“I promised I’d marry her, Jock. She’s carrying our baby. Backing out wasn’t an option.”

Ian, in decisive mode, usually turned Sophie’s legs to Jell-O and her mind to mush, but just now her brand-new groom sounded like a man who’d looked the executioner in the eye and gone under a blunt blade.

He’d lied to convince her to marry him.

She was nearly sick right there on the floor. As she slammed her hand over her mouth, Ian and Jock came around the corner. Unlike most of his overly buff colleagues, Ian was lean and long, agile and—right now—furious.

As if she’d lied to him. As if she’d married him under false pretenses.

“What are you doing?” Shock made his voice too harsh to recognize.

Swallowing, she said, “Hiding behind a marble column, listening to you end our twenty-minute marriage.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee, and to the Calvert family, whom you met in September’s The Secret Father. Are you ready to meet Sophie and her new husband, Ian?

Sophie’s not so sure she’s ready for Ian. She marries him because she believes they both want to create a family for their unborn child, but seconds after the wedding she hears him telling his best friend he had to marry her because she was carrying his child.

She confronts him. He admits “forever” sounds impossible to a bodyguard who’s never been home long enough to own a pet, but he’s determined to try. He’s so determined he follows Sophie to Tennessee, where he uses her family against her. They remind her how unhappy she was because of her own parents’ divorce, and Ian convinces her he cares enough to make their marriage real. But can she see forever now that he’s broken her trust?

I’d love to hear what you think. You can reach me at anna@annaadams.net. Come back to Bardill’s Ridge in March when Sophie’s cousin Molly Calvert falls in love with a man who couldn’t be more wrong for her.

Best wishes,

Anna

The Bride Ran Away
Anna Adams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Steve, again, always—the sweetest love I’ve known

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 FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

ICE TAPPED AT THE stained-glass windows like a million small fingers begging to come in as Ian Ridley fought an unfamiliar compulsion to run. On an unseasonably frigid Tuesday night in April, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., he waited at the altar with his best man and a minister he hardly knew.

He licked his lips. They dried again immediately, despite the damp that seeped from the cold stone floor into his shoes and slowly climbed his body. This wedding was all wrong, a church even Sophie didn’t know and a minister who’d agreed to perform their hasty ceremony because the bride-to-be was pregnant.

Ian could have asked the minister he’d guarded a few years ago to marry them, but he’d been ashamed to admit he’d gotten Sophie pregnant. In a world where he made life-or-death decisions every working day, he hated to lose a friend’s respect.

His whole life had been an effort to prove he was tough enough, good enough. Even smart enough.

A professional bodyguard, he’d once been barely able to protect himself. As an eight-year-old, he’d been bullied at boarding school, where his parents had sent him to free up their time. Strength was a front he’d willed into existence the first time one of the older, bigger boys, had shoved his head in a toilet.

Sophie knew nothing of his past. They didn’t know each other well enough to commit to a regular dinner date, much less marriage.

Take their ceremony. He’d wanted to stand before a justice of the peace. She’d wanted the wedding to “feel real.” One of her friends had suggested this church, and Ian had gone along with the idea. A formal service in unfamiliar surroundings, performed by a minister who’d be grateful they were doing the right thing.

He’d asked Jock, his colleague on several jobs, to be his best man. Sophie had planned to have a maid of honor, but she’d uninvited her friend at the last minute as if she, too, was ashamed of their quick wedding. Ashamed she was marrying him?

Shame was no way to start a marriage, even if marrying Sophie Calvert was the worst mistake he’d made with her yet.

From the moment he’d first seen her, he’d wanted her, pure and simple. Maybe not so pure. He’d wanted her, knowing he was the wrong man for her. She believed in big, protective families like hers. He knew no such animal.

His folks had not only kept him away at boarding school, they’d lived a life quite separate from his. For him family meant Christmas break or brief summer holidays. Not every-day-in-the-same-house contact.

He’d wanted a different kind of family for himself. He’d even been engaged once. That woman—who’d wisely jilted him—was now the wife of an insurance salesman in Reading, Pennsylvania, and, last Ian heard, the proud mother of three. After she’d suggested he eat his engagement ring, he’d stopped pretending to be a man who could stay home long enough to own a cat.

His work required him to live on the fringes of other people’s lives. A bodyguard since the age of twenty, when he’d been assigned to drive a Supreme Court Justice’s nanny to and from work, Ian had fought for fourteen years—with weapons and his bare hands. He’d avoided fights when walking away better served the people he protected, and he’d willingly stepped in front of almost every weapon smaller than a rocket launcher. To keep his clients safe, he’d shoved fear to the back of his mind where it couldn’t hurt anyone.

Tonight, the prospect of marriage to Sophie froze the blood in his veins.

She’d helped him forget who he was. Unable to resist the mutual, blinding desire, he still distrusted its staying power. He’d met Sophie in Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee, when he’d accompanied a client, publishing tycoon James Kendall, to the town to visit his daughter, Olivia. When Ian had left with Kendall, Sophie had seemed almost relieved.

Back in Chicago, he hadn’t anticipated the hunger he felt—for the scent of Sophie’s hair, for the endearing curve of her joyful smile, for the need of him that glittered in her green eyes and made him feel as if he mattered to her more than anyone else.

He’d resisted that hunger for a month. On his first free weekend, he’d located Sophie at her town house in D.C. Two months after that, he’d shown up at her office, and they hadn’t gone very far before she’d parked her car on the side of a dark road.

Another month later, she’d come to Chicago, and they’d eaten, slept and made frantic love in his bedroom for the first three days of her weeklong stay. Two more months and he was waiting in front of an altar, trying to become a father to the baby he’d created with Sophie.

He cared for her. Whatever raged between them wasn’t just sex, but Sophie and he had changed too quickly from strangers to lovers to parents.

Jock nudged his arm. “Here she comes.”

Candlelight brought her out of the shadows at the back of the church. Ian’s gut tightened.

Her dress caressed each curve of a body that nearly brought him to tears. Her stomach already rounded by their baby’s growth, she made him want to be better than he was, capable of promising to be with her when their baby came. He wanted to give his family what he’d gone without all those lonely boarding-school nights—love that went deeper than providing practical necessities.

She met his gaze, her eyes anxious, and he felt again the emotional coil of desire. He’d wanted Sophie in her grandparents’ apple orchard. He’d wanted her in the reception area of her OB/GYN office, surrounded by at least six women in different uncomfortable stages of pregnancy. He wanted her now, as urgently as he needed his next breath.

“Ready?” Jock asked.

Hell no. As if she could hear Jock and sense her husband-to-be’s less-than-heroic response, she lowered her head. Ian nodded.

Love was supposed to last. Lust burned itself out. How could he tell which had him in its grip?

Sophie carried no flowers and, staring at her hands, clamped together yet shaking, she moved down the gray flagstone aisle without music. They’d skipped all the usual trimmings except her dress and his black suit. As he watched Sophie approach, Ian could almost taste her skin. He tilted his head to catch the memory of her nighttime whispers. What secrets curved her mouth now even as doubt shadowed her eyes?

They hadn’t discussed what would happen after they left this church. He couldn’t just quit the only job he’d ever known and take up knitting. They hadn’t talked about her medical practice either. He slid moist palms down his thighs.

Tonight’s wedding had been their only goal, another sign that two people who’d planned each step of their lives until they’d met were bad for each other. His mind ought to be on the vows he was seconds away from making, and that summed up his problem in a nutshell.

Sophie had robbed him of his ability to distinguish priorities. With her practice in D.C. and his job in Chicago, they’d lived too far apart to get serious. They’d both known it. Neither had said so out loud. He hadn’t explained that he’d learned to protect other people because he’d once been unable to protect himself. She needed roots. He had none.

He didn’t want to hurt her. The salient facts all ran through his head, months too late, as she stopped at his side.

“Take each other’s left hands,” the minister said.

Ian silently forced Sophie to meet his gaze again. As she stared at him, her eyes filled with a strange conflict of trust and reservation. Her warmth seduced him as he rubbed his thumb over the fragile bones of her hand. Lifeblood pulsed beneath her skin.

He was wrong for her, but he wasn’t capable of walking away. Even if they were about to ruin their lives, he’d make Sophie Calvert his wife.

“Shall we begin?” The minister searched Sophie’s pale face and then Ian’s. “I assume you’ve both soberly considered what you’re about to do.”

Ian nodded again.

SOPHIE HAD SEEN almost six hundred patients through pregnancies both easy and difficult, deliveries both simple and dangerously complicated. Not one of those women had prepared her for the horror of experiencing morning sickness in a silk wedding dress that had looked alluring three weeks ago. With her twentieth week of pregnancy straining the seams, she felt like a huge white balloon on the verge of exploding.

The ceremony had passed in a blur. She still couldn’t think as she made her way into the bride’s room.

Three weeks earlier she’d anticipated Ian’s lustful appreciation as he watched her float up the aisle. Instead, she’d avoided looking at him, half-fearful of his dismay as he contemplated marrying such a bloated pregnant woman. Her snug dress foretold a load of responsibility for both of them.

She’d glanced at him as the minister asked them to take each other’s hands. After one peek at his flat blue gaze, she’d avoided him until he’d tilted her chin to kiss her.

That chaste kiss continued to confuse her as she struggled out of the dress. Nothing about their short relationship had been chaste. He was a fever that constantly burned in her.

