Kathleen O'Brien - Texas Trouble p.03

“Mommy,” the little girl called out, her sleepy eyes widening with delight.
“Mommy, I missed you!”
Rebecca moved forward eagerly and scooped her daughter into her arms. Stroking
the satiny hair, she turned around and gave Logan a tremulous, apprehensive
smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Ben…Ben thought it was time.”
Goddamn it.
He had been set up.
He ought to be furious. He ought to toss them all out of his house. What right
had they to intrude on the life he’d built so carefully? What right to spring a
hidden, steel-jawed trap, with a little girl as bait?
And yet, he found that he couldn’t give voice to that fury. Now that Rebecca’s
daughter was a living child, and not just an idea, anger was no longer uppermost
in his emotions.
This little girl, whose curious eyes peeked at him from under a fringe of
feathery lashes, was not merely a symbol of betrayal, or even a reminder of
loss.
She was his niece. She was his flesh and blood.
And she was completely innocent. She couldn’t know that, simply by having her
mother’s hair, and the round, blue Cathcart eyes, she reminded him wrenchingly
of Danny, the half brother she would never meet.
None of this dreadful, complicated mess was her fault.
In the end, his heart didn’t consult his brain. It simply opened and accepted
her, in spite of the inevitable pain.
“Hi, Chloe,” he said. He bent down, so that he would be on her level, and she
could see that they shared the same blue eyes. “It’s nice to finally meet you.
I’m your Uncle Logan.”

ORDINARILY, eleven o’clock on a Friday night found Nora immersed in a long,
luxurious bubble bath, her celebration of an evening off from mother-duty. After
the bath, she usually treated herself to a glass of wine and a good book. If she
was feeling particularly frisky, she might even go down to Milly’s room and play
gin rummy till midnight.
Yeah, she was a wild woman, all right.
But because some thorny decisions about how to use a patch of land needed to be
made immediately, Nora’s weekly meeting with the foreman had run late. Instead
of pampering herself as the clock struck eleven, she was walking Dusty out to
his car.
The moon was still almost full, clearly illuminating the long, wide oyster-shell
drive that led up to the hacienda. Because the round disc was so bright, almost
like a silver sun, she saw the glossy black Mercedes coming up the hill long
before she heard it.
How strange…at this time of night. She recognized the sports car. It belonged to
Ben and Rebecca Cathcart.
She wondered what they were doing at the Bull’s Eye. Could Logan be with them?
“Want me to wait here awhile?” Dusty, who had loved Harrison and felt a duty to
offer his protection to Harrison’s widow, eyed the incoming car suspiciously.
“I’m not in a hurry.”
“No, that’s fine,” she said, smiling her thanks. “I know who it is. I’ll be
fine.”
He dawdled anyhow, pretending to fumble with his keys, so that he was still
within earshot when the Mercedes finally pulled up in front of the fountain.
When Rebecca Cathcart emerged from the passenger’s side, looking delicate and
gorgeous in the moonlight, Dusty started his truck’s motor. He obviously
couldn’t imagine such a vision of femininity being a threat to anyone.
“Hi,” Rebecca said, her voice slightly stilted as she walked toward Nora. “I’m
glad you’re still awake. We hated to come so late, but…”
She glanced back toward the car, where Ben presumably waited behind the wheel.
“We really thought we should talk to you before we go back home. We fly out
first thing in the morning.”
“All right.” Nora gestured toward the front door. “Would you like to come in?”
“Thanks, no. Chloe is already asleep in her car seat. This won’t take long. It’s
just that—” She sighed, as if annoyed with herself. “Darn it, I’m just going to
come out and say it. I don’t know where things stand between you and Logan. But
this has been a very difficult night for him. I think…I think he needs you.”
Nora was, quite literally, speechless. Though she’d been over at Two Wings
several times during the week, she hadn’t seen Logan. She’d spent most of her
time helping Vic, whose wife was four days beyond her due date with no signs of
impending labor, leaving him so distraught he could hardly focus.
But she occasionally heard other workers talking about Logan. The word was that
he, Rebecca and Ben were having a lovely family reunion. She’d been happy for
him.
So what had gone wrong?
And who was Chloe?
“I know my coming here is a risk.” Rebecca raised her hands, palms up,
indicating her vulnerability. “I suspect you don’t like me much. And, of course,
I could be completely wrong about your feelings for him.”
Nora frowned. She didn’t dislike Rebecca, exactly. But it was hard to trust a
woman who had done what this woman did. Logan might have chivalrously accepted
all the blame, but Nora knew it took two people to destroy a marriage.
And, in her opinion, it took an extremely self-absorbed, cold-hearted woman to
leap from one brother’s bed to another’s.
“Actually,” Nora said, deciding to be as blunt as Rebecca had been, “your only
error is thinking I would discuss my feelings, or lack of them, with you.
Frankly, I’m not sure I understand what your stake is in this situation.”
Rebecca took the rebuff well. She nodded, as if she fully appreciated Nora’s
position. “That’s simple enough. My stake is that I love him.”
Nora didn’t respond in words. But she assumed her skeptical expression was
answer enough.
“I really do,” Rebecca said. “But it’s not important whether you believe me. I
don’t want you to discuss your feelings with me. I don’t even want you to
discuss them with Logan. I just want you to listen.”
“Listen? To you?”
“No, to him. I have a feeling he may, for once in his life, be ready to open up
to someone. And I think that someone is you.”

