She did so, folding her sweater across her lap. When Gracie sat at her feet, Josie leaned forward to rub the dog’s silky ears. Her father crossed to the end of the sofa nearest the kitchen and yanked a blue tea towel from between the cushions. Bending slightly, he spread it across the worn armrest and tucked it in at the back. Then he sat down, sighed and knocked it half off again with his elbow.

He must sit in that same spot all the time. He must repeat those motions several times a day.

Questions were being answered without any need for conversation. Rick Blume was fair-skinned, cautious and methodical.

Nothing at all like her.

When Brenda returned to the living room to offer Rick a glass of water and a handful of pills, he grinned wryly at Josie’s concerned gaze. “When you get to be my age, the pharmacist has to help keep the old heart ticking.”

Heart ticking. Could this problem be seizure related? And he’d been driving. Did that mean anything?

Josie hmmmed her concern, hoping to draw explanations.

“I was always strong as an ox,” he said. “Years of eating fried bologna and kraut dogs gave me a heart attack coupla years ago. Now I live on pills and greens.”

It didn’t sound as if he had a seizure disorder, but she couldn’t be certain without asking specifically. Josie watched her father swallow the pills and return the glass to Brenda, and a new worry invaded her thoughts. What if the shock of learning her identity canceled the effects of those pills? What if the man died here and now? From a seizure. A heart attack. Shock.

“Would you drink some coffee or iced tea?” Brenda asked Josie on her way to the kitchen.

“No, thanks.” Josie wished she could follow Brenda and escape out the back door. Her father had just said he’d always been as strong as an ox. He drove a truck. If he’d suffered from epilepsy or some other disorder, it must be well under control.

Josie’s sister and brother-in-law would work until Lilly’s condition was controlled or extinguished. Why disturb an old man’s contented life? Perhaps Gabe and her sisters were right.

“How are they?” Rick asked, causing Josie to jump. He leaned forward on the sofa, as if eager to hear the answer.

This was her opening. Ella died seven years ago, but her children are great, she might tell him. Then, Enjoy your life. And Goodbye.

“They are fine,” she said. “More than fine, actually. They are amazing people.”

“Are they?” He peered into Josie’s eyes, nodding slowly. “Brenda’s cousin read about Ella’s passing in the Kansas City paper several years ago. I thought about contacting the children then, but figured I was too late.”

“You did?”

He sat back in the chair, his hand trembling when he lifted it to remove his glasses. As he directed his grimace downward to rub the lenses against the tea towel, he said, “Ella didn’t want me to come around and disrupt her plans for those girls, but I missed knowing them.”

Whatever had happened between her parents to split them up, the man didn’t act monstrous now. Perhaps he’d simply fallen victim to Mother’s fierce personality, as Josie and her sisters had.

“Do you want me to tell you about them?” Josie asked.

He readjusted his glasses over his ears and nose, then stared across at her. A moment later, he gave another nod.

There was so much to tell. Josie was proud of her sisters. They were exceptional. She sometimes wondered if she’d have survived her childhood if Callie and Isabel, the middle sister, hadn’t been around to buffer the experience. It would be tougher to brag about herself, but Rick’s reaction to that particular description should be interesting.

“Callie’s a research scientist who lives in Wichita with her husband, Ethan,” she began. “They have a kindergarten-aged boy named Luke and a baby girl named Lilly.”

She might have mentioned Lilly’s seizures then, but her father pulled off his glasses again. Josie realized they had fogged. He blinked a few times, then wiped his index finger against the corner of his eyes. Was their conversation affecting him? God, Josie hoped so.

“Calliope was smart as a whip,” he said as he laid the wire-rimmed spectacles atop the towel. “I could tell that by the time she was old enough to talk.”

His sweet, tremulous smile was encouraging. Without his glasses, she could see that his eyes were a soft gray, like Callie’s, and that his eyebrows had the same wide and pleasing arch that Isabel’s did.

She’d definitely found her father.

“She’s still smart.”

Josie remembered the billfold she kept in her truck’s glove compartment. She’d crammed the accordion-style photo sleeve full of niece and nephew pictures. Should she go out and get them? Was this the right moment to tell her father the truth?

“And the youngest girl was only a tiny thing last time I saw her,” her father said.

Josie thought for a moment he was speaking about her. She was about to mention the fact that he’d actually left before she was born, until he added, “She was a happy thing, with pretty blue eyes and wavy brown hair.”

