“Aw, Lace, don’t cry.”

“I told you, I must have gotten something in my—” The next thing she knew, she was toppling into Noah’s arms.

Noah didn’t think about what he was doing, because what he was doing felt as natural as flying. Wrapping his arms around Lacey, he tilted his chin to make room for her head and widened his stance to make room for her feet between his. It wasn’t the vibration of flight he sensed, but her trembling.

He kissed her. It was demanding and rousing, and once it started, it was too late to ask what she was doing back in Orchard Hill, too late to ask her anything, or to do anything but pull her even closer …

Dear Reader,

Three of my favorite occasions are weddings, a new baby’s arrival and Christmas. My latest book, A Bride Before Dawn, contains all three. I’m a planner by nature, and yet one of the things I love most about these celebrations is their sheer unpredictability. Will it rain on an outdoor wedding? Will the baby arrive early or late? Will the kids notice if I buy rolls instead of make them from scratch? Maybe, yes and definitely.

In A Bride Before Dawn, Lacey Bell is a planner, too. At the top of her to-do list is: Resist Noah Sullivan. But when Noah and his brothers find a baby on their doorstep and ask for Lacey’s much-needed help, resisting this fly-by-night test pilot is even trickier when he has a three-month-old baby in his arms.

For me, one of the most meaningful aspects of special occasions is thinking of the perfect gift. My gift to you, dear reader, is Lacey and Noah’s story. Good things are going to happen. (They really are.)

Sincerely,

Sandra Steffen

About the Author

SANDRA STEFFEN has always been a storyteller. She began nurturing this hidden talent by concocting adventures for her brothers and sisters, even though the boys were more interested in her ability to hit a baseball over the barn—an automatic home run. She didn’t begin her pursuit of publication until she was a young wife and mother of four sons. Since her thrilling debut as a published author in 1992, more than thirty-five of her novels have graced bookshelves across the country.

This winner of a RITA® Award, a Wish Award, and a National Readers’ Choice Award enjoys traveling with her husband. Usually their destinations are settings for her upcoming books. They are empty-nesters these days. Who knew it could be so much fun? Please visit her at www.sandrasteffen.com.

A Bride Before Dawn

Sandra Steffen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my seven wonders of the world: Anora, Leah, Landen, Anna, Erin, Dalton & Brynn.

Chapter One

Noah Sullivan understood airplanes the way physicists understood atoms and bakers understood bread.

He pulled back on the yoke, pushed the throttle forward and sliced through the clouds. He dived, leveled off and climbed, listening intently to the engine all the while, the control held loosely in his hands. This old Piper Cherokee was soaring like a kite at eighteen hundred feet. She had a lot of years left in her.

The same couldn’t be said for all the planes he flew. The first time he’d executed an emergency landing he’d used a closed freeway outside of Detroit. Last month he’d had to set a Cessna down on a godforsaken strip of dirt in the Texas hill country. He’d never lost a plane, though, and was considered one of the best independent test pilots in his field.

He wasn’t fearless. He was relentless. He couldn’t take all the credit for that, though. He never forgot that.

When he was finished putting the Piper through her paces, he headed down, out of the clouds. He followed the Chestnut River west, then banked south above the tallest church spire in Orchard Hill. Halfway between the citylimit sign and the country airstrip was Sully’s Orchard. It was where Noah grew up, and where he collected his mail every month or so when he flew through.

He buzzed the orchard on his way by, as he always did when he came home, and tipped his wing when his oldest brother, Marsh, came running out the back door of the old cider house, his ball cap waving. Their mother used to say Marsh and Noah had been born looking up—Marsh to their apple trees and Noah to the sky above them. The second oldest, Reed, stepped out of the office, shading his eyes with his right hand. Tall, blond and shamelessly confident, he waved, too.

Those two deserved the credit for Noah’s success, for they’d given up their futures after their parents died in an icy pileup when Noah was fifteen and their baby sister, Madeline, was twelve. Noah hadn’t made it easy for them, either. Truancy when he was fifteen, speeding and curfew violations when he was sixteen, drinking long before it was legal. They never gave up on him, and helped him make his dream of flying come true. Maybe someday he would find a way to repay them.

He still enjoyed getting a rise out of them from time to time, but today he didn’t subject them to any grandstanding or showing off. He simply flashed his landing lights hello and started toward the airstrip a few miles away. He’d barely gotten turned around when a movement on the ground caught his eye.

A woman was hurrying across the wide front lawn. She was wearing a jacket and had a cumbersome-looking bag slung over each shoulder. He tipped his wing hello, but instead of looking up, she ducked.

That was odd, Noah thought. Not the snub. That he took in stride. But it was the middle of June, and too warm for a jacket of any kind.

And not even company used the Sullivans’ front door.

Thirty years ago Tom Bender looked out across his ramshackle rural airstrip five miles east of Orchard Hill, Michigan, and saw his future. Today the pasture that had once been a bumpy runway, where he’d landed his first airplane, was a diamond-in-the-rough airfield operation with tarmac runways and hangars for commuter planes, helicopters, charters and hobbyists.

With the stub of a cold cigar clamped between his teeth and all that was left of a sparse comb-over swirling in the June breeze, he was waiting when Noah rolled to a stop along the edge of the runway. “How’d she do?” Tom asked as soon as Noah climbed down.

Running his hand reverently along the underside of the Piper’s right wing, Noah said, “She handled like the prima donna she was destined to become.”

“I’m glad to hear it. The paperwork’s on the clipboard where it always is,” Tom said, his attention already turning to the biplane coming in for a landing on the other runway. “As soon as you fill it out, Em will cut you a check.”

With that check, Noah would make the final payment on the loan for his Airfield Operations Specialist training, a loan he’d been whittling away at for nine years. Anticipating the satisfaction he would feel when he read Paid in Full on his tattered IOU, he headed toward the small block building that comprised the customer waiting area and Tom’s office.

All eight chairs were empty and Tom’s wife, Emma, was verifying a reservation over the phone on the other side of the counter. She waved as Noah took the clipboard from the peg behind Tom’s desk and lowered himself into a cracked leather chair beside it.

He’d barely started on the checklist when the airstrip’s best mechanic moseyed inside. “You aren’t going to believe what I heard today, Noah,” Digger Brown said before the door even closed. As tall as Noah, Digger had a good start on a hardy paunch he was in the habit of patting. “You care to guess?”

Noah shook his head without looking up. “I’m in a hurry, Dig.”

“Lacey’s back in town.”

Noah’s ears perked up and the tip of his pen came off the page. Lacey was in Orchard Hill? For a few moments, he completely forgot what he’d been doing.

Digger was wearing a know-it-all grin when Noah looked up. “I figured that’d get your attention.”

A few grades behind Noah, Lacey Bell used to walk to school with a camera around her neck and a chip on her shoulder. Back then she’d worn her dark hair short and her jeans tight. Noah had been doing his best to get kicked out of the eleventh grade, so other than the fact that the boys her age used to taunt her, he hadn’t paid her a lot of attention. He’d heard a lot about her, though. Whether in bars, at air shows or loitering around watercoolers, men liked to talk. They’d said she was easy, bragging about their conquests the way they bragged about golf scores and fishing trips and cars. Noah’s relationship with Lacey had taught him what liars men could be.

One night after he’d come home following his Airfield Operations Specialist training in Florida, he’d noticed her sitting on the steps that led to the apartment over the bar where she’d lived with her father. They’d talked, him at the bottom of those rickety stairs, her at the top. He’d been twenty and by the end of the night he’d been completely enamored by an eighteen-year-old girl with dark hair, a sharp mind, a smart mouth and a smile she didn’t overuse. When he returned the next night, she moved down a few steps and he moved up. By the third night, they sat side by side.

She was the only girl he’d ever known who’d understood his affinity for the sky. She’d left Orchard Hill two-and-a-half years ago after the worst argument they’d ever had. Coming home hadn’t been the same for Noah since.

“I wondered if you’d already heard, or if Lacey’s return was news to you, too,” Digger said.

