Kitabı oxu: «Baby Business»

Baby Business

Baby Steps

The Prodigal Valentine

Pride

and Pregnancy

Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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About the Author

Since 1998, two-time RITA^® Award winner and bestselling author KAREN TEMPLETON has written more than thirty books. A transplanted Easterner, she now lives in New Mexico with two hideously spoiled cats and whichever of her five sons happens to be in residence.

Baby Steps

Karen Templeton

To Gail

For giving this couple another chance to finally get

together (and for unfailingly knowing when I most need

a word of encouragement) and to Charles for loving

this book and wanting it to be the best it could be.

How blessed can a girl get?

Chapter One

“You get back here, Cass Carter!”

Dana Malone zipped across the sales floor after her rapidly retreating partner, nearly landing on her butt when a crawling baby shot out in front of her from behind a St. Bernard-sized Elmo. Half a wobble and a shuffle later, she was back on track. “What do you mean, I have to do it—ouch!”

“Watch out for the new high chair,” the long-legged, denim-skirted blonde tossed back, cradling the tiny head jutting out from a Snugli strapped to her chest.

“Thanks,” Dana grumbled, rubbing her hip as she snaked her way through cribs and playpens, Little Tikes’ playhouses and far too many racks of gently used baby clothes. Her two partners—and their skinny little fannies—could navigate the jumbled sales floor with ease. For Dana, the space was a minefield. As was Cass’s request. “Have you lost your mind? I can’t pick the store’s new location by myself, Cass! What on earth do I know about real estate?”

“This is Albuquerque, for heaven’s sake,” Cass said as she slipped into the store’s pea-sized office. “Not Manhattan.” She shimmied past her desk, heaped with paperwork and piles of newly consigned clothes, then swiped a trio of original Cabbage Patch Kids dolls in mint condition from the rocker wedged into one corner. “How difficult can it be to choose one strip mall storefront over another? Here, take Jason for a moment, would you?”

The weight of the month-old infant—and the ache—barely had a chance to register before Cass, now settled into the rocker, reached again for the softly fussing infant. Dana allowed herself an extra second of stolen new-baby scent before relinquishing her charge, watching Cass attach baby to breast with a neutral expression. The baby now contentedly slurping away, her partner lifted amused blue green eyes to her. “C.J.’s already got several potential locations lined up. All you have to do is weed out the ones that won’t work.”

A trickle of perspiration made a run for it down Dana’s sternum, seeking haven in her cleavage. “I’d just assumed we’d all do this together.”

“I know, sweetie. But I’m pooped. And Blake’s on my case as it is about coming back to work so soon. Besides, between our lease being up next month and the store about to burst at the seams—”

“What about Mercy? Why can’t she do it?”

“Why can’t I do what?”

The third side of the Great Expectations triangle stood in the office doorway, sports car-red fingernails sparkling against a frilly little skirt Dana wouldn’t have been able to wear when she was twelve.

“Go property scouting,” Dana said. “You’d be much better at it than me.”

Meredes Zamora swiped a dark curl out of her face as she squeezed into the office. “I’m also much better at juggling five customers at a time. You get rattled with two.”

“I do not!”

Both ladies laughed.

“Okay, so maybe I do get a little flustered.”

“Honey,” Mercy said, not unkindly, “you start stuttering.”

“And dropping things,” Cass added.

“And—”

“Okay, okay! I get your point!”

It was true. Even after nearly five years, even though wallpaper books and Excel spreadsheets held no terror for her, Dana still tended to lose her composure under duress. Especially about making business decisions on her own—

“He’s expecting your call,” Cass said.

Dana suddenly felt like a bird being eyed by a pair of hungry cats. “Who is?”

“C.J.”

She sighed in tandem with the soft jangle of the bell over the front door. In a flounce of curls and a swish of that mini-skirted fanny that had, Dana was sure, never felt the pinch of a girdle, Mercy pivoted back out to the sales floor, leaving Dana with the Duchess of Determination. She decided to ignore the feeling of dread curdling in her stomach as a slow, sly grin stretched across Cass’s naturally glossed mouth. “You’ve never seen C.J., have you?”

Curdled dread never lied. Especially when it came to Cass, who, now that her own love life was copacetic, had made fixing Dana’s woeful lack in that department her personal crusade.

Wiping her palms on the front of her skirt, Dana pivoted toward the door. “Mercy probably needs me out front—”

“No, she doesn’t. Sit.” Cass nodded toward the pile of clothes on her desk. “Those things need to be tagged anyway.”

Scowling, Dana plopped behind the desk, snatching a tiny pink jumper off the pile. “Twelve bucks?”

“Fifteen. Macy’s has them new for forty.” Cass shifted in her chair, making Jason’s hand fly about for a moment until his tiny fingers grasped her bunched up blouse. Envy pricked at Dana’s heart as Cass continued, more to the baby than to Dana, “C.J. is … mmm, how shall I put this …?” Zing went those eyes. “Magnificent.”

So she’d heard. Dana phh’d at her.

“As if it would kill you to spend the afternoon with the man with the bedroom, blue eyes.” Cass tugged her skirt back over her knee. “Butt’s not bad, either.”

Just what Dana needed in her life. Lethal eyes and taut buns. She scribbled the price on the tag, then jabbed the point of the ticket gun into the jumper, entertaining vaguely voodooesque thoughts. “I think that’s called sexual objectification.”

“Yeah. So?”

She grabbed the next item off the pile, a fuchsia jumpsuit with enormous purple flowers. “Twenty?”

“Sure. Sweetie, I nearly drooled over the guy myself when he helped me sell the house a few months ago. And don’t you dare tell Blake.”

Dana’s head snapped up. “Excuse me? You were seven months pregnant, recently widowed—”

Never mind that Cass’s second husband had been a dirtwad of the first order, but a friend has a duty to point out these things.

“—your ex-husband was hot to get back together, and you were salivating all over your Realtor?”

“Yeah, well, it was like having a close encounter with a chocolate marble cheesecake after a ten-year diet. Fortunately, since I’m not all that crazy about chocolate marble cheesecake, the temptation passed.”

Unfortunately, Dana had a real thing for chocolate marble cheesecake. Which Cass knew full well. As did Dana’s hips.

“This wouldn’t be you trying to fix me up, by any chance?”

“Perish the thought.”

Dana sighed, wrote out another price tag. “You forget. I had inside information.” She plopped the last garment on the “done” pile, then folded her hands in front of her on the desk. “C. J. Turner’s idea of intimacy is cozying up to his cell phone on his way to one appointment, making follow-up calls from another. The man is married to his business. Period.”

A moment of skeptical silence followed. “You got this from Trish, I take it?”

“Not that I know any details,” Dana said with a shrug. Her much younger cousin and she had never been close, despite Trish’s having lived with Dana’s parents for several years. She’d worked for C. J. Turner for six months before vanishing from the face of the earth, more than a year ago. Before the alien abduction, however, she had talked quite a bit about the apparently calendar-worthy Realtor. Professionally, she’d sung his praises, which was why Dana had recommended him to Cass when she’d needed an agent’s services. Personally, however, was something else again. “But I gathered the man hasn’t exactly listed himself on the Marriage Exchange.”

Cass gave her a pointed look from underneath feathery bangs. “So maybe he hasn’t met the right woman yet.”

“Boy, you are sleep-deprived.”

“Well, you never know. It could happen.”

“Yeah, and someday I might lose this extra thirty pounds I’ve been lugging around since junior high, but I’m not holdin’ my breath on that one, either.”

“You know, sweetie, just because Gil—”

“And you can stop right there,” Dana said softly before her partner could dredge up past history. She rose, grabbing the pile of newly marked clothes to cart out front. “I’ve already got one mother, Cass.”

“Sorry,” Cass said over the baby’s noisy suckling at her breast. “It’s just—”

“I am happy,” Dana said, cutting her off. “Most of the time, anyway. I’ve got a good life, great friends and I actually look forward to coming to work every day, which is a lot more than most people can say. But trust me, the minute I start buyin’ into all the ‘maybes’ and ‘it could happens,’ I’m screwed.”

Silence hovered between them for a few seconds, until, on a sigh that said far more than Dana wanted to know, Cass said, “C.J.’s card’s in my Rolodex.”

“Great,” Dana said, thinking, Why me, God? Why?

“You keep staring out the door like that, your eyeballs are gonna fall right outta your head.”

C.J. smiled, relishing the blast from the lobby’s overzealous air conditioner through his dress shirt, fresh out of the cleaner’s plastic this morning. “Haven’t you got phones to answer or something, Val?”

“You hear any ringing? I don’t hear any ringing, so I guess there aren’t any phones to answer.” The trim, fiftysomething platinum blonde waltzed from behind the granite reception desk to peer through silver-framed glasses out the double glass door at the gathering clouds. “You giving that cloud the evil eye so it’ll go away, or so it’ll come here?”

One hand stashed in his pants pocket, C.J. allowed a grin for both the storm outside and the Texas tempest beside him. Out over the West Mesa, lightning periodically forked in the ominous sky; in the past ten minutes, the thunder had gone from hesitant rumbling to something with a real kick to it. If it weren’t for this appointment, he’d be outside, arms raised to the sky, like some crazed prehistoric man communing with the gods. Ozone had an almost sexual effect on him, truth be told. Not that he was about to let Val in on that fact.

“Ah, c’mon, Val—can’t you feel the energy humming in the air?”

“Oh, Lord. Next thing I know, you’re gonna tell me you’re seeing auras around people’s heads—”

The phone rang, piercing the almost eerie hush cloaking the small office. Already cavelike with its thick, stone-colored carpeting and matching walls, the serene gray décor was relieved only by a series of vivid seriographs, the work of a local artist whose career C.J. had been following for years. Normally the place was hopping, especially when the three other agents he’d brought on board were around. But not only were they all out, even C.J.’s cell phone had been uncharacteristically silent for the past hour or so.

Unnerving, to say the least.

“I hear you, I hear you,” Val muttered, sweeping back around the desk, assuming her sweetness-and-light voice the instant she picked up the receiver. A wave of thunder tumbled across the city, accompanied by a lightning flash bright enough to make C. J. blink. Behind him, he heard a little shriek and the clatter of plastic as Val dropped the receiver into the cradle. Some twenty-odd years ago, an uncle or somebody had apparently been struck by lightning through the phone; nobody in her family had touched a telephone during an electrical storm since. Still, the quirk was a small enough price to pay for unflagging loyalty, mind-boggling efficiency and the occasional, well-deserved kick in the butt.

She was standing beside him again, her arms crossed over a sleeveless white blouse mercilessly tucked into navy pants, warily eyeing the blackening sky.

“Looks like you’re about to get your wish … oh, Lordy!” Another crack of thunder nearly sent her into the potted cactus by the door, just as a white VW Jetta with a few years on it pulled into the nearly empty lot. His three o’clock, no doubt, he thought with a tight grin.

Not that Cass Carter hadn’t given it the old college try, with her enthusiastic recital of Dana Malone’s virtues. Nor could he deny a certain idle curiosity about the person belonging to the warm Southern drawl on the other end of the line, when Dana herself had called to make an appointment. Still, if it hadn’t been for all the business Cass and Blake Carter had brought to the agency over the past few months, he would have gladly handed off this particular transaction to one of the other agents. He rarely handled rental deals these days, for one thing. And for another, God save him from well-intentioned women trying to fix him up.

His last … whatever … had been well over a year ago, a one-night stand that should have never happened. And he shouldered the blame for the whole fiasco, for a momentary, but monumental, lapse of good judgment that—thank God!—hadn’t turned out any worse than it had. By the skin of his teeth didn’t even begin to cover it. But the affair had brought into startlingly sharp focus exactly how pointless his standard operating procedure with women had become.

It would be disingenuous to pretend that female companionship had ever been a problem, even if C.J. hadn’t taken advantage of every opportunity that presented itself. At twenty, he’d considered it a gift; by thirty, somewhat of an embarrassment, albeit one he could definitely live with. Long-term relationships, however, had never been on the table. Not a problem with the career-focused women who were no more interested in marriage and family than he was, liaisons that inevitably self-destructed. But it was the gals for whom becoming a trophy wife was a career goal—the ones who saw his determination to remain single as a challenge, yes, but hardly an insurmountable one—that were beginning to get to him.

What he had here was a mondo case of bachelor burnout, a startling revelation if ever there was one. But far easier to avoid the mess to begin with than suffer through cleaning it up later—

The phone rang again; Val didn’t move. “What do you suppose is taking her so long to get out of her car?” she said, her voice knifing through his thoughts.