Josie’s hair was board-straight, her eyes hazel. Her father had just described Isabel. Had he forgotten that he had another daughter? Well, he did. And right now she felt ignored, abandoned and outraged.

She should have escaped when she could.

“That little girl followed her mama around as if they were attached at the heart by a strand of Elly’s yarn,” Rick added. “How is she?”

“You mean Isabel?” Josie prompted.

“That’s right, Isabel,” he said. “I do love that name, and I got to choose it for her. What’s she doing?”

“She married a Colorado law professor a couple of years ago. She and Trevor live near Boulder and have a one-year-old daughter named Darlene. Izzy works with kids at a wilderness camp, and also runs Blumecrafts. Remember their mother’s business?”

“I do remember. Hard to believe the baby has a child now, too.”

Josie was the baby, not Isabel. Why didn’t he mention her? She worked up the guts to ask. She should just say it. I don’t take after Ella physically, but I’m just as stubborn and I, too, inherited her artistic talent.

If Rick had made the slightest indication that he knew about and was interested in her, she might have found the courage. Or if she wasn’t alone here to deal with an old man’s reaction to her news.

Suddenly, she wished she’d invited Gabe. Maybe. She leaned on him enough already.

“Do those girls want to meet me?” Rick asked.

“Callie and Isabel?” Josie queried, clarifying for herself that he wasn’t speaking of all three of them now. That poor health or a mixture of medicines or nervous forgetfulness hadn’t caused him to omit mention of the third daughter.

“Of course. Calliope and Isabel. My children.”

The rock that had lodged in Josie’s chest earlier seemed to turn, piercing the tender flesh around her heart.

He didn’t know about her. Or if he did, he’d forgotten or blocked out the memory.

What would happen if she just got up and left now, and never told a soul about her trip to Woodbine today? The thought was tempting. But her father had asked her a question, and even now those cool gray eyes sought an answer.

Did her sisters want to meet him?

No. They had made it clear that they saw no advantage to meeting their father. Despite Josie’s arguments. Despite Lilly’s condition. Whenever the subject came up, they both said that Ella must have had good cause to warn against the contact.

If Josie told her sisters about Rick’s apparent forgetfulness concerning the third baby, they might change their minds. They might want to meet him to support Josie.

Yet to all appearances, Rick was harmless. He was just a quiet old man. And he had expressed a genuine interest, at least in them.

“Maybe they’ll want to meet you,” she said. “I don’t know. I’ll mention the idea to them.”

“You do that,” he said, standing. He shuffled into the hallway and rummaged around in a glass candy dish. After pulling out a business card, he returned and handed it to Josie. “This card’s for Brenda’s dog-breeding outfit, but the phone number’s the same. Have your friends call me, er, Sarah? Sarah Thomas, didn’t you say?”

She stared blankly at him until the dog cued her by trotting to the front door. “Sarah. Right,” Josie said. She stuck the card in her pocket and allowed her father to let her out, then waved from her truck window before she looped out of the drive.

She hadn’t even talked about Lilly’s condition. She’d gotten hints that her father might not have a history of seizures, but she hadn’t asked.

She’d learned a lot of other things today, however. Rick Blume was just an old man, either forgetful or ignorant of a few truths about his past. Thoughtful, in some ways. Introspective—like her sisters.

Josie preferred action. People. Noise.

The more she’d spoken to her father today, the more she’d been reminded of everyone but her. In a family of tortoises, she was the only hare.

She wanted to think for a while, to figure out how or if she should return to discuss Lilly, and if she should break the other news to her father at all.

Congratulations, you have a girl! She has brown hair and hazel eyes, and weighs a smidge over a hundred and thirty pounds.

That wouldn’t be right. She also wanted to settle into her feelings before she told her sisters that she’d contacted Rick Blume. She wouldn’t risk inviting the man into their lives if doing so would harm her family.

She wouldn’t breathe a word about this to Gabe, either. He’d probably just give her a hard time for not warning him about her trip to Woodbine today. And then he’d proceed to tell her exactly how she should have handled it and what she should do next. The man liked being in charge.

But then, Gabe had strong ideas about a father’s role in a child’s life. Real strong ideas. She couldn’t fault him for feeling the way he did. His dad had been his hero.

She simply wanted to handle this in her own time, and in her own way. Keeping the secret might be hard. Josie might have invited trouble by concealing her identity, but she hadn’t anticipated her father’s response, or the pain she’d feel when he hadn’t mentioned her.

