“I’ve Seen You In The Morning, Claire,”

Nick rallied quickly. “Lots of times, if you’ll recall.”

“More than a decade ago,” Claire hastened to add.

“Yeah, and you look even better now than you did then.”

“Oh, right,” Claire remarked. But she couldn’t stop the warm fizzle of heat that wandered through her entire body at his words, at his look. Gee, waking up every morning to have a man like that give you a look like that… Well, it was certainly something a woman could get used to, Claire thought.

Of course, she shouldn’t get used to it.

She couldn’t get used to it.

She wouldn’t get used to it.

Dear Reader,

Please join us in celebrating Silhouette’s 20th anniversary in 2000! We promise to deliver—all year—passionate, powerful, provocative love stories from your favorite Desire authors!

This January, look for bestselling author Leanne Banks’s first MAN OF THE MONTH with Her Forever Man. Watch sparks fly when irresistibly rugged ranch owner Brock Logan comes face-to-face with his new partner, the fiery Felicity Chambeau, in the first book of Leanne’s brand-new miniseries LONE STAR FAMILIES: THE LOGANS.

Desire is pleased to continue the Silhouette cross-line continuity ROYALLY WED with The Pregnant Princess by favorite author Anne Marie Winston. After a night of torrid passion with a stranger, a beautiful princess ends up pregnant…and seeks out the father of her child.

Elizabeth Bevarly returns to Desire with her immensely popular miniseries FROM HERE TO MATERNITY with Dr. Mommy, about a couple reunited by a baby left on a doorstep. Hard Lovin’ Man, another of Peggy Moreland’s TEXAS BRIDES, captures the intensity of falling in love when a cowgirl gives her heart to a sweet-talkin’, hard-lovin’ hunk. Cathleen Galitz delivers a compelling marriage-of-convenience tale in The Cowboy Takes a Bride, in the series THE BRIDAL BID. And Sheri WhiteFeather offers another provocative Native American hero in Skyler Hawk: Lone Brave.

Help us celebrate 20 years of great romantic fiction from Silhouette by indulging yourself with all six delectably sensual Desire titles each and every month during this special year!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Dr. Mummy
Elizabeth Bevarly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For David,

Slayer of icky bugs,

Finder of lost computer files,

Stay-at-home dad,

Perfect husband.

Thanks, Sweetie.

ELIZABETH BEVARLY

is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older-model forty-two-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates, people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband have a five-year-old son, Eli.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

One

Dick Clark had just announced that there was less than five minutes left to this New Year’s Rockin’ Eve when Dr. Claire Wainwright heard the chime of her front doorbell erupt downstairs. Ignoring the interruption—doubtless it was just some New Year’s reveler playing a joke, because heaven knew she wasn’t expecting anyone—she noted that Dick, as always, looked suave and cheerful and eternally young. And she tried not to dwell on the fact that she herself felt…well, not. Not suave. Not cheerful. Not eternally young.

Au contraire, Claire.

When the doorbell chimed again, she exhaled an errant sigh and waited to see if maybe, possibly, perchance, hopefully, she had only imagined the doleful, lonely sounds of that single, solitary dingdong. Because—speaking of doleful and lonely—she had just settled into bed with a flute of flat-going champagne, had just opened the latest issue of JAMA to an article about C-sections and had just gotten as comfortable as she was likely to be in this lifetime. And—speaking of single and solitary—she was home alone. On New Year’s Eve. Again.

Of course—speaking of dingdong—she could have accepted that one offer of a New Year’s Eve date that she had received, but noooo…

Claire still wasn’t sure what had possessed her to turn down Evan Duran’s invitation to spend the evening with him at his cottage in Cape May. It would have been a lovely, lovely event, she told herself now. Snowy moonlight on the ocean, a fire crackling merrily in the hearth, lobster and pâté and champagne every bit as good as what she’d bought for her own solitary celebration.

Of course, the evening would have inevitably stretched into the night, she thought further. And, of course, Evan would have been there, too. Which, now that she thought about it, was doubtless why she had declined his offer.

Nevertheless, he was a handsome, intelligent, decent guy, she reminded herself, a man who had a lot of ambition and drive. He was exactly the kind of man who should interest her, the kind of man with whom she should spend the rest of her life. She didn’t know why she found him so unappealing. There was just nothing there—no spark, no heat, no magic.

The doorbell chimed a third time from way downstairs, and Claire told herself it would be pointless to try to ignore it any longer. Still, she was more than a little puzzled by who might be summoning her at such an hour on such a night. Shoving back the plush, pale blue comforter, she ran one hand through her straight, black, shoulder-length hair, smoothed the other over her amethyst-colored silk pajamas, then tucked her feet into the slippers by her bed. She wasn’t working, obviously, but that didn’t mean she was free to do as she pleased with her time off. An OB-GYN’s work was never done, Claire knew, and babies didn’t exactly come on schedule.

But she wasn’t accustomed to having her patients show up at her house in Haddonfield, either. If an expectant mom found herself on the brink of delivery, she usually went to Seton General Hospital in neighboring Cherry Hill. If Claire wasn’t on call—and tonight, she wasn’t—then one of the other four doctors with whom she was in practice delivered the baby. All of her patients knew that. And it was a system that worked well.

Except when people rang her doorbell at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Unable to fully shake her wariness, she thrust her arms through the sleeves of the tailored silk robe that matched her tailored silk pajamas, then made her way down the long hallway and curving staircase of the roomy, exuberant Tudor she had bought nearly a year ago. Still not quite over the fear of the dark she’d had when she was a child, Claire kept night-lights placed strategically throughout the house, so she found her way now with little trouble. But the fine antique furnishings that were so posh and elegant in daylight seemed looming and a bit overwhelming in the dark. With a nervous gesture, she cinched the belt of her robe a bit tighter.

The doorbell chimed again as her foot hit the thick Persian rug at the bottom of the stairs, in the expansive foyer. Through the stained-glass panes of the front door across from her, Claire made out the silhouette of someone who appeared to be about the same stature and height as she—five-foot-five. In low heels. On a good day.

In the living room to the left of the front door, beyond the beveled bay windows overlooking her front lawn, she noted that the snow that had begun earlier as a soft, powdery cascade had ripened into a full-blown storm. Fat wet flakes blew in fierce sideways slants, buffeting the house with a rattling wind that virtually shook the place. Claire shuddered, even though it was plenty warm inside, and she wondered again what would bring someone to her front door on such a night.

She turned in that direction again, then hesitated when she realized the silhouette had disappeared. Funny, that. Or perhaps not. Maybe whoever had rung the bell had been a bit tipsy, and had finally discovered they had the wrong house. Maybe they had left in embarrassment before being discovered.

Or maybe they hadn’t.

Just to be certain, Claire continued on to the front door and peeked through one of the uncolored panes on the side. But through the flawed, crackled glass, she saw only a swirl of white snow dancing haphazardly in the pale yellow glow of her porch light. She was about to turn away when her gaze lit on a figure at the foot of her driveway.