Twenty feet away, the car door finally opened, and out swung a pair of beautifully arched feet in a pair of strappy high-heeled sandals. C.J. watched with almost academic interest as the woman attached to the feet pulled herself out of the car, the wind catching her soft, billowing white skirt, teasing the hem up to mid-thigh. Her little shriek of alarm carried clear across the parking lot.

In spite of himself, C.J. smiled: he now knew she wore garterless stockings with white lace tops.

“Val? Would you mind checking to be sure all those property printouts for Great Expectations are on my desk?”

“Since I put them there, there’s no need to check. Cute little thing, isn’t she?”

She was that.

Assorted debris and crispy, yellowing cottonwood leaves whirlwinded through the parking lot, whipping at long, tea-colored hair swept up into a topknot, at long bangs softly framing a round face. He could see her grimace as she tried to yank the hair out of her eyes and mouth, hang on to her shoulder bag and hold down the recalcitrant skirt all at once. Huddled against the onslaught, she made a dash for the front door, the weightless fabric of her two-piece dress outlining a pleasant assortment of curves. She hit the sidewalk the precise moment the first fat raindrops splatted to earth; C.J. pushed open the door, only to have a gust of wind shove an armful of fragrant, soft female against his chest. His arms wrapped around her. So they wouldn’t fall over.

“Oh!”

Wide gray-green eyes met his, her skin flushed underneath that unruly mass of shiny hair, now adorned with several leaves and a Doublemint gum wrapper. Inexplicably, he thought of freshly laundered linens and gardens and cool evening breezes at the end of a hot, sultry day.

And, because some habits are simply harder to break than others, he also thought of the pleasant things one could do on freshly laundered linens with a woman who smelled like sunshine and fresh breezes and exotic flowers—

She shot backward as if stung, a full lower lip hanging slightly slack, glistening with some natural-colored lip goo that suited her fair skin to a tee.

C.J. smiled. “Dana Malone, I presume?”

“Oh!” she said a second time, then started madly plucking things out of her hair. Her hands full, she looked frantically around, as if trying to find someplace to stash the evidence before anyone noticed. Always the gracious hostess, Val brought her a small wastebasket. Dana gave a nervous little smile, wiggling her fingers for a second until the disintegrating leaves drifted into their plastic grave. “The wind …” she began as she dusted off her hands, tugged at the hem of her tunic. “A storm’s comin’ … you were closer than I expected … oh.”

Her blush heightened, as did her Southern drawl. Mississippi, he guessed. Maybe Alabama. Someplace that brought to mind verandas and Spanish moss and ladies who still wore white gloves to church during the summer. She wiped her hand on her hip, those glistening lips twitching around a nervous smile. “I don’t usually make such spectacular entrances.”

“And it’s not every day lovely women throw themselves into my arms.”

“Oh, brother,” Val muttered behind him as a slightly indignant, “I did not throw myself anywhere, I was blown,” popped out of Dana’s mouth.

Val cackled. C.J. turned his gaze on his office manager.

“Don’t you have someplace to be, Val?”

“Probably,” the blonde said, her reply swallowed by a flash of lightning and a window-rattling clap of thunder, as the sky let loose with torrents of rain and marble-sized hail that bounced a foot off the ground.

Dana whipped around to face outside, her palms skimming her upper arms. “Oh, my goodness,” she breathed, radiating what C.J. could only describe as pure delight. “I sometimes forget how much I miss the rain!”

Don’t stare at the client, don’t stare at the—”So you’re not from New Mexico, either?”

She shook her head, her attention fixed on the horizon. “Alabama. But I’ve lived here since I was fourteen.” Now her eyes cut to his. “Did you say ‘either’?”

“South Carolina, here. Charleston.”

“Oh, I love Charleston! I haven’t been back in a while, but I remember it being such a pretty city—”

Val cleared her throat. They both turned to her.

“Those printouts are right where I said they were,” she said. “On your desk. For your appointment.” She paused, looking from one to the other. “Today.”

“Oh! Yes! I, um …” Dana lifted a hand to her hair, her face reddening again. “Do y’all have someplace I can pull myself back together?”

“Ladies’ is right around the corner,” Val supplied.

C.J. watched Dana glide away, her fanny twitching ever so slightly. Then he glanced over to catch Val squinting at him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said, her backless shoes slapping against her heels as she finally returned to her station. But when he passed her on the way back to his office to get the printouts, he thought he heard her mumble something about there being hope for him yet, and he almost laughed.

But not because he found her comment amusing in the slightest.

Dana squelched a yelp when she flipped on the light in the mushroom-colored restroom and caught a load of her reflection. Not that her heart rate could possibly go any higher than it already was after catching her first glance of C.J.

Those eyes …

That mouth …

Wow.

“Cass Carter,” Dana muttered, sinking onto a stool in front of the mirror, “you are so dead.” She shook her head, which sent the last few hairpins pinging off the marble countertop, her tangled hair whooshing to her shoulders. Then, with a small, pitiful moan, she dropped her head into her hands.

The man went way beyond chocolate marble cheesecake. Heck, he went way beyond any dessert yet known to man. Or woman. He was … was …

In a class all to himself, is what. Who knew people could actually look that good without airbrushing?

Well, this musing was fun and all, but it wasn’t getting her fixed up. She plucked out another leaf and a crumpled straw wrapper, then dug her brush out of her purse to beat it all back into submission again. Dana stood and bent over at the waist, brushing the dust and grit out of her hair. Maybe the blood would rush back to her head, reestablish some semblance of intelligent thought processes. Grabbing the slippery mass with both hands, she twisted it into a rope, then coiled it on top of her head, standing back up so quickly she got dizzy.

So she sat down again, clamping the coiled hair on top of her head while she rummaged through her bag for the loose hairpins she was forever finding and dropping into the leather abyss.

Wow.

So much for the blood to the head theory.

After the kind of sigh she hadn’t let out since Davey Luken’s clumsy kiss in the seventh grade, she jammed a half-dozen pins into the base of the topknot, finger-fluffed her bangs. Yeah, well, Dana hadn’t dated as much she had, as long as she had, not to gain an insight or two along the way. Because for all C. J. Turner’s Southern charm and suaveness and brain-fritzing masculinity, he also positively buzzed with I-am-so-not-into-commitment vibes. Must’ve driven Trish right around the bend.

Only then did Dana burst out laughing as she realized what she’d felt, on her hip, a split second before she pulled out of C.J.’s arms. Heeheehee … she’d bet her entire collection of Victoria’s Secret knickers the man had not been amused by that little reflex reaction.

Although, come to think about it, it hadn’t been all that little.

Still chuckling, Dana stood again, tugging and hitching and flicking leaf pyuck off her bazooms, only to take a long, hard, honest gander at herself in the mirror. Generally speaking, she was okay with her body. For the most part, things curved in and out where they should, even if a few of the outs were a little farther “out” than average. But she’d long since learned to work with what she had, to spend a few extra bucks to have highlights put in her hair, to use makeup to emphasize her large gray green eyes, to wear clothes that made her feel feminine and good about herself. Dowdy, she didn’t do.

However, that didn’t mean she wasn’t a realist, or that while she knew any number of full-figured women—her mother included—in very happy relationships, neither did her father look anything like C. J. Turner. Nor had any of her former boyfriends. The odds of C. J. being interested in her in that way, even as a passing fancy, were slim.

Well, that certainly takes the pressure off, doesn’t it? she thought, giving those bodacious bazooms a quick, appreciative pat. If nothing else, they’d always have Paris. Or something.

She flicked off the light to the ladies’ room and walked out into the hall, chin up, chest out, feeling pretty and confident and …

“Ready to go?” C.J. said from the lobby, his model-bright smile lighting up those baby blues.

… seriously out of her depth.

“Sure am,” she said, smiling back, praying for all she was worth that she didn’t snag her heel on the Berber carpet and land flat on her equally bodacious fanny.

“Yes, that’ll be fine, I’ll see you then,” C.J. said into his cell phone, clapping it shut and slipping it back into his pants pocket. Not a single call between lunch and Dana’s appointment; since then, the damn thing had rung every five minutes. “Sorry about that,” he said. From the other side of the vacant storefront, she waved away his concern.

“At least this way,” she said, making a face at the bathroom, “I don’t feel guilty about takin’ up so much of your time.”

“It goes with the territory,” he said. “Take all the time you need.”

Her back to him, she lifted both hands in the air and waggled them as she click-clacked over the cement floor toward the stockroom.

Chuckling softly, C.J. decided he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Dana Malone. She exuded all the charm and femininity befitting her Southern upbringing, but none of the coyness. No eyelash fluttering, no feigned helplessness. On the contrary, her incessant fiddling with the printouts, the way she worried her bottom lip as they inspected each property, told him she was genuinely nervous about the position her partners had put her in. And becoming increasingly embarrassed—and ticked off—about being unable to make a decision.

The storm had lasted barely ten minutes, but leftover clouds prowled the sky, leaving the air muggy, the temperature still uncomfortably high. And, after a half-dozen properties, Dana was grumpy and irritable. Now, at number seven, C.J. stayed near the front, his arms folded across his chest as he leaned against a support pillar, watching her. Trying to parse the odd, undefined feeling that kicked up in his gut every time she looked at him.

“It’s okay, I suppose,” she finally said, her words literally and figuratively ringing hollow in the vast, unfurnished room. “It’s certainly big enough. And the double doors in back are great for deliveries….”

She looked to him, almost as if afraid to say it.

“But?” he patiently supplied.

Her shoulders rose with the force of her sigh. “But … there’s not much parking. And you can’t really see the front of the store from the street. I mean …” Annoyance streaked across her features as she fanned herself with the sheaf of printouts. “I suppose we really don’t need more than five or six spaces in front.” She crossed to the front window, her skirt swishing softly against her legs. “And this big window is not only perfect for display, it lets in lots of outside light for the play area Mercy wants to put in. Right now, the toddlers have the run of the shop, and we’re so afraid one of them is going to get hurt….”

He thought he heard her voice catch, that she turned a little too quickly toward the window. “And maybe that Mexican restaurant next door would pull in enough traffic to compensate for being on a side street….” Fingers tipped in a delicate shade of rose lifted to her temple, began a circular massage.

“So we’ll keep looking,” C.J. said mildly as he straightened up. “Next?”

A couple of the papers fell from her hand as she tried to shuffle them; he went to retrieve them for her, but she snatched them up before he had a chance, pointlessly pushing back a strand of hair that kept falling into her eyes. “Oh, um, this one near the Foothills might not be bad. Great square footage for the price, lots of families in the area …” Then her brow creased. “But I don’t know, maybe we should stick with something more centrally located … oh, shoot!”

“At the end of our rope, are we?”

“There’s an understatement … oh! What are you doing?” she asked as C.J. took her by the elbow, ushering her through the glass door.

“Break time. For both of us.”

“I don’t—”

“You’re making yourself nuts. Hell, you’re making me nuts. This is only a preliminary look-see, Dana. No one expects you to sign a contract today.”

“Good thing,” she said, her hand shooting up to shield her eyes from the glaring late afternoon sun as they walked back to his Mercedes, “since it’s all a blur.” He opened the car door for her; she didn’t protest. Once he’d slid in behind the wheel, she plonked her head back on the headrest and closed her eyes. “But what a weenie-brain,” she said on a sigh. “I can’t even eliminate the dogs.”

C. J. felt a smile tug at his mouth as he pulled out into traffic. “I can assure you I’ve met a fair number of people who’d qualify for that title, Dana. You’re definitely not one of them.”

She seemed to consider this for a moment, while her perfume sambaed around the car’s interior. Something high-end and familiar. But, on her, unique. “Thank you,” she said at last, her eyes still closed. “But I sure do feel like one.” Her eyes blinked open. “Why are we pulling in here?”

“Because it’s at least five-hundred degrees out, you’re obviously fried, and this joint makes the best ice-cream sodas in town. My treat.”

A pickup festooned with yapping mutts rumbled up the street behind them as a whole bunch of questions swarmed in Dana’s hazy gray-green eyes.

“You hate ice-cream sodas?” he asked.

A startled laugh burst from her throat. “No! I’m just …” She shook her head, dainty, dangly earrings bobbing on tiny earlobes that had gone a decided shade of pink. “But I think I’ll stick with Diet Coke.”

A four-by-four roared past, spraying soggy gravel in its wake.

“It’s that woman thing, isn’t it?”

Her eyebrows lowered. “Excuse me?”

“Where you won’t eat in front of a guy. If at all.”

Her mouth twisted, her gaze slid away. “I think it’s kinda obvious I’m no anorexic.”

“Good to know. Because I’m here to tell you that not-eating business annoys the hell out of me. But hey—” he popped open his car door, then loosened his tie, having already given his jacket the heave-ho three properties ago “—if you really want a Diet Coke, knock yourself out.”