“Where would I have heard that? Air-traffic control?” Noah asked, for he’d spent the past month crop dusting in Texas, and Digger knew it.

“There’s no need to get huffy,” Digger groused. “Maybe you ought to pay Lacey a visit. I’ll bet she could put a smile on your face. Wait, I forgot. You’re just a notch on her bedpost nowadays, aren’t ya?”

Ten years ago, after saying something like that, Digger would have been wearing the wrench he was carrying. Luckily for everybody, Noah had developed a little willpower over the years.

Eventually, Digger grew bored with being ignored and sauntered back outside where the guys on the grounds’ crew were moving two airplanes around on the tarmac. Noah’s mind wandered to the last time he’d seen Lacey, a year ago.

He’d been home to attend the air show in Battle Creek. That same weekend Lacey had been summoned from Chicago to her father’s bedside after he’d suffered a massive heart attack. Noah had gone to the burial a few days later to pay his respects. Late that night, she’d answered his knock on her door and, like so many times before, they’d wound up in her bed. She’d been spitting mad in the morning, more angry with herself than at him, but mad was mad, and she’d told him the previous night had been a mistake she had no intention of repeating. She’d lit out of Orchard Hill again with little more than her camera the same day.

Now, if Digger was right, she was back in town.

Thoughts of her stayed with Noah as he finished the paperwork and pocketed the check Em Bender handed him. For a second or two he considered knocking on Lacey’s door and inviting her out to celebrate with him. Then he remembered the way she’d stuck her hands on her hips and lifted her chin in defiance that morning after her father’s funeral.

As tempting as seeing her again was, Noah had his pride. He didn’t go where he wasn’t wanted. So instead, he pointed his truck toward the family orchard that, to this day, felt like home.

The Great Lakes were said to be the breath of Michigan. As Noah crested the hill and saw row upon row of neatly pruned apple trees with their crooked branches, gnarled bark and sturdy trunks, he was reminded of all the generations of orchard growers who’d believed their trees were its soul.

He parked his dusty blue Chevy in his old spot between Marsh’s shiny SUV and Reed’s Mustang, and entered the large white house through the back door, the way he always did. Other than the take-out menus scattered across the countertops, the kitchen was tidy. He could hear the weather report droning from the den—Marsh’s domain. Reed was most likely in his home office off the living room.

Since the den was closer, Noah stopped there first. Marsh glanced at him and held up a hand, in case Noah hadn’t learned to keep quiet when the weather report was on.

Six-and-a-half years older than Noah, Marsh had been fresh out of college when their parents were killed so tragically. It couldn’t have been easy taking on the family business and a little sister who desperately needed her mother, and two younger brothers, one of whom was hell-bent on ruining his own life. Despite everything Noah had put him through, Marsh looked closer to thirty than thirty-six.

When the weatherman finally broke for a commercial, Noah pushed away from the doorway where he’d been leaning and said, “What’s a guy got to do to get a hello around here?”

Marsh made no apologies as he muted the TV and got to his feet. He was on his way across the room to clasp Noah in a bear hug when a strange noise stopped him in his tracks.

Noah heard it, too. What the hell was it?

He spun out of the den, Marsh right behind him, and almost collided with Reed. “Do you hear that?” Reed asked.

As tall as the other two, but blond, Reed was always the first to ask questions and the first to reach his own conclusions. He’d been at Notre Dame when their parents died. He’d come home to Orchard Hill, too, as soon as he’d finished college. Noah owed him as much as he owed Marsh.

“It sounds like it’s coming from right outside the front door,” Reed said.

Marsh cranked the lock and threw open the door. He barreled through first, the other two on his heels. All three stopped short and stared down at the baby screaming at the top of his lungs on the porch.

A baby. Was on their porch.

Dressed all in blue, he had wisps of dark hair and an angry red face. He was strapped into some sort of seat with a handle, and was wailing shrilly. He kicked his feet. On one he wore a tiny blue sock. The other foot was bare. The strangest thing about him, though, was that he was alone.

Marsh, Reed and Noah had been told they were three fine specimens of the male species. Two dark-haired and one fair, all were throwbacks to past generations of rugged Sullivan men. The infant continued to cry pitifully, obviously unimpressed.

Noah was a magician in the cockpit of an airplane. Marsh had an almost ethereal affinity for his apple trees. Reed was a wizard with business plans and checks and balances. Yet all three of them were struck dumb while the baby cried in earnest.

He was getting worked up, his little fisted hands flailing, his legs jerking, his mouth wide open. In his vehemence, he punched himself in the nose.

Just like that he quieted.

But not for long. Skewing his little face, he gave the twilight hell.

Reed was the first to recover enough to bend down and pick the baby up, seat and all. The crying abated with the jiggling motion. Suddenly, the June evening was eerily still. In the ensuing silence, all three brothers shared a look of absolute bewilderment.

“Where’d he come from?” Marsh asked quietly, as if afraid any loud noises or sudden moves might set off another round of crying.

Remembering the woman he’d seen from the air, Noah looked out across the big lawn, past the parking area that would be teeming with cars in the fall but was empty now. He peered at the stand of pine trees and a huge willow near the lane where the property dropped away. Nothing moved as far as the eye could see.

Every day about this time the orchard became more shadow than light. The apple trees were lush and green, the two-track path through the orchard neatly mowed. The shed where the parking signs were stored, along with the four-wheelers, wagons and tractors they used for hayrides every autumn, was closed up tight. Noah could see the padlock on the door from here. Everything looked exactly as it always had.

“I don’t see anybody, do you?” Marsh asked quietly.

Reed and Noah shook their heads.

“Did either of you hear a car?” Reed asked.

Noah and Marsh hadn’t, and neither had Reed.

“That baby sure didn’t come by way of the stork,” Marsh insisted.

A stray current of air stirred the grass and the new leaves in the nearby trees. The weather vane on the cider house creaked the way it always did when the wind came out of the east. Nothing looked out of place, Noah thought. The only thing out of the ordinary was the sight of the tiny baby held stiffly in Reed’s big hands.

“We’d better get him inside,” Noah said as he reached for two bags that hadn’t been on the porch an hour ago. A sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up and read the handwritten note.

Our precious son, Joseph Daniel Sullivan.

I call him Joey. He’s my life. I beg you,

take good care of him until I can return for him.

He turned the paper over then showed it to his brothers.

“Our precious son?” Reed repeated after reading it for himself.

“Whose precious son?” Marsh implored, for the note wasn’t signed.

The entire situation grew stranger with every passing second. What the hell was going on here? The last one to the door, Noah looked back again, slowly scanning the familiar landscape. Was someone watching? The hair on his arms stood up as if he were crop dusting dangerously close to power lines.

Who left a baby on a doorstep in this day and age? But someone had. If whoever had done it was still out there, he didn’t know where.

He was looking right at her. She was almost sure of it.

Her lips quivered and her throat convulsed as she fought a rising panic. She couldn’t panic. And he couldn’t possibly see her. He was too far away and she was well hidden. She was wearing dark clothing, purposefully blending with the shadows beneath the trees.

A dusty pickup truck had rattled past her hiding place ten minutes ago. The driver hadn’t even slowed down. He hadn’t seen her and neither could the last Sullivan on the porch. Surely he wouldn’t have let the others go inside if he had.

From here she couldn’t even tell which brother was still outside. It was difficult to see anything in this light. A sob lodged sideways in her throat, but she pushed it down. She’d cried enough. Out of options and nearly out of time, she was doing the right thing.

She had to go, and yet she couldn’t seem to move. On the verge of hyperventilating, she wished she’d have thought to bring a paper sack to breathe into so she wouldn’t pass out. She couldn’t pass out. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of oblivion. Instead, she waited, her muscles aching from the strain of holding so still. Her empty arms ached most of all.

When the last of the men who’d gathered on the porch finally went inside, she took several deep calming breaths. She’d done it. She’d waited as long as she could, and she’d done what she had to do.

Their baby was safe. Now she had to leave.

“Take care of him for me for now,” she whispered into the vast void of deepening twilight.

