JOE COLTON’S JOURNAL

My second son, Drake, has always had a soft spot for Maya Ramirez. They were smitten with each other in their youth, but as an heir to the Colton fortune, my son kept his distance from the housekeeper’s daughter. Back then, I encouraged his self-sacrifice, but I’ve learned a lot about love and loss over the years, and now I believe that some people are destined for each other. Like his mother and me—until Meredith turned her back on me and decided to make my life hell. But I digress…. When Drake—a Navy SEAL who often disappears to parts unknown for long periods of time—returned home for a brief visit several months ago, he finally gave in to his pent-up passion for Maya. Now she’s pregnant, and my son insists she’s about to give birth to a Colton baby! But my tight-lipped boy has his work cut out for him if he intends to stake a claim on his woman and child….

About the Author

LAURIE PAIGE

reports that in addition to remodeling the kitchen in her new (to her) mountain retreat home, she has adopted two mixed-breed Labrador retrievers. It’s like having two two-year-olds in the house. She wishes she’d tossed in twin dogs that steal socks and hide them in different rooms in the house in the story of Maya and Drake. That would have added some confusing elements for the characters! On second thought, Drake probably had all the problems he could handle dealing with proud, stubborn Maya and claiming a place in her life and that of their child! However, true love can smooth out the most tangled of troubles…except for those caused by two seventy-pound dogs. In that case, Laurie recommends obedience classes, which is where she will be as soon as she finishes the next book.

The Housekeeper’s Daughter
Laurie Paige

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Meet the Coltons—a California dynasty with a legacy of privilege and power.

Drake Colton: Navy SEAL. He’d come home to celebrate his father’s sixtieth birthday, but this officer’s family-filled agenda gives way to a night of passion when he is reunited with the housekeeper’s daughter.

Maya Ramirez: Overnight Cinderella. Though Drake Colton had always seen her as a kid sister, this tomboy has blossomed into a raven-haired beauty in his absence. And one night, he makes all her adolescent fantasies a breathtaking reality!

Inez Ramirez: Suspicious mother. She and her husband have always been loyal to the Colton family but now she suspects that a certain Colton may be responsible for her daughter’s “condition.”

This book is dedicated to Hartley,

beloved friend, delightful companion, a true hero.

He greeted each day with a “woof” of joy.

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

One

Maya Ramirez breathed deeply of the crystalline air and let it out in a long exhalation. The accompanying sigh was not exactly one of contentment—too many disturbing things had happened on the Colton ranch the past eight months for contentment to prevail—but at least she had found a certain peace of mind concerning her own future.

Her horse, a sweet mare named Penny for the coppery highlights of her coat, twitched one ear in her direction. Maya patted the mare’s neck and admired the scenery.

It was one of those February days along the coast of northern California in which the sky gleamed a breath-catching blue and the temperature had soared into the sixties after a week of cold, drizzly rain. Today, the cloud bank had receded offshore and all was bright and beautiful. For the first time in months, anything seemed possible.

Almost anything, Maya corrected, batting away a lazy bee that hummed over the lupine that was already beginning to flower in stalks of white, yellow and lavender blue.

“A hawk,” ten-year-old Joe Colton, Jr., yelled, pointing at the long, sweeping line of fifty-foot cliffs that scalloped the ocean along the western border of the ranch.

“Where?” Teddy Colton, younger by two years, called.

“Right there, silly— Uh, right there,” Joe amended with a quick glance at Maya.

She gave him an approving nod, then smiled with affection. She didn’t allow name-calling or insults. Although newly employed as their full-time nanny, she’d been baby-sitting the boys for years, being only sixteen when she’d first been asked to accompany Mrs. Colton to a spa and take care of Joe Junior, who had been a baby at the time.

Ten years ago. Maya sighed and shifted in the saddle, the sudden sting of tears surprising her as she contemplated the passage of time—so fast and yet so slow.

When Mrs. Colton had had Teddy, Maya had helped out with him, too. After graduating from the local high school, she’d started college via computer courses and worked on the Colton estate when needed by her mother, who was the housekeeper there.

Last month she’d been asked to move into the main house and take over as a full-time baby-sitter for the two youngest Colton boys. The nanny, Ms. Meredith called her. Frowning, Maya admitted she’d needed the job rather desperately.

She swatted another bee out of her face, then noticed several others crawling in Penny’s mane. The mare shook her head as one landed on her ear. Maya realized the warm weather had caused a swarm.

“Can we race?” Teddy shouted, giving her an appealing glance from his blue eyes.

She nodded. “I think we’re running into a swarm of bees. Turn back toward the ranch and ease into a canter. Don’t swat the bees. They’ll fly off if you leave them alone and don’t scare them.”

Both boys glanced around anxiously, but they kept their heads and did as told. After making sure they were on their way, she turned the mare, who switched her tail to each side and shook her head again. Gently Maya urged the mare into a fast walk, then past a trot into a loping run.

In front of her, the brothers let out a whoop of excitement and raced toward the stable in the distance. She leaned forward with a grimace and tightened her knees, but she couldn’t keep up the pace. After reining the mare back to a fast walk, she relaxed once more.

The mare repeatedly shook her head as they neared the paddock. Her ears twitched nervously.

Maya patted her on the neck. “Hey, pretty Penny, what’s the matter, girl? The bees are gone—”

She got no further when the horse gave a startled whinny, tossed her head and, without warning, took off at a dead run toward the stable. Maya grabbed the saddle horn and held on for dear life, fear rushing over her as she thought of falling.

The adrenaline boost gave her the strength to rise in the stirrups so that her weight shifted to her legs and her thighs acted as shock absorbers during the wild ride across the pasture. She pulled on the reins, but the mare raced on, heedless of the rider’s commands.

Ahead of her, she saw the boys dismount and stare at her in confusion. Then a man leaped on the horse Joe had been riding and raced toward her.

Maya saw the fence looming fifty yards in front of her and knew she would never make the jump. Neither would the mare with the extra weight of a rider and saddle on her back. “Whoa,” she called desperately and pulled on the reins to turn the frightened horse to the side.

Hearing hoofbeats coming up behind her, she glanced over her shoulder. The other rider was circling toward them. He closed in and raced alongside her.

“Kick free and come to me,” he yelled.

She slid her feet out of the stirrups and leaped into his arms just as he reached for her. He turned his mount and they ran alongside the fence. Penny fell in behind them and followed. Gradually he slowed his horse, then stopped.

In the stillness, there was only the sound of the two horses and the two humans, panting from the wild exertion of the run. His arms enclosed her in a blanket of safety.

It was like coming home.

“What the hell were you thinking, riding like that in your condition?” Drake Colton demanded, his golden-brown eyes flashing like molten rock in the afternoon sun, his gaze hot with fury.

So much for illusions. “I think my horse got a bee in her ear,” Maya said defensively, fighting a ridiculous urge to burst into tears now that the danger was over.

She was pressed to his chest in a vise grip. His heart pounded against hers, which was also beating hard with the aftermath of the fear when her horse bolted and with a new fear as his eyes raked down her figure.

She struggled to push away from his heat and his anger, the vibrant masculinity that called to something equally vibrant inside her. “I can walk,” she told him, forcing herself to ignore the unruly needs that clamored for attention inside her.

Memories of lying snug in his arms for hours and hours overcame common sense—the warmth of his embrace, the way his hands moved on her, his sudden smile. She closed her eyes and foolishly wished for things that were never going to happen. But a person could dream….

Drake returned to the stable. There, he let her gently slide to the ground, then dropped down beside her. “Here, boys, take care of the horses.”

Drake’s two youngest brothers, big-eyed with worry, took the reins, then stood there and looked from their older brother to their nanny as if afraid to leave them alone.