“Actually …” She hugged her purse to her middle, as if trying to shrink. “I can’t stand the stuff.”

“Then it’s settled.” He shoved open his door, then went around to open hers. “Maybe if you just chill for a bit, you’ll be able to think more clearly. Damn,” he muttered as his phone rang again. He grimaced at the number—a deal he’d been trying to close for nearly a month—then at her.

“Hey—” she said, as they both got out of the car “—you’ve got ice-cream sodas to pay for, far be it from me to hinder your earning capacity.” She glanced up at the sky. “Wonder if it’s going to rain again? It sure feels steamy, doesn’t it?”

It did. But somehow, he mused as he answered the phone, he doubted the humidity had anything to do with it.

Chapter Two

Dana would lay odds the diner probably hadn’t changed much in twenty years. At least. Formica soda fountain and booths, nondescript beige vinyl upholstery. It was clean, though, and light, and hummed with conversation, laughter, canned mariachi music. Despite the dearth of patrons this late in the afternoon, C.J. swore the tiny restaurant would be packed by six. Dana believed it. Although Albuquerque had more than its share of tony eateries, this was one of those unassuming little holes-in-the-wall the well-off liked to think they’d “discovered,” where the menu selections were few but the serving sizes generous, the food simple but excellent and the staff treated everyone like a lifelong friend.

And, if she’d been here with Mercy or Cass, she’d definitely be more relaxed. But sitting across from C.J., she was about as relaxed as Sallymae Perkins’s hair on prom night.

Plus—to make matters worse—she also had to admit that none of the places they’d looked at was going to work.

“Sorry,” she said, her mouth screwed up as she poked at a lump of ice cream in the bottom of her collarbone-high glass, dolefully considering the wisdom of broiled chicken breasts and salad with lemon juice for the next three nights.

“Don’t apologize.” C.J. certainly seemed unfazed, slouched in the booth, the top two buttons undone on an Egyptian cotton shirt only a shade lighter than his eyes. Light brown hair sprinkled with gray shuddered in the breeze from a trio of lazily fwomping overhead fans, as his mouth tilted up in a half smile. A gentle smile. A tired smile, she thought, although she doubted he’d admit it. Especially since she was, in all likelihood, as least partly to blame. “That’s why we’re here.”

“But I took up half your afternoon—”

“Would you stop it?” he said gently. “That’s what the first rounds are for, to get a feel for what the client really wants.”

Lazy raindrops began to slash at the window by their booth, while, in the distance, thunder rumbled halfheartedly. What she really wanted, Dana thought with a stab, had nothing to do with anything C. J. Turner had to offer. Unfortunately. She speared the chunk of ice cream, popped it into her mouth.

“So why not just ask?” she asked over the whir of the milkshake mixer behind the counter, the high-pitched chatter of a bevy of kids three booths over.

“I did. And Cass gave me the basics.” One arm now snaked out along the top of the booth seat; he offered her another smile. “The rest she left to you … damn.”

A salesman’s smile, she told herself as he answered his phone with yet another apologetic glance across the table. Impersonal. No different from those he’d bestowed on everyone they’d met that afternoon, on everyone who’d called.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught the sudden appearance of tiny, dimpled fingers hooking the edge of their table. Seconds later a mass of fudge-colored curls bobbed into view, over a set of matching, devilish eyes. Just as quickly, eyes and curls and pudgy fingers vanished, supplanted by a howl.

Dana was out of the booth and on her knees at once, hauling the sobbing baby onto her lap. About two years old, she guessed, smelling of chocolate sauce and baby shampoo.

“Oh, now, now,” she soothed as she struggled to her feet, bouncing the child on her hip, “you’re not hurt, are you?” Laughing, she glanced over at C.J., whose stony expression knocked the laughter right out of her.

“Enrique, you little devil!” A pretty young woman dashed back to their booth, taking the child from Dana’s arms. His wails immediately softened to lurching sniffles as he wound his plump little arms around his mother’s neck.

Dana crossed her own arms over the void left in the child’s wake, wondering why, after all this time, she’d yet to move past this point. In any case, the emptiness, in combination with the look on C.J.’s face, knocked her off an emotional ledge she hadn’t even known she was on. “He’s not hurt,” she assured the baby’s mother, struggling to banish from-out-of-nowhere tears.

The brunette rolled her eyes, then laughed. “He never is. But I’ve really got to get a leash for him! I turn my back for five seconds to wipe his brother’s nose, and he’s gone.” She jostled the child, more to comfort herself than the baby, Dana decided. “Scared me half to death. Yes, you did, you little terror! Oh, no!” She plucked a tiny hand from around her neck and inspected chocolate-coated fingers, then groaned. “I’m so sorry! He got chocolate on your pretty white dress! I’ll be happy to pay for the dry cleaning!”

Dana glanced down at the smudge over her left breast, then shrugged, figuring the young woman had better things to spend her money on than a dry-cleaning bill. Once assured a squirt of Shout would make it good as new, the woman whisked her son away, and Dana slid back into her seat across from C.J., only to realize, to her mortification, that she was still teetering on that emotional edge. Yeah, well, being surrounded by far too many reminders of all those things that were, or seemed to be, out of her reach, would do that to a person.

“Are you okay?” came the soft, genuinely concerned—for himself as well as her, Dana thought—voice across the table.

Looking at him was the last thing she wanted to do. But what choice did she have? She cleared her throat as discreetly as possible, then met his gaze. “Just tired, is all,” she said, but the cant of his eyebrows told her he didn’t buy it for a minute.

“That stain, though …”

She tried a smile, anything to remove the sudden wariness in his features. “Hey, you hear a kid cry, you don’t even think about getting dirty, you just want to make it all better.”

He watched her for a long, hard moment, during which she could practically see the gears shifting in his thought. “You follow your instincts, in other words.”

“Well, yes, I suppose—”

“So why do you think your partners elected you to do the footwork?”

Nothing like a conversational right turn to obliterate self-pity. Dana blinked, then said, “I have no idea, actually. In fact, I tried to get out of it.”

“Because?”

She sighed, wadding her napkin into a ball. “Let’s just say decision making’s not my strong suit. Which I’m sure comes as no surprise.”

“And yet …” C.J. leaned forward, shoving his empty glass to one side so he could clasp his hands together, his eyes holding her fast. “Cass tells me you’re not only a financial whiz, but have a real flair for decorating kids’ rooms, as well.”

Another blush stole up her neck. “Well, yes, I suppose, but—”

“She also said if anyone could find Great Expectations’ next home, it would be you, because you wouldn’t make a decision until you were absolutely positive it was the right decision.”

He reached across the table, briefly touching her wrist. His fingers were cool, a little rough. And suddenly squarely back in front of him, leaving a mild, buzzing sensation in their place.

“Trust your instincts, Miss Malone. The same way you trust your instincts about how to handle children. It’s a gift. Be … be grateful for it. So …”

His posture shifted with his train of thought, giving her a chance to anticipate the next right turn. “Now I have a better idea of what to show you next time.” He shrugged. “No big deal.”

No big deal, her fanny. Never in all her born days had she met a man who could put her so much at ease and keep her so off-kilter at the same time.

“So,” C.J. said, “what day looks good for you to take another stab at this?”

Dana sucked on her empty spoon for a moment, squinting slightly at those lovely, keep-your-distance eyes. The spoon clanged against the inside of the glass when she dropped it in. She looked up, pasted on a smile.

“How’s Friday look?”

Grateful for an excuse to look away from that far too trenchant gaze, C.J. scrolled through his Palm Pilot, then nodded. “First thing in the morning looks good. Say … nine?”

“Perfect,” she said, then stood. “Is there a restroom here? I hope.”

“In back. Not ritzy, but it works.”

“That’s all I ask,” she said, then headed toward the back of the diner. No less than a half-dozen male heads turned to watch her progress.

“Hey, C.J.! How’s it goin’?”

With a smile for Felix, the diner’s owner, C.J. picked up the check the bulky man had dropped in front of him. “Oh, fine. This heat’s a killer, though.”

A chuckle rumbled from underneath Felix’s heavy, salt-and-pepper mustache. “I’m surprised you haven’t already melted, my friend. Maria’s already smacked me twice for staring!” He leaned close enough for C.J. to smell twenty years’ worth of sopapillas on his white apron. “These women who think we want them skinny, they got it all wrong, no? Give me a woman I’m not afraid is going to break, anytime.”

C.J. swallowed a smile. Felix’s wife certainly fit the bill there. He handed a ten to the grinning proprietor, told him to keep the change, then stood as Dana emerged from the restroom … and a vaguely familiar female voice said, “C.J.? What on earth are you doing here?” right behind him.

He turned to find himself face-to-face with an artfully streaked blonde in one of those short, shapeless dresses and a tennis visor, flanked on either side by miniature versions of herself, twin girls who could have been anywhere between three and seven.

He thought back. Five, he decided, had to be the cut-off.

“I thought that was you when I came in,” the woman said, perfect teeth flashing, the ends of her straight, gleaming hair skimming her shoulders. “We don’t live far, the girls love the milkshakes here.” The grin widened. “My goodness, it’s been way too long. How are you? You look terrific!”

“Um, you, too.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Dana’s approach, her raised eyebrows. “Well, well,” C.J. said, glancing at the little girls. “You’ve certainly been busy, haven’t you …?”

“Oh. Hello.” The blonde offered Dana a cool smile, and C.J. thought, I’m dead.

“Dana Malone, this is …”

“Cybill Sparks,” she mercifully supplied, assessing Dana as only a female who feels her territory threatened can. Never mind that he hadn’t even seen the woman—with whom he’d had a brief (and not particularly sweet, as he recalled) affair—in years. Or that she’d clearly moved on.

A weird blend of protectiveness and irritation spiked through C.J., even as Dana, her smile as gracious as Cybill’s was frozen, said, “C.J.’s my Realtor. We were just scouting out properties for my store.”

Which was apparently sufficient to silence Cybill’s Incoming Threat alarm. “Oh? What do you sell?” she asked, her smile more natural again. “Not women’s clothing, I presume?”

A moment passed. “No, a children’s store. Maybe you’ve heard of it?” Dana grinned for the twins, who had ducked behind their mother’s legs and were both smiling up at her with wide blue eyes. “Great Expectations?”

“Ohmigod, yes! I love that store! We’re in there all the time! With four sets of grandparents, the girls get far more clothes than they could ever wear. It’s so great having someplace to unload them. Especially since I can make a few bucks on the deal.” She laughed. “Although don’t tell any of the grands!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dana muttered, but Cybill’s attention had already slithered back to C. J. Her hand landed on his arm, her expression downright rapacious. “I’ve been meaning to call you for, gosh, ages.”

“To let me know you were married?” C.J. said lightly.

“No, silly, to let you know I’m divorced! My number’s the same, so give me a call sometime.” Another tooth flash. “With all those grandparents, it’s no trouble at all finding a sitter on short notice! Nice to meet you,” she tossed dismissively in Dana’s direction, then steered the children toward the counter.

Dana waited until they’d gotten outside to laugh.

“What’s so damned funny?” C.J. grumbled.

“You had no idea who she was, did you?”

“Of course I knew who she was,” he said, giving his lungs a second to adjust to the breath-sucking heat. “It was just her name that temporarily escaped me.”

“That is seriously pathetic.”

“Not nearly as pathetic as the way she threw herself at me,” he muttered.

“True. For a moment there I thought she was going to unhinge her jaws and swallow you whole. I take it she’s an old girlfriend?” she asked over his grunt.

“She’d like to think so. But I swear, the kids aren’t mine.”

She chuckled again, a sound he realized he enjoyed. Very much. He stole a glance at her profile as they walked to the car, thinking what a bundle of contradictions she was—self-deprecating one minute, completely comfortable with teasing him the next. About another woman’s putting the moves on him, no less.

He literally shook his head to clear it.

“So what happened?” Dana said as they got to the car and C.J. beeped it unlocked.

“Nothing, in the long run. Much to her chagrin.”

Once in the car, they clicked their seat belts in place almost simultaneously. “So tell me …” Dana briefly checked her makeup in the visor mirror, then turned to him, amusement glittering in her eyes. “Do women launch themselves at you on a regular basis?”

C.J. wasn’t sure which startled him more—the question itself or the ingenuousness underpinning it. He met Dana’s curious, open gaze and thought, There’s something different about this one, even as he said, “You do realize there’s no way I can answer that and keep either my dignity or your respect intact?”

“My … respect?”

He twisted the key in the ignition, backed out of the lot. “A Realtor who doesn’t have his clients’ respect isn’t going to get very far.”