Reminding herself that this arrangement wasn’t permanent, and that she would return for her baby the moment she was able to, she crept out from beneath the weeping-willow tree near the road and started back toward the car parked behind a stand of pine trees half a mile away.

She’d only taken a few steps when Joey’s high-pitched wails carried through the early-evening air. She paused, for she recognized that cry. It had been three hours since his last bottle. She’d tried to feed him an hour ago, but he’d been too sleepy to eat. Evidently, he was ready now. Surely it wouldn’t take his father long to find his bottles and formula and feed him.

Rather than cause her to run to the house and snatch him back into her arms, Joey’s cries filled her with conviction. He had a mind of his own and would put his father through the wringer tonight, but Joey would be all right. He was a survivor, her precious son.

And so was she.

In five minutes’ time, life as Noah, Reed and Marsh Sullivan knew it went from orderly to pandemonium. Joey—the note said his name was Joey—was crying again. Noah and Marsh were trying to figure out how to get him out of the contraption he was buckled into. Reed, who was normally cool, calm and collected, pawed through the contents of the bags until he found feeding supplies.

When the baby was finally freed from the carrier, Noah picked him up—he couldn’t believe how small he was, and hurriedly followed the others to the kitchen where Reed was already scanning the directions on a cardboard canister of powdered formula he’d found in one of the bags. Marsh unscrewed the top of a clear plastic baby bottle and turned on the faucet.

“It says to use warm water.” Reed had to yell in order to be heard over the crying.

Marsh switched the faucet to hot and Reed pried the lid off the canister. “Make sure it’s not too hot,” Reed called when he saw steam rising from the faucet.

Marsh swore.

Noah seconded the sentiment.

The baby wasn’t happy about the situation, either. He continued to wail pathetically, banging his little red face against Noah’s chest.

Marsh adjusted the temperature of the water again. The instant it was warm but not hot, he filled the bottle halfway. Using the small plastic scoop that came with the canister, Reed added the powdered formula. When the top was on, Noah grabbed the bottle and stuck the nipple in Joey’s mouth. The kid didn’t seem to care that Noah didn’t know what he was doing. He clamped on and sucked as if he hadn’t eaten all day.

Ah. Blessed silence.

They moved en masse back to the living room. Lowering himself awkwardly to the couch, Noah held the baby stiffly in one arm. All three men stared at Joey, who was making sucking sounds on the bottle. Slowly, they looked at each other, shell-shocked.

Last year had been a stellar season for the orchard. Sales had been good and the profit margin high enough to make up for the apple blight that had swept through their orchards the year before. Their sister had survived the tragic death of her childhood sweetheart and was now happily married to a man who would do anything to make her happy. The newlyweds were expecting their first child and were settling into their home near Traverse City. Noah had the money in his pocket to pay off his loan. Somewhere along the way he’d finally made peace with his anger over losing his parents when he was fifteen. All three of the Sullivan men were free for the first time in their adult lives.

Or so they’d thought.

“It says,” Reed said, his laptop open on the coffee table, “that you’re supposed to burp him after an ounce or two.”

Burp him? Noah thought. What did that mean?

“Try sitting him up,” Reed said.

Noah took the nipple out of the baby’s mouth and awkwardly did as Reed suggested. A huge burp erupted. All three brothers grinned. After all, they were men and some things were just plain funny. Their good humor didn’t last long, though. Dismay, disbelief and the sneaking suspicion that there was a hell of a lot more trouble ahead immediately returned.

Looking around for the baby’s missing sock, Noah laid him back down in the crook of his arm and offered him more formula. As he started to drink again, Joey stared up at him as if to say, “Who in the world are you?”

Noah looked back at him the same way.

Could he really be a Sullivan? His eyes were blue-gray, like Reed’s, but his hair was dark like Marsh’s and Noah’s.

“How old do you think he is?” Noah asked.

Reed made a few clicks on his computer. Eying the baby again, he said, “I would estimate him to be right around three months.”

Although none of them were in a relationship at the present time, they did some mental math, and all three of their throats convulsed on a swallow. If Joey was indeed a Sullivan, he could conceivably have been any one of theirs.

The baby fell asleep before the bottle was empty. Too agitated to sit still, Noah handed him to Marsh, who was sitting the closest to him. When the child stirred, they all held their breath until his little eyelashes fluttered down again.

“I don’t see how I could be his father,” Marsh said so quietly he might have been thinking out loud. “I always take precautions.”

“Me, too,” Noah said, almost as quietly.

“Same here.”

The baby hummed in his sleep. His very presence made the case of the reliability of protection a moot point.

“We’re going to need a DNA test,” Reed declared.

“I have a better idea,” Noah said, already moving across the room toward the kitchen and escape.

“Not so fast!” Reed admonished, stopping Noah before he’d reached the arched doorway.

It rankled, but Noah figured he had it coming for all the times he’d hightailed it out of Orchard Hill in the past. “Can you guys handle the baby on your own for a little while?” he asked.

Two grown, capable, decent men cringed. It was Marsh who finally said, “We can if we have to. Where are you going?”

Noah looked Marsh in the eye first, and then Reed. “I heard Lacey’s in town.”

“Do you think she left Joey here?” Marsh asked.

Noah couldn’t imagine it, but he’d never imagined that he and his brothers would find themselves in a situation like this, either. “I saw somebody on the front lawn when I buzzed the orchard earlier,” he said. “It was a woman with bags slung over her shoulders. She was hunched over, so I couldn’t see her well, but now I think she was hiding Joey under an oversize sweatshirt or poncho.”

Reed got to his feet. “Was it Lacey?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She was wearing a scarf or a hood or something. I couldn’t even tell what color her hair was.”

“Why would Lacey leave her baby that way?”

“Why would anybody?” Noah said. “I guess we’ll know soon enough if it was her. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

He strode through the house, where the television was still muted and where diapers and bottles and other baby items lay heaped on the table and countertops. Pointing his old pickup truck toward town seconds later, his mind was blank but for one thought.

If Joey was his, Lacey had some explaining to do.

Just once, Lacey Bell wanted to be on the receiving end of good luck, not bad. Was that too much to ask? Truly?

Looking around her at the clutter she was painstakingly sifting through and boxing up, she sighed. She was searching for a hidden treasure she wasn’t sure existed. Her father had spoken of it on his deathbed, but he’d been delirious and, knowing her dad, he could have been referring to a fine bottle of scotch. She so wanted to believe he’d left her something of value. Once a dreamer, always a dreamer, she supposed.

She’d emptied the closet and was filling boxes from her father’s dresser when the pounding outside began. She wasn’t concerned. She’d spent her formative years in this apartment and had stopped being afraid of loud noises, shattering beer bottles and things that went bump in the night a long time ago. It had been the first in a long line of conscious decisions.

Ignoring the racket, she swiped her hands across her wet cheeks and went back to work. After he’d died a year ago, she’d given her father the nicest funeral she could afford. She’d paid the property taxes with what little money was left, but she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of going through all his things, knowing he would never be back. A year later, it was no easier.

He’d lived hard, her dad, but he’d been a good father in his own way. She wished she could ask him what she should do.

She filled another carton and was placing it with the others along the kitchen wall when she realized the noise wasn’t coming from the alley, as she’d thought. Somebody was pounding on her door.

Being careful not to make a sound, she tiptoed closer and looked through the peephole. Her hand flew to her mouth, her heart fluttering wildly.

It was Noah.

“Lacey, open up.”

She reeled backward as if he’d seen her. Gathering her wits about her, she reminded herself that unless Noah had X-ray vision he couldn’t possibly know she was inside.

She caught her reflection in the mirror across the room. Her jeans were faded and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She wondered when the rubber band had slipped out of her hair. Orchard Hill was a small city, so it stood to reason that she would run into Noah. Did it have to be tonight when she wasn’t even remotely ready?

“I’m not leaving until I’ve talked to you,” Noah called through the door.

“I’m busy,” she said with more conviction than she felt.

“This won’t take long.”

Silence.

“Please, Lace?”

A shudder passed through her, for Noah Sullivan was proud and self-reliant and defiant. Saying please had never come easy for him.