There was indeed someone out there, someone whose attention was focused fully on Claire as she peeked outside. Someone who, she noted further, had left tracks in the nearly six inches of snow that had accumulated on the walk between the driveway and her front door since she’d paid her neighbor’s teenager to shovel it earlier that afternoon.

A ripple of apprehension shimmied up Claire’s spine at the sight of the other person, and she immediately swept her hand over the panel of switches on the wall to her right. Instantly the front yard was flooded with light—from the lamp by the driveway, the lights over the garage and a row of lanterns lining the landscaped walk and drive.

In that brief moment, Claire saw that the person outside appeared to be a young woman wearing a black jacket and black beret, with long blond hair cascading over her shoulders. But as soon as the exterior lights flashed on, the young woman turned and fled across the street, stumbling only once in the heavy snow. There she slowed, evidently feeling safer under cover of darkness. But she turned to walk slowly backward and continued to gaze at Claire’s house, as if she were hesitant to leave.

Very odd, Claire thought. And not a little troubling.

She was trying to decide whether or not the episode warranted calling the police—oh, surely not—when she realized there was something else outside, too. A large, oval, handled basket sat atop the snow at the foot of the creek-stone steps leading to the front door, its contents already dusted liberally with snow. Contents that appeared to be…laundry?

Why would someone leave a basket of laundry on her doorstep on New Year’s Eve? Claire wondered. That made no sense at all. She had lived in South Jersey since her freshman year of high school, and although there were certainly some interesting traditions indigenous to this part of the country, leaving laundry on someone’s doorstep to celebrate the new year wasn’t one of them.

Come to think of it, that wasn’t a tradition in any of the dozens of cultures Claire had called home at one time or another, growing up as she had, the daughter of doctors who were serving as Peace Corps volunteers.

She was still wracking her brain for some explanation when, to her surprise and horror, the bundle of fabric inside the basket moved, and a tiny, mittened fist poked itself free of the blanket surrounding it. Claire realized then that the basket contained, not laundry, but a baby.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…

With two swift gestures, she freed the chain and dead bolt on the front door, then tugged it open wide and stepped outside, frantically searching the opposite side of the street for the young woman who had stood on her driveway only a moment before. Sure enough, the black-clad figure was there, halfway down the block now, staring back at the house. But when she saw Claire come outside, saw her descend the stairs toward the basket, the woman turned and fled with all her might, as if the hounds of hell were following her.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…

This couldn’t be happening, Claire thought. Surely she was dreaming. Surely this was some kind of joke. Some really sick, twisted kind of joke, but a joke nonetheless. Surely her colleagues at the hospital—the ones who knew how she felt about children—would jump out of the shrubbery anytime now, and they’d all have a good, if sick and twisted, laugh at her expense.

Surely.

Then Claire heard a small, soft sound, like the coo of a dove, and gazed down at the basket again. This time, when the fabric moved, she saw a pair of pale blue eyes peeking out from beneath the cuff of a pink knit cap. For a few seconds, she only gazed at those eyes and shook her head in disbelief. Then a particularly fat, particularly wet snowflake smacked her in the eye. She realized then that her toes were freezing in their scant satin slippers, and that her warm silk pajamas had turned icy as they clung to her skin.

And she realized that this wasn’t a joke, sick and twisted or otherwise. So she bent down and looped her arm through the two handles on the basket and gingerly lifted it. Then, stepping carefully over the piles of snow on her front steps, she carried the baby back into the house, closing and bolting the door behind her.

Don’t panic, she instructed herself as, heart racing, limbs trembling, she leaned back against the front door and wondered what to do—besides panic.

Think, Claire. Think. Breathe, relax and think.

But the muddled thoughts tumbling through her brain scattered hastily when the baby in the basket began to make noise again. Nothing alarming, just some quiet little murmurs of…of…of baby noise, sounds that gave her the impression that the child was, for the moment, content. That, however, could change anytime, she told herself. So she’d better figure out what on earth she was going to do.

Police, she thought. Yeah, that’s it. She should call the police. They’d know how to treat a situation like this. Certainly better than she would. Although she was an OB-GYN, she wasn’t too familiar with babies. Not once they’d entered the world, anyway. That, of course, was where the pediatricians stepped in. And thank God for that. Claire was fascinated by the generation and growth of life inside the womb. But once those little nippers came out, well… She was grateful to be able to wash her hands of them. Literally.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like children. They were just a completely alien life force, as far as she was concerned. She’d been an only child of two only children, so she hadn’t been exposed to any babies growing up. And because she and her parents had moved around a lot, to cultures that changed as quickly as their residences did, Claire had never really learned to relate to other children for any length of time. She’d been shy and anxious when she’d come to new communities, and as a result, she’d remained fairly solitary. She’d just never much abided children. Not even when she was a child herself.

And now here she was, face-to-face with a baby—a baby!—and she had no idea what to do. Okay, of course, she knew the basics, that they needed to be fed and diapered and kept warm. Which, now that she thought about it, might be a good reason to panic, because she had neither baby food nor diapers in her house. Then again, the basket on her arm was a bit larger and heavier than seemed necessary for one baby. Could be that whomever had abandoned the little tyke had at least properly provided for it.

For the time being, anyway, she added to herself, swallowing the panic that began to rise yet again.

She forced herself to move to the overstuffed couch on the other side of the living room, then switched on the standing Tiffany lamp beside it and settled the basket carefully down between two big tapestry pillows. Nudging aside the bulk of blankets in which the baby had been swaddled—okay, so the keeping warm part would be no problem—Claire found, in addition to the pudgy infant, about three dozen diapers, a can of powdered formula, four small bottles, an assortment of baby food in jars and five changes of clothes, all pink.

Congratulations, Claire. It’s a girl.

“Oh, boy,” she muttered to no one in particular.

Until now she had been trying to avoid actually looking at the baby, but when the infant began to chatter incoherently again, Claire had no choice but to turn her attention to the little cherub. She had no idea how old the tiny thing was, but the baby was smiling and attentive and making a lot of noise, so she must be several months old, anyway. As Claire watched, the infant’s mouth formed a near-perfect O, and she released a long, lusty coo. Then she laughed, as if she’d just made a wonderful joke, and for a moment—just a moment—Claire felt sort of, kind of…warm inside, and she smiled back.

Then she remembered she had no idea how to care for this child and that ripple of panic began to surge up inside her again.

“Police,” she whispered aloud, as if needing an audible reminder. Surely the police could send someone over right away, someone who knew what to do with abandoned babies, someone who could see to this particular baby’s needs better than Claire could herself. Because although there were a lot of things in her life about which she felt uncertain, of one thing she was absolutely sure. She was in no way cut out to be a mother. Nuh-uh. No way. No how.

As if she needed to be reassured of that fact—which, of course, she didn’t—when she reached in to lift the baby out of the basket, it immediately began to howl. Loudly. Lustily. Lengthily.

Okay, Claire. You can panic now.

Oh, boy, she thought. It was going to be a long night.

Nick Campisano was just leaving his favorite liquor store with a six-pack of his favorite brew when his pager went off.