Bending over, she undulated to work the dress over her head. And nearly passed out.

Grabbing the nearest chair, she caught her breath and gripped handfuls of material to slowly inch the dress over her shoulders. This wasn’t the wedding she’d dreamed of.

She’d imagined arguments with her mom, who would have become uncharacteristically maternal and tried to control everything—the wedding dress, the catering, even the setting—Bardill’s Ridge where her father lived, instead of D.C., where her mother had moved after the divorce. None of these would have mattered to her dad and her grandparents, her aunts and the cousins who’d stood in as brothers and sisters all Sophie’s life. They’d only want the opportunity to surround her with the unconditional love she craved tonight.

She hadn’t invited any of them, even though she’d wanted her cousin Molly to be a bridesmaid.

She’d been concerned that her family’s presence would make Ian feel bad about his parents’ absence. Rachel and Alex Ridley had turned down their son’s invitation, claiming they couldn’t get home from Ireland—where they’d retired for the golf—on such short notice.

Sophie would pay for the slight to her own family. Her mother would assume she’d planned her “elopement” just to get back at her parents for their divorce. The Calvert side, her father’s family, just plain expected invitations to all big events.

She smiled to herself, remembering the day she’d met Ian at one of those occasions. She’d been home to celebrate her grandparents’ anniversary, and he was there as a bodyguard to her cousin Zach’s father-in-law.

The moment she’d met Ian, she’d wanted him. He’d felt the same. Their undeniable attraction frightened her, but it was all they had. Passion and good intentions and a marriage certificate now duly signed and witnessed.

Initially, she’d been reluctant to tell Ian about the baby, but he had a right to know, and when she couldn’t avoid telling him any longer, he’d immediately wanted their child. He’d assumed they’d make a life together, a family. Everything he’d said had persuaded her he’d live or die for the child, whose only outward signs of life were her thickening waistline and her inability to digest anything with more taste or aroma than water.

He’d understood she wanted commitment that might lead to real love. She had no interest in simply being rescued. They’d been honest. No one could get hurt.

She yanked her dress. With the sound of a tearing seam, it flew over her head and fell into her open hands. She peeled off her hose and turned to stuff them into her bag. Taking stock of her green face in the tiny mirror the church provided for its brides, she blamed the harsh lighting for her horror-movie pallor.

No amount of crackers, no wishing morning sickness was all in her head, ever slowed the spin cycle in her stomach. “Damn,” she said and then prayed she wouldn’t burn in hell for swearing in church.

She pulled on jeans she hadn’t worn in two months and stared down at the parted zipper that refused to fasten. Her sweatshirt covered the problem and made her decent enough to go hunt for a washroom—which would have made a handy accoutrement for the bride’s dressing room.

Shivering in the damp cold, she tried each door along the corridor. At the sanctuary’s arched entrance, the eerie silence made her feel as if she was trespassing. Feeling sicker by the second, she tiptoed inside and crossed in front of the altar. They’d put the groom’s room over here somewhere, and Ian probably hadn’t needed extra time to wrestle out of his suit. He’d be in street clothes by now, and she’d just as soon he not get another glimpse of his perennially sick bride.

Nothing a palette full of makeup couldn’t repair once her stomach settled.

She eased around a cool marble column, still fighting waves of nausea. She was a strong woman. She just had to be stronger than morning sickness.

“Man, you’re sweating like a marathon runner. You shouldn’t have gone through with the ceremony. Sophie’s going to kill you.”

Brought up short, she recognized the voice. Jock, who judging from that statement knew her better than Ian.

“I promised I’d marry her. She’s carrying our baby. Backing out wasn’t an option.”

Ian, in decisive mode, usually turned her legs to Jell-O and her mind to mush, but just now her brand-new groom sounded like a man who’d looked the executioner in the eye and gone under a blunt blade.

He’d lied to her to convince her to marry him.

She was nearly sick right there on the floor. As she slammed her hand over her mouth, Ian came around the corner, his expression wary. He knew he’d screwed up. Unlike most of his overly buff, iron-pumping colleagues, Ian was lean and long, agile and—right now—furious.

As if she’d lied to him. As if she’d married him under false pretenses.

“What are you doing?” Shock made his voice too harsh to recognize.

She eased her hand just beneath her lips. “Hiding behind a marble column, listening to you end our twenty-minute marriage.”

“I don’t want to end—”

“I need a bathroom. I’m gonna be sick.”

He pointed down the hall, and she ran, her feet smacking the marble. Just in time, she flung open the door and bolted into a stall. Thank God Ian wasn’t chivalrous enough to follow.

At last, with her stomach as empty as her heart, she braced her hands on the stall and stared at the tile through watery eyes. Longing to sink to the floor, she plucked up enough pride to stay on her feet.

Her idiotic tears were a side effect of being ill and pregnant and hormone ridden. Nothing more. It wasn’t as if she loved Ian.

She stumbled to the pedestal sink and twirled a squeaking handle imprinted with an old-fashioned H for hot. Nothing happened, but C for cold worked.

The hinges on the washroom door squeaked in a long, low protest as someone slowly entered. Someone. Who was she kidding? Ian couldn’t pass up a chance to lope to the rescue.

Bending farther into the sink, she splashed cold water on her face. Long legs in black gabardine appeared in her peripheral vision. Straightening, she turned off the water and met his I-dare-you-to-face-the-truth stare.

“This is the women’s room.”

“Men’s, actually.” He jerked a thumb toward the far wall where three urinals hung in a row. “I’ll bet the faucets work in the women’s room.”

His dry sense of humor had seduced her from day one. Not tonight.

She grabbed a paper towel that protruded from a black plastic holder, jumping as she glimpsed her mascara-streaked face in the mirror. “Where’s Jock?” She wiped her hands and concentrated on sounding as if she didn’t care, as if nothing too terrible had happened.

“He went home.”

She took refuge in patting water off her cheeks. “Ian, I won’t stay with you.”

“You heard something I never would have said to you.”

She considered pulling the sink off its pedestal and throwing it at him.

He licked his lips as if he couldn’t get enough saliva and went on, “I have to protect you and my child, and I agreed to something I actually didn’t believe in, but I am committed.”

“You don’t get it.” She had believed they might come to love each other, and she’d only married him because she’d thought he’d felt the same.

Turning away from him, she ended up in front of the mirror, facing their reflections. Neither of them looked familiar.

He was clearly scared. She was too furious to think straight. And whacking him with a bathroom sink might not help.

She held on to the anger, a nourishing, healthy rage that would keep her on her feet and make her a strong mother for her child. Since her own mother had left home, Sophie had vowed never to need anyone. “I didn’t ask you to marry me. I don’t want your pity, and I despise your sense of duty.”

He reached for her, his long fingers curling into nothing as she moved away. “I protect people. Why wouldn’t I protect you?”

She grabbed the edge of the sink. Unfortunately, it didn’t budge. Misunderstanding her urge to brain him, he moved closer and pressed his palm against the small of her back.

“Are you still sick?” he asked.

She shook her head, unable to speak over a lump in the back of her throat. Who knew the truth could hurt this much? She wanted—no, she needed to be far away from Ian Ridley. She danced out of his reach again.

“You only had to admit you didn’t want the baby. I’m twenty-nine years old, and I’ll take care of myself and my child.”

“We’ll take care of our baby,” Ian said. A sound from outside the rest room turned his head toward the door. On the alert, twenty-four hours a day.

Even so, she had a nasty surprise for him. “We’re not staying together,” she said as she wadded the paper towel into a ball and shoved it through the flap of the waste container. “If you’d told me the truth an hour ago, instead of telling Jock after we were married, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Now we’re going to have to find a way to annul our marriage when I look pretty damn consummated.”

“Sophie, don’t swear in church.” He smiled, no doubt to persuade her he was teasing, but the twist of his mouth looked more like a bloodless threat.

“I’d like to commit murder in a church. I’m only holding back on the off chance that killing you here would make you eligible for sainthood.”

She had to run before she started to reconsider. Start saying things like. We can try to make the best of this. We care about each other. Our child matters most. We can be parents. We can make marriage work.

Claptrap. He’d only married her because she was pregnant. She refused to be rescued. “I’ll never thank you for doing the right thing.”

He looked confused, but that was because he knew next to nothing about her. She’d caused her own parents’ divorce because she’d come home early from school one day and walked in on her mom making love with a stranger, and then she’d asked her father who her mother had been wrestling. When he’d confronted her mom, Nita had tried to lie. She’d accused Sophie of making up a story, and her father had tried to believe his wife. Wanting to believe lies was her family’s flaw.

They’d failed, of course, and her parents’ split had been unbearable for Sophie. She’d felt abandoned.

She’d never been vulnerable in another relationship until she’d let herself care for Ian. If he’d only married her because she was pregnant, he didn’t care as deeply, and she couldn’t allow herself to be the one with the most to lose. Better to leave Ian before he left her.

She clasped the mound of her belly with both hands. God help her, she was willing to sacrifice her child’s chance at a family to save her own soul.

“My feet are cold.” She pointed at her cranberry toenails as if she had no deeper care. She pulled open the door. “Get in touch if you want to know about the baby,” she said over her shoulder. “E-mail me, or call my office.”

She reached the hall before he caught a handful of her sweatshirt. “Wait a minute. I made a mistake, okay?”

“Several.” She tugged, but he held on tighter.