But perhaps Rick had left the family before Josie’s mother had told him about the pregnancy. Maybe there was more to their history than Josie and her sisters had realized.

Right now, Josie sensed that that was exactly the case, and that her quest for answers had just begun.

Chapter Three

Three evenings later, Josie stood in her own front doorway, chortling as Gabe reacted to her costume.

“You’re going to my mom and stepdad’s shindig as Doc Holliday?” he inquired through the screen.

His bewildered expression was priceless. When she’d told Gabe that she was going to tonight’s costume party as Wyatt Earp’s favorite sidekick, she’d known he’d make a big assumption. After all, the gunslinger’s third and favorite wife had been named Josephine Sarah, like her.

She might be laughing hardest at her own joke, but Gabe wasn’t exactly crying. His gaze had lingered a little too long on her flattened chest, and now he was growing an annoyingly large smirk.

“Gabe!” she scolded. “I’m dressed as a man!”

“So?”

“So stop staring at my chest!”

“Just wondering where you’d put ’em.”

She glanced down at her buttoned white shirt and vest. “I wore a tight body suit underneath, that’s all.”

The teasing glint in his baby blues warped his look of concern. “Does it hurt?”

“Of course not.”

“This party could go on until the wee hours. Who knows how you’ll feel after several hours of being squashed up like that? If you want me to help unbind or…”

“Gabe!”

“Fluff or reinflate anything later, I—”

Josie slammed the solid wood door shut between them.

Gabe promptly opened it. “Sheesh!” he said, shouldering his way inside. “Can’t a guy enjoy a good prank when it’s played on him?”

His Ropers clunked on the threshold, and the scent that wafted in ahead of him was a pleasing mixture of worn leather and expensive male cologne. “Are you really that mad?”

“I don’t get mad,” she insisted, then ignored his rude snort as they stood together in the entryway.

“Now that the shock has worn off, let me take a gander.” He waggled his index finger around in a circle.

Sucking her cheeks in, Josie bit down on them to exaggerate the famous dentist’s hollow cheeks. She turned slowly, allowing Gabe to see her full costume. She’d found a long, gray coat at the thrift store and scrounged a pair of ancient work boots from the attic. She hadn’t been able to get her hands on a wide-brimmed hat, so she’d parted and slicked down her hair in a masculine style.

Gabe shook his head. “You look like Doc Holliday.”

“Now you show me.”

Gabe’s pivot was smooth, but he added a healthy dose of male swagger. As well he should. Tall and tanned, he had magnificent muscle tone and a face that broke hearts on a regular basis. He could probably shave a labyrinth into his golden-brown curls, leave food fragments in his straight white teeth and trade clothes with his grungiest friend, and women would still offer him paper scraps with their phone numbers. The man was a bona fide hunk.

Another thing Josie would never tell him.

“Good job,” she said. “I especially like the vest and holster.” She reached up to yank at a few strands of his thick mustache. “This isn’t yours, is it?”

After slapping her hand away, he pressed a finger against the fake facial hair to keep it from peeling off. “Of course not. You saw me clean-shaven a couple of days ago.”

“Just checking,” she said, smiling as he worked to restick the edges.

He had to be sexier than the real Wyatt Earp. It might have been fun to play Josephine to his Wyatt tonight. To arrive at the party on the arm of a handsome good guy, to dance in his arms. Perhaps even enjoy a little old time smooching out behind the barn.

She couldn’t do that, of course.

Josie was no fool. Her longest intimate relationship had lasted eleven weeks. Her platonic connections were much more solid. She hung out with the guys over whichever sporting event was in season, and they swapped tales of work and romance wins and woes. She liked men, and her buddies were the best of the bunch.

She didn’t sleep with them, though. Sleeping with men led to departures of men. She wouldn’t lose a friend that way. Especially not Gabe.

“Really thought I’d dress as your wife, huh?” she asked as she crossed her living room.

“Would it be that bad?”

“Aw heck, Gabe. You want a wife? Just empty your pants pockets before you do your laundry.”

“Beg pardon?”

She laughed. “Dial the number on one of the business cards or napkin scraps you find in there.” She strode into the kitchen to grab a paper bag full of plastic-wrapped marshmallow and cereal treats. “Those women aren’t looking for job interviews, my friend,” she hollered back.

“I’m not looking for a wife and you know it,” he shouted. “I was merely surprised at your choice of costumes.”

“Just admit it, I got you.” She lowered her voice as she returned to Gabe to exit via the door behind him.