“I see.” She faced front again, severing what he realized had been a gossamer-thin thread of connection, leaving him feeling both annoyed and relieved, which made no sense whatsoever. “Thanks,” she said, her voice definitely a shade darker than moments before. “For the soda, I mean. I needed that. And I promise not to be such a worrywart on Friday.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he said lightly, wondering why her soft laugh in response sent a chill marching up his spine.

In combat boots.

Sometime later, Dana let herself into her parents’ Northeast Heights home, breathing in the pomander of swamp-cooled air, that night’s fried chicken and a brief whiff of fresh roses, at once comforting and disquieting in its immutability. Her pull here tonight was equally comforting, equally disquieting. Tonight, she needed home, even though, paradoxically, this was the one place guaranteed to remind her of those areas of her life currently running on empty.

She found her father first, molded to a leather recliner in the family room, a can of diet soda clutched in one thick-fingered hand, the baseball game on the movie-theater-sized TV screen reflected in his glasses.

“Hey, Daddy. Whatcha up to?”

Gene Malone jerked up his head and grinned, his thinning hair fanned out behind his head like a limp peacock’s tail.

“Hey, there, baby!” he said over the announcer’s mellow drone. “What brings you around?”

Her father, a Sandia Labs retiree, was rounder, and balder, than he used to be, but the humor simmering behind his pea-soup-colored eyes was the same as always. Dana bent over to kiss his forehead, then crackled onto the plastic-armored sofa beside the chair, staring at the TV. “Nothing much. Just hadn’t seen y’all in a bit.” Trying to keep from frowning, she studied his face. “How’re you feeling?”

“Never better.” A heart “episode” the year before had scared the willies out of them; unfortunately, she strongly suspected he wasn’t following his diet and exercise regimen as scrupulously as he should. Especially when he said, “You know, this eating more chicken and fish routine really seems to be helping. I haven’t felt this good in ages.”

Uh-huh. Somehow, she didn’t think fried chicken was what the doctor had in mind. “Glad to hear it, Daddy. Where’s Mama?”

“In the den, sewing. Leastways, that’s what she said she was gonna do.” The leather squeaked when he shifted. “You know Trish called?”

This was news. “No. When?”

“Day or so ago, I don’t remember.”

“She say where she was?”

“Have no idea. You’ll have to ask your mother.”

Wondering, and not for the first time, how two people could live together for so long and talk to each other so little, she left her father to cheer on whoever and headed toward the smallest bedroom—the one that had been Trish’s for nearly eight years—which they generously referred to as a den. In a sleeveless blouse and cotton pants, Faye Malone sat with her back to the door, as comfortably padded as the futon beside her. As usual, she was keeping up a running conversation with the sewing machine while she worked, pins stuck in her mouth, tufts of touched-up-every-three weeks auburn hair sticking out at odd angles where she’d tugged at it while trying to figure something out.

Heaven knew, having Faye for a mother had never been exactly easy, and not only because of the woman’s habit of walking out on anyone who didn’t agree with her. Or her nearly obsessive protectiveness when it came to family. All her life, Dana had variously loved and feared the woman whose scowl had been known to set people to rethinking opinions held dear from the cradle. Tonight, however, Dana envied her mother her single-mindedness.

And her strength.

“What’s that you’re making, Mama?” she asked, once Faye had removed the pins from her mouth.

Her mother jumped and pivoted simultaneously. “Lord, honey, you gave me a start,” she said, laughing, dropping the pins into an old saucer by the machine. “This? Oh, um … just a little something for Louise at church.” She cleared her throat. “Her daughter’s havin’ her first baby next month.”

Dana sat on the end of the futon that had replaced the old iron daybed, fingering the edge of the tiny royal blue and scarlet quilt. The vent over the door blasted too-cool air at the back of her neck, making her shudder. “Pretty,” she managed, trying to keep her voice light, to ignore the tension vibrating between them. Not to mention the unmistakable wistfulness in her mother’s voice, that she’d never get to watch her daughter grow big with a grandbaby.

“So …” Eager to change the subject, Dana clasped her hands, banging them against her knee. “Daddy said Trish called?”

“Oh, yes!” Her mother pulled off her glasses, tucking them into her shirt pocket. “I would’ve mentioned it, except there didn’t seem to be much point.”

“So she didn’t tell you where she was, I take it?”

“Not a word.”

“She say she was coming back?”

Her mother shook her head. “Although she had that funny little hitch in her voice, like when she’d done something wrong and was afraid we’d get mad at her? To this day, I don’t know what my sister was thinking, marrying that … creep. Man wasn’t worth the price of the marriage license. And cost Marla her own daughter.”

An observation made many times over the past dozen years. Dana’s aunt’s second marriage, to a man the family fondly referred to as The Cockroach, had had a disastrous effect on her already troubled daughter. After Trish’s third attempt at running away, and since Dana had been more or less on her own by then, Dana’s parents had offered to let the teen come live with them in Albuquerque. And on the surface, especially after Aunt Marla’s death a few years back, Trish had certainly seemed to be getting her life on track. She’d settled down enough to finish high school, gotten through community college, and had finally landed that job at Turner Realty. She’d even talked about becoming an agent herself, one day.

But threaded through Trish’s marginal successes ran not only a string of rotten relationships with men, but a chronic resistance to letting either Dana or her parents get close enough to help her. Other than the occasional call during the past year to let them know she was still alive, she’d cut herself off from the only family she had.

Sad, but, since her cousin had consistently rebuffed Dana’s attempts at being chummy, none of her concern. If Trish was out there somewhere, miserable and alone, she had no one to blame but herself.

“She asked about you,” she heard her mother say.

Dana started. “Me? Why?”

“Beats me.” Mama threaded a needle and moved to the futon, where she preferred to do her hand sewing. “I thought it was odd, too.” She fell into the cushion with an oof. “Although she did ask how you were getting on since …”

Her mother caught herself, her lips puckered in concentration as she stared at her sewing.

At the beginning, Mama had meant well enough, Dana supposed, doing her level best to take Dana’s mind off her situation. Tonight, though, Dana realized she’d lost patience with pretending. And with herself for allowing the silence to go on as long at it had.

“Go on, finish your sentence. Since I had my operation.”

Faye smoothed the quilt with trembling hands. “I’m sorry, honey. It just sort of slipped out.”

Dana sighed. “It’s been more than a year, Mama. Way past time for us to still be sidestepping the subject, don’t you think?”

“I …I just don’t want to make you feel bad, baby.”

Stomach wobbling, Dana snuggled up against her mother, inhaling her mingled scent of soap and sunscreen and cooking.

“I know that,” she said softly, fingering the tiny quilt. “But ignoring things doesn’t change them. Not that I’m not okay, most of the time, but … but there are definitely days when I feel cheated, when I get so angry I want to break something. And if I can’t unload to my own mother about it, who can I tell?”

“Oh, honey.” Faye dropped her handiwork; Dana let herself be drawn into her mother’s arms, suddenly exhausted from the strain of putting on a brave face, day after day after day. Whether it had been holding Cass’s baby, or the toddler in the diner, or even the strange mixture of kindness and wariness in C.J.’s eyes that had brought on the sudden and profound melancholy, she had no idea. But today, this minute, all she could see were the holes in her life. And with that thought came a great, unstoppable torrent of long held-back tears.

Why did the ordinary rites of passage that so many women took for granted—boyfriends, marriage, motherhood—seem to slip from her grasp like fine sand? In her teens and twenties, there had always been “later.” But watching relationship after relationship crash and burn—if they ever got off the ground to begin with—had a way of eroding a girl’s self-confidence. Not to mention her hopes.

Was it so wrong to want a family of her own, to ache for a pair of loving, strong arms around her in bed at night, to be the reason for someone’s smile? Was it foolish to want a little someone to stay up late wrapping Christmas presents for, to wonder if they’d ever get potty trained or be okay on their first day of school, to embarrass the heck out of by kissing them in public, to tuck in at night and read to?

Or was she just being selfish?

And her mother listened and rocked her and told her, no, she wasn’t being selfish at all, that someday she’d have her own family, a husband who’d cherish her, children to love. That she had so much to offer, she just had to be patient. Things happen for a reason, Mama said, even if we might not understand the particulars when we’re in the middle of it.

So what, exactly, Dana wondered over her mother’s murmurings, was the reason for C. J. Turner’s appearance in her life? To torment her with eyes she had no reason to believe would ever sparkle just for her, a pair of arms she ‘d never feel wrapped around her shoulders, a chest she’d never be able to lay her head against?

She sucked in a breath: What on earth was she going on about? She didn’t even know the man! Were nice guys so rare these days that simply being around one was enough to send her over the edge? Because even in the midst of her pityfest, she knew the meltdown had nothing to do with C. J. Not really. No, it was everything he represented.

All those things that, for whatever reason, always seemed to elude her.

But even the best crying jags eventually come to an end. Dana sat up, grabbed a tissue from the tole-painted box on the end table, and honked into it, after which her mother pulled her off the futon and led her to the kitchen. Yeah, yeah, the road to Jenny Craig was paved with comfort food, but there you are. And as she ate—fried chicken, coleslaw, potato salad—and as Amy Grant held forth from the clock radio on the counter, punctuated by the occasional war whoop from the family room, the conversation soon came back around to her cousin.

“So …” Dana wiped her fingers on a paper napkin, perking up considerably when her mother hauled a bowl of shimmering cherry Jell-O out of the fridge. “What was Trish asking about me? And is there whipped cream?”

The can of Reddi-wip plonked onto the table. “Just if you still lived alone, still worked at the store.” Mama scooped out two huge, quivering blobs into custard dishes. “I gave her your number, I hope that’s okay?”

“Sure. Not that she’d ever call me.” The first bite of Jell-O melted soothingly against her tongue, reminding her of the last dessert she’d eaten. As well as the lazy, sexy, South Carolina accent of the man who had bought it for her.

Her mother was giving her a pained look. So Dana smiled and said, “Speaking of the store, I started looking at possible sites for the new location today.”

“Well, it’s about time! A body can’t hardly breathe in that itty-bitty place y’all are in now. Find anything?”

Yeah. Trouble. “Not yet.”

“That’s okay, you will, honey. You just have to keep looking.”

A twinge of either aggravation or acid reflux spurted through Dana as she stared hard at her spoon. And how long, exactly, was she supposed to keep looking? She thought back to how she’d spent weeks searching for the perfect prom dress, finally finding one she absolutely loved in some little shop in the mall. Except … the neckline was too low. And it was red. With a full skirt. And all those sparklies …

So she’d kept looking. And looking. Until, by the time she finally realized that was the only dress she really wanted, it was gone. So she’d had to settle for something she hadn’t liked nearly as much because she’d dithered so long.

Because she’d believed herself unworthy of something so perfect.

She nearly choked on her Jell-O.

She was still doing it, wasn’t she? Refusing to even try something on because of some preconceived notion that it wouldn’t work. And maybe it wouldn’t, once she got it on (she stifled a snort at the double entrendre). God knew she’d left plenty of clothes hanging in dressing rooms over the years. But at least she owed it to herself to try, for crying out loud—

“Dana, honey? Why are you frowning so hard?”

Dana blinked herself back from la-la land and smiled for her mother, even as fried chicken and potato salad tumble-dried in her stomach.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, thinking, Damn straight I have a lot to offer.

And absolutely nothing to lose.

Chapter Three

C.J. clattered his keys and cell phone onto the Mexican-tiled kitchen countertop flanking a professional-grade cooktop he never used, gratefully yielding to the house’s deep, benign silence. His briefcase thumped onto the stone floor as he glanced at the message machine: nada. Good. However, since his cleaning lady, Guadalupe, only came twice a week, his cereal bowl greeted him where he’d left it more than twelve hours earlier, bits of dried corn flakes plastered to the sides, a half cup of cold, murky coffee keeping it company. He tossed the dregs into the stainless steel sink, splattering his shirt in the process, aggravating the vague irritability clinging to him like seaweed.

C.J. yanked open the dishwasher and rammed the dishes inside, then grabbed a beer from the Sub-Zero fridge. Moments later, he stood on his flagstone patio, his gaze skating over the infinity pool, its mirrored surface reflecting the cloudless, almost iridescent early evening sky, then across the pristinely kept golf course dotted with fuzzy young pines and delicate ash trees beyond. And backdropping it all, the rough-cut Sandia Mountains, bloodred in the sunset’s last hurrah. A light, dry breeze shivered the water’s surface, soothing C.J. through his shirt. He took a pull of his beer and thought, glowering, What more could I possibly want?

Other than dinner magically waiting for him, maybe.

And not having to make a certain phone call this evening.

Back inside, a couple of touches to assorted wall panels instantaneously produced both cool air and even cooler jazz. Damn house was smarter than he was, C. J. thought grumpily, continuing on to the master suite at the back of the house.