“I’m not going to hurt her,” Drake assured them in harsh tones, then added for her ears alone, “yet.”

“Ask River to check Penny’s ear. I think she was stung by one of the bees,” Maya called to the youngsters, ignoring the threat from the furious man beside her as the fears and dreams, the need to cry, faded into fatalistic calm.

She had thought this moment might come someday. But not so soon. She wasn’t ready, hadn’t prepared….

After the boys led the horses off to the stable, Drake turned back to Maya. It hurt to look at her, at the thick, dark splendor of her hair, the endless depths of her brown eyes and most of all, at the protruding mound of her tummy.

“Just how pregnant are you, anyway?” he demanded, which wasn’t at all what he’d planned to say to her upon his arrival at the ranch thirty minutes ago. At that time, he’d planned a calm, reasonable approach to their problems.

“What do you care?” she asked, so softly he almost didn’t hear. Then she walked away without a backward glance, leaving him standing in the dust, his heart pounding with emotions he couldn’t describe.

Maya stood under the shower and let the water flow over her from head to toes. She washed, rinsed and stepped out. From the hallway, she heard a knock on her door.

“Just a minute,” she called.

Fear coiled through her, not a pounding fear as earlier, but fear just the same. She wondered what ill fortune had brought Drake back to the ranch at this time.

Along with her bodily changes, her emotions had become all topsy-turvy during the past few months. That afternoon had been the worst. Yearning, joy, grief—she’d experienced all those and more during the minutes he’d held her close in that rock-solid embrace, their hearts beating as one.

As they had last summer.

But this wasn’t summer, she reminded herself. Summer and fall had come and gone with no word from him. Her confusion was to be expected; she’d thought she would also be gone before Drake came around again.

There’s no place in my life for a wife and family, his curt farewell note had stated.

Pain, as fresh, as unbelievable, as the morning she’d read those words, scorched through her, but there was no time for it now. She pulled on a terry-cloth robe and wrapped a towel around her hair. Her hands were trembling.

“Maya?”

Relief surged through her as she realized her mother was at the door. Inez Ramirez had been housekeeper at the Hacienda de Alegria ranch since before Maya was born. Maya’s father was the gardener and general groundskeeper.

“Come on in. The door’s open,” Maya invited.

Her mother looked her over when she entered. “Teddy said you nearly took a spill while you were riding.”

“Penny bolted. I think she got stung in the ear. But I’m fine. Drake rescued me.” She smiled to alleviate her mother’s worries.

“I heard. The boys said River found the stinger and removed it.” Inez closed the door and crossed the room to lay a hand on her daughter’s forehead. “You don’t feel dizzy or faint? No pain anywhere?”

“No, really, I’m quite all right.”

Her mother ignored her. “Maybe you should see the doctor. I can drive you to town.”

“That won’t be necessary. I go in for my monthly checkup Tuesday. That’s only two more days. I don’t want to bother the doctor on a Sunday.”

Inez sighed and backed off. “If you start hurting, call me right away. Or if your water breaks.”

“I will.”

Maya watched her mother retrace her steps to the door, ready to return to the kitchen to prepare the evening meal for the Colton family, and whoever else might be in residence.

Her parents had been wonderful to her, after getting past the first shock of her news that she was expecting. They had immediately assumed she and Andy Martin, a local math teacher, would be marrying soon. They had been even more shocked when she’d had to tell them that Andy, the man she’d been seeing regularly until a few months ago, wasn’t the father.

Andy was her friend, but he wasn’t her lover.

Alone once more, Maya crossed her arms over her abdomen and silently prayed that Drake wouldn’t discover she was eight months pregnant with his child.

She thought of summer and starry nights and the blossoming of hot, wild passion that had known no bounds. They had made love in her bed, in his, in the sweet-smelling, prickly hay stored in the stable and barn.

After they’d danced several times at his father’s birthday party, Drake had made a quick trip to Prosperino, the tiny town that served the ranchers and dairy farmers and tourists who stayed at the many bed-and-breakfast inns along the coast around here. His dark, smoldering glances had told her why the trip was necessary—birth control.

But they hadn’t made love that night. During the toast to Joe Colton in celebration of his sixtieth birthday, someone had shot at the Colton patriarch. The ranch had been in an uproar for hours, the police milling about and questioning everyone over and over. No one had gone to bed until daybreak.

However, there had been other nights. “I’ll take care of you,” he’d said just before they’d made love. “Don’t worry about anything.”

And she had believed him.

She would have laughed at how foolish she’d been, except she felt too raw, too vulnerable at this moment and might end in tears. She wouldn’t go to the table with weepy eyes and increase her parents’ worry over her.

Knowing she had to, she rose, squared her shoulders and dressed. She would be expected to join the ranch staff who ate in the big dining area at one end of the kitchen. As someone had once remarked, life goes on.

The Colton family and friends usually ate in the formal dining room or in the sunroom that separated the living room from the patio cupped in the center of the U-shaped house. Drake would be with them, so she wouldn’t have to face him on top of everything else.

She dried her hair, pushed it back with butterfly clips and checked that her two charges were ready for dinner. They, too, were relegated to the kitchen now during meals, except for special occasions when their mother wanted to show them off.

Maya suppressed the cynical thought about her employer. The Coltons paid her salary as well as her tuition to college. Another few months and she would have a degree in early childhood education. Then she would take her child and leave the ranch.

Her heart gave a painful lurch at the thought of going away from all she knew and loved. Her parents would miss her. So would the boys. She would miss all of them dreadfully. However, she was twenty-six, old enough to make her own way in the world without depending on anyone.

When she, Joe Junior and Teddy entered the kitchen, an instant silence fell over the group gathered there. Glancing around, her eyes met the golden ones of her nemesis. “What are you doing here?” she blurted.

Heat rushed into her face at the quick stares she received from the house staff. He was a Colton. He could eat anywhere he pleased.

“Waiting for my brothers,” he explained easily. “I wanted to thank them for their help this afternoon.”

“Huh, it wasn’t anything,” Joe said. “You’re the one who saved Maya.”

“Yeah,” Teddy agreed. “You were really quick. Can you teach me to jump on a horse like that, without using the stirrup to get up?”

Drake laughed, his teeth flashing white against his deeply tanned skin. “You only need to grow another few inches and you’ll have no trouble.”

The boys, tall and rangy for their ages as all the Colton men were, claimed seats on either side of their older brother, their eyes filled with admiration as they gazed at him. Drake stood and pulled out a chair on the other side of Teddy for her. When he was seated again, the boys asked a thousand questions about his life in the SEALs.

“Where ya been this time?” Joe asked.

“Central America.”

“I wish I could go there,” Teddy said, envious.

“No, you don’t,” Drake told him. “It was hot, the mosquitoes were as big as magpies and I had the boniest donkey God ever created to ride over the mountains.”

He told funny stories during the meal, distracting them from the dangerous nature of his duties with the elite unit. Maya wondered what new scars he might have on his strong, lithe body.

Immediately, visions of his six-one, sinewy frame flooded her mind. She’d touched him all over, discovering every mole, every tiny imperfection…and every scar that spoke of a life lived dangerously close to the edge.

There’s no place in my life…

He’d made love to her, then written those words as she lay sleeping, innocently believing in a future that included them and their children and a lifetime of sharing. The table blurred. She held the anguish in by dint of will. No one would see her cry, she had vowed eight months ago, after that first awful storm of grief had passed.

She ate the delicious meal without tasting it. Every time her eyes met Drake’s over Teddy’s blond curls, a shiver rushed through her. His gaze boded no good for her.