“Tell me you’re more sure than I am,” he said. “You only looked twice at me because your aunt wanted time to talk to James Kendall alone. Otherwise, I was, probably still am, just a big dumb ox to you.”

“I don’t care about your job.” Now she was stretching the truth. She had assumed bodyguards were all brawn, no brains. She freed herself from his grip and shook her shirt back into place. “It’s true. At the anniversary party Aunt Beth wanted me to occupy you for an hour, so she could talk to James Kendall alone, but I’ve wasted a lot longer than an hour on you.” What more did he want from her? She’d reshuffled her life and her patient schedules to see him in Chicago. “I meant what we said in that ceremony.” Honesty forced her to expand. “Maybe I thought for a second that I didn’t know you well enough to marry you, but I planned to work at our marriage. It wasn’t some temporary penance.”

“Like it was for me?” He tried to catch her hand, but once more she slipped away. He obviously didn’t know how to handle an antagonist he couldn’t drop like a bag of fertilizer. “I don’t care what you heard me tell Jock. I’m serious about our marriage, too. I wish we’d done things the right way, but—”

“You mean with a string of dates and a proposal and a virginal wedding and eventually a baby? You can’t have that with me. I don’t know what happened between us, and I must have been in a daze until tonight, but I’m not binding myself to a man who’s doing me a favor.”

He curved his hands around her shoulders, his grip tight but not painful—as if he knew just how much strength to use. “What you overheard was panic. I want you and our baby.”

She shrugged, and he tightened his fingers instinctively to hold her. She gripped his wrists and pushed him away. “I—don’t—need—you.”

Something shattered behind his eyes. She’d managed to hurt him, but she couldn’t afford to care and she didn’t look back.

The rest room door swished closed behind her and this time Ian stayed put. She made straight for the bride’s room and finished dressing, though her arms and legs seemed to refuse input from her brain.

She gritted her teeth, determined not to cry. Weeping over a bodyguard who’d simply done his job would be ludicrous and humiliating.

Yanking the zipper on her jeans as high as it would go, she wrapped herself in her coat, wadded her wedding dress underneath her arm and fled through the nearest marked exit. The frigid night reminded her of Tennessee. The mountains that held Bardill’s Ridge in their safe embrace would be full of mist in the morning.

She yearned to be there.

Because she was sliding on the icy sidewalk, she crunched through the frozen grass, hurrying around the church to her car. She opened the door, tossed in her dress, hitched up her jeans and climbed in.

How many times had Gran asked her to work at the “baby farm,” a clinic and spa for pregnant women who wanted time out and pampering before they delivered their babies? Sophie had always resisted. Though she loved her family, she’d wanted to be the only Calvert she knew, not a minor member of the teeming crowd.

What had she been trying to prove? She shivered, planting one frozen hand between her thighs as she used the other to insert the key in the car’s ignition. Her baby needed family—not a dutiful father, but a family whose special gift was unstinting love.

She stared at the church doors as her car shuddered to life and her breath hung in the icy air. She could deliver a baby one-handed in the middle of a typhoon. She always carried a well-stocked medical bag in her car, but she knew nothing about raising a child. Maybe she needed family, too.

Time to see if Gran still wanted an OB/GYN who had no idea how she’d managed to get herself pregnant.

CHAPTER TWO

IN THE MORNING Sophie forced herself to stop and rethink her next move. Getting pregnant had taught her everything she needed to know about following impulses.

Two weeks passed while she considered the consequences of staying and of going home to her family.

She used her caller ID to screen Ian’s calls. He showed up at her office one cool evening, and she brushed past him. He waited on the porch at her town house that same night for twenty minutes before he gave up. He’d broken her trust, and she refused to forgive him.

She wasn’t proud of her own behavior. One slip, a lie that even she could see he’d meant for the best, and she felt justified in taking their baby far away. Maybe a more trusting woman would be able to meet Ian halfway, but she had to assume that lying for a good reason might be something he did as a habit.

Her longing for the people she could depend on grew with each hour.

She’d felt safe in Bardill’s Ridge. Her family interfered, but they knew when to back off and when to race to the rescue. And they understood moderation. No one threw away their own lives and freedom—as Ian had been so damn anxious to do.

Still, she made no effort to see a lawyer to end her marriage. She blamed her lethargy on total exhaustion. A pregnant woman couldn’t deliver a patient’s baby at three in the morning and then rush out to arrange a divorce before her office hours began.

Another lie. If she really wanted the divorce, she’d find the energy.

She hardly felt married. When the certificate arrived in her mailbox, she tossed it into the rubbish bin before she remembered she might need it to break her legal bond to Ian.

At the beginning of her third week of married life, the baby moved. That first little flutter gave her plenty of energy and a reminder that she wasn’t on her own anymore. That had her deciding on her next move.

She rearranged her patient schedules, and while she was at it, brought up the topic of taking over her patients for good with the colleagues who had agreed to fill in for her.

Next step—talk to Gran. She dialed, and the receptionist immediately answered.

“The Mom’s Place. May I help you?”

“Leah, this is Sophie Calvert.” She cleared her throat of its nervous vibration. “I’d like to make an appointment with Gran.”

“I’ll put you through.”

“No.” She tried to stop Leah, but too late.

“What’s wrong, Sophie?” her grandmother asked. “Are you ill?”

“Not at all, but I need your undivided attention for an hour or so.”

“Here? At my office, I mean.” Her grandmother’s tongue clicked. “Something’s wrong or you wouldn’t have asked for an appointment. Tell me before I imagine the worst.”

“Don’t imagine anything. I just need advice.” She didn’t want to discuss the possibility of working with Gran over the phone. “Don’t mention it to Dad, okay?”

“Sure. Ethan won’t be mad at me if I hide the fact you’re coming home.”

Sophie laughed. “I’m depending on you. Will you send me back to Leah, and tell her when you’ll have an hour free?”

Two days later she flew to Knoxville, rented a car and drove into the blue-and-green Smoky Mountains beneath a bright sun. Up here spring was slower to take hold. At the baby farm, she climbed out, sniffing the faint sharp scents of young honeysuckle and azalea. Their slightly spicy fragrances sat well with her iffy stomach. That had to be a good omen.

Sophie tucked her hands into the hem of the sweater that had felt too warm in Knoxville but disguised her pregnancy nicely. She mounted the granite steps that led to the resort’s entrance. Overhead, tall pines swayed against their maple and oak neighbors, rustling in hushed whispers.

A group of six young women were sprawled in chairs around a sunny table on the terrace, listening to a lecture on quadratic equations. The fees paid by customers who came here looking for extra care, or maybe just time off to pamper themselves during their pregnancies, went to help local teenagers who found themselves in trouble with no real support systems. These girls studying math on the wide cobbled patio would attend college if Greta Calvert had any say about it.

Now that her gran had her mitts on them, these young women were like part of the family.

Inside the glass-fronted lobby, Sophie waved at Leah, who nodded toward Gran’s office. Sophie took courage from her own determined footsteps on the polished granite floor. She knocked at the door, nervous for the first time in her life about facing Gran.

She’d have to tell her family about the baby soon. She glanced through the glass at the outdoor math class. She didn’t have to worry about being disowned, but no one would be pleased at her stupidity.

Had Ian told his parents? She pushed the question out of her mind. The answer was no longer her business, and she couldn’t afford to think of him. She had to get her own life back on track.

“Sophie, is that you?”

Just hearing Gran’s voice made her happy. After turning the knob, she leaned around the door and smiled. Her heart swelled and her throat felt too tight to speak. She searched the shadowy room for the vigorous mainstay of her life. “Gran?”

A white-haired woman with a desk as tidy as her pragmatic approach to life put her telephone back into its cradle and hurried through the slashes of sunlight across the thick carpet.

With arms outstretched, Greta Calvert uttered a sound that resembled a sob. Sophie choked back tears of her own as she stepped into her grandmother’s hug. Gran would love her no matter how big a mess she’d made.

“Honey, honey…” Greta Calvert sang and cried. Holding on to Gran’s deceptively frail body, Sophie let the tears fall for the first time since her wedding.

Everything in the room told her she was home. Her father had built Gran’s desk more than twenty years ago. The pictures marching side by side on its glowing honey-colored surface, stacked in lines up and down the walls, slotted unsteadily in corners on the bookshelves, offered a history of Calvert family endeavors. Graduations and baptisms, weddings and rowdy conversation shared across crowded dinner tables. Sophie scanned them all, swimming in memories, hearing echoes of the stories her dad and aunts and uncles told.

Gran kept every gift given to her in love, wildflowers, now dried, her resort guests had collected on their walks up the ridge, and paintings the Calvert grandchildren had done. She even stored pens and pencils in a clay mug Sophie had made in Girl Scouts.

As Sophie composed her emotions, Gran leaned back. Surprisingly tall, she met Sophie eye-to-eye. Her affection eased Sophie’s second thoughts.

Everything would be okay. She’d made a couple of dumbfounding mistakes, but Gran had heard stranger stories, and she possessed an unlimited capacity for love. Where Gran forgave, so would the rest of the Calverts.

“Tell me your deep, dark secret, Sophie,” Gran said teasingly, as if she didn’t believe it could be anything serious.

Just that quickly Sophie got scared. Gran had always known when she’d sneaked an extra cookie or waded in icy streams before winter left the mountains, but a baby put such trivial things as cookies and wet jeans in perspective.