From the middle of the king-size bed, a yard-long slash of gray surveyed him—upside down—through heavy-lidded yellow eyes. The cat pushed out a half-assed meow that ended in a yawn huge enough to turn the thing inside out.

“Don’t let me disturb your rest,” C.J. said as he tossed the day’s dress duds into the leather club chair in the corner, adding to the mountain of clothes already there, waiting to be hauled to the cleaners. He’d barely tugged on a soft T-shirt, a pair of worn jeans, when he felt a grapefruit-sized head butt his shin.

“Nice try, fuzzbutt, but you’ve still got food in your dish, I looked. Which is more than I can say for myself. Unless you want to make this phone call for me?”

The cat flicked his tail in disgust and trotted away, and C. J. mused about how he wouldn’t mind having a tail to flick in disgust himself, right about now.

He rolled his shoulders as he returned to the kitchen, his aching muscles a testament to the fact that too many years of twelve- and fourteen-hour days were beginning to take their toll. Still, work was what he did. Who he was. Besides, what was the alternative? Watching reality TV for hours on end? He glanced at the microwave clock. Eight-thirty-two. Two hours later in Charleston. If he put this off long enough, he’d miss his father’s birthday altogether. A tempting, if unrealistic, thought. “Forgetting” the occasion would only add fuel to the implacable fire of bitterness and resentment lodged between them.

The cat writhed around his ankles, startling him. The house was beginning to cool off. C.J., however, was not.

Eight-thirty-six. Frosted air teased his shoulders as he opened the freezer, yanked out a microwaveable dinner. He peeled back the corner and stuck it in the zapper. Fifteen minutes. More than enough time.

He snatched his cell off the counter, hesitated another moment, then dialed. His father answered on the first ring, his voice bombastic, irritable, condemning the caller for having interrupted whatever he’d been doing. “Turner here!”

“Dad. Happy birthday.”

A moment of silence followed. Then: “That you, Cameron?”

“Who else would it be? Unless I have a half brother you forgot to mention.”

Again, brittle silence stretched between them. Ah, yes—one did not joke with Cameron James Turner, Sr.

“Wondered if you were going to remember.”

“Of course I remembered.” Although he hadn’t sent a card. Hadn’t in years, since Hallmark didn’t make one that said Thanks for never being there for me.

“Well,” his father said. “It got so late.”

“I just walked in the door. Long day.”

That merited a grunt, but nothing more. Then, “Business good?”

“Fine.”

“Growing?”

“Steadily.”

“Glad to hear it,” his father said, but perfunctorily, without any glow of pride. Not surprising, considering how small potatoes his father obviously considered a four-person real estate agency. In Albuquerque. C.J. glanced at the microwave and mentally groaned. How could two measly minutes seem like an eternity? “So. You do anything for your birthday?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know—go out with friends?”

“Why would I do that?”

Why, indeed? “Well. I just wanted to say … happy sixty-fifth.’ Night—”

“Not so fast, hold on a minute. You planning on coming out anytime soon?”

Shock sluiced through C.J. He and his father hadn’t seen each other in more than a dozen years. “What did you say?”

Why?

“Simple enough question, Cameron. I’m getting my affairs in order, need your signature on some papers.”

C.J.’s fingers strangled the phone. He should have known. “I can’t get away right now. You’ll have to courier the papers to me.”

“But they have to be witnessed—”

“So I’ll have them witnessed!”

The dial tone snarled in his ear; his father had hung up on him, shutting C.J. off, and out, as he always had. Always would.

C.J. slapped the phone shut. From two thousand miles away, he felt the burning look of disapproval etched into his father’s overlarge features, the disappointment shadowing blue eyes like C.J.’s own. He’d never understood why, nor had he ever felt compelled to dig around for answers he wasn’t sure he wanted, anyway. The basics were simple enough: his father had denied him nothing, except himself.

And while C.J. would never intentionally treat another human being as dismissively as his father had him, his well didn’t exactly run deep, either, judging from his lack of any real connection with the women he’d dated over the years. Clearly, he’d inherited his father’s factory-defective heart.

But Dana’s different, came the thought, as unexpected and unwelcome as a bee sting.

Followed immediately by Don’t go there, Turner.

Not a problem, he thought with a rueful grin. Not after all he’d gone through to reach a place where he was finally as much in control of his life as was humanly possible. And blissfully, gloriously free—free from the pressure to be someone he wasn’t, free from either his own or anyone else’s expectations.

At his feet, the cat meowed, a tiny interrogative eeerk.

Almost nobody, anyway.

The microwave beeped. In a daze, C.J. popped open the door, grabbing his dinner with his bare hand. He cursed, dropping the hot tray with a great clatter.

Free, he mused, to make a fool of himself without witnesses.

He let the cat out back, then followed, his meal and drink in tow, to sink into one of the pricey, thickly padded patio chairs the decorator had picked out. The sky had gone a deep, soothing blue; C.J. took another pull of his beer, then let his head loll back against the cushion. Overhead, the first stars had begun to twinkle. And if he wanted to sit here for the next two hours watching them, he could. If he wanted to turn the volume up all the way on the sound system, he could. If he wanted to leave the toilet seat up, or his towels on the floor, or two weeks’ worth of clothes piled on his chair, he could.

It was as close to heaven as any man could wish for, he thought, forking in a bite of tasteless … something.

“Such a shame you have to go out in this heat to look at more properties today,” Mercy said from her perch on the counter beside the cash register, dunking a donut into her coffee.

Squatting in front of a display of infant toys, Dana lifted her eyes, caught the smirk. “Uh, yeah. You look real broken up about it.”

“Oh, come on,” Mercy mumbled around the last bite of donut, then dusted off her hands. A geranium-pink tank top emblazoned with a rhinestone heart set off her ebony curls, today caught up in a series of clips studded with even more rhinestones. Subtle was not one of Mercy’s strong suits. “I can think of a lot worse things than tootling around the city with a good-looking guy.”

“Whom you haven’t even met, so how do you know how good-looking he is?” Dana stood, moving over to a rack of toddler dresses to yank out a 3T that had gotten wedged in with the 2s. “And you have powdered sugar on your chin.”

The brunette rubbed at the spot. “Did I get it?” Dana glanced at her, nodded. “And I trust Cass’s taste in men. So …” Mercy slithered off the counter, tugging at the hem of her short white skirt, then knotted her hands around the top of the chrome rack, chin propped on knuckles. “How hot are we talking, exactly?”

Her just-try-it-on initiative about C.J. notwithstanding, Dana wasn’t about to give her partners any ammunition toward the cause. This was one uphill battle she intended to tackle on her own, thank you. So she shrugged and said, “He’s okay, I suppose. If you like that type.”

“Type as in gorgeous?”

“No. Type as in ‘I-don’t-do-serious’.”

“Oh, that.” Mercy batted the air. “Not a problem.”

Dana couldn’t help the laugh. “And you’re saying this because …?”

“Yeah, yeah—I know what you’re getting at. But I’m still single not because I don’t think there’s a man alive who doesn’t, deep down, want to come home to the same woman every night, but because I’m … particular.” She flounced over to the door, peered out at the still-empty parking lot. In this heat, it was unlikely they’d get many customers. “A girl’s gotta have standards, you know.”

Dana eyed the leftover donuts still on the counter, forced herself to look away. “And one of mine is that the sight of children and wedding rings doesn’t make the guy puke.”

Mercy pff’ed her disdain through glossed red lips, then tented her hand over her eyes. “Speaking of standards … badass vehicle at three o’clock. Yowsa.”

Dana glanced over to see the familiar silver sedan glide into a parking space. “Oh, no! I was supposed to meet him, at the agency,” she said over a pounding heart, suddenly not at all sure she was ready to put her new resolve to the test. Especially before her second cup of coffee. “What on earth …?”

Both women stood, transfixed, as C.J. got out of the car, slipped on his suit coat. Poor guy, dressed for a board meeting in this weather. Still, that first glimpse of tall, handsome man in a charcoal suit was enough to make anyone’s heart stutter. Including Mercy’s, apparently.

“He’s okay?” she said, eyes wide. “Hey, you don’t want him, toss him this way. I got no problem with leftovers.”

“What happened to your standards?”

“Trust me, chica. He meets them.”

The door swung open, and he was in. And smiling. “Morning, ladies,” he said, his voice still holding a hint of just-out-of-bed roughness that made Dana swallow. Hard.

Then she smiled, thinking, Okay, toots. You can do this.

Damn.

The Dana Malone smiling broadly for C.J. from across the store was not the same Dana Malone he’d left three days ago. Where was the nervousness, the shyness, the insecurity, that had—C.J. was pained to admit—made it much easier to blow her off as any kind of a threat to his hard-won autonomy?

You are man, he reminded himself. Strong. Above temptation. Impervious to … smiles.

While he stood there, thinking about how strong and above temptation he was, the curly-haired dynamo standing beside Dana jutted out a slender, long-nailed hand. “Hi! I’m Mercedes Zamora. Partner Number Three.”

“Oh! I’m sorry!” Dana said. “Mercy, this is C. J. Turner—”

“I know who the man is, honey,” Mercy said with a warm—very warm—smile. Out of the corner of his eye, C.J. caught Dana’s glare. The phone rang. Nobody moved.

“Merce?” Dana tugged one of the woman’s long curls. “The phone’s ringing.”

“What?” she said, still grinning at C.J. like an overeager retriever. Dana tugged again, harder. “Ow!”

“The phone?”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” Mercy said, rubbing her head. But as she turned away, she glanced over her shoulder at C.J., then gave Dana a look he decided was best left untranslated.

Dana rolled her eyes, shrugged in a we-love-her-anyway gesture, then said, “I’m sorry … wasn’t I supposed to meet you at your office?”

“You were. Except it occurred to me I might get a better feel for what you all needed if I saw the shop first.”

She laughed. “There’s a thought,” she said, then ducked behind the counter and held up the coffeepot, grinning. “Can I tempt you?”

Uh, boy.

It wasn’t fair, the way that nearly weightless dress, barely darker than her skin, caressed her curves, skimmed her breasts, her thighs, fell in a graceful sweep to her ankles.

It wasn’t fair, the way her thick hair, corralled into a braid, exposed her delicate jaw and neck, the way that same wisp drifting around her temple still eluded capture. As she swept it back, he noticed she wore simple pearls in her earlobes.

It wasn’t fair, her having earlobes.

“No. Thank you.”

“Your loss,” she said, pouring herself a cup.

“So,” C. J. said, turning to face the sales floor. And frowning. “Hmm. Now I understand why you need a bigger space.”

“You don’t miss a trick, do you?” he heard behind him, and he smiled. But it was true. He’d never in his life seen so much stuff crammed into one store. Not an inch of wall space had been left exposed, and you took your life in your hands navigating the floor, as well. There were even mobiles and stuffed animals and wall hangings suspended from the ceiling. Something … indefinable spread through him, gentle and warm and oddly … scary.

He grinned anyway, taking in the racks of tiny clothes, the miniature furniture, the shelves of whimsical lamps and tea sets and fancy dress dolls. The combined scent of rich coffee and her perfume as she came to stand beside him. “This reminds me of what I’d always imagined the Old Woman’s shoe to look like on the inside. No wonder you nixed all the places I showed you. Which means … damn. You’re probably going to hate everything I picked to show you today, too.”

“Now, now … guess we won’t know until we try, right?”

Tempted to peek behind the counter for the telltale pod, C.J. instead crossed to a display of christening gowns, fingering one whisper-soft garment frothed in ivory lace.

“The workmanship’s incredible, isn’t it?” she said. “That one’s nearly seventy years old.”

C.J. let the fabric fall from his fingers, stuffed his hand in his pocket. “You’d think the family would want to hang on to something like that, pass it down.”

“If there’s someone to pass it down to.” Before he could decide if he’d only imagined the slight edge to her voice, she said, “Let me grab my purse and we can get going, I’ve got an appointment with a decorating client at twelve-thirty.”

She disappeared into the forest of racks and displays, leaving her perfume in his nostrils and a decided sense of foreboding in his brain.

On the surface, Dana mused upon her return to the shop two hours later, one probably couldn’t call the outing successful. Because C.J. had been right—all the new places sucked, too.

“Well?” Mercy said the instant the door shooshed shut behind her.

“Nothing.”

“Oh. Well, did you find a place, at least?”

Dana gave her a dirty look. One that belied what she was really thinking, which was that on a personal level, things couldn’t have been more successful. As in, there was a lot to be said for having spent a whole two hours in the man’s company without angsting about how she looked or what she said or even what he thought about her. Not more than once or twice, anyway. “Where’s Cass?”