As if he were the real Wyatt Earp facing off some outlaw, Gabe remained in place, his hands low on his hips. “You about ready, then?” he asked when she finally stopped a short four inches from his chest.

Josie throttled a grin. She’d met Gabe when she was a college sophomore running the weekend registers at the hardware store and he was a hungry carpenter with a perpetual need for supplies. These days when the proud owner of Thomas Contracting landed jobs that required interior design work, he talked up her skills. Josie referred construction work to him.

She had a great deal of respect for Gabe’s talent and integrity, but he could be too serious. Too logical. When he was in an ornery mood, though, he was more fun than anyone.

Josie craved that distraction tonight. As she looked up into his gleaming eyes, she stepped squarely on his toe. “You’re the one who’s not moving.”

He yanked his boot from beneath hers, then swung around and offered her an elbow. She hooked a hand around it and they stepped outside. He waited on the porch while she locked her house, then offered his arm again as they approached the driveway.

Tonight should be a blast.

When Josie reached her truck, she stopped. Gabe kept going and nearly yanked her arm out of the socket.

“Ow!”

He mumbled an apology, but also untangled his arm and kept walking toward his pearl-white BMW, parked behind her truck in the drive. “We’re taking my car, kid.”

“Nope.” She lifted her keys to jingle them. “Move the overpriced status symbol. I’m driving.”

Gabe stopped and turned around near his car. He shoved his thumbs over his holster and leaned a hip against his fender, appearing as though he could wait all evening.

She sighed. He’d had that dang car just over a month. Every year when the new models came out, he traded up. She’d been driving the same Toyota pickup for ten years. It had heart, like her. Gabe’s cars were simply vehicles, and she told him so, often.

After a moment, he broke their staring match to frown down at his clothes. “I can’t ride with you,” he said. “I borrowed this shirt from Nadine’s husband.”

Nadine was Gabe’s younger sister by six years, and Livy’s twin. The fact that Gabe had borrowed the Western-style shirt from his brother-in-law was no great shock, but Josie couldn’t fathom what he’d meant by the comment.

“These boots used to be my mother’s,” she said. “How would borrowed clothes factor into this decision about who drives?”

“I can’t risk ruining the shirt with blood or broken glass,” he said, deadpan. Then he walked around to the passenger side of his car and opened it, indicating with a nod that she should duck inside.

She stood her ground. “You’re not risking anything. I’m a great driver.”

“Except you rely on everyone else to be on their toes.” He leaned down to pat the car seat. “Get in. We’re taking the car.”

She waved the paper bag. “Can’t. I need to go by Callie’s before the party.”

“I know the way to your sister’s house.”

Josie scowled and kept her feet planted.

“Come on, Josie.” Gabe leaned an arm across the top of his car door. “I’ll be the designated driver and you can have as good a time as you want.”

Now, that was tempting. A couple of beers and she’d be primed to party. Maybe she’d forget all her turmoil about her visit with her father.

“You can get completely schnockered if you like,” Gabe added.

Josie didn’t drink that much. She made certain she didn’t. And worried anyway.

Lifting her chin, she crossed the space between her truck and Gabe’s car. “For your information, I’ve never once been schnockered. I drink one or two at a time, and generally only on weekends.” She slid inside and slammed the car door before Gabe could respond.

But of course, after Gabe had come around and folded his long frame behind the steering wheel, he said, “You’re practically a miniature person, so two could get you into plenty of trouble.”

“I’m five-four—almost average for a woman my age.” She sounded huffy, but she couldn’t help it. Her height, or lack of it, was also a sore point.

Gabe winked.

Ooh! The man could push her buttons! Josie opened her mouth to tell him what she thought of his teasing, but shut it again when she noticed his eyes.

His gaze had locked on her lips, and he was frowning. His mustache hopped from side to side as he wiggled his jaw. Then he pursed his lips slightly.

“Uh, Gabe? What are you doing?”

He lifted his eyes to hers. “Your mustache is crooked.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” She felt her own pasted-on mustache and discovered one side hanging loose. “Can I borrow that?” She pointed to his rearview mirror.

“Sure.”

She set the paper bag on the floorboard, then slid halfway onto his car’s middle console and tilted the mirror her way.

Gabe didn’t start the car. As she worked to peel off the left edge of the mustache and restick it, he sat with the full length of his leg pressed against hers.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“Enjoying the view.”

She flicked a gaze at his muscular thighs and just higher, for an instant. “Uh-huh! You were liking more than the view.”