Best get to the point. “Are you still open to having me join you in practice here?”

Happiness flashed in Gran’s eyes. Sophie pressed her fingers to her mouth as relief washed over her, but then Gran sobered with a wary question. “Why?”

That wasn’t supposed to happen. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

Gran urged Sophie onto the sofa and then settled beside her, smoothing a soft, printed skirt over her knees. “What’s wrong?” she asked again. “Not more than a few months ago I begged you to come home, but you said this town was too small. You knew too many faces here. You were happy in Washington among strangers.”

Her spin made Sophie smile. “I doubt I put it like that.”

Clearly not in the mood for a joke, the other woman waited.

“I’m ready.” Sophie looped her hair behind her ears, trying to look as if she had nothing to hide. She hated disappointing her grandmother. “I’ve had enough big city.”

Mysteriously, it was true the moment she said so. As her grandmother searched her face, she realized she might not have been so open to Ian if she hadn’t grown lonely. Gran folded her hands in her lap and still said nothing.

An uncomfortable tingle darted up Sophie’s spine. “Where’s my rip-roaring welcome?”

Gran traced her skirt’s paisley pattern with a delicate, pearl-tipped fingernail. “You’re lying. I never thought I’d see the day.”

Sophie squelched a groan. If only she’d inherited Gran’s talent for culling truth from a lie. “Can’t you take my word for it?” A momentary twinge of sympathy for Ian troubled her as a headache began behind her forehead. She was asking her beloved grandmother to trust her—exactly what she’d refused to do for Ian.

“You’re running from something. Or someone.” Cool, capable brown eyes pinned Sophie to her side of the sofa. “It’s that man, isn’t it? That Ian.” She screwed up her face as if his name tasted bad.

Surprise jolted Sophie. “You don’t like Ian?”

“He’s not right for you. Not some man who wanders the world without a mat to call his own. I saw you liked him. I should have butted in. I was afraid he’d hurt you, but I trusted your good sense.”

Sophie remembered what had kept her out of Tennessee all these years. “Why do you all do that? Ever since the day Mom left Bardill’s Ridge, every female in our family, including the ‘marry-ins’ has tried to save me from myself. None of you believed in my ambition. You were all waiting for me to come to no good because Mom didn’t know how to be a mother.”

“Nita may have left, but you had Beth and Eliza and me.” Beth and Eliza were Gran’s other two daughters-in-law. “We should have pretended you had a normal family and you didn’t need us?”

Sophie gripped the trim on the sofa cushion so tightly the beads bit into her palms. She’d proved their worst fears about her. Before Ian had come along, she’d been heart-whole and content with her job and her Washington friends. She’d thought she was too smart, too careful to get hurt. But the truth was, she’d never cared enough about any other man.

Even now, three weeks after their sham wedding, she missed Ian, and missing him felt irrational. She’d compromised her pride for him. She’d punched holes in all her best walls of defense, and he’d betrayed her trust.

“Sophie, I can’t offer you the job unless you tell me why you want it. I need another doctor—and I want a good one like you—but I’m after someone who’ll take over, someone I can depend on.”

“Why take over?” The family all assumed Gran would work here until they carried her out feet first. She’d promised she was quitting a million times before. Sophie felt a chill.

“Nothing’s wrong. Don’t jump to conclusions,” Gran said, and kneaded Sophie’s hand. The same touch had comforted Sophie all her childhood. “You remember I promised your grandfather I’d retire on our anniversary?”

“Yeah, but no one believed you.”

“Grandpa did.” Gran laughed, a touch embarrassed. But Sophie knew she had the courage to take the necessary steps. “If I’m not working here, someone as good as I am has to take my place.”

“You’re sure that’s all?”

“Positive.” Gran kissed her forehead. “I’ve done good work and I want it to continue. If you take over, I could help you until you know the place the way I do.”

Gran wasn’t arrogant. She’d trained at Vanderbilt when most Tennessean young ladies were learning how to sew a fine seam. Despite getting married and soon giving birth to her first son, she’d finished at the top of her undergraduate class and stayed there all the way through med school. Not one of the powerful men in charge of those male-dominated institutions had ever given her a break.

She deserved an honest, long-term commitment from her granddaughter. It wouldn’t be fair to take temporary shelter in the mountains. “What if I think it over to make sure?” Sophie asked. “I don’t want to waste your time with training and then let you down.”

Gran pulled back, satisfied. “Take a few days. Are you staying in town?” She stood, ushering Sophie to the door. She was a busy woman. She made time for family, but she didn’t dawdle. Sophie took no offense. She’d learned her work ethic from her grandma.

“I’m on my way to Dad’s.” She’d decided to tell him about the baby now. Lucky thing Ian was too far away for her father to set an armed posse on him. She’d be lucky if her dad didn’t turn the posse on her.

Gran reached for a file from the top of her in-box. “Listen to him for a change. Ethan’s a smart man.”

“You say that about all your sons.”

Gran slid on her glasses and smiled over the half lenses. “Bring him up to dinner tonight. Grandpa will want to see you, too.”

Sophie doubted food would be one of her dad’s priorities after she dropped her bomb. He’d be too busy trying not to let her see she’d disappointed him. “I’ll call if we’re coming.”

“Fine.” Gran nodded at the door. “I’ll walk out with you. My next appointment should be waiting.”

Gran darted around her as they exited her office. Sophie took her time, studying the spacious waiting room as if she’d never seen it before, the easy chairs squatting, fat and comfortable, in front of the far windows, the hefty ottomans just waiting to prop up a pregnant woman’s swollen feet.

She could work here. She already felt her share of family pride in the place.

Several patients glanced up from their magazines. Gran’s patrons were usually the only strangers in town and even they couldn’t maintain their anonymity forever. They obviously wanted to know who she was.

The pressure mounted. This was for real. These women would be her patients, and she’d be leaving an office full of women in Washington—her first patients in her first practice.

Sophie headed for the door. She’d often thought of how it would feel to work here, but she’d never imagined scurrying home to Bardill’s Ridge, pregnant and conveniently married. She flattened both hands on her stomach.

She’d manage fine with the patients, but how would she survive her grandmother’s on-the-job mothering? It might be a good idea to end her marriage before Gran discovered it. Greta Calvert believed in family enough to think Sophie should give Ian a second chance.

And the other citizens of Bardill’s Ridge? Sophie’s mother had left town with a man who wasn’t her husband. Sophie could see the heads nodding. Wild like her mother.

Nita had never possessed the instincts that guided some moms. Marriage was a piece of paper she could simply burn, and when she had a date, her daughter was usually an inconvenience.

Sophie understood that her mom just didn’t “get” motherhood. And while Sophie loved her, she didn’t want to be like her.

In D.C., her soon-to-be unmarried state wouldn’t provoke a ripple of interest, even among her own patients. Bardill’s Ridge would consider such an attitude too progressive to abide within the city limits. Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to protect her reputation with a marriage that existed only on paper.

With one hand covering her belly, Sophie pushed open the glass door. She’d be a good mom. Her dad, her cousin Zach, her grandfather and Molly’s dad, Uncle Patrick, would be strong father figures in her child’s life.

“Sophie?”

Her grandmother’s startled voice spun Sophie around on the threshold. Gran’s eyes were fastened on the hand covering Sophie’s stomach.

Stricken with guilt and regret, Sophie dropped her hand to her side, allowing Gran to study the bulge of her stomach unimpeded.

When Gran looked up, her gaze was a mixture of happiness and confusion and regret. After a moment she turned away.

“Wait.” Sophie could barely speak over her own despair. She’d hurt one of the two people whose love and respect meant more to her than anyone else’s.

“Tell your father,” Gran said curtly. “And then we’ll talk. I just don’t want you or a child to be hurt, Sophie.”

Sophie stanched the urge to defend herself. She nodded and turned to descend the granite steps.

The weather had changed. The Mom’s Place looked less rosy under a now cloudy sky, and a chill breeze mussed her hair. Even the girls had taken their books inside.

Sophie glanced toward her car and froze. Ian had materialized, seemingly out of nowhere. Long and lean, feet crossed at the ankles, he was braced against her car. Her first thought was that he had to be cold in his light camel-colored windbreaker. Then she saw anger in his blue eyes. His mouth was a thin slash of pain.

She walked toward him. “Why are you following me?” she asked. She couldn’t control the desire she felt at seeing him, but then stiffened against it. Her body was no longer running her relationship with Ian.

“You’re my wife. You’re carrying my child. I want to be with you. Take your pick.”

“You’ve prepared a series of stories?” She had to get Ian out of here before Gran saw him and called for family reinforcements. “Let’s start with the one where you want to be with me. You’re saying that because you think that’s what I want to hear. We can drop that whole ‘wife’ concept, because we’re getting divorced. That leaves you thinking you owe something to my baby.” She halted, prepared to shove him aside to reach her car door. “You owe the baby nothing. I’m the one who depended on a condom.” She was allergic to the Pill, but she’d never explained that to Ian. Who’d have thought she’d need to? “This is my child.”

“Mine, too.” His dogged gaze devoured her. He might be looking for changes in her body, but his regard turned her heart into a battle drum.

She longed to throw him off her mountain. Her sense of his betrayal was still so strong she wanted to call her cousin Zach, the local sheriff, to chat with Ian about stalking.

“Even if you plan to be the baby’s father, you have no business near me until I deliver.” She fished her keys from her purse and held them up. “Will you move?”