“I’ll break the damn door down if I have to.”

Knowing him, he would, too. Shaking her head at Fate, she turned the dead bolt and slowly opened the door.

Noah stood on her threshold, his brown eyes hooded and half his face in shadow. He was lean and rugged and so tall she had to look up slightly to meet his gaze. The mercury light behind him cast a blue halo around his head. It was an optical illusion, for Noah Sullivan was no angel.

Before her traitorous heart could flutter up to her throat, she swallowed audibly and said, “What do you want, Noah?”

His eyes narrowed and he said, “I want you to tell me what the hell is going on.”

Chapter Two

Noah was as ruggedly handsome as ever in faded jeans and a black T-shirt. His dark hair was a little shaggy, his jaw darkened as if he hadn’t had time to shave, but that wasn’t what made it so difficult to face him tonight.

“Have you been crying?” he asked.

Lacey tried not to react to the concern in his voice. It was dangerous and conjured up emotions she wasn’t ready to deal with. “I must have gotten something in my eye. I’m in the middle of something here. Now’s not a good time.” She moved as if to close the door.

He narrowed his eyes and looked at her so hard she almost believed he could have X-ray vision. “This won’t take long.”

“I mean it, Noah. You’re going to have to come back tomorrow. Or the next day,” she said, praying he didn’t hear the little quaver in her voice. The backward step she took was pure self-preservation, for the man was a weakness for which she had no immunity. “I’ve had a lousy day and I’m not in the mood for company.”

She was taking another backward step when he reached for her hand. Her senses short-circuited like a string of lights at the end of a power surge. His fingers were long, his grip slightly possessive. It brought out a familiar yearning born of loneliness, need and a great sadness.

“Aw, Lace, don’t cry,” he said, tugging lightly on her hand.

“I told you, I must have gotten something in my—” The next thing she knew, she was toppling into his arms.

Noah didn’t think about what he was doing, because what he was doing felt as natural as flying. Wrapping his arms around Lacey, he tilted his chin to make room for her head and widened his stance to make room for her feet between his. For once, it wasn’t the vibration of flight he sensed, but her trembling. At first she held herself stiffly, but slowly the tension drained out of her. He didn’t know what she’d been through since he’d last seen her, and he didn’t want to guess what was at the root of her tears. In that place where instincts lived and survival reigned, he knew only that she needed something as simple and basic as a human touch.

It had been a year since he’d inhaled the scent of her shampoo, since he’d felt her warm breath against his neck or held her soft curves against the hard length of his body. He heard the rush of blood in his ears and he knew the cause.

He needed to stop this. He’d come here for a reason, a damn good one.

She sighed and lifted her head from his shoulder. Splaying her fingers wide against his chest as if to push away, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. For a moment, neither of them moved, not even to breathe.

Her eyes were luminous and her lashes were damp. Noah’s heart skipped a beat then raced in double-time. Without conscious thought, he swooped down and covered her mouth with his.

He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Okay, he knew. He’d been imagining this ever since Digger told him Lacey was back in town.

He kissed her. It was demanding and rousing, and once it started, it was too late to ask what she was doing back in Orchard Hill, too late to ask her anything, or to do anything but pull her even closer and tip her head up and plunge into the heat and hunger springing to life between them.

She opened her mouth beneath his, and clutched fistfuls of his shirt to keep from falling. He wasn’t going to let her fall. Keeping one arm around her back, he moved his other hand to her waist, along her ribs, to the delicate edges of her shoulder blades. He massaged the knot at the back of her neck until she moaned. It was a low, primal sound that brought an answering one from deep inside him.

The kiss stopped and started a dozen times. Raw and savage, it tore through him until his heart was thundering and holding her wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

His ears rang and his lungs burned and need coursed through his veins. He was guilty of slipping his hands beneath her shirt, guilty of succumbing to her beauty and his need. His right hand took a slow journey the way it had come, along her ribs, to the small of her back and lower. She locked herself in his embrace and buried her fingers in his hair, as guilty of wanting this as he was.

He covered her breast with his other hand, the thin fabric of her bra the only barrier between her skin and his. He massaged and kneaded until she moaned again, her head tipping back. His eyes half-open, he made a sound, too, his gaze going to the boxes lining the room.

“You’re packing,” he said, easing the strap of her tank top off her right shoulder. “Where are you going?”

“It’s no concern of yours.”

“You leave a kid on my doorstep, it’s sure as hell my concern,” he said against her skin.

The censure in Noah’s voice brought Lacey to her senses. Stiffening, she opened her eyes. She drew her right shoulder away from his lips and yanked herself out of his arms. Unable to get very far away without running into boxes, she had to make do with six feet of space between them.

She pulled her shirt down and pushed her strap up. Her breathing was ragged and her thoughts jumbled. Trying to get both under control wasn’t easy. What an understatement. The passion that had erupted had temporarily thrown her into her old habits, for she’d never been able to resist him.

Catching sight of her reflection in the mirror again, she pushed her hair behind her ears and took several calming breaths. From six feet away she could see Noah’s vehemence returning.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?” he asked.

Something crashed in Lacey’s mind like a whiskey bottle hurled against the alley wall below. That was why Noah was here? Because for some unfathomable reason he believed she’d gotten pregnant? If she could have laughed, it would have been bitter.

“Are you going to answer my question or aren’t you?” he demanded.

Again, she heard the censure in his voice. When other young girls were learning to say please and thank you and how to walk in heels and fit in with their peers, Lacey had been learning how to fend for herself. Eventually, she’d acquired those other skills from teachers and friends, books and television, but self-preservation was as deeply ingrained as her pride.

She may have been raised over a shabby bar, but she didn’t have to accept his or anyone else’s unwarranted reproach. “I want you to leave,” she said. “Now.”

His eyes narrowed. “What game are you playing, Lacey?”

She squared off opposite him. “I’m not playing with you anymore. I thought I made that clear a year ago.”

Her statement would have carried more impact if her lips weren’t still wet and swollen from his kiss, but she could tell by the way he drew his next breath that she’d scraped a nerve.

“Tell me this,” he said, his hands going to his hips, too. “Did you leave Joey on our front porch tonight?”

She lifted her chin a notch, surprise momentarily rendering her speechless. Finally, she managed to say, “What do you think?”

“I think that if you did, it’s a hell of a way to tell a man he’s responsible for a kid.”

It was her turn to feel stung. Obviously, he didn’t know her at all. That was the problem, wasn’t it? He told her what he wanted and needed and she pretended to want and need the same thing. Until two-and-a-half years ago, that is. That was when the truth had come out. It was the same night they’d broken up. It hadn’t been pretty, but it had been necessary in order for her to move forward in her life, and all the other mumbo jumbo she read in self-help books.

She straightened her back and stiffened her upper lip. It rankled slightly that she had to remind herself that she’d done nothing wrong and, consequently, owed him nothing.

“If he’s mine,” he said, on a roll, “the least you could have done was sign the damn note so we wouldn’t have to wonder which of us is his father.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Noah made her head spin. He always had.

She’d fallen in love with him when she was eighteen years old. By the time she’d realized that he’d needed his lofty dreams of freedom more than he’d needed her, it had been too late to guard her heart from getting broken every time he flew off into the wild blue yonder. Eventually, she’d found the courage to chase her own dream.

Now here she was, back where she’d started. No matter what Noah thought, she wasn’t the same girl she’d been ten years ago, or five, or even one. Now she had to think about what she needed.

She walked to the door and held it open. “I asked you to leave.”

“Are you going to answer my question?” he asked roughly, squaring off opposite her in the doorway.

Gathering her dignity about her, she said, “A baby. That would be the ultimate tether, wouldn’t it? What would you do if I said yes? Would you marry me, Noah?”

A slap wouldn’t have stunned him more.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, unable to close the door while his foot was in it.

Tires screeched and a horn honked out on the street. The fracas seemed to bring him to some sort of decision. Staring into her eyes as if he could see all the way to her soul, he said, “Dinner is at one at the homestead tomorrow. Be there.”