Drake stood at the window of his dark room and stared at the windows across the central courtyard patio. Maya’s room. He knew it well. Once it had been his.

A flurry of emotion ran through him. Need. Anger. Despair. Loneliness. Name it and he’d felt it during the past eight months, even during hot nights in the humid jungles of Central America when he should have been concentrating on the business at hand.

His mission: rescue an American diplomat kidnapped by drug dealers and held in a mountain stronghold. He’d nearly lost two good men on that trek, but in the end, the mission had been a success.

A new scar from a bullet wound suddenly throbbed in the fleshy tissue of his hip. He’d been lucky. The bullet had missed his pelvic bone by half an inch. With a shattered hip, he wouldn’t have made it out.

He laughed silently, sardonically. Yeah, he led a charmed life. There was just one problem at present. Maya.

Past emotions hadn’t held a candle to the ones he’d felt upon seeing her on a runaway horse. Fear had clawed its way to his throat and stayed there until she was safe and secure in his arms.

Safe?

From her condition, she obviously hadn’t been very safe in his arms eight months ago.

The irony of the note he’d left on the table beside her bed struck him. He’d told her his job was too dangerous, his life too busy, to include a wife.

Right. What about including a child? He shook his head, unable to answer that question just yet.

Staring at the window across the way, he set his jaw and headed out. It was time they had a serious talk. He entered the long hall running along the other wing of the house and rapped on the door.

Every nerve in Maya’s body jumped when the knock sounded. “No rest for the weary,” she muttered, a gallows attempt at humor that did nothing to lift her spirits.

She’d supervised the boys’ studies, then read to them after their baths. Their mother demanded they be in bed and the lights out at nine. Maya was careful to comply. To fail was an invitation to wrath from Ms. Meredith.

Upon returning to her room, Maya had half expected Drake to be there, waiting for her. Finally, after almost an hour of fruitless study, she’d closed her textbook and prepared for bed. She should have known better. Coltons were a stubborn, unpredictable lot, and Drake was no exception.

She would live through this, she told her flagging spirits. She’d lived through his leaving and finding that awful note, then realizing she was pregnant and telling her parents. What more could life throw at her?

Warily, she approached the door after tightening the belt to her robe. She opened it and peeked out.

“I want to talk to you,” Drake announced in a low tone.

She considered locking the door. He probably knew how to unlock it without a key. The room had once been his before he struck out on his own.

Last summer, lying in bed with her, he’d told her of his childhood escapades, of sneaking in past curfew, of the hiding his father had once given him that had caused his mother to cry, making him feel so bad, he’d stopped skipping school and started studying. Now he slept in a room across the patio in the other wing of the house, a guest in his former home.

Surprised by an unexpected rush of sympathy, she moved back. He entered and closed the door.

His eyes, dark in the soft lamplight, as unyielding as a granite cliff, roamed over her. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

The question annoyed her. “Yes.” Her answer seemed to stir his temper.

He scowled. “Only a fool would be out on a horse in your condition.”

“The doctor said I could continue all my normal activities,” she said, tilting her chin defiantly as resentment swept over her. “I always ride with the boys—”

“That was stupid. If you’d been thrown—” Drake stopped, unable to block the image of her lying on the ground, hurt, dying.

“Damn you,” he muttered. “If you can’t think of yourself, think of the child. You’re going to be a mother. You have an obligation to take care of the baby.”

She moved away. “I know very well what my obligations are,” she said coolly.

Then she walked over and sat in the old rocker that had been used to soothe many a Colton baby, including himself.

Drake stalked over to the desk chair, pulled it around and straddled it, his arms resting on the back while he observed the woman he’d returned home to see, the woman his father had mentioned in his last letter, telling Drake of Maya’s pregnancy and suggesting that he come home.

An inner contraction, so strong it was painful, reminded Drake of last June and the week he’d spent at the ranch, home from his job with the Navy SEALs to celebrate his dad’s sixtieth birthday.

What a memorable visit that had been. Someone had taken a potshot at his father. Shortly after that Drake had made love to the dark-haired Madonna who now watched him warily. “Inez says you’re at least eight months along.”

Her eyes widened. “You talked to my mother?”

“Yes. Since you refused to discuss it, I went to the one person I knew would tell me the truth. Why didn’t you write?” he asked, changing tactics abruptly.

“Why didn’t you?”

The challenge hit him right between the eyes. “I was off the beaten path most of the time.”

The excuse sounded flimsy even to his ears. Her gaze flashed to him, then away, clearly expressing her disbelief.

He realized he’d grown up with this person, yet he didn’t know her. He was three years older and had traveled the world; she’d spent her life here on the ranch. So why did she suddenly appear to be the one who was older and wiser?

Impending motherhood had changed her. It was more than the fact that her breasts were fuller and her tummy rounded. He sensed a primordial knowledge within her that hadn’t been in the innocent young woman he’d loved, then left.

“My mission was dangerous,” he tried to explain. “I move around. There’s no future…I told you in the note I left.”

“I believed you.”

The simplicity of those three words threatened his self-control. They spoke of trust once given and now lost. Despair opened like a pit leading straight to the hell within him.

He exhaled heavily. He’d lived with the darkness for a long time. It was an old enemy, one he knew well. Standing, he thrust his hands into his pockets and paced to the window and back. “The child changes things.”

“It isn’t yours.”

He stopped in front of her, not quite certain he’d heard right. She stood and faced him with that calm, older-than-time composure she’d recently acquired.

“It isn’t your child,” she repeated the denial.

The silence buzzed around them like an angry swarm of killer bees. She returned his hard stare without blinking, then she smiled slightly, not in amusement but as if the whole situation was one of supreme irony.

This distant, world-weary attitude baffled him more than her not bothering to write and tell him the news. He considered the conversation with her mother and remembered a name. “Then it’s Andy Martin’s?”

“Is that what my mother said?”

“Yes.”

She tilted her chin in that stubborn way she had. “It’s my baby. Mine and no one else’s.”

He’d been in enough standoffs with desperate people to know an impasse when he hit one. “Right. A virgin birth,” he scoffed. “Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere. I came home to find out the truth. I mean to know it before I leave.”

“How did—” She clamped her lips together.

“How did I know about the baby? My father wrote. He said you were pregnant and that I should come home and get my affairs in order.”

“Affairs,” she repeated. “That’s the operative word with you Coltons, isn’t it?”

At that moment, he could have wrung her neck…or kissed her until she stopped this charade she’d decided to act out and responded to his kisses as she had last summer. His body went hard in an instant. Last June she’d been all sweet fire and sexy innocence, as eager to explore him as he had been her.

“You know me better than that,” he said, the words coming out husky, the hunger evident.

Her hand flew to the neckline of the robe, which she pulled tightly closed as if fearing he might rip it from her lush body in a fit of uncontrollable passion.

“Do I? Maybe we don’t know each other at all anymore,” she suggested.

The sudden bleakness in her eyes struck a tender place under his breastbone. He thought of the woman who had told him her plans to finish her degree and teach school in Prosperino, or maybe start her own business and work with the troubled kids over at the Hopechest Ranch where she tutored students in remedial reading. It was her optimistic vision of the future that had forced him to write that note. It was a future he couldn’t hope to share.

Abruptly he headed for the door. “You’re right. Maybe we don’t know each other now, but once we did. Your mother said I shouldn’t upset you, but don’t think this is the last of this conversation.” He left quietly and headed outside for the steps that led down to the shore.

Maya rubbed her back and paced restlessly about the small room. Was her back hurting worse? Had she injured herself during the ride? She bit her lip against the pain and loneliness of the midnight hour. And the hunger that ate at her since she’d felt Drake’s arms around her once more, strong and sure and capable.