He straightened, his skin taut across his cheekbones. “I made a mistake.” Tired and anxious, his voice softened with a plea that unsettled her. Ian never begged.

“It’s too late.” She lifted her keys again.

He ignored them. “I’m sorry.” She could hear the ache in his tone. “I don’t know how to be a husband, but I’ll do my best if you give me a chance. How can I convince you?”

“Make me forget you lied about wanting to be one.” A horrible truth dawned on her. She actually wished she could forget what he’d said at the church. “I trusted you.”

“I didn’t lie.” He held himself still, his only movement the rubbing of his right thumb against his index finger. One night as they’d lain in a moonlight-painted bed, he’d told her that finger, unnaturally straight from middle knuckle to nail, tingled in cold weather.

She’d never asked how he’d damaged it. Why hadn’t she? Why hadn’t he told her, anyway? None of that mattered now.

“If I thought I couldn’t be with my child any other way,” she said, “I’d pretend I wanted you, too.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking. She suddenly found herself focusing on it. She remembered how it felt beneath hers, moist with passion, seductively destroying that common sense her grandmother had mentioned. She’d glimpsed a future in his kisses. She’d believed in him because she’d thought no one could make love as they had without sharing more than just physical need.

“Sophie.” He curved his hand around her forearm. “When you look at me like that…”

He dragged her closer, but it wasn’t hard. She forgot to resist. His breath whispered against her lips.

He paused, his seemingly defenseless gaze almost asking permission. She could break away if only she could remember how to make her feet move. She might have been dangling in midair. She’d made another mistake, putting herself within his reach.

She was about to make a worse one. She closed her eyes and sighed in absolute, physical relief when Ian brushed his lips over hers.

A sane inner voice commanded her to run. She made herself deaf. She hadn’t touched him in nearly three weeks, and she’d pined for his hands on her, his kiss, his beating heart pressed against her seeking palm.

This was their strongest bond, and she needed him in ways she didn’t begin to understand. He closed the chilly space between them. Sophie slid her hands into the hair at his nape and pulled his head down to hers with strength born of inexplicable longing. Holding Ian was more like coming home than driving up the mountain road had been.

He tightened his arms as if surprised to find her in them. His warm hands bunched her sweater. She breathed in as his fingertips traced her spine, her rib cage, the curve of her breasts.

A moment’s shame flitted through her as she welcomed his touch. She’d run from that church because she hadn’t wanted to need him. Letting him hold her like this, giving vent to her desire, put the lie to that, but she’d stopped feeling whole without him.

A groan slipped from his mouth to hers, melting her against the car. She arched, claiming him, offering herself. But somehow sanity reminded her where they were.

“My gran,” she said against his throat, unable to make herself look over at the resort’s open windows.

At once he released her. They were both breathing hard. He caught her left hand. “Where’s your ring?” She’d never heard his passion-thickened tone in public.

Bemused, she shook her head.

“Your ring, Sophie.” Repeated more harshly, the question finally penetrated her thoughts.

“Nothing’s changed.” In case he didn’t understand, she widened a bland gaze, trying to force him to believe her. “You touch me—I want you. Apparently, I’d make love to you anywhere, anytime, but nothing else has changed, either. I don’t trust you, and I can’t live with you.”

“You can.” He rubbed his finger again, his thumb trembling in time with her heartbeat. “We’ll learn to trust each other.”

“Not in front of our child. I want to do motherhood right.”

He reached for her again. Thank goodness he expected her to give in as if she possessed no will of her own, because she caught him off guard, taking his wrists to drag him away from her car door. He didn’t seem to be a guy who struggled with women. He was easy to move.

She opened the door and jumped inside, completely unashamed of her healthy fear. Not of him—of herself and her apparent addiction to him. She wasn’t on her own anymore. Time to break bad habits.

She started the engine. Ian planted his hands on his hips, the picture of a gunslinger.

She reversed the car, staring straight into his unforgiving gaze. He’d find her before long. He had a gift for hunting down his quarry. She’d never hidden from anyone before, and how far could she run in Bardill’s Ridge?

DUST SETTLED ON THE GRAVEL that had skidded from beneath Sophie’s tires. Ian took stock of the faces at the windows of the resort. Somewhere among those reproachful women, Greta Calvert no doubt wished him dead.

He couldn’t blame her. He’d screwed up Sophie’s life, and he’d certainly want to destroy anyone who ever hurt his child.

He turned away, unable to go inside to reassure Greta, since he had to follow Sophie. Or anticipate where she’d head next. To her father. If she planned to move back to Bardill’s Ridge—and that had to be her plan—she’d tell Ethan Calvert about the baby.

Ian already knew the way. If only he’d kept his big mouth shut after the ceremony, they’d be telling her father together. She shouldn’t have to face him alone. A sense of guilt made him hurry to his own rental car. Sophie loved her dad, respected him, worried more about his disappointment in her than even Greta’s. Her parents’ divorce had driven her to want to please Ethan.

Ian quick-stopped through a couple of four-way intersections on the country roads before he reached town. Three red lights later, he had to slow for traffic at the square. Some of the local farmers had brought early wares from their greenhouses and set up stalls beyond the wrought-iron fence that protected the grass. Their customers upped the small-town traffic.

By the time he reached Ethan Calvert’s house, Sophie and her father, a tall man in jeans and logger’s plaid, were standing in front of the barn-workshop that rose higher than Ethan’s clapboard house. The pair were clearly at odds. Ethan leaned down to say something that made Sophie grimace. Ian didn’t think. He just launched himself from the car to protect his wife.

Ethan and Sophie turned at the sound of his slammed car door. Sophie tried to stop him with a hand up, looking like an impatient crossing guard.

“Ian, no. This is about our family.”

“I’m part of your family now, Sophie.”

She widened her eyes in an urgent, silent appeal that he keep quiet about the wedding. He shook his head. He’d rather saw off his own arm than hurt her again, but she’d made their child the spoils of this fight.

Ethan interrupted their unspoken battle, moving in front of his daughter.

“Dad.” She grabbed his flannel-covered arm. “It’s as much my fault as Ian’s.”

“Maybe you don’t know how we handle your kind of man down here.” A threat of bodily harm quivered in Ethan Calvert’s voice.

Ian restrained a ripple of anticipation. Physical danger he could handle all day long, but Sophie had him in an emotional trap, and he had to be smart. He strode to her side. “Tell him everything.”

“I have,” she lied. A blush drew her father’s closer attention. “You’ve already forced me to break the news about the baby to my dad on the doorstep because I knew you’d hare over here. Now leave us alone.”

Ian glanced from father to daughter. Ethan must know how much his divorce had hurt his daughter. He’d surely want Sophie to give wedded parenthood a chance to provide her child with two parents together in the same house. Especially when the baby’s father wanted to do the right thing—as detestable as the concept of responsibility might be to Sophie.

Behind them, another car climbed the hill. Ian turned, as did Sophie. It was her cousin Zach Calvert in a Bardill’s Ridge patrol car. Her grandmother must have rushed to the telephone.

The sheriff parked beside Ian’s car and climbed out. The slow-moving Southern lawman had a talent for kicking the shit out of bad guys. In his frustration, Ian thought a fight sounded good, but it wouldn’t guarantee his welcome into the family.

Another cousin, Molly, climbed out of the passenger side. She’d been one of the Calverts Ian had investigated before he’d allowed James Kendall to set foot in Bardill’s Ridge. The more the better he thought now.

“Sophie—” Zach settled his cap on his head “—do we have a problem?”

Without waiting for her answer, Molly pushed between her cousin and Ian, her glance setting him on par with a mugger. Molly’s parents had abandoned her, and she’d lived on the street until Sophie’s Aunt Eliza and Uncle Patrick had adopted her. She knew more about bad people than Sophie.

Molly’s abandonment put his own in perspective, and sympathy would have led Ian to be kinder about shutting her down, but Sophie showed no favorites in her habitual resistance to being helped.

She fended Molly off. “I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t know what you two are doing here.”

“Gran.” Ignoring Sophie’s resistance, Molly looped her arm around her cousin’s shoulders.

“Wait a minute.” Ethan towered over the two women. “I don’t need my mother or my nephew and niece to help me protect my own daughter.” Planted at his daughter’s side, Ethan looked strong enough to do the job.

“What are you protecting her from?” Ian ignored everyone else.

The sheriff moseyed into the fray. “Our grandmother suggested you manhandled Sophie in the parking lot at the baby farm.”

“Don’t call it the baby farm,” Sophie and Molly said at the same time.

“Gran hates it,” Sophie added, though it was what she and everyone else called the resort. She didn’t want Ian to feel he was part of the family.

“Whatever you call the place,” Zach said, maneuvering to get in Ian’s face, “she said this guy had his hands all over you and I should find out why.”

“Oh, for…” Sophie twisted out of Molly’s grip and swung away from her relatives. “Gran didn’t want to believe what she really saw. And, Molly, I’m sorry to tell you she called you because she thinks I’ve turned into a bad girl, and you might have some pertinent advice.”

Her cousin’s pale skin colored, clashing with her dark red hair. “Why does this family believe we should talk about such personal things in front of just anyone?” She pinned Ian with another pointed glance.