“The baby kept her up all night with colic, so she’s taking the day off. Says she’ll switch one day next week with you, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dana said distractedly, leaning on the counter and leafing through the mail. “Although we really need to think about hiring another body or two. So we could, you know, have lives?” The phone rang. Without looking, she reached for the receiver.

“Great Expectations—”

“Dana?”

“Speaking. May I help you?”

“Dane … it’s me. Trish.”

She jerked upright, the mail forgotten. “Trish? Where are you? Mama’s worried sick about you.”

“I’m okay. Which I told her last week when I talked to her. Listen … I need to see you.”

It took a second. “You’re here? In Albuquerque?”

“Yeah, just for a couple days, though.”

“Where? Give me a number where we can reach you—”

“You coming into the shop tomorrow?”

“What’s tomorrow? Saturday? Yes, I’ll be here all day—”

“When do you get in?”

“Around nine, I suppose. But wouldn’t it be better to get together at my place? Or Mama’s house—?”

Click.

Dana stared at the phone for a second, then slammed it down.

“What was that all about?” Mercy asked.

“That was my airhead cousin.”

“The one who disappeared?”

“The very same.” Dana huffed a sigh. “Says she’s in town, but won’t tell me where she is. Said she’s coming to the shop tomorrow, although God knows why.”

Swishing a lime-green feather duster over a display of ornate frames, Mercy shrugged. “She probably wants money.”

“Yeah, well, she’s in for a rude surprise, then, since between the medical bills from last year and our expansion, this is one dry well. If she needs help, she can jolly well haul her butt back home and go to work like the rest of us poor slobs.”

Mercy laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Anyone who didn’t know you would think you were this wussy Southern belle, all sweet and helpless. But let me tell you, if I had to pick someone to be on my team against the bad guys? I’d pick you in a heartbeat.”

Dana tilted her head at her friend. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The phone rang again the very moment a mother with four stair-step children tumbled into the shop.

“Great Expecta—”

“Hey, I’m on my way to another appointment,” C.J. said, and Dana’s face warmed with pleasure. Dumb. “But I just thought of a place I bet would be great for the shop. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. Must be the heat. In any case, I’m tied up until five, but wondered if you wanted to see it then? It only came on the market this morning, and I don’t know how long it’s going to last. And the great thing is the owner’s willing to sell, so you could apply the rent toward the purchase price if you all want to buy eventually—”

“Slow down, slow down,” she said, laughing. “Yes, five would be fine. But let me meet you there.”

She wrote down the address on a scrap of paper, then hung up, deciding she was feeling all fluttery and trembly inside because of the prospect of finally finding the right location for the store. Yes, that must be it.

Mercy drifted over to the sales counter while the mother browsed and the kids wreaked havoc. Since there was little they could hurt or that could hurt them (despite the place being an obstacle course for Dana), no one paid the children any mind.

“Let me guess,” she said. “That was C.J.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because your face wasn’t darker than your dress five minutes ago.”

“Bite me.”

That merited a cackle. “He ask you out?”

“No, goofball—he has another place to show me.”

“Miss?” the mother asked. “How much is this play kitchen?”

“It should be tagged,” Mercy said with a smile. “Let me see if I can find it for you.” Then, over her shoulder to Dana as she edged toward her customer, “I’ve got a real good feeling about this one.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Merce—”

“The property, the property,” Mercy said, saucer-eyed. “Why, what did you think I meant?”

Then she cackled again, and Dana thought, With friends like this …

Dana was so quiet, so expressionless. C.J. listened to her sandals tapping on the dusty wooden floor as she wordlessly walked from room to room in the quasi-Victorian, her expression telling him nothing.

“The Neighborhood Association would be thrilled to have you in the area. Plus, it’s close enough to Old Town to pull in a nice chunk of the tourist traffic. And I think the other businesses around would complement yours—”

She shushed him with a swat of her hand.

It was beastly hot in the house, which smelled of musty, overheated wood and dust and that damned perfume; several strands of her hair hung in damp tendrils around her neck.

And he stared. As if he’d never seen damp necks and tendrils before. So he looked out a grimy window, thinking maybe it was time to bring the electronic little black book out of retirement. Except the thought made him slightly nauseous.

The tapping came closer, stopped. He turned; she was smiling. Beaming.

“It’s perfect! When can the others see it?”

“Whenever you like.”

She clapped her hands and let out a squeal like a little girl, her happiness contagious. And C.J. hoped to hell his inoculations were up to date.

A few minutes later, after they’d returned to their cars, C.J. said, “See, what did I tell you? When it was right, you had no trouble at all making a decision.”

Her laugh seemed to tremble in the heat. “True. In fact …” Her gaze met his over the roof of his car. She glowed, from the heat, from excitement, from what he guessed was profound relief. “I feel downright … empowered.”

C. J. opened his car door, letting out the heat trapped inside. “And what,” he asked without thinking, “does an empowered Dana Malone do?”

Her grin broadened. “She offers to cook her Realtor dinner.”

Nothing to lose, Dana reminded herself as perspiration poured down her back in such a torrent she prayed a puddle wasn’t collecting at her feet. As she watched C.J.’s smile freeze in place, the undeniable beginnings of that Oh, crap look in his eyes.

“But before you get the wrong idea,” she said over her jittering stomach, “this is only to thank you for all your patience with me, especially since I know how busy you are and you probably eat out a lot, or stick things in the microwave—”

“Dana,” he said gently, looking wretched. “I’d love to, really—”

And here it comes.

“—but I don’t think … that would be a good idea.”

Despite having steeled herself for the rejection, embarrassment heated her face. Still, she managed a smile and a light, “Oh. Well, it was just a thought. No harm, no foul.” Except after she opened her own car door, she wheeled back around. “Although you could have at least lied like any other man, and told me you already had plans or something.”

“And if you’d been any other woman,” he said softly, “I probably would have. But you deserve better than that.” He drew in a breath, letting it out on, “You deserve better than me. Marriage, babies … not in my future, Dana. But something tells me you very much see them in yours.”

Her eyes popped wide open. “Who said anything about …? It was just dinner, for heaven’s sake!”

Now something dangerously close to pity flooded his gaze. “Would you have extended the same invitation if I were involved with someone? Or if you were?”

“Um … well …” She blew out a breath, then shook her head.

His smile was kind to the point of patronizing. “I’m a dead end, Dana. Don’t waste your effort on me.”

She glanced away, then back, her mouth thinned. “I’m sorry, it was stupid, thinking that you’d … be interested. Especially after everything Trish said.”

His head tilted slightly. “Trish?”

“Lovett. My cousin. She worked for you for about six months, oh, a year ago? And she said … never mind, it’s moot now.”

“Dana,” C.J. said, a pained look on his face, “trust me, it’s better this way.”

Their gazes skirmished for a second or two before she finally said, “Yes, you’re probably right,” then got into her sweltering car and drove off, repeating “No isn’t fatal” to herself over and over until, by the time she got home and called Cass with the good news about the store, she was almost tempted to believe it.

Way to go, dumb ass, C.J. thought as he sat at a stoplight, palming his temple. In less than a century, man had invented cell phones, the Internet and microwave pizza. And yet after fifty thousand years, give or take, no one had yet to figure out how to let a woman down without hurting her.

But what else could he have said? That, yeah, actually he would have killed for the privilege of spending a little more time in her company? To see that dimpled smile, to hear her laugh? To simply enjoy being with a woman without an agenda?

Except … she did have one, didn’t she? Maybe a bit more soft-edged than most, but no less threatening. Or sincere. And how fair would it have been, to accept her offer, to give her hope, when he knew it wouldn’t go any further? That selfish, he wasn’t.

And then there was the little sidebar revelation about Trish being her cousin. Uh, boy … he could just imagine what would hit the fan if Dana knew everything about that little side trip to insanity.

C.J.’s brow knotted. So why didn’t Dana know? Then he released a breath, realizing that whatever Trish’s reasons for keeping certain things to herself, if she hadn’t told Dana by now, she probably wouldn’t. And there was no reason for her to ever find out, was there?

A car horn honked behind him: while he’d been on Planet Clueless, the light had changed.

And even if she did, he thought as he stepped on the gas, what difference would it make? Once this deal was finalized, he’d have no reason to see or talk to Dana Malone ever again.

Which was a good thing, right?

In a bathroom flooded with far too much morning sunshine, Dana blearily stared at herself in the mirror. She pulled down a lower lid—yeah, the bloodshot eyes were a nice touch. Not to mention the still slightly visible keyboard impression in her right cheek. Charming.

She shakily applied toothpaste to brush, only to realize she wasn’t sure she had the oomph to lift the brush to her mouth. From the living room, her pair of finches chirped away, merrily greeting the new day, momentarily tempting her to go find a hungry cat. But if she’d been up until nearly 4:00 a.m., at least she hadn’t spent it brooding. Much. Since here she was, still alive (sort of), she guessed her “No isn’t fatal” mantra had worked. And anyway, she’d only have to see C.J. once, maybe twice more, right? If that. So. Over, done, let’s move on.

She shoved the brush into her mouth. And naturally, right at the pinnacle of sudsiness, the phone rang.

Dimly, from some tiny, marginally awake corner of her brain, it registered how early it was. She spit and flew back into her bedroom, fumbling the phone before finally getting it to her ear.

“Hel—”

“Dana?”

A few more brain cells jerked awake. “Trish?” She glanced at the caller ID. Blocked call. Shoot. “Where are you—?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were going to be at the shop at nine. That’s what you said, right? Nine? I mean, are you going to be there any earlier?”

As usual, she sounded borderline crazed, but in a controlled sort of way.

“I usually get there around ten ‘til. Trish what’s going on—?”

Click.

The girl really needed to get herself some phone manners. Sheesh.

An hour or so and a half bottle of Visine later, Dana pulled into the far side of the empty parking lot in front of the shop. It was her day to open up, a good thing since she wasn’t yet ready to face humanity. Or Mercy’s inevitable squinty assessment of Dana’s putty-knife makeup application. She was, however, supposed to be facing Trish, who was nowhere in sight. But then, reliability had never been her cousin’s strong suit.

Bracing herself, Dana took a deep breath and swung open the car door. Instant oven. Already. Yech. And it always took an hour for the store to cool off after being closed up all night. Double yech.

Her purse gathered, she slammed shut her door and crossed the parking lot, noticing the drooping petunias in the oversized planters by the front door. If they didn’t get water soon, she thought as she shoved her key into the lock, they’d turn into twigs. Lord, her slip was already fused to her skin. Knowing she had thirty seconds to deactivate the alarm before it went off, she shoved open the door—

Behind her, something sneezed.

The key still in the lock, the door swung open as whatever it was sneezed a second time. She turned, letting out a half-shrieked, “Ohmigod!”

The baby peered at her from underneath the nylon hood of the car seat, its face tinted blue from the reflection. It stared at Dana for a long moment, then offered a big, basically toothless, drooly grin.

Dana was far too stunned to grin back. But not too stunned to immediately scour the neighboring parking lots, her hand shielding her eyes from the morning sun glinting off the top of a beige sedan as it disappeared down the street. She stepped off the sidewalk—

Brrrrannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggg!

Dana yelped and the baby started to yowl like a banshee as the alarm blared loud enough to wake the dead. On Mars. She grabbed the car seat and roared into the store, thunking the seat onto the counter so she could dump out her purse to find the key to deactivate the alarm. Ten seconds later, she’d killed it, but not before nearly wetting her pants.

In the ensuing silence the baby’s howls seemed even louder. Dana unlatched the ridiculously complicated harness and hauled the little thing into her arms, then paced the jammed sales floor, almost more to calm herself than the infant. After a bit, the wails had softened to exhausted sobs, and Dana no longer felt as though her heart was going to pound out of her chest. She dropped into a rocking chair, the infant clutching the front of her dress, now adorned with baby tears and drool.

“No …” she breathed. “No, God, no … this can’t be happening….”

Trish surfaces out of the blue, asks when Dana’s going to be at the shop; lo and behold, a blond baby appears, smelling of cheap perfume and cigarettes. As she assumed the baby didn’t wear cheap perfume or smoke, it didn’t take a real big leap of faith to figure out who did.

She got up, deposited the baby—dressed in a miniature football outfit, so she was guessing boy—into a nearby playpen and stormed back outside, startling a couple of pigeons.

“Well, Patricia Elizabeth Lovett,” she muttered to the air, “you’ve outdone yourself this time.”

Since said Patricia Elizabeth obviously wasn’t going to jump out from behind a Dumpster and yell, “Surprise! Had you there for a minute, huh?” Dana’s only option was to go back inside and figure out what to do next. As she turned, however, she noticed the shopping bag. A quick glance inside revealed a small stack of clothes, six or seven disposable diapers and three filled bottles.