How long before she forgot those moments last summer? Months? Years? A lifetime?

Unable to sleep lately or to sit for long periods, she walked the floor for hours. Most of the time she was confident of her ability to care for herself and a child, but sometimes, like now, her courage faltered.

Drake was a complication she hadn’t foreseen. After his leaving last summer, with only a note to explain that they had no future, she hadn’t thought he would even care if she was carrying his child.

The pain of that moment rushed over her anew, nearly causing her to cry out. She gritted her teeth and waited for it to pass. She’d learned, during the past eight months, that one could endure.

Sitting in the rocker and leaning forward as far as she could to relieve the pressure on her lower back, she knew she would have to admit the truth.

Unless there was a way to hide the truth…

She picked up the phone and dialed a number in L.A. When her sister answered, Maya spoke quickly and in a low voice.

“Lana, this is Maya. I have a question for you. Are you alone? Can you talk?”

“Well, hello, baby sister,” Lana said in surprise. “Yes, I’ve just given my patient her final medication and was heading for bed. What’s happening?”

Maya took a careful breath. “Drake Colton is home. His father told him about…about…”

“The baby?” Lana finished helpfully when Maya faltered.

“Yes. Listen, I know a DNA test would reveal the identity of the father, but no one could do anything to the baby without my consent, could they? Like take blood?”

“Is Drake threatening to take the baby from you?” Lana demanded indignantly.

“No, no, nothing like that. He doesn’t know he’s the father—I haven’t told anyone but you—but he thinks he could be.”

“Could be!” Lana’s tone was shocked and angry. “How many affairs does he think you carry on at one time?”

“Never mind that. What about the DNA test?”

“I’m a private duty nurse, not a lawyer, but I think he could. I mean, a court order would do it.”

“And the Coltons can afford the best lawyers in the world,” Maya said, then sighed. She felt physically and emotionally exhausted.

She waited patiently as Lana tried to reassure her on her maternal rights, then said good-night.

The future seemed dark and even more uncertain all at once. How could she have been so foolish? she’d asked herself a thousand times during the intervening months.

She knew the answer. Love. The stuff of dreams.

Well, she was awake now, she mused ruefully, forcing a smile at her once idealistic self. Reality was a backache and an inability to find a sleeping position that her body accepted. Reality was also Drake Colton.

Unlike her longtime friend Andy Martin, Drake hadn’t mentioned marriage. If she told him the baby was his, what would he do—insist on marriage or simply offer to support the child…or try to take it from her?

She had no idea what “putting his affairs in order” meant to him. She again fought the despair that darkened her spirits at unguarded moments. She had known Drake all her life, but she truly hadn’t a clue about his intentions.

Sighing, she got up and paced some more.

Two

Drake hunched his shoulders against the chill and thrust his hands into his jeans pockets. The wind off the ocean had calmed, so the night wasn’t as cold as expected.

He stalked along the rough shore, occasionally stumbling over a large rock mixed with the coarse sand and rounded pebbles of the beach. The moon cast a feeble light on the land, but it was instinct that led him to an alcove hidden among the boulders at the base of the cliff.

Folding his legs under him, he settled on a rise of sand that formed a bench under the rocky indentation and buried his face in his hands. He and his siblings had played at being pirates and sea captains in this alcove. He’d made love to Maya here.

Darkness overtook him, that desperation of the soul that had been his companion for most of his life. Since his twin had died under the wheels of a car.

A shudder ran through him, as hot and painful as the bullet that had sliced through his hip.

“Drake, we’re not supposed to go out on the highway,” Michael called.

Drake pedaled his bike up the hill that overlooked the main road. “Come on. Let’s go look for arrowheads on the other side of the road where the creek cuts through.”

“Dad will kill us if he finds out.”

“So how’s he to know? I’m not going to tell. Come on, chicken. We won’t be long.”

His dad hadn’t had to lay a hand on them. Michael, riding behind him, hadn’t seen the car come speeding around the curve. Drake had. He’d yelled and run off the side of the road. Michael had been watching him, puzzled, right up until an instant before he’d been hit.

Drake groaned and lifted his head. He watched the turbulent roll of the waves onto the shore, each one a reminder of the past. His father had told him Michael’s death wasn’t his fault. The child psychologist his father had called in had said the same.

Drake’s adult reasoning assured him this was true in the sense that he hadn’t meant harm. But in his heart… In his heart, he would forever be calling for his brother to “Watch out” and knowing, even as he did, it was too late.

Shaking his head, he wondered why, with all his other worries, this one had come back to haunt him now.

Abruptly he pushed to his feet, needing movement to dispel the memories of a past too powerful to forget.

Back at the house, he paused on the patio before going to his room. The light still shone in Maya’s window. A shadow moved across the drawn shade.

Why was she still up?

He saw her stop and bend forward. She was in obvious pain. Panic shot through him. He rushed to her door and entered without knocking.

“Are you all right? Is the baby coming?” he demanded.

She brought herself up straight and stared at him as if he were out of his mind. “No. Go away.”

Pushing a lock of hair behind her ear, she moved away from him, her hands on her back. Insight came to him. “Your back’s hurting.”

She sighed and didn’t answer.

“Stay here,” he advised as if she might disappear into the night. “I’ll be right back.”

Maya turned as quickly as she could, intending to tell him to leave her alone now and forever, but she faced only the door. He was already gone.

Glancing at the clock, she knew she had to get some rest. She slipped out of the robe, got in bed and turned out the light. Lying on her side with a knee drawn up to support her midsection, she firmly closed her eyes.

She’d counted three hundred sheep when the door opened and the light was switched on again. “What is it?” she snapped.

“Liniment,” Drake said in a tone that implied this explained everything. “Stay still. I’ll rub your back.”

Shock rolled over her. “You’ll do no such thing!”

She’d die before she let him see her in her nightgown, her stomach round as a roly-poly.

He snatched the covers down and sat on the edge of the bed. “This will help you sleep,” he assured her, as if that was the only concern about him being in her room at…

“It’s almost one in the morning,” she said.

“Yeah. You need your rest.”

He pushed her gently down on the bed, then opened the bottle. The pungent scent of horse liniment filled the room. With one hand, he pulled the straps of her gown off her shoulders and down her arms.

“Slip this down to your waist—”

“No!” Panic was beginning to muddle her thoughts. She was entirely too aware of his warmth next to her hip and of the hour and of the yearning, the remembered hunger, that flooded her from deep within.

Pushing upward, she realized that was a mistake as her gown slipped off her breasts. She threw her arms over her chest and huddled against the sheet as liquid heat ran in her blood.

“That’s better,” Drake said.

She heard the slosh of the liniment, then felt his hand on her bare shoulders, accompanied by the strong smell and cooling effects of horse medicine. Realizing he wouldn’t leave until he’d accomplished his task, she lay stiffly and let him rub her neck and down her spine to the edge of the nightgown.

When his fingers slipped under the material, every nerve in her body jerked.

“Easy,” he murmured, his voice low and sexy, soft the way it had been when they made love, endlessly tender as he coaxed her into wild passion.

Relentlessly, he continued, rubbing and rubbing, pushing the gown down as he went lower until it finally rested at her waist. Using both hands, he massaged deeply on either side of her backbone and into the small of her back. It was painful, yet perversely made her feel better. Her eyes closed of their own accord as the pain receded.

She groaned with relief as strained muscles slowly relaxed for the first time in weeks. He shifted closer, putting one knee up on the bed to rest by her side.

“That’s better,” he murmured.

Minutes went by in silence, broken only when he wet his hands with the liniment before starting his massage again.

His fingers were magic. The stiffness melted away, replaced by a languid uneasiness that also faded as his touch became gentler. Now he rubbed soothingly.