“You just do,” he answered, “but I envy your honesty.” He was all set to confess his and Sophie’s secret. He’d use every advantage to force a second chance with her and his baby. He waited for her to speak up. The trees around them clicked their branches as if they were counting off the seconds. He knew Sophie was willing him to keep silent. With deep regret and a gut-sucking fear she’d never forgive him now, he did the dirty work. “I need to talk to my wife about our child.”

The other Calverts turned as one to gape at Sophie. She seemed to sink, but Ian caught her, willing to lie on the ground for her if she’d get over this and start rebuilding their fledgling life. She found her strength and shrugged him off.

“You knew I was begging you not to tell them.” She flexed her fingers as if she’d like to shove him down the mountain.

He glanced at her father. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Ethan clenched his hands into fists as shock glazed his eyes. “I don’t get it, Sophie. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to slide him under the biggest saw you own.”

Zach took a step. Ian tensed, ready, willing and pretty much aching to fight.

Sophie must have sensed a hint of his desperation. She held up one palm, breathing deeply. “Cut it out.” She focused on Ethan, who looked appalled. “I need time to figure out how to handle my life. Dad, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Sophie.” Ian knew he was begging, but didn’t give a damn. “I didn’t tell him to hurt you.”

“He’s my dad. I’m his daughter. How’d you think he’d feel?”

“I love you.” Ethan reached for her, but she backed into Ian. “It’s just that your mother—”

“I’m not Mom.”

Her voice, ragged with guilt and the fear that she might just be like her mother, forced Ian to act. He pressed her to his side. “Sophie’s done nothing wrong. If you want to blame someone, blame me, but we’re both trying to make the situation right if you’ll stay out of our business.”

“You invited them in,” Sophie said. “Now they’ll give us hell until we agree to try staying married.”

“I know,” he said.

Rage exploded in her eyes. She tried to break free, but he pulled her hand against his chest and held her. She had to understand his pounding heart wouldn’t lie, and he wouldn’t expose such weakness to anyone else on earth.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just want what’s mine. I’m fighting for my child as hard as you are, but I’m fighting for you, too. I was raised by headmasters and upperclassmen. I’m going to be this baby’s father, and you and I have to do something about our marriage. Can’t you just forget what I said to Jock?”

“No.” She shook her head, but her sadness was palpable. “I keep asking you, what’s changed?”

“I quit my job, and I told my boss not to assign me anywhere else.” He still hardly believed he’d done it, and she sucked in a breath. “You understand that kind of commitment, Sophie? Can you match it?”

She shook her head, looking dazed. They were both so tied to their jobs she knew exactly what his leap of faith meant. Commitment. She sighed, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t have given up my job,” she said as if she didn’t even realize the words were coming out of her mouth. “You’d do anything…”

Her father brought his fist up to his chin, rubbing as if he were trying hard not to take a swing at her husband. Ian shifted Sophie out of range and prepared himself to take the punch.

She placed her hand over her father’s fist without taking her eyes off her husband. “I guess Ian fits in well enough with the rest of us. He’s already an expert at spilling his guts in front of a crowd.”

CHAPTER THREE

“ARE YOU—” Ian broke off, aware of their audience. Had Sophie just agreed to start over? In silence broken only by the squeak of the weather vane slowly revolving on her father’s tin roof, he stared from Molly to Ethan to Zach. They eyed him and then looked at one another.

Ethan recovered first. “Sophie, I want to send this guy to the hospital right now, but think a minute. Maybe he’s talking sense.”

With a pained expression, she closed her eyes and Ian stifled an urge to laugh. He’d flown to Bardill’s Ridge, convinced he’d lose her for good the second a Calvert laid a loving hand on her. Instead, her family was driving her toward him.

Ethan glared at him in a not-so-veiled warning before he went on. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d fought harder to keep my family together. Sophie, your mother was unhappy. I never wanted to hear about that. All that mattered to me was that she’d cheated on me and done it recklessly enough for you to find out.” His face reddened. “At least listen to Ian, if he’s this serious about trying to make your marriage work. I’m not asking anything more of you.” Ethan wrapped an arm around his niece. “Come on, Mol. Zach, why don’t we give these two some privacy?” He herded them toward the patrol car. “Soph, use the house. I’ll be in my shop.” He paused, his boot heel scraping through the gravel as he eyed Ian with unmistakable threat. “Where I’ll hear if you yell for me, Sophie.”

“I don’t need to talk.” Sophie looked like her father, gazing at Ian with mistrust.

“Your child’s dad disagrees.” Ethan tossed the reminder over his shoulder as he continued to assist Zach and Molly to their car. “But you shout and I’ll be with you in a heartbeat.” He nodded at Ian. “Toting my power tools.”

Ian nodded, a sign of respect. In Ethan Calvert’s place, he’d also wonder if he was handing Sophie over to the devil.

“How do we know we’re not forcing her into a bigger mistake?” Molly twisted free of her uncle’s hold. “He might not be a decent guy.”

Sophie planted herself beyond anyone’s reach. “Thank you, everyone, but don’t worry about me. I’ve made all the mistakes I plan to.” Her glance stabbed Ian. “And I’m perfectly capable of making him see sense one last time.”

Molly studied Ian’s face as if she saw all the way into his mind. Finally she turned to her cousin. “Do what you really want. Don’t just think about how good it would feel to throw him out today. Imagine how you’ll feel when you look back—and remember how I grew up. My parents pleased themselves, and I got to pick up the pieces.”

Ian had heard the stories about Molly’s father and then her mother leaving town without her.

“Let’s go, Zach.” Molly tugged her other cousin’s sleeve. Then, with second thoughts in her eyes, she hugged Sophie, who focused a dazed smile on her cousin before Molly stepped back. “And—” she pitched her voice low “—I’m available for that ‘bad girl’ talk as soon as you need it.”

Zach took his turn, going toe-to-toe with Ian. “Sophie may technically be my cousin, but she’s more like a sister. No one hurts her. No one.”

Ian had looked into Zach’s mysterious past, too. He hadn’t been unable to uncover where the sheriff had learned the martial arts he’d used to disarm a bank robber. He hadn’t gotten to the bottom of the silence Zach kept about his military training. But as he met the other man’s belligerent eyes, Molly’s advice about considering the future echoed in his head.

She was pretty smart. Hurting Sophie’s cousin Zach might feel satisfactory in the extremely short run, but a family feud and his own eventual guilt wouldn’t further his cause. “I’m glad Sophie can count on you.”

The words nearly stuck in his throat, and Zach’s expression called him a liar. It also promised to follow up, but he let Molly drag him back to his car. Still watching, he started the engine and backed out.

Only Ethan remained, reluctant now to leave them alone. He curved an arm around his daughter, ignoring her stiffness. “How do you feel?”

“I’m fine.” Exhaustion weakened her tone. She leaned away from him. “I know about pregnancy. It’s my job.”

“In theory. You’ve never been pregnant before. You’re taking care of yourself?”

“Absolutely.” Relenting, she sank against him. “I don’t want you to worry.”

“I won’t.”

His obvious lie touched an unexpected chord of loss in Ian. Sophie’s family might meddle, but they mattered to each other. He tried to imagine Ethan Calvert telling his daughter he couldn’t make her wedding because he had an appointment to pick up some specialty wood for a new project he was building.

Couldn’t possibly happen.

“Come on, Ian. Let’s get this over with.” Sophie led the way across ragged brown grass to the clapboard house that had once been her home.

“Sophie,” her father called. Urgency edged his voice.

Ian turned back with her. Ruddy color painted Ethan’s face again as the wind whipped his graying hair. He hooked his fingers into the belt loops of his jeans, turning his booted feet inward. “I know you aren’t like your mom. I got scared for you.”

To Ian’s surprise, Sophie’s expression hardened. Aiming a level nod at her father, she opened the door and waited for Ian to enter ahead of her. Feeling a little sorry for Ethan Calvert, he glanced back. With the door in a death grip and her face twisted in fierce concentration, Sophie looked like a woman in pain.

“Damn.” She let go of the doorknob with such emphasis the door flew open. “Hold on.”

He smiled at her disappearing back, but turned away so she could make up with her dad in privacy. He hunched to avoid slamming his head into the low door frame.

Inside, a wood stove stood unlit at one end of the cold living room. Family photos decorated the opposite wall. Ian resisted an urge to look for pictures of Sophie. Though he was curious, she’d think he was pretending to be an attentive husband.

A fine layer of dust covered every surface. Ian peered through the open door at the brittle grass growing unevenly around patches of dry dirt. Sophie hadn’t lived here in a long while. Her town house offered a little clutter, but plenty of welcome. This wasn’t her kind of place. Images of her growing up in an atmosphere of neglect made him uneasy.

She sprang up the single step to the threshold, hiding red-rimmed eyes the second she saw him. “Do you want coffee? Something to eat? Dad said Gran dropped off a cake yesterday.” She closed the door, and the room grew dim in the sparse light through the darkened window.

“You’re hungry?” he asked.

“I’m from the South. Our first instinct in any crisis is to feed the victims. Besides, Gran is the queen of chocolate cake bakers, and making coffee for you and Dad will give me something to do with my hands.”

And allow her to keep her back to him while she regained her composure. “What else did your father say?”

She led him down a narrow hall that seemed to shrink around them. “He thinks I waited until too late before I worried about trusting you.” They reached a kitchen as bright as the rest of the little house was dim. Wide, clean windows opened to the sun on three sides of the room. “I didn’t tell him the whole truth about what happened at the wedding.”