How thoughtful.

Dana snatched up the bag so hard one of the handles broke, nearly dumping everything into the gasping petunias. That’s when she noticed the note. Of course. There was always a note, wasn’t there?

She dumped the bag on the counter, saw that the baby seemed happy enough gurgling to his own hands as he lay on his back, then tore open the envelope.

Her eyes flew over the one-page letter, picking up the essentials, “… tried it on my own … knew how much you loved and wanted kids … it’ll be better this way … full custody … hope you’ll forgive me … Ethan’s really a little doll, you’ll love him … birth certificate enclosed …”

It was so Trish. On a sigh, Dana unfolded the birth certificate, if only to find out how old this kid was.

“WHAT?”

The baby lurched at the sudden noise, then started to cry again. Nearly in tears herself, Dana threw the letter and birth certificate on the counter and went to pick him up. None of this was the baby’s fault, she reminded herself as she hauled the infant out of the playpen and cuddled him in her lap. None of it. Least of all who his daddy was.

Cameron James Turner, the paper said.

Cameron James Turner, of “fatherhood isn’t part of my future” fame.

“Well, guess what, buddy?” Dana hissed under her breath as she grabbed a bottle off the counter and stuck it in her new little cousin’s mouth. “Fatherhood sure as hell is part of your present.”

Chapter Four

Dana thanked the police officer for coming so promptly, assured her she’d be in touch if she heard anything or needed her, then showed her out. Not that the visit had been exactly productive. Or even illuminating. Turned out there wasn’t a whole lot anybody could do, seeing as Trish had left Ethan with family and all. Technically, it wasn’t abandonment. Of course, the officer had said, if Dana really felt she couldn’t take care of the baby, there was always foster care …

Uh-huh. Sharp sticks in eyes and all that.

Mercy took the baby from her as Cass—whose own son was sawing logs in a cradle in the back—slipped an arm around her shoulders.

“For crying out loud,” Dana said, “how could anyone be so selfish? Ooooh!” Her palm slammed the counter, dislodging a teddy bear from its perch by the register. She caught it, only to squeeze the life out of the thing. “If Trish showed her face right now—” the bear’s floppy limbs flailed as she shook it “—I swear I’d slap her silly. What an air-brained, self-centered, addlepated little twit.”

“Familial love is such a wonderful thing,” Cass wryly observed.

Ignoring Cass, Dana stuffed the bear back into its chair. “What am I supposed to do now?” She shook her head, watching six-month-old Ethan play with Mercy’s hair. Her own, as usual, was coming undone. “How am I supposed to take care of a baby on my own? I live in this itty-bitty apartment, and hello? I work full time? What on earth was Trish thinking?”

“Maybe your parents could take over during the day,” Mercy suggested, but Dana wagged her head emphatically.

“Neither one of them is up to full-time babysitting at this point in their lives.”

Then both of her partners went ominously silent, instantly putting Dana on the alert. “What?”

“What about C.J.?” Mercy asked, wincing a little as she dislodged curious little fingers from the three-inch-wide gold loops dangling from her ears.

“Oh, right. Mr. Family Man himself.” When they both blinked at her, she sighed and ‘fessed up about the day before. Okay, she might have done a little judicious editing of the conversation—they didn’t need to know about the dinner invite—but she definitely left in the “He doesn’t want kids” part.

“Be that as it may,” Cass said, assuming the role of Voice of Reason. She folded thin, bare arms over a button-front blouse already adorned with a telltale wet spot on one shoulder. “C.J. doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d blow off having a kid. So my guess is Trish left town without telling him.”

Dana hadn’t thought about that. Still, she wasn’t exactly in a charitable mood. “And if she did?”

Mercy leaned against the counter, setting the baby on the edge, protectively bumpered by her arms. He yanked off her turquoise satin headband and began gnawing on it; she didn’t seem to notice. “Hey, if he knew about the baby and refused to take responsibility, you better believe I’d be first in line to string him up by his gonads. But if he didn’t—and remember, you’re not absolutely sure Ethan is C.J.’s—then I think you’re gonna have to wait and see. Give him a chance.”

“You weren’t there, you didn’t see the look on his face …” Dana began, then shook her head, her mouth pulled tight. She reached for Ethan, her eyes burning for reasons she had no intention of thinking about too hard. “I think it’s pretty safe to assume I got me a baby to raise.”

The bell jangled over the door; with a grunt of annoyance, Mercy left to help the pregnant woman slowly picking her way through the store. Cass, however, stroked Dana’s arm for a second, then grasped Ethan’s chunky little hand.

“Honey, I understand what you’re saying. But you really have no idea how C.J.’s going to feel once he sees his son. Look at him—he’s adorable. How could he not fall in love with him?”

At that, the baby turned all-too-familiar blue eyes to Dana and grinned as if to say, “Hey! Where ya been, lady?” Amazement and terror streaked through her, so powerful, and so sudden, she could hardly breathe. Dana nestled the infant to her chest, rubbing his back and sucking in a sharp breath. I’ve been given a baby, she thought, only to then wonder … was this a dream come true?

Or the beginning of a nightmare?

She gave Cass a wan smile. “Hand me the phone, wouldja?”

Hours later, Dana watched Mercy scan the tiny one-bedroom apartment, her features a study in skepticism. Between her Firebird and Dana’s Jetta, they’d managed to haul a portacrib, playpen, baby swing, a case of powdered formula, two jumbo packs of disposable diapers, clothes, rattles, wipes, bedding and at least a million other “essentials” Mercy insisted Dana would probably need before sunrise. In the middle of all this, Ethan lay on his back in the playpen, grunting at the birds. Mercy’s eyebrows knotted a little tighter.

“You sure you’re gonna be okay?”

“Uh-huh,” Dana squeaked out. “Besides, I don’t want any witnesses when C.J. shows up.”

“Damn. I always miss all the fun.”

Dana managed a weak, but nonetheless hysterical, laugh. All afternoon she’d ping-ponged between hope and profound skepticism. Maybe prejudging the man wasn’t in anybody’s interest, especially Ethan’s, but she wasn’t so naive as to expect him to take one look at his kid and suddenly switch tracks.

“Sweetie,” Mercy said gently, “why don’t you call your mom? Let her come help you out.”

“I will, I will. Soon. But one does not spring potentially life-altering news on my mother without a plan. The woman has turned worrying into an art form.”

“I hear ya there. At least let me set up the portacrib—”

Dana took her friend by the arm and steered her toward her door. Not that it wouldn’t make sense to let her stay. Most of Mercy’s sisters were spittin’ out babies like popcorn. No matter when one visited the Zamora household, it was awash in little people. But while Mercy’s presence would have been a great help in many ways, Dana wouldn’t have been able to think. And thinking was the one thing she most needed to do.

And she really didn’t want any witnesses when C.J. arrived. Not because she was going to kill him—she didn’t think—but because Ethan’s sudden appearance had turned a nonrelationship into … well, she didn’t know what, actually. But so much for never having to see the guy again.

Thirty seconds and a heartfelt hug later, Dana was finally alone.

With a baby.

She zipped to her bedroom, rummaging through her bottom drawer for a pair of old shorts, and a faded UNM T-shirt, changing into both at warp speed. The gurgling, drooling six-month-old pushed himself up on his elbows when she walked back to the living room; Dana squatted down in front of the playpen as if inspecting a new life form. Yesterday, she had no idea this child even existed. Now she was responsible for him, maybe for a few days, maybe for the rest of her life.

The thought slammed into her so hard she nearly toppled over. One day, she figured she’d adopt a child or two, when she was ready, both financially and emotionally. At the moment, she was neither. She’d always assumed she’d have some prep time for accepting a child into her life. As, you know, part of a couple?

So much for that idea.

A particularly ripe odor wafted to her nostrils. A byproduct of the earlier grunting, no doubt.

“Let me guess. You messed your pants.”

Ethan grinned and cooed at her, lifting his head at exactly the right angle for Dana to get a good gander at his eyes. Lake-blue, flecked with gold around the pupils, exactly like you-know-whose. On a sigh, she stood and hefted the smelly little dear out of his cage and over to the sofa, where she changed his diaper with surprising aplomb and less than a dozen wipies.

“Now I bet you’re hungry, right?”

In answer, Ethan stuck his fist in his mouth and started gnawing on it with the enthusiasm of a lion ripping into fresh wildebeest. Dana picked up the much sweeter smelling child and plopped him back into his car seat, which she figured was as safe a place as any to try to shovel food down his gullet. But what food, she wondered, might that be?

“Next time you dump a kid on me, Trish,” she muttered, ransacking the paper bag full of little clanking jars Mercy had helped her pick out at Albertson’s on their way home, “don’t forget the dag-nabbed feeding instructions!”

She yanked out ajar, holding it up to the baby hunk with the killer eyes. “Carrots?”

Ethan gurgled, then let out a loud “Bababababababa” while waving his arms. Then he chortled. Not giggled. Chortled.

Dana sort of chortled back, popping open the jar. “Carrots it is, then.”

Except carrots, it wasn’t. It was like trying to shove a video into a malfunctioning VCR—it slid right back out.

She opened another jar, held it up. “Peaches?”

That got a slightly more forceful rejection.

“O-kaaay … maybe orange stuff isn’t your thing. How about green?”

Green beans went in … and green beans oozed out, accompanied by the quintessential “Get real, lady,” expression.

Dana quickly discovered that baby food didn’t exactly come in a wealth of colors. Or tastes. But she gamely tried creamed corn, chicken (that, she couldn’t get past the baby’s lips), squash, pears and beets.

Pears and beets went down. And down and down and down, until Dana wondered if babies, like puppies, would simply stuff themselves until they got so full they threw—

“Oh, gross!”

—up.

At least four times more food came back out as had gone in. Krakatoa had nothing on this kid, she mused while frantically trying to catch the maroon-and-pear colored mess that kept spewing forth from those little rosebud lips.

Three saturated napkins later, Ethan chortled again. Not seeing the humor this time, Dana did not. And she was hot and getting hungry herself. Not only that, but it was beginning to sink in with alarming speed that no one was going to come take this vomiting bundle of joy away in an hour or two. And what if he didn’t sleep through the night?

With a little groan, Dana let her head clunk onto the tabletop, not realizing how close she was to a pair of enterprising little hands.

“Ye-ouch!” Her own hands flew to her head, prying five tiny and amazingly strong fingers from her hair, which was now liberally infused with regurgitated Gerber 1^st Foods. Well, hell. Somebody, somewhere, probably paid big bucks for this look. She got it for free.

Rubbing her scalp—man, the kid had a grip—she regarded her little charge, now in deep conversation with the Tiffany-style lamp over the table. She skootched over, out of Clutcher’s way, and laid her head down again.

So many questions and thoughts swarmed in her brain, she couldn’t sort them out, let alone act on any of them. For tonight, her top priority was keeping the child alive. She was off all day tomorrow, and Ethan had to sleep sometime, right?

Dana lifted her head far enough to prop it in her palm, reaching out to the baby with her other hand. Ethan grabbed Dana’s fingers and tried to stuff them into his mouth. The two little teeth on the bottom made their presence known really fast, but she felt ridges on top, too.

“You getting yourself some new teeth, big guy?” she said with a tired smile.

Ethan chortled.

Dana’s heart did a slow, careful turn in her chest. She stood and scooped the baby out of his car seat, cuddling him on her lap. Ethan settled right in, tucking his head underneath Dana’s chin, and her heart flopped again, more quickly.

This was all too unpredictable for her taste. Her cousin might change her mind, C. J. might want … actually, God knew what C.J. might want.

She cursed under her breath, noting that more no-nos had slipped past her lips in the past several hours than in the entire thirty-two years that had preceded them. Insecurities and turmoil and all the unanswerables swirled and knotted together into a nebulous anger no less fierce for its vagueness. Her eyes stung as she realized how furious she was, at Trish, at C.J. (yes, even though he probably didn’t know about the baby), at fate.

At herself.

All her life, she realized tiredly, she’d let people push her around. All her life, she’d been the one voted most likely to say “sure” when she really wanted to say “I don’t have time” or “I’m not comfortable with that idea” or even, simply, “I don’t want to.” Suddenly, she was a kid again, hearing her mother’s gushing to some neighbor or teacher or saleslady who’d admired Dana’s impeccable manners. “Oh, Dana’s never given us a single moment’s worry,” she’d say. “Always does what she’s supposed to do, never gives us any lip. Just a perfect little angel!”

“Just ask Dana—she won’t mind …”

“You can always count on Dana for a job well done and a smile to go with it …”

“You know, I’ve never heard Dana complain, not even once….”