Exhaling on a deep sigh, she slipped into slumber with no dreams to haunt her rest.

Drake continued rubbing lightly, not quite ready to stop touching her. Her skin was as smooth and soft as he remembered. Her warmth reached down inside him to that place of piercing cold that had been with him almost as long as he could remember. Only Maya had ever eased it.

He screwed the cap on the liniment bottle and placed it on the night table, then turned out the lamp. The moonlight fell in an oblong of brilliance on the carpet. He couldn’t keep the thought from his mind that next door, Teddy slept in the bed that had once belonged to his twin.

Last summer, lying in this bed, he’d told Maya about the accident and his part in it, about the guilt he sometimes felt for being alive. She’d simply held him closer and had made tender love to him until he’d forgotten the past. He grimaced slightly. They’d both forgotten everything, including the need to use protection, during those hazy moments of delight.

It had never occurred to him that she would become pregnant. He’d never thought of having children.

Without considering the act, he ran his hand around her waist and rested it on the hard mound of her abdomen. To his amazement, he felt something press against his palm, then he experienced a series of bumps. A funny feeling washed over him as he realized the baby was kicking the spot where his hand rested. It came to him that the child was alive and well and real.

Very real.

Maybe it was sheer vanity, but he knew it was his. It seemed to him that the baby knew him, too, that it was welcoming him home.

About time.

He started as the words popped into his head as if his son or daughter were speaking to him through mental telepathy.

“Yeah, I know,” he said softly. “Now if we could get your mother to admit the truth, maybe we could figure out where to go from here.”

Maya shifted in her sleep and gave a little moan. She sighed and became still once more, her knee drawn up on the mattress to support the weight of the baby. Feeling an odd constriction in his chest, he stood.

Carefully he lifted the straps of her gown back into place, then covered her. After a last long look filled with needs he couldn’t deny, he rose and slipped out of the room.

In his own bed, he tried to think of a plan of action. That was why his missions were usually a success. He thought of every contingency and had a solution for each and every one. He’d do the same with Maya. As soon as he figured out what her problem was, other than anger at him.

Maya got the boys up and off to school as usual. Life did go on, or else Ms. Meredith would have a fit.

Hearing the vacuum going in the living room, she knew her mother was in there. The sprawling hacienda-style home was vacuumed and dusted twice a week. In the spring and fall, it underwent a cleaning that literally left no bed unturned. The same thing happened in the Ramirez household.

Maya crept into the kitchen. Sure enough, it was empty for the moment, although she could smell a roast in the oven and traces of the bacon from breakfast. Not hungry, but thinking of the baby, she prepared two pieces of toast and poured a glass of milk. She set them, along with a mug of coffee, on the table.

Halfway through the meal, Drake ambled in from outside. He looked devilishly handsome in old jeans and boots, a blue shirt and denim jacket. He brought the scent of the outdoors and horses into the room with him. After getting a mug of coffee, he joined her at the table. There, she got a whiff of his cologne.

It transported her back in time to days of riding and playing with the two younger boys at their heels while they searched for arrowheads and wild berries. To long walks along the beach while they talked their hearts out. To nights—

With a sharp intake of breath, she pulled herself back from that abyss. Remembering brought nothing but pain and the cold light of day to the dreams she’d harbored.

“What is it?” he immediately wanted to know.

She glanced at him. A mistake. His golden gaze held hers for a long, serious minute and asked questions she couldn’t answer. She looked away. “Nothing.”

But the longing was already in her. She wanted him to sweep her into his arms and make everything okay. She wanted him to wipe out the last eight months of worry and embarrassment, of startled and disapproving glances as her family and friends realized she was expecting. She wanted things that weren’t going to happen.

With a stoic smile, she wondered who she thought she—the housekeeper’s daughter—was, to set her sights upon a son of the mighty Colton clan.

“Share,” he requested.

She shook her head. “Just musing on the ironies of life.” She took a sip of coffee, then washed down her vitamins with the last gulp of milk.

Her maternity top fluttered as the baby moved. Maya waited. Sometimes the movements were too vigorous for comfort. Then she would have to sit for a few minutes and wait for the baby to settle down before she could go on.

“Is the baby moving?” Drake asked, leaning closer and peering at her abdomen.

“Yes.”

He wasn’t put off by her abrupt answer. “May I?” he asked and, without waiting, laid his hand on her tummy.

Maya was immediately aware of heat rushing to the spot, as if a sun had suddenly blazed to life in her.

“It kicked my hand last night,” Drake said.

“Wh-what?”

“After you went to sleep, I touched you like this. The baby kicked against my hand several times.”

He grinned, his even teeth a white slash in his tanned face, making him startlingly handsome, the way Tom Cruise was when he flashed his million-watt smile. It was enough to make women fall at their feet, both the actor and this man.

Chalk it up to being human, she advised her smarting heart. She’d had a crush on Drake Colton most of her life. Once, at seventeen, she’d thought he was interested in her when he came home from college, but he’d abruptly withdrawn, avoiding her the rest of his stay.

It had hurt, but she’d gotten past the dreams she’d spun of them at that time. She would again. It was merely a wee bit more complicated this time around.

Removing his hand, she said politely, “Please don’t.”

He leaned back in his chair, steam rising from the coffee as he drank deeply, his eyes never leaving her. When he set the cup down, he asked, “Do you know whether it’s a boy or a girl?”

The silence grew too long to be comfortable.

She had to clear her throat before speaking. “A girl,” she said in a near whisper. She cleared her throat again. “I had a sonogram. It’s a girl.”

He nodded solemnly, and she couldn’t tell whether he was pleased or not.

Really, she had to stop thinking this way, as if he might be delighted at the prospect of their having a child. Those hopes belonged to her younger, more idealistic self. Drake’s note had made it clear his intentions had not extended to a future, not with her at any rate.

“Did you get a picture of her?”

She nodded.

“Maybe you’ll let me see it sometime,” he suggested softly, almost wistfully. “Have you picked a name yet?”

Her chest tightened. “Marissa. Marissa Ramirez.”

His face hardened for a fraction of a second, then the expression was gone. He smiled as he considered the name. “Marissa. I like that. If she’s lucky, she’ll be as beautiful as her mother.”

His eyes glided over her in a visual caress, warm and exciting and promising more than he ever meant to give. Maya set her mug down abruptly as her hand trembled wildly, threatening to spill hot liquid down her front.

“I have studying to do.” She rose, refilled her cup and retreated to the relative safety of her room. She stayed there until lunch.

Hearing the others congregating in the dining room and kitchen, she knew she had to make an appearance. If she didn’t, her mother would come to check on her, worry on her brow as she fretted about lack of appetite and its effects on the baby. There would be no retreat from harsh reality at the present.

Maya squared her shoulders and walked down the hall, ready for the firing squad, so to speak. Drake wasn’t in the kitchen. Relieved, she turned to her mother. “Can I help?”

Inez nodded distractedly. She dumped a stack of homemade tortillas into a cloth-lined basket. “Take these to the dining room,” she said. “Check if there’s enough salsa on the table.”

Maya’s heart dropped straight to her toes, but pride wouldn’t allow her to refuse. After all, she had opened her mouth and volunteered. Another lesson in life from the school of hard knocks, she reminded herself, trying for humor to bolster her flagging courage.

“Oh, and butter,” her mother added, stirring a pot and tasting the contents before adding more seasoning.

Maya put fresh butter on a crystal dish, picked up the basket and went into the formal dining room. Maybe none of the family had gathered yet.

As if she would have such good fortune.

It was worse than she imagined. Drake and his father were at the table, deep in conversation, when she walked in. There was a beat of silence, then Joe rose with a smile.