He tried to look indifferent. No one had ever protected him before, and he didn’t deserve it now. “I appreciate your caution.” He couldn’t seem to produce a simple thanks.

“Dad has a lot of tools that could harm a man if he got really upset.”

Ian couldn’t hold back a smile. “I’ll try not to make him any angrier.” Her wry mood made her seem more familiar. “How about you, Sophie? Are you ready to forgive me and start over?”

She turned, coffee can in hand. “I don’t forgive lies—even lies of omission—easily, and I won’t forget. Be honest with me from now on, Ian.”

From now on? He felt as if she’d punched him, but he crossed the room before he realized he’d moved. “What are you saying?” He took the coffee can because he wanted to touch her, but held back. “We stay married? We go on with our plans from before?”

“We didn’t make plans.” She loaded a filter into the coffeepot, then took the can back. “Another mistake—and not one I think you and I ever made before we knew each other.”

He nodded. “Normally, I like to know where I am, what to expect—how to minimize the risks. You made me forget the rules.”

“Same here. I’ve planned my career since—” She stopped, and he wondered what she didn’t want him to know. Her eyes glittered as if tears lay in them. Her scent, flavored by sun and mountain wind, emanated from the top of her head, enticing him. “I always ticked off the steps on my lists before I met you.” She busied herself with the coffee. “Let’s make rules this time. I stay out of trouble when I understand the boundaries.”

“What rules?” What more could he give up?

“I’m moving here.” She peeled off the coffee can’s plastic lid, still without looking at him. “I see you’re serious, but living here is part of the deal. This is a good place to raise children, safer than D.C. or Chicago. And my family is here. I want my child to know family the way I did.”

“I thought you grew up in D.C.”

“Partly. I stayed with my mom in the summers after she and Dad divorced, and I went to school at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins.” She ran water into the glass carafe. “But my best times were here with my dad and my cousins and my grandparents. I want to come home before I have the baby.”

Sacrificing his job should have been enough. “I either come with you or take a divorce and visitation?”

She nodded, finally looking at him. “I’m willing to try, but there’s no point in staying married if we aren’t going to work at it.”

When she widened her green eyes like that, he tended to believe his whole world lay in them, but he wouldn’t pretend he could let her push him around. “I’ll eventually have to take another assignment. How am I going to find work from here?”

“Exactly.” She poured water into the coffee-maker’s well and dropped the lid. “So you’ll travel as often as you do now. My family will help me with the baby.” She slid the carafe onto the warmer and switched on the machine. “You could even be killed.”

Her pragmatism almost hurt. Maybe his death would affect her more if it actually happened.

“I’ll work at our marriage, Ian. You know I want to be with you, but I let myself forget the important things before. And our baby is important—more than I am, more than you are.” She shrugged, her skin flushing as if she’d confessed too much. “Besides, my grandmother is about to retire. I asked her if I could join her at the baby farm, but she needs to know I’m staying.”

“For good?” He looked around. The kitchen was nice, but the rest of the small, stagnant house, with its close-set walls, contained only so much oxygen. “You’re asking me to surround myself with people who think I’ve ruined your life.”

“I’m forcing you to become part of my family.”

She stared at his hands, and he realized he was rubbing his finger, the one that had never set properly after his father had broken it during an argument. Ian had thrown up his hand to defend himself, and instead ended up with a lifelong memory of an idiotic argument and his father’s demand for submission.

Just like then, he had no choice now.

“They’ll be your family, too.” Surprising him, she covered his hand, including his broken finger. “Give them a chance and time.”

He pulled away and shoved both hands into his pockets. “What do you really want?”

“You can take me at face value.” Clearly puzzled, she opened a cabinet and took down a tall glass and a mug. “I told you I want to live here, partly because of your work. I want to come home, anyway, but if we’re staying together, it makes sense to be where my family can help with the baby. My job is demanding, too.”

“You obviously made the decision before you thought about staying with me. This is an ultimatum.”

“I am moving home. I—need…” She closed her mouth, making a seam of her lips as if she had to gather strength to utter the word. “Help. And that won’t change if you and I are married.”

Anger grabbed him by the throat. Only his father had ever dictated to him. He tried to say no—to suggest their child wouldn’t be the first to divide time between divorced parents.

But his own confusing childhood stood in his way. How could he consider shuttling his son or daughter between houses without trying to create a family home?

Sophie was right about the Calverts. They’d help her when he had to work. And her grandmother was growing older. A new physician at the baby farm made sense. Sophie at the baby farm made sense. Worst of all, if he refused, he’d be doing it to prove his manhood. To himself.

He’d lost all his options the day Sophie’s pregnancy test came up positive. Now he had to live with the consequences—and maybe make something good out of them. Maybe make a real family and a real home for his child.

“When do you want to move?” He stripped his tone to the bare words—no emotion. That was safer.

“As soon as I transfer my practice to another doctor. While I’m arranging that, you can pack up in Chicago—or put things in storage in case we don’t make it. Whatever you want to do.”

Her expression was innocent even as she suggested their marriage remained a trial relationship. He left the bait where she’d cast it. Time would prove him honest.

“We’ll pack you up first,” he said. “I don’t want you doing all that work on your own.”

“I know what I’m capable of physically.” She took two sliding steps down the counter, movements she was obviously repeating from the past. She lifted the lid on a round, plastic container and stared, struck dumb, at a rich chocolate cake. “That looks—” her throat worked as she swallowed “—good.”

He wanted badly to laugh, and he envied that cake her besotted admiration. She pushed it away with the tips of her fingers. He crossed to the counter and pulled it back. “Take some.” When Sophie gave in to temptation, she gave all and then some. She was irresistible.

“I wish I could say no, but I’ll eat my fair share.” Flashing a pained smile, she took down two plates and served cake on both. But she denied herself even a bite of the moist chocolate while she poured a glass of milk and a cup of coffee.

He watched, seduced. It was all part of the dance. She wanted the cake. It was in reach, but she controlled her appetites. He lifted his mug, determined to remind her of other days and other delicacies. “No more champagne?”

Her blush looked like sunburn. They’d sipped champagne from the hollows of each other’s bodies. “No more,” she said, her voice liquid. “Until we learn how to talk to each other with our mouths.”

He stared at hers, remembering the silky touch of those full lips, the delicious taste of her. “I like the way you use words already.”

She picked up his mug and her glass, leaving a splash of milk that betrayed her trembling hand. He tore a paper towel from a fat roll and wiped up the spill behind her.

“You’re the one who said we did everything backward.” She set both drinks on the table. “This time we’ll learn about each other. We can’t go on having sex until we suddenly wake up and can’t stand being in the same room.”

He frowned, understanding she wasn’t just declaring a moratorium on champagne. “Being more conventional won’t keep us from making more mistakes, and I didn’t say I hated the—”

“Sex? I want more than just sex, Ian.” She pulled back a hard wooden chair and sat, staking territory. “If you can’t live with waiting until we’re both sure we want to be married, we’d better both call lawyers.”

Anger rolled over him again, but it was about time he learned to control his emotions around Sophie. “Go softly. I know you think I tricked you into this marriage, but playing house won’t help us. I want a wife for myself and a mother for my son.”

“Or daughter,” she said. “And I have to know we can be more than lovers.”

“I tried to hide cold feet because I was afraid I’m the worst thing that could happen to you.” Maybe she’d heard all the evidence she needed, but her low opinion of him still hurt. “You meant more to me than the time we spent in bed, but at least it was a connection.”

She glared at him. “I don’t trust the way we felt.”

It was useless to argue. “How long do you see us living as housemates?”

“I’m trying to be your wife.” She lifted her chin. “Because you cared enough to quit your job. And… I didn’t…” She stopped, her gaze wavering with doubt, but then she seemed to gather strength. “I didn’t think about our baby when I left you.” She breathed as hard as if she’d run a couple of marathons. “My mom never seemed to realize I was as important as her dates, and I always thought if I had children, I’d put them first.”

“You aren’t your mother. You aren’t anyone but you.”

“Don’t try to make me feel better. I don’t need comfort. I only want to hear the promises you can keep.”

She sounded as if he’d lied to her all along, instead of making one nearly catastrophic slip. “Why’d you agree to marry me in the first place? Don’t you respect me at all?”

“This isn’t a matter of respect.” She finally speared a bite of cake, but her lust for chocolate had lost its effect on him. “You say you want to be with me, but you could meet someone you really care for. I want to know where I stand with you at all times.”

His wife had funny ideas about marriage. “Why would I marry you and keep my options open for another woman?”

She stared until all he could see was the open, earnest expression that had rendered him stupid in her grandfather’s apple orchard last fall. “I don’t seem to make sense anymore.” She opened her mouth. The fork and the piece of cake slid between her moist red lips.

Ian gripped the sides of his chair, his muscles shaking with his effort at control. He wanted to pull her onto this table and touch her until she turned back into the woman he’d known.

At last she swallowed her bite. “I told you what I need. Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

“I’m not crazy about rules, but I’m afraid I’ll lose you if I argue.”

“You’re afraid you’ll lose the baby.”

A mixture of temper and frustration with her absolute blindness pushed him. “If that’s the way you want it. Would you have married me if you weren’t pregnant?”

Her game face cracked, and she shook her head from side to side, pain bruising her eyes. Her blond hair tangled in messy strands over her shoulders.

“I believed we’d make it work until I heard you tell Jock you had no choice about marrying me.” She flattened her hands on either side of her plate. “Who wants to hear on her wedding day that she was an entry in the groom’s to-do list?”