Great, he thought. He should have realized there was no way he’d be allowed to enjoy what was left of New Year’s Eve. Hey, he hadn’t been allowed to enjoy Christmas Eve, had he? Or Christmas, either. Or Thanksgiving, for that matter. Or even Halloween, dammit. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been allowed to have an entire holiday off at all. So why should tonight be any different?

Because he needed a break, dammit—that was why. He needed a little time to step back and reevaluate, and try to remember why he’d become a cop in the first place. Something about wanting to make a difference, he recalled from some vague, dark, corner of his mind. Something about wanting to be a role model for kids who didn’t have any in their lives. Something about wanting to help people—help kids—get themselves straight and stay that way.

Yeah, right, he thought now. As a narcotics detective, all he seemed to succeed in doing lately was watch the problem get worse. Too many kids—good kids, at that—were taking drugs, selling drugs, dying from drugs. Oh, yeah. Nick had made a really big difference for them.

And tonight—like every other night—he needed some time to unwind and relax, some time to think about life. Some time to help him remember what living his life was all about. Yeah, life, he echoed derisively to himself. He was gonna have to see about getting himself one of those real soon. All work and no play was making Nick a very cranky boy.

He sighed with resignation when he noted the number on his pager, then made his way slowly back to his big—and very dated—Jeep Wagoneer, where he’d left his cell phone for the few minutes he’d be inside Cavanaugh’s Liquors. Sure enough, the word Called appeared in the readout. Clearing it, Nick punched in the number he’d been instructed to return—the number of his workplace—and after hearing a feminine voice greet him blandly at the other end of the line, he snarled, “Campisano. Whaddaya want?”

“Woooo, those are just the words a woman wants to hear in the middle of the night from a big, strong man like you,” the sultry voice at the other end of the line said, punctuating the observation with a wry chuckle.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Nick said—even if it was without a trace of apology. Suzanne Skolnik was, after all, his boss, but she wasn’t so far removed that he couldn’t voice his irritation at being summoned during his off-hours. “Whaddaya want?”

“Where are you?” she asked without preamble.

“Halfway home. Soon I’ll be all the way home,” he added pointedly. “Why?”

But instead of answering his question, she said, “Define ‘halfway home.”’

Nick growled under his breath. This didn’t sound good. “Cavanaugh’s Liquors on Route 30,” he told her. Then he asked again, “Why?”

“So you’re skirting the wilds of Haddonfield, right?”

Nick growled again. “Yeah. Why?”

“And you got four-wheel drive in that big bucket of yours, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

But he still didn’t get a response to the one question he really wanted answered. Not a response that he liked anyway. Because his superior asked another question of her own. “You know a lot about kids, don’t you, Nick?”

As questions went, it wasn’t that unusual a one for a man in his line of work to hear. “I know enough,” he said. “Why?”

“Don’t you got, like, a lot of nieces and nephews?”

“Eighteen, last count,” he replied. “Why?”

“That’s right,” Lieutenant Skolnik said thoughtfully. “Your sister Angie just dropped two last month, didn’t she?”

Nick was fast losing patience with this interrogation. Not just because he seldom indulged in chitchat with his boss, but because he was cold, and he was tired, and the snow was coming down harder and at least two of the six bottles of Sam Adams in the seat next to him were calling his name.

“Uh, no offense, Lieutenant,” he said slowly, “but, um…I’d appreciate it if you could tell me just where the hell this line of questioning is going.”

“I need you to answer a call for me in Haddonfield,” she said finally.

“Oh, come on,” he pleaded, even though he knew it was pointless to try. “I just pulled a double shift, and I haven’t had a day off in two weeks. I’m supposed to have three days off solid. You promised, and I earned it.”

“I know, Nick, and I’m really sorry,” she said, her voice conveying her genuine apology. “But you’re the only one who can take care of this.”

He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. Then aloud he said, “Define ‘this.”’

“We got a report of an abandoned baby in Haddonfield,” she told him. “And we got nobody in the area who can respond right now. Since you just left here twenty minutes ago, and since I know your proclivities regarding Cavanaugh’s,” she added parenthetically, “I figured I could catch you in the area.”

Before he could object further, she gave him the exact address, and Nick whistled low. “That’s a pretty primo rent district. Who’d be abandoning a baby there?”

Wryly his lieutenant replied, “Gee, just a shot in the dark here, but…maybe somebody who can’t take care of it and wants it to have a better life?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Even if it means breaking the law to get it?”

“Yeah, well, believe it or not, Nick, there are some people out there who hold the laws of our great state in contempt. I know that comes as a shock to a guy like you, but…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “So, why do I get the assignment? I kinda had other plans.”

Not that those plans consisted of anything major, he conceded to himself. Just a little sleeping and eating and watching what was left of Saturday Night Dead with Stellaaaa—not necessarily in that order. But there was no reason his lieutenant had to know that.

“You get the job,” she told him, “because, like I said, between the New Year’s revelers and the snow, we can’t get anybody else out there tonight. And nobody at Social Services is answering the phone right now. Dispatch says the woman who made the report sounds pretty frantic. Says she can’t take care of the baby. So somebody’s gotta go get that kid. You’re a couple miles away. You got four-wheel drive. You can swing by there and take care of it and, even with the paperwork, be home by morning. Then, I promise you, you can have four days. Solid.”

Being home by morning, Nick thought, was highly debatable. Not only was morning barely seven hours away, but the way the snow was coming down, it wouldn’t be long before even four-wheel drive would be totally ineffective. Still, it would be nice to get an extra day off out of this. And he was only a couple of miles away. And he did kind of have a soft spot for kids.

Dammit.

“All right, all right,” he relented, however reluctantly. “I’ll take care of it as fast as I can. But those four days you promised? I better get every last one of ’em. Without being bothered once.”

“You got my word, Nick,” Lieutenant Skolnick promised. “Scout’s honor.”

He told himself not to dwell on the fact that Suzanne Skolnik seemed in no way the Scout type, scribbled down the particulars of the reported abandonment, then ground the Wagoneer to life. Was it his imagination, or had the already fierce snowfall doubled in severity in the few minutes he’d spent on the phone? He shook the thought off. No problem. His Jeep was more than reliable, and he had little trouble maneuvering it over the snow and slush. In no time at all—well, not much time at all—Nick rolled to a halt in the driveway of the house to which he’d been directed.

Nice piece of real estate, he thought. Must have set the owners back a pretty penny, but then, people who lived in neighborhoods like this one usually didn’t have to worry too much about paying the bills. The place was lit up outside like a Christmas tree, and Nick could tell that when it wasn’t snowing like a big dog, it was probably a real showplace, carefully landscaped and tended. A big two-story monstrosity, it had the look of English aristocracy about it, with bay windows leaded in a diamond pattern, and stained glass all around the front door. It was the kind of place that was perfectly suited for big garden parties and intimate tea socials.

In other words, it was about as far removed from Nick’s own personal reality as it could possibly be.

As a South Jersey boy, born and bred, he was blue-collar in the extreme. And damned proud of it, too. His father had been a cop, just like his father’s father had been, and his father’s father’s father before that. All the Campisanos were either in law enforcement or fire fighting, and all the Gianellis, on his mom’s side, worked in the Gianelli bakery. That’s where Nick’s mom had invariably been while he was growing up—when she wasn’t seeing to the needs of her six kids.