“Maya, you’re looking beautiful today.” He glanced at his son. “There’s something about an expectant mother, isn’t there? A glow that’s special.”

“Yes.” Drake’s voice was low, sexy.

Maya felt the blush start at her toes and work its way up. By the time it reached her hairline, she felt like a fresh-boiled lobster.

“Didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Joe murmured, his gaze so full of delight and kindness, she could have wept.

“No, it’s all right,” she managed to say past the lump in her throat.

When she dared look at Drake, his gaze was noncommittal, with no emotion that she could detect. “Mom sent some tortillas and butter.” She placed them on the table near the men.

After checking the salsa dish, she hurried back to the kitchen. “Here,” Inez said, thrusting a platter into Maya’s hands. “Take these. The new helper I hired didn’t show up. I have to get the rest of the food ready.”

Maya suppressed a twinge of guilt. Had it not been for Drake, she would have been giving her mom a hand. Instead, she’d hid in her room all morning. And accomplished nothing in the way of studying. She had a big test coming up later in the month.

She took the huge platter of burritos to the dining room table. Mexican food was one of Joe’s favorite meals and in spite of Ms. Meredith, her mother served it often.

Maya returned to the kitchen for bowls of refried beans and Spanish rice. In the dining room, after checking the table to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, she again turned toward the kitchen, aware of a brooding gaze on her each time she’d entered the room.

“Why don’t you join us?” Joe asked.

Her feet took root and she couldn’t move. She shook her head and felt her hair swish against her face. Realizing she was overreacting, she managed a smile and tried to decline politely, but it was useless. Drake had already pulled a chair out for her. Joe took her arm and guided her into it.

“Well,” she said with a strained smile, “since you insist.”

Joe’s smile was understanding and benign. She wasn’t sure about Drake’s. It held a more menacing quality.

“How are your studies going?” the older Colton asked, serving her the platter of burritos before taking two for himself.

“Fine, sir. I made the dean’s list.”

“As usual,” Joe said in approval. He passed the plate to Drake.

The son, she noted, took four. How could his lean frame burn up so much food, she wondered, something she had asked once before.

“I think a lot,” he’d answered at the time. He’d kissed her deeply. “And engage in vigorous activity,” he’d added, then he’d proceeded to show her what he meant.

The heat surged to her face at the memory. She spooned out rice and beans, then passed the bowls to Joe, who sat at the end of the long table with Drake on his left, directly across from her so that she met his eyes every time she looked up.

Ms. Meredith breezed into the room, bringing the scent of expensive blended perfume. Without acknowledging Maya’s presence, she wrinkled her nose at the food, then informed her husband she had a luncheon engagement in town and, without so much as a goodbye to her son, left.

Maya tried not to feel sorry for Drake and the other Colton children, but it was hard. Her own mother, Inez, loved kids and lavishly showed it. Other than periods of intense interest in her two youngest children, Drake’s mother mostly ignored her children. It was a riddle because she hadn’t always been that way.

From her childhood, Maya recalled Ms. Meredith as a gentle, laughing woman who would run and play with her children and husband as if she, too, were young and full of life.

Glancing up, she saw Drake’s eyes follow his mother as she left the house.

Maya suddenly sensed the need of the boy for the comfort his mother would have once given him. Then his gaze hardened and he was a man again, tough, resilient and determined, the kind of man the Navy called on for its most dangerous missions.

It was a life he relished. As if he courted death. As if he dared it to come close.

She ate quickly, sorrow in her heart. Maybe Drake didn’t know it, but there was something in him…not exactly a death wish—nothing so drastic as that—but a core of darkness nevertheless, one that he had never come to grips with.

“I wanted to ask you about the Hopechest Ranch,” Joe continued after the brief interruption. “I want your opinion. Do you think it’s helping the children?”

“Oh, yes. It’s a wonderful place and has a fine reputation. The reading program is excellent. In my opinion,” she added, realizing she might have sounded arrogant.

“I’m thinking of increasing the endowment this year.”

“That would be good, sir. The courts are referring more children there than the school can take.”

“Mmm.” The older man thought a bit. “Drake, while you’re home, maybe you can take a tour of the Hopechest and recommend something more we can do—a new stable or arena, perhaps? Or an additional bunkhouse.”

“I’ll look into it,” Drake promised.

“Good. That’s good, son.”

Maya was touched by the obvious pride and trust the elder Colton placed in his son. Drake needed to see he was appreciated for himself.

Abruptly, she cut off the thought. Drake didn’t need her concern and pity. He was a grown man. She’d do well to keep out of other people’s business, especially when her own emotions were totally unreliable at this point.

Remember that advice, she mocked her soft heart, and you’ll get along a lot better in the world. Except she was going to love her child devotedly and show that love just as her parents had done with her and her sister, Lana.

She sighed in resignation. Yeah, she was one tough cookie.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Drake asked, looking directly at her.

His father turned his kind gaze on her, too, while they waited for an answer.

“Fine,” she murmured. “I’m just fine.”

“Back not hurting?”

The question sounded so intimate, she felt as if he were making love to her right there at the table. The awful blush started again. “No. Excuse me. I have to be at the Hopechest soon.” She picked up her plate of half-eaten food and fled.

“You didn’t eat much,” her mother noted as soon as Maya entered the kitchen.

“I had plenty. I have to run now, Mom.” She kissed her mother’s cheek. “Love you.”

“Love you,” Inez repeated, her dark eyes checking her over anxiously.

On the drive to the children’s ranch, Maya wished she didn’t have to hurt her parents. They loved her and worried about her, but she just couldn’t admit Drake was the father of her child and that he didn’t want them.

The contents of that note still burned in her heart, making her chest tighten so that she could scarcely breathe whenever she recalled it. His lovemaking had meant nothing. He’d made no promises, not one.

Pushing her troubles into the background, she turned in at the Hopechest Ranch. The kids who lived here had it rough. Compared to them, her life was a piece of cake.

“Hey, Miss Ramirez,” Johnny Collins called, spotting her getting out of her car. He came over to help carry her books and papers.

“Hey, Johnny,” she greeted the fourteen-year-old, one of her favorites. His mother had abandoned him and his father years ago. The boy’s father had taken to drinking and couldn’t keep a job. Johnny had been caught with his hand in the till, so to speak, at a fast-food place where he’d lied about his age and gotten a job. “Did you get through the book I assigned last week?”

“Yeah. I wrote down the words I didn’t know and looked them up after I got through each chapter, like you said. It made reading easier.”

“Good.” They went into the classroom where she privately tutored the kids who were way behind. “I got your test graded. You aced it. Wow!” she exclaimed softly, giving him the praise he deserved.

His dark eyes lit up. She noted the golden flecks in them and thought of Drake’s dark eyes that flashed golden when the light hit them.

“Okay, let’s see your list of words,” she requested when she was at her desk and ready to start.

For the next two hours she worked with Johnny, then a group of students who were further advanced. At three, she rushed home to check on Joe Junior and Teddy and make sure they did their homework correctly. Ms. Meredith was a stickler about that, too.

Drake was in the corral, working with one of the young cow ponies when she arrived. She stood by the car and watched him for a few minutes.

He had a firm touch on the reins and made sure the gelding knew what was expected and performed the task correctly before he went on to something else. He would make a good teacher for the students at the children’s ranch—

Reality check, she interrupted herself. Drake didn’t need her advice on what to do with his life when he grew tired of risking it on daring rescues in places where he could get himself shot on sight. It wasn’t her business.

Just as she turned to head inside, Drake stopped his mount beside the fence. He dipped his head toward her in greeting, then simply watched her, making her think of lunch and the way he had looked at her then. There was an invitation in those dark depths, but she didn’t know what it was an invitation to.