“Dana won’t be a problem. She’d go along with whatever we decide to do. Won’t you, Dana?”

She pushed herself off the sofa, hugging Ethan, realizing there was nowhere to go. So she stood in place, jiggling the baby, fuming and muttering and cussing—but not so Ethan could really hear her—over the finches’ agitated twittering.

Okay, that’s it—Dana Malone’s doormat days were o-ver. No more swallowing her anger when someone pissed her off. No more smiling when she really felt like popping someone upside the head. No more Ms. Nice Lady. She was mad, dammit, and God help the next person who got in her way—

The doorbell rang.

She marshaled all her newfound fury into one hopefully emasculating glare and marched to the door.

The way her topknot hung by a thread over her right ear was C.J.’s first clue that something was very, very wrong.

The baby slung on her hip was the second.

Her voice mail had been short, and not exactly sweet. “Meet me at my place anytime after six,” she’d said, then left her address, finishing with, “And believe me, it’s not what you think.”

“You … wanted to see me?”

Wordlessly, Dana spun around and stomped back inside the apartment, which he cautiously took as permission to enter.

His first horrified thought, when he saw the room, was that she’d been burgled. After he swallowed his heart, however, he realized the damage seemed superficial. In fact, it was all baby stuff. A swing and playpen fought for space between a peach-colored armchair, a glass-topped coffee table; diapers—both clean and dirty, from what he could tell—littered the pastel, Southwest design sofa; an infant car seat took up half the blond dining table, the rest of which was covered by no less than a dozen open jars of baby food and a mountain of dirty napkins or paper towels or something.

She’d gone into the kitchenette, where she dampened a cloth to wipe off the squirming baby’s cheeks. Said child giggled, somehow snatched the wet rag out of Dana’s hand and tossed it with unerring accuracy smack into her face.

A finely honed survival instinct told C.J. to proceed with extreme caution.

“Babysitting?” he asked.

“Funny you should say that.” Dana caught the cloth as it fell, slapping it onto the counter. Hot little flames sparked in her eyes. “Trish breezed back into town today.”

C.J. literally felt the blood drain from his face.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. She brought me a present. Now, it’s a very nice present, to be sure, but heaven knows I wasn’t expecting anything like this. Nor did I realize I wasn’t going to be given any say in whether or not I even wanted this present.”

He looked at the baby, who flashed him a wide, gummy smile, then back at Dana. Somehow, even her hair seemed redder. Okay, Trish in town probably equaled Trish told Dana. But she’d have hardly asked him to come over about that, for crying out loud. And what did the baby have to do with anything?

“I’m sorry,” C.J. said, “but am I missing something?”

Her mouth set, she swept past him on her way from kitchen to living room, bending awkwardly with the child still balanced on her hip in order to pull something out of her handbag. Then she marched over to him and smacked a triple-folded sheet of paper into his palm.

Acid etched at the lining of his stomach as he unfolded the paper, burst into flame when he read it. The first word out of his mouth was particularly choice.

“Yeah. That was about my reaction, too,” Dana said. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Did you and my cousin …”

“You mean, she didn’t tell you?”

“She didn’t tell me squat.”

Still staring at the paper, C.J. pushed out a sigh. “Once, Dana. Right after she’d quit. And we both knew it was a mistake.”

He couldn’t quite tell if that was disappointment or flat-out, go-to-hell-and-don’t-come-back hatred that was making her eyes so dark. “And does the date correspond to that once?”

“Yes. But …” He shook his head, as if doing so would make it all go away. “This can’t be right.”

“Why not?”

He lifted his eyes to Dana’s. “Because I had a vasectomy. Five years ago.”

Silence stretched between them, painful and suffocating. Until, on a soft little “Oh,” Dana dropped onto the sofa with the baby on her lap.

The baby, C.J. thought, with eyes exactly like his.

But then, lots of babies had blue eyes. Tons of babies. Millions, even.

And somewhere, some deity or other was grinning his—or, more likely her—ass off.

“Wow,” Dana said. “You weren’t kidding about not seeing babies in your future.”

C.J.’s mouth pulled tight. “That had been the plan. But—”

“Oh, geez, sorry to have come down so hard on you. I should have realized … Especially knowing my cousin …” She frowned. “What?”

“I think I need to sit.”

“Uh … sure. Make yourself at home.”

C.J. shoehorned himself into a half-blocked club chair across from the sofa and stared again at the birth certificate. At the letters that formed, of all the crazy things, his name. Yeah, as screwups went, this one was in a league of its own.

He supposed Trish could have been lying, otherwise why wouldn’t she have surfaced sooner? Still, something deep in his gut told him she wasn’t.

“C.J.?”

He let out a humorless laugh, then collapsed back into the chair, meeting her gaze. “You really believe me, don’t you? About Ethan. Not being mine.”

“Um … yeah. Shouldn’t I?”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m telling you the truth. But for all you know, I could be some bastard who’d say anything just to get out of accepting responsibility.”

“Are you?”

“A bastard?” he said with a weak smile.

“Trying to duck responsibility.”

He shook his head.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, and he hauled in a huge breath.

“The thing is … I’ve been a bad boy.”

She smirked. “I don’t think you want to go there.”

“No, I mean …” He exhaled. “The procedure’s ninety-nine percent effective. About the same as the Pill. Which your cousin told me she was on, by the way. Why are you shaking your head?”

“Trish couldn’t take the Pill, she had bad reactions to the hormones.”

C.J. stared at Dana for a moment, then scrubbed the heel of his hand across his jaw. “I’ll have to get back to you on that piece of information. But as I was saying—”

“Ninety-nine percent.”

“Yes.”

She was quiet for a long time. Then: “Bummer.”

In spite of himself, he felt his mouth pull into a smile. “See, I’m supposed to have things checked every so often. To make sure …”

“I get the picture,” she said, flushing slightly. “I take it you—”

“Oh, I did. Every six months for the first two years. No worries, they said.”

“But they were wrong?”

“Well, something sure as hell was.”

She made a funny noise, like a balloon beginning to leak air. “No wonder you look kind of sick. So you really didn’t know?”

His own anger, at Trish, at circumstances, but mostly at himself, erupted. “Of course I didn’t know! How could I know about something that wasn’t supposed to happen, for God’s sake?”

She hauled the baby up onto her shoulder, as if shielding him. “Sorry. I had to ask. Because you’re right. For all I know—which isn’t a whole lot, obviously—maybe you are a master at sidestepping consequences and I’m a fool for believing otherwise.”

“You’re not a fool, Dana. You’re nobody’s fool.”

“Unlike some people in this room,” she said, and he shut his eyes, his head on the back of the chair.

“I suppose I had that coming.”

She snorted softly, then said, “Hold on a minute. Did you tell Trish you’d been … fixed?”

“It didn’t come up. What I mean is,” he said quickly, pushing his head forward to look at her again, “since she volunteered that she was taken care of first, there didn’t seem to be any reason to mention it.”

“Or to use a condom?”

“You know, I think I liked things better when I thought you were a shrinking violet.” She glowered at him. “No, Dana, we didn’t use anything else. Since we’d both recently had insurance physicals, there didn’t seem to be any point. Especially since I thought, oddly enough, we were doubly safe.”

“One chance in a hundred is still pretty slim odds,” Dana said, nuzzling the baby’s soft, flyaway hair, and C.J. forced himself to take a good look at this kid who may well have beaten the odds, just for the dubious honor of being his son. For a moment, the room spun, as though the earth had shifted under his feet.

“Oh, God,” he said on a rush of breath. “What the hell do I know about taking care of a kid?”

Dana had wanted so badly to hold on to her anger, to not feel sorry for the obviously shattered man in front of her. Staying angry with him gave her some focus for her own turmoil, at least. But the shock contorting his features tore her apart. She’d been left with the child, true—but at least she’d always wanted children. C.J., on the other hand, had every reason to feel duped. By everybody.

Still and all, he was a big boy. A big boy who should be more than acquainted with the actions-have-consequences concept by now. Take enough swings at the ball, sooner or later you’re gonna break a window.

Even, apparently, one made out of safety glass.

However, in answer to his question, she now swept one arm out, indicating the disaster-stricken apartment. And herself. “And does this look like the living space of someone who does know what she’s doing?”

“But you’re such a natural with kids.”

A slightly panicked laugh burst from her mouth. “Loving them and keeping them alive are not the same thing. I’m an only child, never had any little siblings or anything to practice on. I never even babysat, because I was too busy being the nerdy straight-A student. So I don’t have anything more to go on than you do.”

“I somehow doubt that,” C.J. said, and there was no mistaking the bitterness edging his words. But now was not the time to pursue it. Especially when he asked, “Why do you think your cousin lied about being on the Pill? Why would she have taken that chance?”

Dana lowered Ethan onto his tummy in the playpen, then sat on the sofa in front of it, laying her cheek on her folded arms across the padded top. “Logic has never exactly been Trish’s strong suit,” she said, watching the baby. “Who knows? Maybe she …” She gulped down the pain. “Maybe she wanted to get pregnant.”

“That’s nuts.”

“No, that’s Trish.”

“Then why didn’t she tell me about the baby, for God’s sake?”

She shifted to look at him. “Because this wasn’t about you, it was about whatever was going on in my cousin’s head at the time. Although those I’d-rather-eat-scorpions-than-become-a-father vibes you give off probably didn’t help. And no, it wouldn’t even occur to her to fight that. Staying power isn’t exactly her strong suit. Heck, sitting through a two-hour-long movie is a strain.”

C.J. pushed out a groan. “And you have no idea where she is?”

“Not a clue. I did talk to the police, however,” she said, filling him in on the events leading up to her becoming Ethan’s caretaker, including her chat with the officer that morning.

“You think she’ll come back?”

Dana leaned to one side to see if his face gave more of a clue than his voice as to what he was really thinking, then stood up, retrieved the note. Handed it to him with a, “For what it’s worth.”

She watched him read it, watched his expression grow more solemn.

“C.J., until you know for sure that Ethan’s yours, maybe you shouldn’t get yourself anymore tied up in knots than you already are.”

Haunted eyes met hers. “And if he’s not?”

“Then I’ll deal,” she said quietly. “Somehow.”

He held her gaze in his for several seconds. “And if he is, then so will I.” He handed the note back to her, his gaze drifting to Ethan. “What a crappy thing to do to a kid,” he said, the steeliness underlying the softly spoken words sending a shudder up her spine. “No way am I turning my back on my own son, Dana. I’m not hurting financially, he’ll have everything he’ll ever need. But if she wanted you to have custody …” He shook his head, letting the sentence trail off unfinished.

Several seconds passed before she could speak. But no way in hell was she going to just sit here and nod and go, “Okay, sure, whatever.” That Dana didn’t live here anymore. “Excuse me? What happened to ‘no way am I turning my back on my own son’? I didn’t shove that birth certificate in your face in exchange for your checkbook, you big turkey!”

“But Trish left him with you!” he said, and a raw anguish she hadn’t seen before blistered in those deep blue eyes. “Not me.”

And with that, comprehension dawned in the deep, muddled recesses of her brain.

Dana sucked in a steadying breath and said, “C.J., my cousin is so many sandwiches short of a picnic she’d starve to death. But she certainly knew I’d recognize your name, and that I’d contact you. So in her own weird way, I don’t think she deliberately meant to shut you out.”

“Never mind that that’s exactly what she did,” C.J. said coldly, and Dana thought, Ah-hah.

“In any case,” she said, “we’ll deal with Trish later. Maybe. But right now, this is about Ethan. And if he is yours, damned if I’m letting you off the hook like she did.”

C.J. flinched as though she’d poked him with a cattle prod. “Dammit, nobody’s letting anybody ‘off the hook!’ Believe me,” he said, his mouth contorted, “nobody, nobody, knows more than I do that this is about a helluva lot more than money. But pardon me for needing more than fifteen minutes to get used to the idea of being somebody’s father!”

The last word came out strangled. His throat working overtime, C.J.’s head snapped toward Ethan, sprawled on his tummy in the playpen. The baby had been contentedly gumming a teething ring; now he lifted his face to them, his drooly grin infused with a trusting curiosity that twisted Dana’s heart.

She shifted her own gaze to C.J., thinking, This is not a bad man. Screwed up, maybe, but not bad. And expecting him to turn on a dime was not only unfair, but unrealistic. Especially when she remembered how she’d felt after receiving her own life-altering news not all that long ago. It takes time to regain your balance after getting walloped by a two-by-four.

At that, Dana rammed her fingers through her hair; it finally succumbed to the inevitable and came completely undone. “Look,” she began again, more gently, “this is a really bizarre situation, and I don’t know any more than you do what the next step’s going to be. I mean, it all hangs on what you find out, right?”