Nick chuckled in spite of himself as he gazed at the big house before him. His family sure could have used that much square footage when he was growing up, but chances were the occupants of this house probably didn’t have any kids at all. At most, they probably only claimed one or two. He’d shared a small bedroom with his two brothers the whole time he was growing up, and his three sisters had made do with another. The little brick bungalow in Gloucester City had only had one bathroom for the longest time, until his father and his uncle Leo had installed another one in the basement when the Campisano children started turning into Campisano teenagers.

What a luxury that had been, he recalled now with a fond smile. Two bathrooms. No waiting. Not beyond twenty or thirty minutes, anyway.

Still, Nick wouldn’t change a thing about his upbringing. Even though there had never been a dime to spare, and even though he and his brothers and sisters had all gone to work in one capacity or another when they turned sixteen, he’d never felt as though he lacked anything in life. The Campisanos were a close-knit bunch to this day, and it was no doubt because they’d learned to share and compromise at an early age.

Nick wouldn’t have it any other way. There was nothing in the world, he knew, that was more important than family. Nothing.

He glanced down at the sheet of paper where he’d scrawled the information Lieutenant Skolnik had given him about the abandoned baby. The dispatcher had done her best to record the particulars accurately, but the woman calling in had obviously been more than a little upset, and the baby had evidently been squalling like a demon seed right next to the phone. Dr. Carrie Wayne was what the woman’s name was. Nick just hoped this was the right house. Focusing on the big Tudor again, he decided that whatever kind of doctor she was, she must be damned good at it.

He shoved open the driver’s side door, pushing hard against an especially brutal gust of wind, then he heaved himself out into the storm. The snow easily covered his heavy hiking boots—it must be almost a foot deep by now. He tugged up the zipper on his navy blue, down-filled parka, stuffed his hands into his heavy leather gloves and slung his hood up over his head. No sense courting pneumonia on top of too much work, he thought. Hey, he intended to enjoy those four days off he had coming.

By the time he trudged his way to the front door, he was huffing and puffing with the effort it had taken to cover the short distance, thanks to the wind and snow. And he was thinking that he’d better get this over with quick if he had any hope of finishing by morning. He rapped his fist hard against the wooden part of the front door, then thought better of that and jabbed the doorbell twice. Then he took a step backward to wait. The howling of a baby greeted him from the other side—yep, it was the right house, all right—and then someone pulled the door inward. Nick opened his mouth to say something in greeting.

Opened it to say something in greeting, but not one single word came out.

Because once he saw who stood on the other side of that door, he couldn’t speak at all. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. All he could do was stare at the black-haired, blue-eyed woman standing there, and remember how soft and fragrant was every single curve and valley that lay beneath those shiny purple pajamas she had on.

Not Dr. Carrie Wayne, he thought inanely. Dr. Claire Wainwright. As if he needed anything else to make this night more pointless and irritating than it already promised to be.

Two

The baby had been crying off and on ever since Claire had picked her up, but she’d gone absolutely ballistic at the sound of the doorbell. Yet even with a baby screeching in her ear, the moment Claire opened the door and saw Nick Campisano standing on the other side, she heard nothing but the roar of her blood rushing through her body.

Nick. God. Of all the people who could have shown up in response to her call, why did it have to be him?

Oh, sure, she knew he was a cop, and that he worked and lived within twenty minutes or so of her house. But never in her wildest dreams had it occurred to her that when she called the police to report an abandoned baby, Nick would be the one who’d show up to respond.

Why would they send a narcotics detective? she wondered. And if they did send a narcotics detective, then why did it have to be the one who’d taken her virginity more than fifteen years ago?

Oh, come on, Claire, she immediately chastised herself. He didn’t exactly take your virginity, did he? You pretty much wrapped it up with a big bow and gave it to him.

She shoved the reminder away before it could become a memory, and forced herself to step backward into the house. Evidently needing no further invitation than that, Nick strode easily into the foyer, and she hastily closed the door behind him. She watched in silence—well, she was silent, anyway, even if the baby was still howling—as he shoved the hood back from his head and tugged off his gloves, his gaze never wavering from hers as he completed the actions. And she noted, too, that in the three years that had passed since she’d last seen him, Nick’s dark hair had begun to go a bit gray.

That was the only sign of change on him, though. And even at that, there were merely a few brave threads of silver that had dared to appear in his coal-black hair. The rest of him looked pretty much the same as it had the last time she’d seen him—appealingly rugged, startlingly handsome, overwhelmingly self-assured. And big. Really, really big. How could she have forgotten the fact that he towered over her so? Even when she’d last seen him, when she was wearing high heels, his size had intimidated her.

Though it was funny, now that she thought about it—he’d never intimidated her when they’d been together. It had only been since they’d split up after college that Nick had seemed to become so…awesome.

Again she remembered their last encounter—what an awkward situation that had been. They’d bumped into each other at a wedding, of all places. And it had just been too painful a reminder of the way she’d turned down his proposal of marriage all those years ago.

He seemed to be thinking about those times, too, she noted, because his dark eyes were wary, his posture stiff and his mouth—that incredibly sexy, wholly masculine mouth—was turned down in a frown. Which was just as well, really. Because she recalled all too well just how positively breathtaking Nick Campisano could be when he smiled. Nick’s smile…

She couldn’t quite bite back a sigh at the memories that washed over her in a warm, wonderful wave. Nick’s smile had always made everything in the world seem all right. It had also always brought her to her knees.

“Claire,” he said carefully by way of a greeting, his voice reflecting no emotion whatsoever.

In spite of that, Claire nearly melted as quickly as the snow that was pooling around his big hiking boots. Oh, wow, she thought. Just the sound of her name uttered in his soft, velvety voice made the hairs at the back of her neck leap to life. Anything else he said, she could tell already, would rouse the rest of her body parts just as thoroughly, just as quickly.

“Nick,” she managed to reply, albeit cautiously. But she was inordinately proud of herself for being able to voice even that one word without revealing the tumult of conflicting emotions that were warring inside her, just below the surface.

However, neither of them seemed to know what to say beyond those two single-syllable acknowledgments.

The baby, however, seemed to have a very good idea what to add. Although she had temporarily ceased her wailing when Nick had entered the foyer, the infant burst into tears again at the awkward, tension-filled silence that ensued. The reaction was completely appropriate, as far as Claire was concerned. She was beginning to feel like crying herself.

Automatically—though none too easily—she began to bounce the baby in her arms, but the gesture did nothing to soothe the poor thing’s anxiety. On the contrary, the infant seemed to become even more agitated with Claire’s attempt to comfort, and her wailing elevated to a full-blown screeching.

“Not like that,” Nick said, unzipping his coat. Then he reached for the baby as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do.

Eagerly Claire released the infant to his care, and he settled it easily against the soft cotton sweater covering his chest. He splayed one big hand open over the baby’s back—nearly covering it—then rubbed his palm in a leisurely circle, rocking his entire body back and forth with a slow, gentle rhythm. Almost immediately, the baby’s crying eased up, then gradually diminished until she hiccuped with a soft sigh and stopped entirely.