“You’re the one on my side of the car.”

She bounced into her seat, returned the treat bag to her lap and stuck her tongue out at him. Then she reached up to jerk the mirror around to face him. “Yours is still loose on one side.”

He flipped the visor down in front of him and used that mirror to adjust his costume piece.

Immediately, Josie looked behind her visor and discovered another vanity mirror there. “You should have told me,” she said as she snapped it back into place. “I forget about the cushy doodads in your stuffy cars.”

He didn’t offer a countering response. When he finished adjusting his mustache, he turned toward her. “Better?”

His eyes held the mischievous gleam she’d seen a hundred times before, and that flash of teeth was devilish. Her heart skittered into a quicker rhythm.

Sometimes Josie wondered what it would be like to love a man like Gabe. To love a man fully. Sometimes she ached for that connection.

Gabe peered into the mirror again. “Still crooked?”

She averted her gaze. “Nope. You’re fine.”

“Good.” She heard the flap of his visor, then he started the car and backed out of the drive.

Finally.

Josie needed to get to that party. Her only thoughts should be about having a great time and forgetting the one man in the world who could hurt her. Who had hurt her, whether he’d intended to or not.

That man was her father.

Certainly not Gabe Thomas.

AS GABE BEGAN the thirty-minute drive from Augusta to Wichita, he and Josie talked about the party and who they might see there. About a hundred home-improvement industry professionals had been invited to the annual event thrown by Gabe’s mother and step-father, who owned a big lumber-supply company in east Wichita.

True to his word, Gabe drove past the east Wichita exits, continuing on to Ethan and Callie Taylor’s west-side home. By the time he approached their house, it was eight o’clock and well past dark. Yet the house behind the curtains was unlit.

“I hope everything’s okay,” Josie said, clicking out of her seat belt before Gabe had braked in the drive. “What if Lilly had another seizure? They could be at the hospital again.”

“Don’t decide that now,” Gabe said as he followed Josie to the porch. “Maybe they’re putting the kids to bed or sitting out in the backyard. Did they expect you?”

“Ethan’s working tonight, but Callie and the kids should be home. She’d leave the porch light on, I think.” Josie rang the bell.

Callie opened the door seconds later, calm and elegant despite the green glitter antennae she wore atop her blond head. “Hi, you two.” She smiled tiredly as she looked from her sister’s costume to Gabe’s. “How appropriate.”

“Everything okay?” Josie cocked her head to peer beyond her sister into the house.

“Sure. Things are fine.”

“Your lights are out,” Josie said.

“Oh. Sorry.” Callie opened the screen door and motioned them inside. “I’m trying to keep things calm for Lilly. When I ran out of candy, I turned off the front lights and took her and Luke back to the kitchen. I didn’t want the neighborhood kids to keep ringing the bell.”

Callie led them through the house to the kitchen. Lilly had fallen asleep in front of the bowl of Cheerios on her high chair. Five-year-old Luke sat at the table, his entire arm crammed inside a plastic pumpkin container. Wordlessly, the sturdy brown-eyed boy studied Gabe and Josie as he removed a lollipop from the pumpkin. After he had set it with a pile of similar treats, he said, “I didn’t know grown-ups could go trick-a-treatin’.”

“Gabe and I aren’t trick-or-treating.” Josie approached her nephew and claimed a chair next to him. “We’re on our way to a costume party.”

Callie pulled her sleeping baby from the high chair. “Lilly conked out a few minutes ago. I’ll go put her in her crib.”

Josie eyed her niece, a delicate blonde dressed in a pink bunny suit. “She’s really okay? Normal?”

“Not quite normal,” Callie said. “She hasn’t had any other seizures, but I’m noticing some eye fluttering when she wakes up. If she has another episode, her doctor’s going to give me a referral to a pediatric neurologist in Kansas City.”

“Good.” Josie saw that Gabe was still standing and yanked out a chair next to her. “Siddown, Gabe.”

“Oh, please do!” Callie said, standing with the angelic baby at her chest. “I forget you’re company. You aren’t company! Be comfortable!”

As Gabe sat, Lilly made signs of rousing, so Callie glided out of the room to put her to bed.

“Can I go to the party?” Luke asked, staring at his aunt. “I ate five red taffies. Mom says no more candy, but I can probably have some cake.”

“This is an adult party and you’d hate it,” Josie said, grinning at Gabe. “All talk and no cake.”