The deep cadence of his voice hung in the air for a long time after he left. Lacey closed the door, but she moved around the cluttered apartment as if in a trance.

Noah Sullivan had a lot of nerve. It was just like him to threaten to break her door down if she didn’t let him in and then trounce off as if everything that had happened was her fault. He made her so mad.

She closed her eyes, because that wasn’t all she felt for him. She’d gone an entire year without seeing him, without talking to him or touching him, and then, bam, she’d spent one minute in his presence and wound up in his arms. Why did her body always seem to betray her when it came to Noah?

She knew the answer, and it had as much to do with love as it did with passion. She stomped her foot at the futility of it all.

From what she could gather from the little he’d told her tonight, somebody had left a baby on the Sullivans’ doorstep. It wasn’t clear to her why Marsh, Reed and Noah were uncertain which of them was the father. The entire situation seemed ludicrous, but if Noah believed the child might have been a product of their night of passion last year, the baby must be an infant.

What kind of a mother left her child that way?

A desperate one, Lacey thought as she looked around the old apartment where she’d spent her formative years. She understood desperation.

Shortly after her father died last year, the company she’d worked for in Chicago had downsized and she’d found herself unemployed. Her meager savings had quickly run out. Part-time and temp jobs barely put food on the table. Before long she was behind on her rent. And then things got worse.

She placed a hand over the scar on her abdomen, then just as quickly took her hand away.

She didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. She couldn’t change the past, and who knew what the future held?

Right now, what she needed was a viable means of support. What she had—all she had—was this narrow building that housed her father’s boarded-up bar and this ramshackle apartment above it. Although she’d promised herself that she would never move back to Orchard Hill, the deed to this property gave her a handful of options she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She could reopen the bar, or rent out the building and this apartment, or sell it all—lock, stock and barrel.

As she returned to her packing, she thought about Noah’s invitation. Okay, it had sounded more like an order. Dinner was at one tomorrow, he’d said. He expected her to be there.

She wondered what he would do when she didn’t show up. She spent far too much time imagining what would happen if she did.

There were two types of guys. Those who asked permission. And those who begged forgiveness. Why, Noah wondered, did he always land in the latter category?

He’d had every intention of knocking on Lacey’s door and asking her one simple question. “Is Joey my son?”

But he’d seen her tears, and he’d reached for her hand, and one thing had led to another. Now here he was, pulling into his own driveway, the remnants of unspent desire congealing in his bloodstream while guilt fought for equal space. Since there wasn’t much he could do about his failings right now, he pulled his keys from the ignition, turned off his headlights and got out.

The house was lit up like a church. Even the attic light was on. The windows were open, but other than the bullfrogs croaking from a distant pond and a car driving by, he didn’t hear anything. He hoped that was a good sign.

He went inside quietly, and found Marsh and Reed in the living room again. They were standing in the center of the room, staring down into the old wooden cradle between them. There was a streak of dirt on Marsh’s white T-shirt and Reed’s hair was sticking up as if he’d raked his fingers through it. Repeatedly.

Noah waited until they looked at him to mouth, “How long has he been sleeping?”

After glancing at his watch, Marsh mouthed back, “Four minutes.”

“Did you talk to Lacey?” Reed whispered.

Noah nodded and tried not to grimace.

As if by unspoken agreement, they moved the discussion to the kitchen. Keeping his voice down once they were all assembled there, Noah said, “Lacey didn’t leave Joey on our doorstep.”

“She told you that?” Reed asked.

“She didn’t have to. If I hadn’t been in shock, I would have realized it right away. If she’d been pregnant with my kid, she would have gotten in my face or served me with papers. She wouldn’t have left the baby on my porch and then crept away without telling me.”

“You’re positive?” Reed asked.

“Covert moves aren’t her style,” he said. “If Joey is a Sullivan, he isn’t mine.”

Marsh, Reed and Noah had personalities very different from one another. But one thing they had in common was an innate aversion to asking permission to do what they thought was best. Consequently, Noah wasn’t the only member of this family who sometimes wound up in the uncomfortable position of asking for forgiveness. Remembering all the times these two had been waiting for him when he’d broken curfew or worse, and all the times they must have wondered what the hell they were going to do with him, he felt an enormous welling of affection for his brothers.

“Obviously, you were both with somebody a year ago. Do either of you have an address or phone number?” he asked.

The first to shake his head, Reed was also the first to drag out a chair and sit down. “She was a waitress I met when I was in Dallas last summer. She spilled salsa in my lap and was so flustered she tried to clean it up. I stopped her before—Anyway, she blushed adorably and said her shift was almost over. She had a nice smile, big hair and—” His voice trailed away.

“What was her name?” Marsh asked after he’d taken a seat, too.

In a voice so quiet it wasn’t easy to hear, Reed said, “Cookie.”

Noah didn’t mean to grin. Marsh probably didn’t, either. It was just that the fastidious middle Sullivan brother normally went out with women named Katherine or Margaret or Elizabeth.

“What’s her last name?” Noah asked.

“I’ve been trying to remember ever since we brought Joey inside.”

Reed Sullivan had sandy-blond hair, but his whisker stubble was as dark as Noah’s and Marsh’s. Letting whisker stubble accumulate was a rare occurrence, so rare in fact that Noah had forgotten how dark it was. Scratching his uncommonly stubbly cheek, Reed looked beyond mortified. If he expected chastisement, he wasn’t going to get it from either of his brothers.

“You said she was a waitress,” Noah said, trying to make a little sense of a very strange situation. “What was the name of the restaurant?”

Reed said, “It was a small Mexican place near the airport. Now I wish I’d used a credit card so there would be a paper trail.”

Noah turned his attention to Marsh, who had grown unusually quiet. “What about you? Are you dealing with a one-night stand, too?”

Marsh shook his head. “Her name is Julia Monroe. At least that’s what she told me.” His voice got husky and took on a dreamy quality Noah had never heard before. “I met her on vacation last year on Roanoke Island. We slept under the stars and visited just about every coffee shop up and down the Outer Banks.”

“Have you talked to her since the week was over?” Reed asked, obviously as curious as Noah.

“The number she gave me was out of service,” Marsh answered.

That seemed odd to Noah, but there wasn’t much about this dilemma that didn’t seem odd. “What about the note?” he asked. “Does the handwriting look familiar to either of you?”

Marsh and Reed wore similar expressions of uncertainty. After a moment of quiet contemplation, Reed asked, “Why wouldn’t she have signed the note? Or addressed it?”

It was just one more thing about this situation that didn’t make sense. Leaning back in his chair, Noah thought about the note. It hinted at desperation, contained a written plea and a promise that Joey’s mother would return for him. Maybe that was all she wanted them to know.

“Does the middle name Daniel mean anything to either of you?” Noah asked.

Again, Marsh and Reed shook their heads.

Reed said, “We’re back to square one. We’re going to need a DNA test. I checked online a little while ago. Kits are available at drugstores everywhere. The test looks pretty straightforward and simple to perform, but it can take up to six weeks to get the results.”

“I don’t want to wait six weeks,” Marsh said firmly.

“Neither do I,” Reed said with the same amount of force. “Our only alternative is to hire a private investigator.”

Reed reached across the table for his laptop. Marsh went to the cupboard and dragged out an old phone book.

Before either of them went a step further, Noah stopped them. “You can’t pluck some name off the internet or from the phone book for something this important.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Reed asked.

As a matter of fact, Noah did. For once in their lives, having a hellion for a brother was going to come in handy. “A few years ago I tested an airplane for a guy calling in a favor. He’s a P.I. over in Grand Rapids and flies a blue biplane called Viper. I don’t have a business card but I know somebody who does. I’ll make a few phone calls first thing in the morning.”

“Is this investigator any good?” Marsh asked.

Noah said, “He’s found runaways and exes and bail jumpers and just about everything in between.”

His stomach growled audibly. Trying to remember how long it had been since he’d eaten, he went to the refrigerator and opened the door. He saw various cartons, bags and containers of leftover takeout, one of which was starting to resemble a science experiment. This was why he always cooked when he was home.