The baby stirred and kicked vigorously as if sensing her agitation. Flustered, she rushed into the house.

Three

“Maya, come with us,” Joe Junior shouted as soon as she stepped in the door. “Drake’s gonna teach us how to rope.”

“Yeah, we’ll be rodeo champions someday!” Teddy said.

“Indoor voices, please,” Maya reminded them, going into her room and storing her book bag before swapping her flats for sneakers. “What about your homework?”

The boys vowed they’d do it before dinner and give up their hour of television if need be.

“Okay.”

“We can?” Joe looked disbelieving, then he let out a whoop, quickly suppressed. He and Teddy took off.

Maya’s heart did a somersault. Drake was good to his younger brothers. He obviously cared for them. They needed love and approbation from someone other than her. Their mother was too unpredictable in her love.

Their father loved them, but there was a sadness in him that Maya thought the youngsters sensed, so they tended to be subdued around him. Besides, Joe was deeply involved with all the other problems in the Coltons’ lives at present—the shootings, the disappearance of Emily.

With Drake, the boys could do “guy” things. The shared companionship was good for all of them, Drake included. The boys touched a soft spot in him. He needed that.

Not that she was concerned with his needs, she reminded herself. Pulling on a jacket, she headed outside to keep an eye on her two charges. Ms. Meredith had made it very plain that she paid Maya to be with the boys and keep them from harm. That meant keeping them within view at all times.

Arriving at the paddock, Maya found Drake had set up two sawhorses with brooms for heads and was showing the boys how to hold their lariats. She couldn’t help but laugh. He turned his intense gaze on her with a quickness that dried up the merriment.

“Your laughter makes the day brighter,” he said.

Maya was aware of the boys looking from one to the other, then at each other. They giggled in the way kids do when grown-ups say funny things.

“Is this right?” Joe asked, directing his brother’s attention to their concerns once more.

Leaning on the fence, Maya watched Drake start the two youngsters close to the sawhorses. Joe, being older, caught on quicker than Teddy. Drake moved him back to ten feet, then worked with Teddy until he got the hang of tossing the rope over the broom.

After an hour, Maya called out, “Ten more minutes, guys.”

“Then what?” Drake asked.

He gave her a sexy once-over that startled her thoughts right out of her head. “Then it’s time for homework,” she said, gathering her wits.

When the boys protested, Drake shushed them. “You have to plan your time carefully to get everything done. That’s what a good SEAL does. You’ve done roping, now it’s time for the next item on the agenda, right, teacher?”

“Uh, right,” she echoed.

“Vamoose!” Drake ordered, then grabbed a sawhorse in each hand and left the paddock.

Joe and Teddy climbed over the fence and dropped to the ground beside Maya. “Drake’s really good,” Joe told her. “He could be a rodeo champion if he wanted.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m gonna be,” Teddy decided.

Joe gave him a shove. “Ha!”

“I am!”

“Enough, guys. Don’t argue. Discuss—that’s the rule. And don’t touch another person without permission. Joe, ten minutes earlier to bed.”

“Aww,” Joe started to complain.

Ms. Meredith opened the door and glared at all three of them. “You will lower your voices at once,” she ordered.

“Yes, ma’am,” both boys intoned simultaneously.

Maya felt like echoing the boys’ subdued manner. She had stopped “ma’am-ing” Ms. Meredith a year ago upon realizing that, in order to be taken as an equal, she must act as one. She would not be subservient.

“Have the boys done their homework?” Meredith asked her with a severe frown.

“We’re on our way to do that now. Drake was teaching them how to rope. It’s excellent training for eye-hand coordination,” she said in a firm teacher-knows-best voice.

She smiled with an assurance she was far from feeling and hoped she didn’t get a dressing-down in front of her young charges. They tended to take her side, ending with all three of them getting a lecture.

To her relief, the other woman nodded and left them in the hall while she went into the living room to speak to her husband. Maya quickly herded the boys to her room where she set them to work on their lessons. She got out her own books and studied the physical, mental and emotional development of children from kindergarten to sixth grade.

Drake peeled out of his clothes, took a quick shower, dressed, then hurried to the kitchen. Maya wasn’t there.

“Where…are the boys?” he amended his question.

Inez Ramirez, longtime housekeeper, friend and confidante to the Colton family, studied him for an uncomfortable five seconds before answering. “Maya took their dinner to her room. They aren’t finished with their homework yet.”

Disappointment hit him. He tried to keep it from showing. Growing up, he and all the kids on the ranch had decided Inez could read minds. She always knew when they had done something they shouldn’t as soon as they walked into the house. At the present moment, he felt as if she knew of each and every tryst he’d had with her daughter last summer…and of the lustful dreams he’d been having of Maya every night since then.

“Thanks,” he said politely and headed for the living room where he’d seen his parents earlier. He paused when he got within earshot.

“You simply have to pay it. It’s been months,” Drake heard his father say.

“Really, Joe,” Meredith said in obvious annoyance. “It’s only a couple of thousand. You’d think I’d asked for your life savings.”

“Precisely why I did what I did with your credit cards. You have an allowance. I suggest you pay your bills with it.”

“But some of these charges were for your birthday party!”

Drake winced at his father’s laughter. He’d never heard that tone before—cold and harsh and cynical.

“Not one of the family’s better days,” Joe Senior continued in the same vein.

“I…no, it wasn’t,” his mother agreed, her voice going soft. “It frightened me, that you might have been killed, or at the least, incapacitated.”

Drake waited for his father’s reply, but heard nothing. In another second, he heard the tap of his mother’s heels. He stayed in the dining room until she went down the hall toward her room. He heard her door shut with a brittle slam.

After another minute, he ventured into the other room. His father stood at the window, his face expressionless as he stared out at the deepening twilight. He turned when Drake entered, then smiled in greeting.

Drake felt a tightening in his chest. No matter what his father’s disappointments or trials were in life, Joe always had time for children, whether his own or the foster kids that stayed with them at the ranch. Drake admired that quality in his sire and tried to emulate it with his younger brothers.

“How are things with you?” Joe asked.

“Fine, sir,” Drake began, then stopped. “Well, maybe not so good. I’m not making much headway with Maya.”

Joe raised his eyebrows in question.

“She won’t tell me who the father of the child is,” Drake admitted.

“A brandy?” Joe asked, pouring one for himself.

“Please.”

Drake accepted a snifter, then sat on the sofa after his father settled in a chair. The feel of leather, the shine of the furniture and faint scent of lemon oil were familiar and comforting.

His father swirled the brandy in his glass, then fastened a piercing gaze on him. “Does that matter?”

Drake was startled by the question. “Well, yes,” he began. “That is… If it’s mine, then naturally I’ll do the right thing.”

“What if it isn’t?” Joe persisted. “Joe Junior was left on our doorstep. Your mother and I adopted him and raised him as if he were our own flesh and blood.”

Drake nodded. It was such ancient history, he’d truly forgotten that little Joe was a foundling.

“If Maya’s child couldn’t be yours, I assume you would have said so and not come home.”

Drake met his father’s level gaze. “It could be. I think…actually, I’m sure it is. But she won’t say so,” he finished in frustration.

“Have you asked her to marry you?”

Drake smiled in irony. “We haven’t gotten that far.”

“I take it that you don’t want the marriage?” Joe questioned dryly.

Drake fought the storm of emotion that rushed through him. “I didn’t plan on having a wife and family. My life is uncertain at best.”

“And extremely dangerous the rest of the time,” Joe concluded. “Yet women and children do manage when husbands and fathers have tough jobs that take them away from home for long periods. It’s all in how the family handles it. Love makes a big difference.”