“Shhh,” Nick said quietly, never altering his motions. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Nobody here is going to hurt you. You’re just fine. Shhh…”

Even though she knew the reassurance was meant for the baby, somehow it went a long way toward making Claire feel better, too. “Thanks,” she said. But whether her gratitude was for his calming the child’s fears or her own, she couldn’t rightly say.

Although Nick continued to croon soothing, comforting words to the baby, his gaze never wavered from hers, and a million accusations seemed to burn in the dark espresso depths of his eyes. She wished she could think of something to say that might make the situation a little more bearable. But for the life of her she couldn’t even think of some meaningless platitude to utter.

For another long moment, the two of them only continued to stare at each other without speaking. Nick mumbled softly to the baby, and Claire stood uncomfortably with her arms crossed over her midsection, watching them. Watching the way his big body formed a protective shelter for the tiny life he held so carefully in his embrace. Watching the way his entire face seemed to soften and grow warm with the action of cuddling an infant. Watching how effortlessly, how naturally, he performed the action.

Eventually the sight of Nick and the baby grew too difficult for Claire to witness, so she turned around and left the foyer behind, making her way into the living room instead.

And she tried very hard not to think about the fact that, if things had turned out differently, she might very well be married to Nick right now. And the baby he cradled in his arms might very well be theirs.

Stop it, Claire, she admonished herself immediately. Things hadn’t turned out differently. They hadn’t gotten married, and that wasn’t their baby in Nick’s arms. She’d made her choices a long time ago, and now she had to live with them. Just because things hadn’t exactly worked out the way she had thought they would, well… That was no reason to dwell on regrets and what-ifs.

Even if she and Nick had married back then, there was no guarantee they’d still be married today. Claire knew she wouldn’t have been happy with the kind of life he had envisioned for them. And her unhappiness would have doubtless flowed over onto him. It was very likely that, by now, they both would have been miserable. They might not even be together anymore.

Thankfully her thoughts were interrupted when Nick followed her into the living room with the now-silent baby. When he strode past her, she saw that the infant had fallen asleep. Very carefully he bent to return the baby to its basket, then moved it to the floor in front of the couch. For a moment, he only watched the infant sleep, her little mouth working over a bottle that only existed in her dreams. Claire smiled warmly at the sight. Then Nick stood up and turned to face her, and her smile immediately vanished.

Without speaking, he tilted his head toward the other side of the room, where they could talk without fear of waking the baby. Claire preceded him in that direction, stopping by the fireplace, where, surprisingly, a few warm embers still glowed from the fire she had enjoyed earlier that evening.

He hadn’t removed his big parka, but unzipping it had revealed beneath it a baggy, tobacco-colored sweater and well-worn jeans. Without even looking to see what he was doing, he withdrew a small notebook and ballpoint pen from the inside pocket, all the while gazing at her with bland expectation. The accusation that had darkened his eyes earlier was gone now, and his posture was no longer hostile. In many ways, it seemed to Claire that he had turned into a total stranger.

“So you want to tell me how all this came about?” he asked as he clicked the pen, the very picture of efficiency. Somehow, though, when he voiced the question, he seemed to be talking about a whole lot more than the baby who had just shown up on her doorstep.

Well, gosh, Nick, it’s like this, Claire thought. You wanted something totally different from what I wanted, and you never once stopped to ask me about my dreams and my desires. You could only think about your own, and you assumed I’d just go merrily along. That’s how all this came about.

She pushed the thought away before the words could spill out of her mouth and into the open, ensuring what would undoubtedly become an ugly scene. Instead, she scrunched up her shoulders restlessly and let them fall, sighed fitfully, then ran an unsteady hand through her hair. “I was in bed when I heard the doorbell ring just before midnight,” she began.

“Alone?” he demanded.

She couldn’t quite help the incredulous little sound that escaped her. “Do you see anybody else here?” she countered.

“No,” he conceded. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re here alone.”

“I’m alone,” she muttered. Then, just because she felt spiteful, she added, “Tonight I am, anyway.”

The verbal dart must have struck its target perfectly, because Nick’s frown returned, and his eyes darkened angrily again. “Fine,” he bit off. “You were alone in bed and heard the doorbell just before midnight. You sure about the time?”

She nodded. “Dick Clark had just updated me to the situation in Times Square,” she said.

“Then what happened?”

“I ignored it at first,” she continued. “I thought it was probably some New Year’s Eve prank. But it happened a couple more times, so I finally got up to answer it.”

“You make it a habit to answer your door in the middle of the night when you’re here all alone?” he asked, not bothering to disguise the fact that he considered such behavior to be, well, pretty stupid.

“Hey, I don’t usually have to answer the door in the middle of the night,” she told him. She decided to let him sort out for himself whether that was because she didn’t normally have visitors at that time of night, or because there was usually someone else here with her—someone of the masculine persuasion—who answered the door that time of night for her.

Before he could object further, she added, “I thought it might be a patient. And I didn’t just run down and pull the door open wide in welcome. I checked through the window first. That was when I saw the woman standing at the foot of my driveway.”

Nick narrowed his eyes at her. “You actually saw a woman leave the baby?”

Claire shook her head. “I didn’t see her literally put the basket down on my doorstep, but I think it’s a safe bet she’s the one who left the baby here, yes.”

“Did you get a good look at her?”

“Not really. It was dark, and it was snowing pretty hard, and the part of the window I was looking through isn’t completely clear. But the brief glimpse I got of her gave me the impression that she was young. All I can tell you for certain is that she was white, had long blond hair, and was wearing a black jacket and beret. Those are about the only things I’m sure of.”

Nick nodded slowly. “Did you speak to her at all?”

Again Claire shook her head. “As soon as I saw her out there, I switched on all the outdoor lights, but she took off running before I could see her clearly or say anything. For what it’s worth, she did seem hesitant to go. Even after I came outside, she didn’t bolt right away. Just slowed down on the other side of the street and watched me. It was only after she knew I saw the basket that she took off running. I think she wanted to make sure the baby was taken inside before she left.”

Nick eyed her thoughtfully as he processed the information. “You sound like you’re defending her actions.”

Claire opened her mouth to protest, then closed it, putting some thought into her response before giving it. “Maybe I am, in a way,” she relented. “Whoever the young woman was, she really did seem reluctant to leave. I don’t think she would have abandoned the baby unless she was sure someone would be home to take it inside.”

“It still doesn’t excuse what she did.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Claire agreed.

He paused a telling moment before adding sarcastically, “But I can see why you’d think her behavior was acceptable.”

Okay, now that made Claire mad. “I never said her behavior was acceptable,” she countered. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Nick.” She refrained from adding again.

“Yeah, but you’re no fan of children, are you?” he charged.

“Hey, I like kids just fine,” she told him. “As long as they belong to someone else and keep their distance.”

He nodded, making no effort to hide his disappointment. “So you can probably sympathize with the woman who left that little bundle of joy on your doorstep, can’t you? You’d probably do the same thing if you found yourself saddled with a baby you didn’t want.”