“When are you leaving?” Marsh asked.

“I’m not,” Noah said, cautiously sniffing a carton before tossing it into the trash. The science experiment went in next.

“You don’t have another flying engagement lined up?” Reed asked.

“It’ll keep.” Unlike the leftovers on the top shelf. “I’m not going anywhere until this is resolved. I figure we can use a couple of extra hands around here.”

While Noah threw out everything except eggs, butter, condiments and cans of soda and beer, Marsh and Reed talked about what they might expect on Joey’s first night here. According to the information Reed had gotten from the 83,000 Google hits, children this age generally required a feeding every two to six hours.

“You’re saying we could be in for a long night,” Noah said, closing the refrigerator.

Reed was fast at work on a preliminary schedule. Following a little discussion, Noah was assigned the third watch.

He ate a peanut-butter sandwich standing up. After chasing it down with a cold beer, he strode to the stairway on the other side of the room. “I’m going to get some sleep. Wake me up when you need me. I mean it. We’re in this together.”

“Noah?” Marsh said quietly.

With one hand on the doorknob, Noah looked back at his oldest brother.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Marsh said.

“Glad barely scrapes the surface,” Reed said, closing his laptop.

Something constricted deep in Noah’s chest. “I’m glad to be here.” It was the honest-to-God truth.

He could have left it at that, but opportunities like this didn’t come along every day, so of course he cocked his head slightly and said, “Sex on the beach, and big hair and big—” He cleared his throat. “Who knew you two had it in you?”

He dodged the roll of paper towels Marsh threw at him, and took the steps two at a time. In his room at the end of the hall, he emptied his pockets of his keys and change and put the check from Tom Bender on his dresser, then quickly stripped down. Heading for the only bathroom on the second floor, he thought about the apology he owed Lacey.

He turned on the shower. While he waited for the water to get hot, he considered possible ways he might say he was sorry. Red roses, he thought as he lathered a washcloth and scrubbed the day’s grime from his arms, chest and shoulders. In his mind’s eye he saw a dozen red roses upside down in Lacey’s trash can. A box of chocolates would meet with the same fate.

By the time he dried off, he knew what he had to do. It wasn’t going to be easy.

Begging forgiveness never was.

Chapter Three

Sure, the rusty thermometer on the light pole in the alley behind Bell’s Tavern registered eighty-one degrees, but the bright afternoon sunshine wasn’t the only reason Ralph Jacobs was sweating.

“You’re getting a bargain,” Lacey said patiently as her dad’s former customer placed another bill in her outstretched hand.

“Six hundred’s a little steep, doncha think?” he groused, mopping his forehead with a folded handkerchief. “That old Chevy is close to twenty years old, you know.”

She glanced at the pickup truck now sitting on Ralph’s flatbed trailer. She could have gotten more for her dad’s pickup if she’d had time to advertise, and they both knew it.

Turning her attention back to the transaction, she watched as Ralph wet his finger and reluctantly added another hundred spot to the others in her hand. “Dad always took good care of that truck,” she said. “It was ten years old when he bought it. Remember how proud he was that day? It still has low mileage and started just now the first time you turned the key. You and I agreed on $600.”

“It has four flat tires,” he insisted.

“I threw those in at no extra charge.”

Ralph made a sound she would have been hard-pressed to replicate. When he finally parted with the sixth hundred-dollar bill, she handed him the signed title and tucked the money into the pocket of her faded cutoffs for safekeeping.

Just then Lacey’s best friend came hurrying down the steps, her light brown curls bouncing and her white blouse nearly as bright as the sunshine. “It was good of you to offer to drop these boxes at Good Neighbors on your way home, Mr. Jacobs,” April Avery called as she secured the last carton on the trailer with the others.

Ralph made that sound again, because it hadn’t been his idea.

April was one of those savvy, quirky women nobody could say no to. She’d moved to Orchard Hill after she married into the large Avery brood seven years ago. She and Lacey had clicked the first time they met and had become the best of friends in almost no time.

Together they watched as the trailer carrying many of the things Harlan Bell could no longer use rattled away. The moment they were alone again, April pushed her curly hair behind her ears and exclaimed, “I thought he would never leave. Now, finish your story.”

“Where was I?” Lacey asked. As if she didn’t know.

“You were just getting to the good part,” April said. “Noah threatened to break your door down if you didn’t open it, and the instant you did, he took you in his arms and kissed you so thoroughly you swooned. That is so romantic.”

There was never much activity in the alley at this time of the afternoon in the middle of the week. Two boys had taken a shortcut through here on their bikes a few minutes ago. A panel truck was making a delivery to the appliance store at the other end of the alley, but the deliverymen were too far away to hear Lacey say, “I did not swoon. And it wasn’t romantic.”

“Then your heart didn’t race and your knees didn’t weaken and butterflies didn’t flutter their naughty little wings in unmentionable places?” April asked.

Lacey held up a hand in a halting gesture. Just thinking about Noah’s kiss was stirring up those butterflies again.

“That’s what I thought,” April said, nudging her with one shoulder. “You’re lucky. The only romance I’ve had since Jay’s been deployed is via webcam. Trust me, it’s not the same as real kissing.”

Lacey stared at her friend. “You and Jay have webcam sex?”

“Never until after the twins are in bed, but we’re talking about you.”

Smiling at April’s one-of-a-kind sense of humor, Lacey wandered to the metal trash can lying on its side under the stairway. She set the can upright and put the lid on with a loud clank. Next, she unlocked the tavern’s back door and the two of them went inside.

April’s in-laws owned the busiest realty company in Orchard Hill. She’d been working in the office and pursuing her real estate license since her husband, a guardsman, had been called to active duty eight months ago. She was here this afternoon as Lacey’s friend but also to offer her professional opinion regarding a selling strategy for the tavern. It would be her first solo listing.

While April poked her head into the empty storage room that had once housed kegs of beer and crates of liquor, Lacey went to the front door and propped that open, too. Standing in the slight cross breeze, she tried to see the place through a Realtor’s eyes.

When it came to bars in Orchard Hill, Bell’s Tavern had been near the bottom of the food chain. Lacey had always gotten the impression that her dad had liked it that way. Originally, the building had been a mercantile exchange. It had passed hands several times before being converted into a tavern eighty years ago. The ceilings were low, the sidewalls were exposed brick and the hardwood floors desperately needed refinishing. The tavern’s most redeeming features were the old speakeasy door from Prohibition days, now leaning against the wall in the storeroom, and the ornate hand-carved mahogany bar and matching shelves behind it. The mirror had been cracked when her dad bought the place, so she couldn’t blame that for her run of bad luck this past year.

She thought about the itemized hospital bill tucked inside her suitcase upstairs. Before her phone had been shut off, bill collectors had called at all hours of the day and night. The wolves were at her door.

“Do you think Avery Realty will be able to find a buyer for this place?” she asked.

“Is that really what you want?” April countered.

Sliding her hands into the pockets of her cutoffs where all the money she had to her name crinkled reassuringly, she said, “I have to sell, April.”

April gave one of the barstools a good spin. “Don’t mind me. I’ve been having serious separation issues ever since Jay left for Afghanistan. It’s selfish of me, but I want you to stay. Don’t worry, we’ll find a buyer for this place, although in this economy it could take a little while. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about the hidden treasure your dad mentioned before he died.”

“I’ve searched everywhere,” Lacey insisted, putting one of the cameras from her mother’s collection back on the high shelf where she’d found it. “There’s nothing here. Even this old Brownie has more sentimental value than monetary worth.”

“Maybe the hidden treasure isn’t a tangible object,” April said. “I think that’s what your father was trying to tell you.”

“What do you mean?” Lacey asked.

April stopped testing every barstool and looked back at her. “You’re in Orchard Hill and Noah is in Orchard Hill. Maybe the hidden treasure is the lodestar that keeps bringing you two together. You know, Fate.”

“Oh, man, I hope that wasn’t what he was talking about,” Lacey declared. “I’m not even on speaking terms with Fate anymore.”