Drake knew his father was questioning his feelings for Maya. He stared out the window at the dark shadows cast by a tree swaying in the night wind. The darker shadows in his soul shifted painfully. Maya was like the sun. She was all the bright, good things in life, the things forever out of his reach.

“Dinner,” Inez called softly from the dining room.

Joe observed the flicker of emotion pass through his son’s eyes. Drake was a man, with a man’s needs. Sex was part of that, but so was love. A life without it was desolate indeed.

Suppressing a sigh, he rose and led the way into the dining room where the family was gathering for the evening meal. It should have been a joyous time of the day.

He sat at the head of the table, Drake at his left. River and Sophie, now married and expecting—his and Meredith’s first grandchild!—joined them. Their new house which River had designed and built himself, was a beauty, but Joe loved when they visited the main house.

Meredith entered, nodded graciously when the children greeted her, and took her place.

Glancing at Drake, Joe thought of young Teddy. He’d had an impulse to confide to his older son that the youngest Colton wasn’t his but he loved the boy as if he were.

That fact wasn’t something a man could tell his child. However Meredith had changed, she was still the mother of their children. That she adored Joe Junior and Teddy, Joe couldn’t deny.

A sadness reaching clear to the depths of his soul rolled over him. Drake was struggling to realize just what his relationship was with Maya, but Joe had had no doubts the first time he’d met Meredith. Neither had she. They had known they were in love from the first.

Where had it all gone?

Maya was relieved when she walked out of the doctor’s office. She and little Marissa were doing fine. Her wild ride hadn’t harmed the baby, thank goodness. She backed out of the busy parking lot next to the medical building and nearly ran over Peggy Honeywell who ran the bed-and-breakfast, Honeywell House, in Prosperino.

They grinned and waved at each other. When the coast was clear, Maya ran a few errands and drove carefully to the high school. She met Andy Martin in his classroom.

“How’s it going?” he greeted her cheerfully, his eyes sweeping over her blossoming figure as if to check her progress.

Just the way every person she met looked her over nowadays. She sometimes felt like a beached whale with a curious crowd milling around, trying to figure out what to do with her.

“Great,” she assured him. She got out some test papers. “Here are Johnny’s latest exams. I really appreciate your looking them over for me. He needs more help in math than I can spare him, I’m afraid.”

Andy studied the papers and made some notes in the margins beside the wrong answers. “Mm,” he said once in a while. “Ah, yes.”

Maya thought his comments sounded promising. The boy was smart, precocious in the way of many children who’d had to raise themselves, but he was sadly lacking in basic skills such as reading and arithmetic.

“Okay, I think I can come up with a program of study for him that will bring him up to par.” Andy squinted and gave her an assessing look.

“What?” she asked.

“How about I come out to the ranch Saturday morning? Could you fit that into your schedule? I’d like to work out some word problems, then check with you on his vocabulary level. We’ll see how well he does on reading comprehension when it relates to problem solving.”

“That would be perfect. Thanks, Andy. You have no idea what a load this is off my mind. I think Johnny has college potential, but he’s going to need extra help to get him up to speed.”

“No problem.” He checked his watch. “You feel like an early supper or maybe a snack?”

When she’d realized she was pregnant with Drake’s child, she’d broken off entirely with Andy, refusing even the most casual of meetings with him. When he’d learned of the child, he’d sought her out and offered marriage.

No questions asked.

Not like Drake, who apparently wanted to know exactly when she’d became pregnant and with whom. She would never forgive him for that, no matter how sorry she might feel for him because of his parents’ problems or his sad past.

“I think not.”

“I hear Drake Colton is back in town,” Andy murmured, a speculative note in his voice.

She stared at the chalkboard, unable to totally lie and unwilling to admit she’d been a fool. “Yes, he’s home for…for a vacation, I suppose.”

“Maya—”

She jumped to her feet—well, okay, it was more of a lunge—and smiled brightly. “I really have to go. The boys are on their own and probably ignoring their homework.”

Andy walked out to the car with her. He opened the door, then lightly clasped her arm. “I’ve been your friend for a long time. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded unhappily. She’d never meant to hurt him.

“You can come to me at any time. To talk. To just get away. Whatever. Okay?”

“Thanks.” Impulsively she kissed his cheek, then quickly got in the car and left before she bawled like a motherless calf right there on the main street of town. That would start a buzz on the old grapevine!

Andy watched, his eyes filled with kindness and worry, until she’d turned the corner and was out of sight.

Maya sniffed, sighed and turned her mind to her duties at the Colton estate. She had a paper to finish, then she had to e-mail it to the professor. That was after she supervised the boys and got them to bed.

Heavens, but she was tired. And her back hurt. Also her feet. For a second, she wondered how she’d gotten into such a situation.

“By being stupid,” she muttered sarcastically. “By falling in love,” she added on a sadder note as she parked near the house and pushed herself wearily out of the car.

She went from one task to another for the next few hours, checking Joe’s and Teddy’s homework, helping her mother finish getting supper on the table, making sure the boys had their baths and were in bed at lights-out, then doing her own work. She saw Drake briefly in passing. He gave her a narrow-eyed scrutiny and barely spoke.

Okay, she could handle that, she assured herself as she slipped into a clean nightgown. After all, she’d handled that brief, shattering note—

A soft knock sounded on the door.

“Not tonight,” she called out.

Drake opened the door.

“I’m really going to have to remember to lock the door from now on,” she said in protest.

“Why? Are men lining up to get inside?”

She closed her eyes and spoke to the room at large. “Do I have to take these kinds of insults? No.” She glared at Drake. “Please get out before I scream bloody murder.”

He had the grace to look slightly remorseful. He paced the room, then took up his usual position straddling her desk chair. “I saw you in town today.”

She frowned. “So?”

He slapped his hand on the back of the chair. “Dammit, you were with another man, kissing him right out on the street. What gives?”

Maya stared blankly at Drake. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you mean.”

“Are you with him?” When she continued to stare at him, he added, “Is it serious between you two?”

She realized who he meant. “Andy is my friend.”

“That was Andy Martin?” He frowned. “He’s changed.”

“Well, that’s because you probably haven’t seen him since high school. People do grow up. Some people,” she tossed in for good measure.

“Meaning I haven’t?” He laughed softly, cynically, at that ridiculous accusation.

The baby did a double flip, and Maya grimaced and pressed her side in discomfort. Would she ever make it to her due date? At this moment, she had her doubts.

“I’ll get the liniment,” Drake volunteered.

“No—”

But as usual, he was quicker than a cat. He retrieved the bottle from the table and opened it. Then he chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded, feeling big and clumsy and at the end of her tether.

“Our daughter is going to think her parents are of the equine variety if we keep using the horse liniment to rub you down.”

“She wouldn’t if you’d just leave me alone.”

“I can’t,” he stated, so simply she couldn’t think of an argument to convince him he could. “Lie down,” he requested, gesturing toward the bed.

Sighing, she heaved herself up and went to the bed, not caring if he saw her as round as a pumpkin in her gown. It wasn’t as if he were going to ravish her.

Memories rushed at her, tilting her already shaky emotions. Tears sprang to her eyes. Eight months ago, he had laved her with kisses and caresses and sweet, sweet words of love. And then he’d left.

“What is it?” he asked softly.

She shook her head. Maybe the words hadn’t been those of love, only need and physical hunger. Except she’d felt the love in him, saw it in his eyes. Or thought she had. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

Putting a knee on the bed, she let herself down on the cool sheet and turned on her stomach as much as she could, her leg drawn up to take her weight. She sighed at her own awkwardness, then at her foolish dreams.

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