Claire knew there was little reason to dignify that allegation with a response. But she couldn’t quite help herself from retorting, “I would never abandon a child. Nor would I conceive one I couldn’t care for. So no, I don’t sympathize with her. But I do think it’s wrong to summarily judge and sentence her without knowing the circumstances of her situation.

“Still,” she hurried on before Nick could interrupt, as he clearly wanted to do, “I can see how a guy like you would see the situation as either-or. You never were much good at distinguishing shades of gray, were you? It was always Nick’s way or no way with you.”

She could tell there was more—a lot more—that he wanted to say on that particular matter, but he set his jaw resolutely and instead asked, “What else can you tell me about this episode that might be helpful?”

For the next quarter hour Nick asked a lot of questions about the baby’s abandonment that Claire did her best to answer. For most of them, however, she could provide nothing helpful. Everything had just happened so quickly, and she’d just been so surprised by it all, that few details had registered in her brain.

Finally, though, Nick seemed to run out of questions, so he clicked his pen again, flipped the notebook closed and tucked both back inside his coat pocket. Then he spared another backward glance toward the sleeping baby and turned back to study Claire with clear concern. She waited for him to pose another question about her unexpected visitor. But very softly he asked, “How’ve you been, Claire?”

The quick and unexpected change of subject—not to mention the unmistakable tenderness in his tone—caught her off guard, as did the glimmer of genuine affection that briefly lit his eyes. Gone, for an instant, was the antagonism and accusation that had heated the air between them earlier. Gone was any sign that he felt anything other than honest curiosity about her well-being. For a moment, Claire had no idea what to say. Because for a moment, she honestly didn’t know how she’d been.

“Um, fine,” she finally muttered, shaking off the odd sensation that everything in her life was wrong. “I, uh…” She swallowed with some difficulty and glanced away. “I’ve been fine.”

“Just fine?”

She inhaled a shaky breath and released it slowly, wishing she could turn back the clock almost twenty years, to the day she’d first lain eyes on Nick Campisano at Overdale High School in Gloucester City. It really had been a lifetime ago. Back then, Claire had been the shy, skinny new kid, hiding behind big glasses and baggy clothes. Nick Campisano, with his dark good looks and gregarious disposition and total self-confidence, in his red-and-gold, multilettered football jacket, had seemed like a Roman god. Even as a sophomore, he’d already been making a splash on the varsity teams. And Claire, as a lowly freshman, hadn’t entered his sphere of existence at all.

No, that hadn’t happened until she was a junior, and he was a senior. When she’d gotten contact lenses and gone through a second puberty that had rounded her out nicely. They’d been in study hall together, where fate—and Mrs. Ballantine—had thrown them together at the same table. It had taken all of five minutes for Nick to charm Claire into going out with him. After that, there had been no turning back for either of them.

Not until the day she graduated from Princeton with a BS in biology and an acceptance letter to Yale med school. That was the day everything began to unravel.

“Yes, fine,” she told him when she remembered that his question required an answer. “I’m fine,” she repeated yet again, as if by saying it often enough, she could make the statement true.

“Yeah, well, I guess I can’t disagree,” he told her, his voice low and appraising. “You look terrific.”

A tiny splash of heat ignited in the pit of her stomach at his carelessly offered observation. Immediately she extinguished it. No sense getting fired up over something that wasn’t going to happen, she told herself. Unable to stop herself, however, she replied, “You look pretty good yourself.”

He shrugged the compliment off quite literally, then waited until she was gazing at his face again before he continued. “Nice house,” he remarked with absolutely no inflection one way or another. “Guess you’re doing pretty well these days.”

“I do all right,” she concurred.

He expelled a single, almost derisive chuckle. “All right,” he echoed. “You probably paid more for this house than I’ll make in ten years.”

She couldn’t contradict him, because she knew he was right. So she said nothing.

“Guess you got everything you wanted, huh, Claire?”

Well, not quite everything, Nick.

“How would you even know what I wanted?” she asked softly, without bitterness. She didn’t want to return to their earlier acrimony, but she wasn’t about to let him get away with thinking that what had happened between them was all her fault. “You never even bothered to ask.”

His easygoing demeanor quickly vanished, and he went back to being brittle and wary. “There was a time when you and I wanted the same thing,” he said. “I didn’t need to ask.”

Although that wasn’t quite true, Claire didn’t call him on it. She only told him, “We were kids, Nick. We couldn’t possibly know what we wanted then.”

“Hey, speak for yourself,” he countered. “I knew exactly what I wanted.”

“Then maybe you should have taken better care of it,” she replied.

Nick studied Claire in the faint, golden light of the very expensive-looking lamp that shone from the other side of the room. And he tried with all his might to make his heart stop pounding against his breastbone the way it was. Nothing had brought him more happiness back then than taking care of Claire Wainwright. Nothing. And he couldn’t think of anything that would bring him more joy now.

But there had been other things that were more important to her than Nick Campisano. And for that, more than anything else, he couldn’t forgive her. He’d offered to build his entire life around her and the family they would have created together. And for that, she’d dumped him. Because that wouldn’t have been enough for her.

God, she looked incredible, though. Better than he could possibly have imagined. Better than she had ever looked before. The last time he’d seen her, he’d been too stunned and overwhelmed to say anything to her. All he’d been able to do was stare at her from across the dance floor of the Knights of Columbus hall, telling himself to ask her to dance, then cursing himself for wanting to.

By now, they should have been celebrating their tenth or twelfth wedding anniversary. They should have had a house full of rug rats crawling and running all over the place. They should have been worrying about carpooling and school plays and orthodontists and how old Nick, Jr. should be before they’d let him get a golden retriever.

They should have been a family, a great, big, boisterous—and very happy—South Jersey family. Instead, they were both alone. And speaking for himself, happiness—real, honest, genuine happiness—was one thing he’d never quite been able to find.

“I listened to you, Claire,” he defended himself softly. “I just didn’t think you meant what you said. I couldn’t believe you’d think there were other things that were more important than us.”

Her lips parted in what was obvious surprise, but she said nothing, neither to deny, nor to confirm, his allegations. Instead, she only wrapped her arms around herself more tightly, as if she were trying to keep herself from falling apart.

“So, um, what are you going to do about the baby?” she finally asked.

He told himself he was relieved by her question, was glad she was no more willing to revisit the past than he was. Somehow, though, the change of subject didn’t sit well with him. As it had been for so many years, things just didn’t seem settled between the two of them.

“To be honest,” he said, “I’m not sure. I should call Social Services, but there was no answer there earlier, so I’m not too hopeful that there’s going to be anybody there now. And even if there is, with the weather being the way it is, I don’t think there’s much chance that anyone’s going to want to venture out here tonight.”

Claire went pale at his assessment of the situation. “But…but…someone has to make it out here tonight,” she said, clearly anxious.

Nick shrugged noncommittally. “Yeah, well, I’ll give it my best shot, but don’t get your hopes up.”

“But someone has to.”

“Claire, I—”

“They have to, Nick,” she interrupted, her tone of voice bordering on panicked.

Nick grew puzzled at her reaction. Hey, he knew Claire was no fan of kids—of course, that was something he didn’t find out until the day she’d told him to take a hike—but her reaction now was still kind of surprising. It was just a baby, he thought. What was the big deal?