Luke wrinkled his nose, then picked up a piece of yellow taffy and squashed it between his fingers before sorting it into a pile. He scrutinized the badge on Gabe’s vest, then asked, “You a pleece-man?”

“Sort of,” Gabe said. “I’m dressed as Wyatt Earp, who was a lawman in cowboy days.”

Luke’s eyes widened. “Cool.” Then he studied his aunt, his expression serious again. “You a cowboy pleece-man, too, Aunt Josie?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re a girl.”

“Girls can be police officers or doctors or whatever they want to be,” Josie said. “Your mother’s a research scientist, right? That’s a difficult and very important job.”

“I know. My daddy says a girl can even be president.” Luke’s words made clear his belief in his father’s wisdom. “But does a girl pleece-man hafta dress like a boy? A spooky boy?”

Gabe chuckled at Josie’s gasp of offense. “She’s supposed to be Doc Holliday, who was a male dentist in cowboy days,” he said. “Sometimes he helped Wyatt Earp with the policing duties.”

Luke studied his aunt’s manly hairstyle for a moment. Finally, he gave a nod. Then he pointed proudly at his own badge. “I’m a pleece-man, too, but not a cowboy. I’m a detective like my dad. He rocks socks!”

“He is pretty great, isn’t he?” Josie said.

“Yep.” The little boy nodded. “Lilly can be a doctor like my mom. I wanna be a pleece-man. My teacher says I even take after Daddy!”

Josie’s hazel eyes grew distant. She sat staring at Luke’s candy piles.

Worrying about Lilly again, probably.

Gabe contemplated Luke’s blue police-officer costume. Nodding toward the cap hooked over the back of Luke’s chair, he said, “Cool hat.”

Luke yanked it from the spindle and placed it on his head, then bent sideways in his chair to eye the holster around Gabe’s hips. “I asked for a gun an’ hoe-ster, but Mommy said no way.”

Josie was still silent, focusing on a single purple lollipop that hadn’t been sorted into a pile.

“I know where to find a tool belt in your size,” Gabe told Luke. “A hard hat, too. Maybe next year you could be a building contractor like me.”

After extracting a piece of gum and a roll of hard candy from his pumpkin, Luke placed them carefully on the table before shaking his head. “No. I wanna be a pleece-man, like Daddy.”

“I understand,” Gabe said.

And he did. Josie’s nephew hadn’t met his father until he was a year old, but since then both Ethan and Luke had been making up for lost time. “Oh, well,” Gabe said, shooting a teasing smirk toward Josie. “Maybe I can talk your aunt into being a contractor next year. She’d be less spooky in a tool belt than she is in a mustache, I think.” He winked at Luke, who giggled.

Josie didn’t respond at all. She sat clutching her paper sack and eyeing that damn lollipop, appearing very much as if she hadn’t heard.

She was sure acting strange.

When Callie returned to the kitchen, Gabe and Josie said their goodbyes and returned to the car just as five gruesome-looking revelers passed the dark house.

Gabe watched Josie set the paper sack on her lap again. He’d thought it was a gift for her sister or the kids, but she’d carried it inside and back out again.

Josie didn’t talk in the car, which left Gabe to wonder what could be so wrong. Callie was Lilly’s mother, and she’d obviously decided to maintain as much normalcy as possible.

Gabe wondered how long it would take Josie to unload this new burden, whatever it was. “Something happen at Callie’s that I missed?” he asked.

“Not that I know of.”

More silence.

“Things okay at your work site this week?” he asked as they traveled through downtown Wichita. “Trouble with suppliers?”

She shifted in her seat, and Gabe prayed she’d snap out of it now. “Peter’s pushing for me to finish the first model home by Thanksgiving,” she said. And stopped talking.

Peter Kramer was a Wichita developer who had hired both of them for his current project. He was demanding, but fair. Gabe glanced across at Josie. “Gonna make it?”

She stared straight ahead. “Sure. I’m ordering draperies this week, and I scheduled the furniture to be delivered a week early.”

Josie’s tone was confident. She’d make a lot of money from this job, and she’d probably score a referral or two. Apparently, work wasn’t the problem.

“Ethan and Callie have got a handle on this thing with Lilly,” he said. “They’ll work diligently to find answers. Lucky thing your sister does medical research for a living.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Okay. Josie didn’t sound overly upset about Lilly. Not right now. But she acted…bothered. By something.

“And how’s Isabel? Still enjoying Colorado life?”

“She loves it.”