Anguish threaded her voice and drew him to his knees at her side. He wrapped his arms around her, elbowing the plate out of his way. “I never meant what you heard. I was afraid I’d hurt you, but if I could take it back, I would.” He pressed his lips to her forehead, breathing in her sexy, clean scent, sliding his mouth over her lustrous hair. “I don’t talk like this. I’ve never let anyone mean so much to me that I can’t walk away, but, Sophie, I’m trying to walk toward you, if you’ll just let me.”

She dashed tears from her eyes and pried her damp hair away from her cheeks. She looked weary down to the fine bones of her strained face.

He finally understood her fear. She was trying to protect herself and their child, and she believed he’d betrayed her.

“You’re worth whatever I have to do,” he said.

Her mouth was straight and thin, and the loss of joy she’d worn back in that orchard wounded him. “I’ve never trusted anyone who lied to me the first time.”

He stroked her shoulder and then passed her the glass of milk. “I won’t hide anything from you again.”

“Good.” She looked into the glass as if she was reading a murky crystal ball and then set it down. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Immediately he rose, his hands clenched. He hated feeling helpless. “What can I do?”

“Wait here and don’t bust into the bathroom to help.”

He nodded as she stood, growing paler by the second. All the life in this small house seemed to follow her when she left the kitchen.

Mindful of his promise to stay out, he washed their dishes. He was drying the last fork when Ethan Calvert knocked briefly and entered the house.

“Soph?”

“Back there.” Ian assumed she didn’t want her father’s help either. “You should probably wait.”

Ethan searched him suspiciously. “What’d you do now?”

He couldn’t blame the man. “She’s in the bathroom. Morning sickness.”

Ethan grabbed the back of the nearest chair. “Let me promise again I will kill you if you hurt my daughter. And if you get yourself killed and leave her stranded with a child, I’m still coming after you.”

Ian tried not to laugh. Ethan was serious, and Sophie would be better off if he and her father got along. “I was trying to take care of her when I married her.”

“I wouldn’t say that too loudly.” Ethan glanced over his shoulder. “She’s pissed off with you for doing right by her.”

“I know.”

“Doing the right thing isn’t enough.” Ethan released the chair. Out of habit, Ian kept an eye on his restless, angry hands. “My daughter deserves better.”

“I know.” And he’d begged forgiveness in every humiliating way he could think of. Ian wanted to ask Ethan what made Sophie so unwilling to offer a second chance. Just in time, he remembered Sophie was his wife, not a subject who’d hired him to protect her. Grilling her father about her personality wasn’t permissible. “I’m serious about our marriage and this baby.”

“I remember what her mother’s and my divorce did to her, and I don’t want her to feel responsible for creating a long-distance relationship between her child and you if she cared enough to marry you in the first place.” Ethan came around the table, taking the dish towel from Ian’s hand. “But I’ll be watching you, and I’m not forgiving like Sophie.”

Forgiving? Sophie? Not even her father knew her. “You have nothing to worry about, sir.”

“Why are you worried, Dad?”

Ian turned, and Ethan jumped guiltily.

“Dad, were you threatening my husband?”

“Absolutely,” Ethan said.

She rolled her eyes. Her smile trembled in a pale face, but she met Ian’s gaze with a hint of her old joy. “He’s probably serious.”

“I assume he is.”

She went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. “I’ve held enough of a grudge for both of us, Dad.”

Ethan moved past Ian to put his arm around her. “Take the time to figure out what you feel for him.”

She wrenched the cap off the bottle and stared at Ian as she sipped. He felt like a patient she suspected of malingering. Turning, she rubbed her hand across her belly, provoking a surge of possessiveness that startled him. “Anger is no tool for starting a family.”

Ian bit the inside of his cheek. He could have pointed out her mistaken assumptions about his motives. But with both Calverts staring at him as if he’d stolen a family heirloom, it seemed smarter to just shut up.

CHAPTER FOUR

A MONTH LATER Sophie waited while Gran unlocked the small cabin she and Ian were to share on the grounds of The Mom’s Place. A less anxious woman might have called the cabin her home, but Sophie felt like running every time she looked at the moving van they’d rented. Their stuff intermingled in there as if they were any normal married couple.

And Gran was no help with her delight in the show. “Your husband’s no coward.”

With a sense of foreboding, Sophie followed her glance along the gravel driveway, which was overrun by unruly weeds. Ian carried a box bulging with dishes around the van just in time to meet a throng of pregnant women laughing together on their morning stroll up Bardill’s Ridge. As they parted to walk around him, their voices floated on the light breeze, and Ian froze. He’d never wavered since that day at her father’s house, but the women, with their rounded bellies, surging hormones and burgeoning life, turned him to stone.

“You have to give him points for courage,” Gran said.

“Because he’s terrified?” A deep flood of relief actually thinned Sophie’s voice. Ian’s postreconciliation conviction had begun to rub her the wrong way, as if she was slacking because she couldn’t stop worrying about their future.

“Because he agreed to take this cabin, anyway. Living up here is scary stuff for an anxious father-to-be.”

Sophie could afford to laugh since Ian’s look of near panic made her feel less alone. “Gran, he makes his living walking in front of bullets.”

“He’s never had to raise any of those bullets to be responsible citizens.” Gran unlocked the door and ushered her inside. “How did this happen to you, anyway? I assume you know about the birds and the bees?”

As far as Sophie could tell, they’d been rough with a condom in their haste. Gran wouldn’t want to hear about that, and it wasn’t information she felt comfortable sharing. “A mistake,” she said. “Are you sure you won’t need this place for a guest?”

“Let me think…reserve a cabin for a possible guest, or give it to my new partner, who’s willing to live on site with our patients—or patrons, as the accountant calls them.” Gran switched on a light in the cabin’s entrance. “I say welcome home.”

Behind them, Ian stumbled over the threshold. Sophie caught the sides of the box to steady him.

“Everyone in this place is…” He broke off, looking from her to Gran as if one of them might call on her dad and his power tools.

“Pregnant?” Sophie said. “That’s the point. It’s a retreat for women whose husbands have gone away or women who need a break.”

“Or want to be pampered,” Gran said. “Or for the girls who have no other place to go.”

“I saw a group of teenage girls collecting leaves down by the bridge. I couldn’t believe they were old enough to date, much less have children.” Ian hoisted the box higher. “And I’d like a few minutes with the guys who dumped them.”

Sophie admired his righteous anger until she remembered he’d married her out of the same sense of duty. She couldn’t afford to dwell on doubts that made her feel as if she was doing the wrong thing, so she forced them from her mind. “It’s not just the guys,” she said. “Those girls have parents, too. Parents who decided not to take care of them. Thank God they have Gran.” She hugged her grandmother and then turned her husband toward the back of the cabin. “I think the kitchen is that way, Ian.” She pointed down the hall. “Can we take a look at the bedrooms, Gran?”

“I’ll bring up the beds next,” Ian said. “You could use a nap.”

She intended to do no such thing, but her gran’s approving nod kept her from arguing. She smiled at both of them as car doors slamming outside made them all turn toward the yard. A line of men trooped up the hill.

“Zach and Dad and Grandpa.” Wouldn’t you know? Their first day, and already the menfolk had to make sure Ian was treating her right. Sophie almost touched him for comfort, but stopped just before her fingers reached his forearm. He might not understand her family well enough to know he was on probation. All the better for him if she left him in the dark. She curled her hand into a loose fist and tapped the box. “They’ll help you unload. Grandpa loves to direct traffic.”

“Another pushy Calvert.” Ian crooked a smile at Gran. “Sorry. I was trying to tease Sophie.”

Gran patted his shoulder with a wicked grin. “You’ll say a lot worse by the time my husband moves you in to his satisfaction.”

Ian’s startled gaze made Sophie laugh again. He turned to her with a glance that reminded her of before—back when they were only having fun. Like a creature of habit, she considered pulling the box of dishes out of his hands so she could throw herself into his arms. Fortunately, the baby nudged her, just at belly button level, and she remembered her new, sober resolutions. She climbed the stairs to safety.

On the landing three doors opened off a narrow hall. She peered into each one. Two bedrooms and a bathroom. Sophie slid her hand beneath her hair and pulled it away from her nape. Two bedrooms. They needed three. At least they would after the baby came.

She couldn’t remember which cabins up here had three bedrooms. She glanced down the stairs. How could she complain? The house came rent free from her grandmother and the resort’s board. They’d cleaned it for her and Ian. The gold hardwood floors smelled of polish. The walls reeked of fresh paint.

Her heart beat faster as she crossed the master bedroom and opened the closet door. A walk-in might be large enough to turn into a nursery. But not this one, built in the late fifties. It was dark and small and, thank heavens, smelled of paint, rather than the musty scent of long disuse.

She backed out, hearing Gran climb the stairs. By the time the baby came in another thirteen weeks, she and Ian might be sharing a room, anyway, so the shortage of bedrooms wouldn’t matter.

The mere suggestion of trusting him that much nearly choked her. It might be wiser to make sure they had another room if they needed it. She hurried back to the hall to meet her new boss. “Where’s the third bedroom?”

Confusion clouded Gran’s eyes. “There are only two.”

“We need three.”

“Three?” Gran cocked her head and hurtled to the right conclusion. “One for you, one for Ian and one for the baby.”

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