“I’ll make the call,” he assured her. “But in this weather, on New Year’s Eve, no less, I just wouldn’t count on seeing anybody anytime soon. It’d take a miracle to get someone out here tonight.”

“Then get me a miracle,” she insisted. “Now.”

“Why? What’s the big deal?”

She expelled one single, incredulous chuckle. “Because I can’t take care of this baby by myself,” she told him. “There’s no way.”

He smiled, feeling something warm and totally uncalled-for unwinding in his belly. “Hey, don’t sweat it. Even if we can’t get anybody from Social Services out here tonight, you won’t be by yourself.”

She eyed him curiously. “I won’t?”

“Nah,” he assured her. “I’ll be glad to stay here to help you out. Any way I can. All night long.”

Three

Just as Nick had suspected, no one answered the phone at Social Services. Nor was there anyone available at any of the other half-dozen numbers he called in an effort to get someone out to the house, to take the baby off Claire’s hands. The holiday and the snow had sent every available body out to see to situations that were infinitely more pressing than an abandoned baby who was, at the moment, safe and warm, and in the care of both a government official and a medical doctor.

A disenchanted government official and a very anxious medical doctor, yeah, but still…

Nick settled the cordless phone back into its resting place on the kitchen counter and turned to Claire with a shrug. “Sorry,” he said. For some reason, though, he didn’t exactly feel sorry. There was just something about this situation that prevented him from becoming too overwrought. “But that was the last person I knew to call. Looks like it’s going to be tomorrow afternoon at the earliest before anybody can take Sleeping Beauty off your hands.”

They’d moved both baby and basket into the kitchen with them, and now the infant was slumbering peacefully in the middle of the expansive kitchen table—which Nick couldn’t help but notice was quite a bit larger than one person could possibly need. By the soft, pink light of a small, terra-cotta lamp that burned atop the—really big—refrigerator, Claire had made a pot of coffee. While he was on the phone, she had filled a mug for each of them, and now she was clutching hers with a brutal grip, as if it were her last handhold on reality.

As if reading his mind, she muttered “This can’t be happening. This has got to be a dream. No, a nightmare,” she hastily corrected herself. “I can’t believe I’m going to be stuck here with you and a baby until tomorrow afternoon.”

Nick told himself not to take her sentiment to heart, that she was speaking out of panic and fear and nothing more. But it stung to realize that Claire considered spending any amount of time with him and a baby a nightmare. It wasn’t exactly surprising, but it did sting.

“Yeah, well, look at it this way,” he told her, biting back the bitterness that began to pool in his belly again. “Maybe it won’t be until tomorrow afternoon.”

She arched her eyebrows hopefully. “No?”

He shook his head slowly. Then, gritting his teeth mildly, he told her, “No. The way things are going, it might very well be the day after.”

This time her eyebrows shot down in an angry V. “That’s not funny.”

He bit back a disgruntled chuckle. “Tell me about it. If you think I’m any happier to be stranded in close quarters with you than you are to be here with me, think again. I’m the one who got dumped, in case you’ve forgotten.” The one who never stopped loving you, he added to himself, none too happy about that realization, either.

Why deny it, though? he asked himself. It had been more than a decade since he’d asked Claire to marry him. More than a decade for him to put his feelings for her in the past and move on with his life. And in that length of time, he’d done neither. He still loved her. His love for her had been what prevented him from marrying anyone else. He couldn’t, in good conscience, join himself to another woman and devote his life to her, when what he felt for her would only be shade of the love he still harbored for Claire.

And, simply put, he would never love another woman. Not completely. Not the way he had loved Claire. Not as long as Claire still walked the earth, anyway.

He wasn’t so bitter that he blamed her for the unhappiness he felt these days. Sure, he’d wanted to be married with kids by now, and his life would never feel complete without a family of his own. But it was his choice to remain single and childless. His choice not to get involved with other women beyond a superficial, physical relationship. His choice to look down the road at the future and see nothing but a solitary existence. He certainly didn’t blame Claire for those things. But he didn’t exactly forgive her, either.

She sighed fitfully, bringing his thoughts back to the present. “Let’s not start this again,” she said quietly. “It’s pointless. It’ll just make this situation that much more difficult to weather. We’re not going to learn anything more than we already know about each other.”

“Pointless,” he echoed hollowly. “Yeah, that’s a good word for it,” he concurred further. “We have a whole history that was pretty much pointless, don’t we?”

“Nick…” she said, her voice tinted with an unmistakable warning.

He lifted both hands and held them palm out, in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay,” he relented. “I promise to be a good boy. Really, I do.”

Claire rolled her eyes, but refrained from comment. Instead, she turned her attention to her new infant centerpiece. “She sure seems to be sleeping a lot. Is that safe? I mean, I thought babies slept really badly.”

Nick shrugged, gazing in that direction himself. “Depends on the baby,” he said. “A lot of them are lousy sleepers. But some of them sleep like rocks. Besides, this one’s gotta be at least six or seven months old. By now she should be sleeping fairly well at night. And, hey,” he added softly, “tonight hasn’t exactly been conducive to good sleep for her, has it?”

Claire turned and eyed him suspiciously through lowered lids. Very coolly, she remarked, “You seem to know an awful lot about babies. Do you…have one or two of your own?”

He couldn’t help noting that she glanced quickly down at his—ringless—left hand as she made the comment. Ooo, he thought. Touchy. Is that jealousy tinting Claire’s voice now? Well, well, well.

He shook his head. “No, I’m not married with kids. But I’ve got a lot of nieces and nephews. Angie had twins a month ago, bringing her own personal contribution to four, and—”

“You’re kidding!” Claire exclaimed happily. “Angie? Little Angie has four kids?”

Her smile was dazzling, her delight infectious, and Nick couldn’t help but smile, too. “Hey, ‘little Angie’ is twenty-eight years old,” he pointed out. “She’s been married for six years now.”

Claire shook her head in disbelief. “That’s so amazing,” she said. “I remember her tagging along after us when she was just a kid.”

“She always liked you a lot,” he told her. “She wouldn’t speak to me for months after we broke up. She was sure I did or said something to you that made you run off to Connecticut.”

“Nick…” Claire said again, again with clear warning.

“I’m not trying to rehash old business,” he told her honestly. “I’m just stating a fact is all. You can’t expect us to spend any amount of time together and not bring up some part of the past.” He covered the distance necessary to bring him within arm’s length of her. And with no small effort, he refrained from reaching out to touch her. “We were a big part of each other’s lives once upon a time, whether you like to admit that or not.”

Her lips parted fractionally in surprise at his charge. For a long moment, she only gazed up at his face, her cobalt eyes deep and compelling and filled with some emotion he was probably better off not trying to figure out. Claire’s eyes had always been his undoing, he recalled now, too late. So blue. So arresting. So damned expressive. She could never hide her feelings, because invariably her eyes had betrayed her. They’d always been her own undoing, too.