Gabe asked a few more questions about Josie’s sisters, but she simply answered and didn’t get enthused about her tales. And as soon as he stopped asking, she stopped talking. “What’s bugging you, then, kid?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re completely distracted.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You hardly paid attention to Luke.”

“Yes, I did. He commented on all our costumes. He thought it was strange that I was dressed as a guy.”

“Oh, yeah? What did he want that he didn’t have?”

“A gun and holster. He’s asked for them every year since he was two. Callie always refuses.”

“What did he say when I offered him a tool belt and hard hat?” Gabe asked.

“You didn’t.”

He caught her gaze, held it.

Josie sniffed. “I guess I missed that. I was probably watching Lilly.”

“Callie had taken her out of the room by then.”

Josie scowled.

“See? You’re acting funny.”

“If I am, it’s none of your business.”

He dropped the subject. In his family, everything was everyone’s business. But Josie had grown up with a mother who’d held a high regard for privacy. This wasn’t the first time Josie had told him to mind his own business. Perhaps she’d talk after they’d relaxed at the party for a while.

Or maybe Gabe would stop worrying about it. He’d decided he ought to start dating again—it’d been almost nine months since he’d had that fling with Kendra.

Gabe’s married sister, Nadine, had said she might bring a single teacher friend tonight. She thought the woman and Gabe might hit it off.

Maybe Gabe would focus on his own good time. And Josie could talk when she was ready.

Chapter Four

Minutes later, Gabe neared his mom and stepdad’s huge house just outside Wichita’s northern city limits. Cars and trucks were already lined up along the grassy area between the house and barn. Gabe had to park next to the ditch, about fifty yards away.

As Josie started to get out of the car, she gaped at the bag in her hand. “Crud! I meant to give this to Luke.”

“What is it?”

“Some of those cereal treats. I made them to resemble pumpkins and ghosts. He loves them.”

Gabe wasn’t surprised at the contents of the bag. Josie wasn’t a cook, but she doted on her nephew. “Don’t worry about it. He hauled in enough sugar to last him a while.”

“Guess so.” Josie left the bag in her seat and they began the long trek to the barn. The ground beneath them was uneven, so Gabe took Josie’s elbow. Usually, they would have talked. Josie was still quiet, and that was strange, but Gabe wasn’t supposed to let that bug him.

Gabe’s mother had outdone herself with decorations. One side of the barn’s double doors had been strung with cobwebs and spiders, and it appeared as if a life-sized witch had flown through the top front wall. Six torches lit the area just enough to show a black, bulbous backside, some broom bristles and a pair of boot-clad feet, all poking out of a painted, jagged hole. After Gabe had followed Josie into the barn quaking with spooky music, he spied the witch’s green warted face and broken broom handle jutting through the other side.

Holding a diaphanous pink mermaid tail draped over an elbow, Cindy Connolley, Gabe’s graying but ever-gorgeous mother, swished over to greet him and Josie and direct them to the drinks. “That’s hot buttered rum in the cauldron,” she said. Then she nodded toward a shaggy student type standing behind the table. “Otherwise, The Thing there will set you up.”

“Thanks, Cindy.” Josie immediately approached the young guy, then stood talking to him for a moment after he’d handed her a bottle of beer.

The Thing might be the hired help tonight, but he’d dressed for the party. With three surplus eyeballs dotting his forehead and four muscular arms—two held fake martinis—he should be able to handle the job.

Gabe was relieved to see Josie smiling. She leaned forward to peer at one of the guy’s extra arms, then laughed about something he’d said.

If Josie’s ailment was loneliness, this guy could be her cure. Apparently, he was a seasoned partyer.

He was a little too young, though. And scruffy. All five of his eyes ogled Josie’s chest as he made some comment. Gabe could hazard a guess about what the other guy was saying.

The little runt had better be nice to Josie.

Turning toward his mother, Gabe muttered, “Who’s he?”

“The Thing? Accountant in Kurt’s business office. Graduated cum laude from Wichita State’s business school.”

“When—last week?”

“Maybe five, six years ago? He’s probably close to thirty, Gabriel.”

“He’s okay? Nice to his mom? Avoids drugs and orgies?”

Furrows formed on his mother’s brow. “I think so. You never know, really.” She looked horrified for a moment before her expression cleared. “Oh, no. I remember meeting his parents once. He’s fine.”

As if a meeting of parents meant anything. Serial killers had parents, didn’t they? “Hope so.” Gabe forced his attention to the party decorations. “I love the crashed witch. You get the details right, don’t you?”