Lacey was relieved when April let the subject drop, because she couldn’t have argued about the unreliability of Fate with someone whose husband was dodging land mines and shrapnel on the other side of the world. Leaving her friend to get the measurements she would use in the real-estate listing, Lacey took stock of her situation.

She’d taken a leap of faith when she’d moved to Chicago more than two years ago. It was never easy to start over in a new place, but she’d made a few friends there, and although her job as an administrative assistant had been mundane much of the time, it had paid the bills. She’d taken night classes and dared to believe that her future had potential.

Then her dad died and the company she’d worked for downsized and she was let go. A few months later she’d wound up in the emergency room, and what was supposed to have been a simple surgery sprouted complications. Not long after that, she’d received an eviction notice. Her last temp job had barely left her with enough money to cover the bus ticket back to Orchard Hill. She didn’t know how she would ever repay the hospital unless she sold the tavern. So, no, she didn’t care to place her faith in something as flighty as Fate.

When April had all the information and measurements she needed to pull some comparables and start working on a selling strategy, Lacey saw her to the front door. After promising to come by later to see April’s three-year-old twin daughters, Lacey flipped the dead bolt. She was on her way to turn out the light in the storeroom when she noticed a cue stick lying on the pool table in the corner. She headed over to take care of it, the quiet slap of her flip-flops the only sound in the room.

There was a nagging in the back of her mind because she didn’t recall seeing the cue stick lying out when she’d been down here yesterday. Wondering if she simply hadn’t noticed, she went around to the other side of the pool table to put the stick away. She hadn’t gotten far when she saw something on the floor beneath the pool table.

She bent down for a closer look and found a sleeping bag carefully tucked under the wood skirting of the pool table. Her breath caught and a shiver ran up her spine.

She might have overlooked the cue stick, but she’d swept these floors yesterday and was positive the bedroll hadn’t been here then. That meant somebody had been here between last night and today.

How could anyone have gotten in? The doors and windows had been locked, the whole place battened down tight.

She searched her mind for a possible explanation. If Orchard Hill were a larger city, she might suspect that a homeless person was camping out in the empty tavern. She was more inclined to think a teenager or a college student might have done it. That didn’t explain how someone could have gotten in. And since when did teenagers or college students fold things up neatly? It didn’t make sense to leave the sleeping bag here.

Lacey went perfectly still. Maybe the intruder hadn’t left.

Was someone here now?

Her heart raced and goose bumps scurried across her shoulders. Shattering beer bottles and loud voices didn’t frighten her, but this eerie quiet had her imagination running wild.

There was a light on over the bar and another one over the pool table. The windows on the east wall faced the brick building next door, allowing very little natural light inside. Suddenly, every corner in the room seemed too dark and every doorway a potential hiding place for someone lurking menacingly in the shadows.

From behind her came a soft thud. Her hand flew to her mouth and her breath lodged in her throat.

The sound came again. It was a footstep—she was sure of it—followed by the creak of a floorboard. She spun around. And saw Noah pause just inside the back door.

“Oh! It’s you,” she said on a gasp.

Noah came closer, one thumb hitched in the front pocket of low-slung jeans. The fingers of his other hand were curled around the handle of an infant carrier.

His eyes were in shadow, but one corner of his mouth lifted in a humorless grin. “The door was open so I didn’t knock. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I came here to tell you I’m sorry. I guess I should apologize for scaring the daylights out of you while I’m at it.”

Prying the cue stick out of her clenched hands, she laid it on the table where she’d found it. She carefully wound her way around small tables with mismatched chairs, and arrived at the bar shortly after him. She was glad when he started talking, because she would have had a hard time getting anything past the knot in her vocal cords.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” He lifted the car seat a little higher so she could see the baby sleeping inside. “My nephew, Joseph Daniel Sullivan. He likes to be called Joey.”

“Your nephew?” she managed to ask.

“You don’t have to keep your voice down,” Noah said. “He can sleep through anything, as long as it’s his idea.”

So the child already had a mind of his own. He sounded like a Sullivan, Lacey thought.

Gently, Noah placed the car seat on the bar and continued. “I had no right to accuse you of leaving Joey on our doorstep last night. It’s no wonder you didn’t join us for dinner today. That reminds me.” He reached into a canvas bag he’d placed beside the baby, and brought out a clear, covered bowl of spaghetti. “I brought a peace offering.”

The next thing she knew she was holding the bowl, still slightly warm, in her hands.

“Are you ever going to say anything, Lacey?”

She raised her chin and opened her mouth only to reverse the process. She didn’t know what to say. What did a girl say when she was standing three feet away from her first love, a man who looked as if he hadn’t slept, a man whose dark hair was a little too long to be considered civilized, but who continued to keep a steady hand on the car seat where an unbelievably small baby slept?

“Did you use your homemade spaghetti sauce?” she asked, only to groan aloud.

She could tell by the slight indentation in his left cheek that his grin was no longer humorless. “Would you accept my apology if I said yes?” he asked.

Lacey wasn’t ready to smile. She wasn’t one to get angry and get over it. For her, forgiveness was a process. “So this is Joey,” she said, moving to a safer topic. “Have you determined whose son he is?”

With a shake of his head, Noah said, “We won’t know for sure until Marsh and Reed have a DNA test and get the results. Meanwhile, they’re hoping they can locate Joey’s mother as quickly as possible, not that it’s going to be easy. They’re meeting with the P.I. right now. I’m on baby duty. You can ask me anything you want, but first, I’d like to finish my apology.”

Lacey placed the bowl of spaghetti on the bar with her camera. Settling onto one of the stools, she made a show of getting comfortable.

Noah eased onto the stool next to her. Looking at her in the mirror, he said, “Our breakup two-and-a-half years ago came as a shock to me. Hell, it blew me out of the sky. Looking back, I realize it shouldn’t have.”

She wanted to tell him to stop, because this was dangerous territory, more dangerous than he knew. She took a deep breath and willed herself to hear him out.

“I don’t know how I could have missed the clues,” he said. “But I did. If there was a little kid within a hundred feet, your eyes were on him. Just like now.”

She dragged her gaze from Joey and stared at Noah’s reflection. He had the tall, rangy build of a barroom brawler. One of these days he would probably get around to shaving, but it wouldn’t change that moody set of his lips or the depth in his brown eyes. He rarely talked about himself. On the surface, he was all bluster and swagger. If a woman was patient and paid attention, every once in a while she caught a glimpse of the part of him he kept hidden most of the time.

One day after she’d been seeing him for about a year, he’d taken her flying. It was during that flight that she’d learned how he felt about becoming a father. He was wonderful with kids—she’d seen that for herself—but his feelings about parenthood had nothing to do with how children responded to him and vice versa. That May morning, two thousand feet above the ground, he told her about the day his parents died in an icy pileup on the interstate.

Every now and then someone in Orchard Hill recalled a memory of Neil and Mary Beth Sullivan. Noah’s mother and father had been well liked and were sadly missed. It was common knowledge that Marsh had stepped directly out of college and into the role of head of the family after they’d died, and that Reed came home two years later to help. The youngest, Madeline, had been everyone’s darling, and Noah was the hell-raiser everybody worried about.

Until that day, Lacey hadn’t known he’d been in the car when it crashed. With his eyes on the vast blue sky outside the cockpit and the control held loosely in his able hands, he’d described the discordant screech of tires and the deafening crunch of metal. Trapped in the back, he hadn’t been able to see his parents. But he’d heard the utter stillness. The silence. Fifteen-year-old Noah had walked away with a broken arm and minor cuts and bruises—an orphan. He didn’t remember much about the days immediately following the accident. During the burial, the fog in his brain had lifted and he’d solemnly vowed that he was never going to put a kid of his through that. He wasn’t going to have children. Period.

Over the years she’d tried to find the words to tell him that lightning didn’t strike twice and that their children wouldn’t be orphaned. But who was she to make that promise?

She’d loved him, and for a long time she’d told herself what they shared was enough. He was right, though. She never had been able to keep her eyes off little ones. After April and Jay had their twins three years ago, yearning to have a baby of her own became an ache she couldn’t pretend didn’t exist.