And right now her eyes were telling Nick that she was remembering those times even better than he remembered them himself. Every muscle and microbe, every sense and sensibility he possessed screamed at him to reach out to her. To take her in his arms and pull her close. To relive those moments of the past and create a few more for the future. Even after more than a decade of separation, even after the emotional wringing he’d suffered as a result of her abandonment, he still wanted Claire. With all his heart, with all his soul. Till death do them part.

Great, Nick. This is just great.

“It’s not that I don’t want to admit how important we used to be to each other,” she said, scattering his thoughts, but doing nothing to alleviate the jumble of his emotions. “On the contrary,” she added quietly, “maybe I remember that part of it better than you do.”

Nodding slowly, but unwilling to reveal just how much her statement shook him, he asked, “Then what is it? What’s wrong?”

She sighed again, opened her mouth to say something, then shut it without uttering a word. She only shook her head silently and spun around, but not before Nick caught the shimmer of tears in her eyes. Something twisted tight in his gut at the sight.

Yeah, those eyes, he thought again. They’d always been trouble. Looked like some things, at least, hadn’t changed a bit.

Claire couldn’t imagine what had come over her to make her act this way. As if it wasn’t already bad enough that she’d be responsible—at least in part—for an abandoned baby for another day, perhaps two. As if it wasn’t already bad enough that the person with whom she was sharing that responsibility was a man she’d once banished from her life, a man she’d never expected to see again, in anything other than passing. As if it wasn’t already bad enough that the two of them were traveling down a memory lane that was pockmarked with land mines that might go off at any second.

No, as if all that wasn’t already bad enough, she was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, way down deep inside, in a distant, lonely place she’d thought locked away forever, she was still in love with Nick Campisano. Even after all these years. Even after the emotional upheaval she’d somehow managed to survive upon their parting. Even after all that, she sensed that there was still a part of herself—a rather large part, evidently—that wanted Nick in her life. Substantially. Eternally.

Wonderful, Claire. You’ve just ascended to the next level of stupidity.

She spread one hand open over her eyes, pretending to swipe away fatigue, praying that Nick hadn’t noticed the presence of tears. Why on earth was she crying? she wondered. She was just exhausted, she tried to reassure herself. It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and she’d been up for nearly twenty-four hours straight. Even before that she’d been tired. She’d never been a good sleeper. The holiday season always made that worse. And the emotional stress of the last few hours had helped not at all.

Tired, she echoed to herself. Weary. Fatigued. That was why she was experiencing this strange wave of melancholy memory. It was nothing more than that. She couldn’t possibly still be in love with Nick after all this time. It made no sense.

Oh, really? a little voice inside her piped up. Then why have you never been able to make a commitment to another man? Why have you never found anyone who made you feel the way Nick made you feel? Why is he the yardstick by which you measure every potential mate?

Instead of answering the little voice, Claire commanded it in no uncertain terms to just shut up and leave her alone because it had no idea what it was yammering about, anyway.

Dragging her hand over her face one final time, Claire spun back around to face Nick. He looked as exhausted and dejected as she did. They both obviously needed sleep— and lots of it. She spared a glance for the solidly sleeping infant and told herself they should take advantage of this brief reprieve. No telling when the baby would awaken again, or how long it would be before she went to sleep after that. Even an hour or two of rest would help enormously.

“We should go to bed,” she said.

At the soft sound of disbelief Nick uttered, she closed her eyes. “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” she said flatly, turning to face him again. When she opened her eyes, she saw that he didn’t look quite as tired as he had before. No, in fact, he appeared quite capable of staying awake for hours, if offered the right kind of incentive.

“Hey, I don’t know jack,” he told her. “Why? What were you talking about? My, my, my, Claire. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“Yeah, you wish it was in the gutter,” she shot back. But somehow she couldn’t quite quell the soft smile that threatened to bloom.

Nick smiled, too, though his own effort was considerably more predatory. “I remember a few occasions when we both had our minds there. It was a lot of fun. To put it mildly.”

Claire’s smile fell at his willingness to continue with what she considered a very dangerous topic. But she couldn’t battle the heat seeping through her at the memories—anything but mild—that exploded fast and furious in her brain. Fast and furious. That was how it had always been between them. As if they both feared they’d never get enough of each other. As if they’d somehow known their time together was limited, and they had to make the most of every second. As if they couldn’t bear to be apart. As if they needed to consume each other in order to survive.

We were both kids then, she tried to remind herself. It was nothing more than hormones.

That was all it had been to make them react to each other with the instant and complete intensity that they had, she told herself again. Hormones. Biology. Chemistry. And okay, anatomy, too. It was all very scientific, very natural. A chemical reaction, nothing more. A really, really hot chemical reaction, granted, but a reaction nonetheless. They were two mature adults now, fully capable of keeping that kind of response under control. No way would they burn for each other the way they once had.

She gazed at Nick again, feeling her maturity level drop as quickly as her temperature rose. Uh-oh.

“It’s over,” she told him, trying not to choke on the lie. “That’s all in the past. There’s nothing there between us now.”

He emitted another, louder, sound of disbelief in response to her statement. “Right,” he said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. “Sure, Claire. Whatever you say. If it makes you feel better, then by all means, you go ahead and wallow in your little fantasy.”

“It’s not a fantasy,” she insisted. “It’s true.”

He eyed her levelly as he took a step toward her. “So you’ve put the past completely behind you. Is that what you’re telling me?”

She nodded and somehow managed to murmur, “Yes.”

He took another casual step forward. “Since opening that door a couple hours ago, you haven’t experienced a single stir of old emotion?”

This time she shook her head, but her voice was a little shaky as she told him, “No.”

Another, less casual, step forward. “Not even one little spark of heat?”

This time Claire didn’t trust her voice not to betray her, so she only shook her head again and remained silent.

Nick, however, continued to speak. And take yet another step toward her. “Not so much as a banked ember?”

This time Claire couldn’t even manage to shake her head. All she could do was watch Nick’s face, noting the flicker of heat and the play of light in his dark eyes as he drew nearer still.

“So then it’s just me,” he continued, his voice dropping to a dangerously low pitch. “It’s just me who’s been feeling this current of electricity jumping back and forth between us like a generator wound way too tight?”

She cleared her throat with some difficulty and forced herself to respond. Unfortunately, the only response that emerged was lame at best. “I, uh…I think you must be imagining things, Nick.”

One more step forward, and he stood immediately in front of her, with scarcely a breath of air separating them. She told herself she should be offended that he’d usurped her space the way he had, without asking her permission, without thought for how it might make her feel. It was just another reminder of why the two of them hadn’t worked out together the first time around.

As much as she had loved him, Nick had always overrun Claire. He hadn’t meant to do it, and it hadn’t been because he’d wanted more than she was willing to give. That’s just the way Nick was. Overwhelming. Larger than life. Too big, too happy, too outgoing, too gregarious, too loving, too…too…

Too too.

Claire had always felt overshadowed, overpowered. Not just by Nick, but by the entire Campisano clan. They’d all been just like him. Too affectionate, too kind, too nurturing. All of them had always been totally in tune with one another, as if they were all different parts of one big, beautifully purring machine. Where one lacked, the other supplied. Where one hurt, the other healed. Where one despaired, the other encouraged.

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