“Guess you got that from me,” she said, examining his mustache. “Is that real?”

Gabe had seen his mom a few days ago for dinner. Did women not realize that a decent mustache took weeks to grow? “Nope,” he said. “Mine’s as fake as Josie’s.”

Those twin lines creased his mother’s face again. “You two haven’t broken your ‘just friends’ pact, have you?”

“No. Why?”

“You’re acting a bit odd, son. Sort of…overprotective. And you two did come dressed as a couple.”

Gabe scanned the crowd, noting that Josie had left The Thing and was headed toward the dance area. “We’re both dressed as men, Mom. Men who I presume were straight. And I only watch over Josie because she doesn’t have anyone else to tackle the chore.”

“Oh, okay, then,” his mother said. “Well, the best costumed couple takes home the trophy, same as every year. Vote at the box near the snacks. Maybe you can woo the crowd and win.”

“Yeah, right. Where’s Kurt?” Gabe scanned the room.

“That fisherman dancing with one of the sexy bunnies.”

Gabe followed his mother’s pointed finger and spotted her husband. Slightly stouter and a decade older than Gabe’s mother, Kurt Connolley had lost his hair ages ago. He nose was huge. He wasn’t handsome, especially when compared with Gabe’s late dad, but his mother so obviously loved her second husband. She always said she’d been lucky twice.

Kurt’s costume was pretty standard—hip waders, multipocketed vest and floppy hat. However, the fishing pole he carried had a humongous hook, covered with sea-green glitter and baited with a pair of fluffy pink bedroom slippers.

To catch a mermaid.

Gabe laughed. “Nope. You’ll keep another trophy.”

His mother glided away to greet some new arrivals behind him, and Gabe noticed that Josie had perched herself cross-legged on a hay bale. She sipped from her bottle and watched the dancing couples.

Very un-Josie-like behavior.

Gabe followed her and plopped down one bale over. “You’re not mingling?”

“No.” She sighed.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Want to dance?”

“No.”

He nodded, but remained near her for a moment longer in case she decided it was time to blab out her woes.

“Make your rounds,” Josie said after another long, loud sigh. “I’ll join you once I finish my drink.”

Having two sisters and a mom, Gabe was very aware that “leave me alone” was often a veiled request for extra attention.

Josie generally said what she meant, though. He’d back off and let her brood awhile.

“I’ll check back in a bit,” he promised.

He returned to the bar for a soft drink before making his way through the crowd to greet his colleagues and survey the costumes. Josie wasn’t ready to budge a half hour later, so he approached the dance area and was immediately snagged by a Minnie whose Mickey didn’t dance. He danced one song with her, then another with the famous Kansas Dorothy.

Dorothy was otherwise known as Alana Morgan, one of his mother’s Augusta acquaintances from way back. She and Cindy Connolley had worked together on the theater’s planning board for a few years, and they still played cards on occasion.

After his waltz with Alana, Gabe’s sisters arrived to drag him away from the dance floor. Once more, Nadine and Livy had dressed as a pair—of salt and pepper shakers this year. Even with molded tinfoil hats and plastic-enclosed bodies, they were stunning. Blond and blue-eyed, like Gabe and his parents.

“You didn’t bring anyone?” Gabe asked Nadine.

“Just me,” Livy answered. “Frank stayed home with the kiddoes.”

The twins practically spoke as one when they were together. Gabe rarely noticed.

“You know he hates crowds,” Nadine explained.

Gabe had meant Nadine’s teacher friend, not her husband. It didn’t really matter, though. With Josie in a deep funk, he’d probably feel guilty if he danced the night away with a potential new girlfriend.

As he danced one song with each sister, Gabe watched Josie get up to nab another drink and talk to a couple of people. But she was still spending most of her time warming that bale of hay.

Josie had always been energetic. Easygoing. Even when she was upset about something, she carried on her normal activities and tried to ignore the problem.

But she didn’t mope.

Gabe attacked her from behind, simultaneously grabbing an elbow and the hand holding her drink. He managed to haul her off the hay bale without splashing either of them with beer.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Taking you to Mom’s terrace.”

“Why?”

“To talk.”

“Don’t need to.” They passed a werewolf, a scrawny Arnold Schwarzenegger and the impaled witch.

“Going to.” Gabe released Josie’s hand outside the barn but kept hold of her elbow until they were rounding the corner to the terrace. After nudging her onto a cushioned lounge chair, he sat at its foot and studied her face under the glow of some ghost string lights.

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