“Until you spelled it out for me,” he said, drawing her back to the present, “I didn’t know you even wanted kids. But you did. And I didn’t. It was a classic breakup. End of story, right?”

Lacey remembered the day she’d ended things with Noah. They used to fight sometimes. When it happened, their arguments were messy and noisy. That final night neither had raised their voices. It made their breakup unforgettable on every level.

“Then we wound up in bed last year,” Noah said. “And Joey is about the right age to have been a product of that night. That’s no excuse for barging into your apartment last night and accusing you of deserting him. I hadn’t seen you in a while, but I should have known. People don’t change. You knew how it felt to lose your mother. You never would have left a baby on my doorstep. Slapping me with a lawsuit or siccing the cops on me—that I could see you doing.”

Nothing else could have made her smile just then.

Their gazes met, and this time it wasn’t in the mirror. Emotion swirled inside her, welling in her eyes. Her doctor in Chicago had told her that sudden tears were part of her healing process. She had a feeling it was too much to hope that Noah didn’t notice.

She knew how she looked. Her fine dark hair skimmed her shoulders and turned wavy in the summer humidity. Her shorts were threadbare, her T-shirt was thin and her breasts were sensitive. No doubt he noticed that, too.

She found herself looking into his eyes again. It was easy to get lost in that dark brown gaze. There was a time when she wouldn’t have been able to drag her eyes away. Last night, for example, and a hundred other nights, too.

Today she flattened her hands on the worn surface of the bar and slid off the far side of her stool. “Okay. I forgive you for scaring the daylights out of me and for accusing me of leaving Joey on your doorstep.”

He stood, too. Cocking his head slightly, he said, “Can I get that in writing?”

She rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help smiling, too. Feeling lighter—perhaps there was something to this forgiveness business—she spied her favorite 35 mm camera. The instant it was in her hands, she felt back in her element. She aimed it at Joey, adjusted the focus and snapped a picture.

The poor baby jerked. His little hands flew up and his eyes popped open. Surprisingly, he didn’t cry. Instead, he found her with his unwavering gaze.

His eyes were blue and his cheeks were adorably chubby. Fleetingly, she wondered how his mother could stand to be away from him for even a day.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured quietly. “I didn’t mean to startle you. The next time I’ll ask for permission before I take your picture. Deal?”

The change in his expression began in his eyes. Like the wick of an oil lamp at the first touch of a lighted match, delight spread across his little features, tugging the corners of his lips up until his entire face shone.

“May I take another one?” she asked him.

He smiled again, this time for the camera. He was a Sullivan all right. Marsh and Reed didn’t need a DNA test to determine that much.

“I can’t believe it,” Noah said.

She glanced up and snapped his picture, too. “What can’t you believe?”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile. He obviously has good taste in women.”

She wished she didn’t feel so complimented.

“Would you like to hold him?” he asked.

She ached to. “Maybe some other time.”

There was a moment of awkwardness between them. They weren’t a couple anymore, and neither knew what to say. After a few more seconds of uncomfortable silence, Noah picked the baby carrier up by the handle, an effortless shifting of muscles and ease, and said, “I guess I should get this little guy home.” He slipped the strap of the diaper bag over one shoulder then started toward the back door where he’d entered ten minutes earlier.

Lacey slid her hand inside her pocket. Reassured that her nest egg was still safe and sound, she glanced into the shadowy corners around the room. Goose bumps popped out up and down her arms all over again.

With her camera suspended from the strap around her neck, her key in one hand and the bowl of spaghetti in the other, she hurried after Noah, locking the door behind her as she left. While he wrestled to secure the car seat properly in the seat of his truck, she started up the stairs.

“Lacey?” he called when she was halfway to the top.

She glanced down at him. “Yes?”

He was looking up at her, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. “I’m glad you’re back. Orchard Hill hasn’t been the same without you.”

She didn’t have a reply to that because she wasn’t sure how she felt about being back. She climbed the remaining stairs and let herself into the apartment. After putting her camera and the spaghetti away, she stood for a moment catching her breath and willing her heart rate to settle into its rightful rhythm.

When Noah was gone, she went out again, locking that door, too. She cut through the alley and emerged onto Division Street.

Orchard Hill was a college town of nearly 25,000 residents. Three seasons of the year, the downtown was teeming with activity. Now that most of the students had gone home for the summer, Division Street had turned into a sleepy hometown main street. That didn’t keep her from looking over her shoulder this afternoon.

Her first visit was to the electronics store three blocks away where she studied the wide assortment of cell phones before choosing one she could afford. Her first call an hour later on her prepaid, bare-bones cell phone was to the Orchard Hill Police Department. After all, it was one thing to be unafraid of things that went bump in the night and another thing to ignore evidence that somebody had gotten into a locked tavern and slipped out again with barely a trace.

Lacey knew how a shadow felt.

She’d waited an hour for the police cruiser to arrive. Now she wasn’t letting the man in blue out of her sight.

She’d shown Officer Pratt the sleeping bag and cue stick, and explained the situation as best she could. She answered his questions then remained an unwavering six feet behind him as he checked the perimeter of the tavern inside and out.

A tall man with thinning gray hair, he didn’t seem to mind having a shadow. He painstakingly rattled windows, inspected sashes, jiggled locks and shone his silver flashlight into corners, behind doors and inside both restrooms.

After examining the doors and dead bolts and finding that nothing seemed to have been disturbed, he returned to the pool table where the narrow sleeping bag now lay. “You’ve never seen this before today?” he asked.

Lacey shook her head.

“Are you sure you didn’t give out any keys to anybody? An old boyfriend, maybe?”

He was only doing his job, so she answered his question. “I had new dead bolts installed after my father passed away. Nobody has a key except me. I know I locked the doors yesterday because I had to unlock them this afternoon before I could get in.”

He turned the narrow sleeping bag upside down and gave it a little shake. A plastic bottle of water rolled out, across the floor. With a great creaking of his hips and knees, he squatted down to reach it. Hauling himself back to his feet, he unscrewed the top.

“Do you wear pink lipstick?” he asked, holding the bottle toward the light.

She shook her head and took a closer look, too. The clear plastic bottle was half-full. She recognized the brand of sparkling spring water as one sold locally, but the pale pink shade of the lip print around the top didn’t look familiar to her at all.

“Frankly,” Officer Pratt said, “I’m stumped. Nothing inside the tavern has been taken, broken, meddled with, defaced or damaged in any way. Judging from the size of the sleeping bag and the pink print on the bottle, it’s safe to assume we’re dealing with a female. I don’t know how she got in and out, or why. The windows are all intact and the locks appear secure. It looks to me as if we have a Houdini on our hands. I’d call it breaking and entering, except nothing’s been broken. Other than the sleeping bag and water bottle, there’s not even any evidence that an actual trespassing has occurred. It feels more like a mystery than a crime, doesn’t it?”

He capped his pen and closed his book, obviously finished here. She followed him to the door, where she said, “Then you’re not going to do anything?”

“There’s nothing more I can do,” he said. “I’ll make a note of your call and the subsequent findings for my report, and I’ll have a patrol car drive by periodically if it’ll make you feel better. Call the department if you notice anything else or if she comes back, but I don’t think she will.”

She thanked the policeman for coming. After he was gone, she put the cap back on the bottle and started to gather the sleeping bag into a heap for the trash. Something made her stop short of the trash can.

She hadn’t heard any news reports about recent serial killers wearing pink lip gloss and sleeping under pool tables. Officer Pratt said it himself. The entire situation felt more like a mystery than a crime.

Crimes were frightening, but mysteries were, well, mysterious. The goose bumps that had been popping up all over her body dissolved. Rather than throw the items away, she shook out the bedroll and refolded it, then put it back where she’d found it under the pool table, the bottle of water with its cap screwed on tight beside it.

After cataloging everything in her mind, she turned out the lights and locked the tavern’s back door. As she climbed the stairs to her apartment, she wondered if Officer Pratt was right, and whoever had visited the tavern was long gone, never to return.

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