LOGAN HAD BEEN WORKING in the amphitheater for at least two hours, maybe three.
To get ready for the open house, they’d made all the public areas perfect, but
the backstage storage areas were still a mess.
He’d been tearing out rotten wood and drywall until his shoulders burned. The
halogen work lights he’d set up transformed night to day, and he had no idea
what time it really was.
All he knew was that he hadn’t worked long enough, or hard enough, to drain the
tension out of his system. If he tried to go to bed now, he’d never sleep. He’d
just lie there, opening his memories one by one, like so many Pandora’s boxes,
until he drove himself insane.
So, though he was covered in sweat and plaster, and the windowless rooms were as
hot as the inside of a volcano, he was going to keep at it, till dawn if
necessary.
He dragged off his sticky shirt, then twisted the nozzle on the outside of the
amphitheater to turn on the hose.
Bending at the waist, he let the water pour over him from head to toe. It might
soak his hair and his jeans, but at least it cooled him down and washed away
some of the grit and grime. He shook his head, spraying water everywhere, then
scraped his hair back from his face.
Now where had he put the crowbar? He would pull down this whole place, plank by
plank, if that was what it took to make the memories of Danny go back where they
belonged.
“Logan?”
The voice seemed to be coming from the concrete rows of seating that fanned out
from the stage, up the natural bowl of land into which the amphitheater had been
carved. He looked, but his halogen-blinded eyes could make nothing out of the
darkness.
“Logan, it’s me.” Her footsteps were soft on the grassy earth between the seats.
“It’s Nora. Are you there?”
God, he wished she hadn’t come. It didn’t matter whether she was here because
she needed him, or because she believed he needed her.
Whatever she wanted, he couldn’t give it to her.
He was too frayed, too raw, too close to the edge. He didn’t trust himself. He
didn’t have the self-control tonight. He couldn’t guarantee he’d do the right
thing. He was no longer even sure what the right thing was.
Finally her form differentiated itself from the other shadows beyond his lights.
She’d made her way onto the stage, obviously following the illumination.
He had to say something. Surely he wasn’t so far gone that he could only stand
here, frozen by the sound of her voice.
“I’m in the back, Nora,” he said. But his voice sounded strained. “In the
storage room.”
He hadn’t realized what he must look like, until he saw the shock on her face.
And then he could imagine it all too clearly. He must look like a madman.
Half-naked, gleaming with sweat, hair dripping into his forehead, a jagged plank
in his hands, rubble all around him.
“Oh, Logan,” she breathed. She moved quickly to him and put her palm against his
wet, flushed cheek. “What is it? What happened?”
He stepped back. “Nothing happened.”
He ran both hands through his hair, trying to stop the rivulets of hose water.
“I’ve been tearing out some old wood. It’s late, Nora. What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for you.” Her face was as somber, as worried as he’d ever seen it
look, even when Sean was at his worst. “Logan, please. Tell me what happened.”
Tell her?
The hell he would.
And yet…it startled him, the sudden violent urge he felt to do exactly that.
“Nothing happened,” he repeated, but it felt rote, strangely desperate, the way
a prisoner might issue denial after denial under interrogation, always fearing
that on the next round he might crack. “Nora, go home. Please. Just go home.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I’m worried about you. You look sick. Have you hurt
yourself?”
“I’m fine. I just need to be alone.” He rubbed his hand over his eyes. The
lights were beginning to give him a headache. “Please. Go. We can talk
tomorrow.”
“I can’t,” she said. She almost sounded sorry, as if she wished she could do as
he asked but it just wasn’t possible. Her resolve sounded much more absolute
than his, and he wondered why she cared so much.
Even if it was obvious he was sinking, why didn’t she just cut him loose?
“Logan, who is Chloe?”
He knew, then, what had happened. Rebecca had called her, and asked her to come
by and check on him. So apparently his show of emotional composure, his stoic
“time heals all wounds” charade, hadn’t fooled anyone. They all knew what seeing
Chloe had really done to him.
“Chloe is Rebecca’s daughter,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he sounded angry. He
wasn’t angry, and yet there it was, that harsh, serrated edge at the underside
of his voice. “Rebecca and Ben have a daughter. I have a niece. I knew about
her, of course. But I hadn’t met her, until tonight.”
Nora’s eyes widened. “How old is she?”
“Eighteen months.”
Nora bit her lower lip, and he could almost see the mental calculations. She
began to speak, but he stopped her.
“Don’t ask,” he said. “The answer is no. Chloe was not conceived while Rebecca
was still married to me. No matter what you think, Nora, Rebecca isn’t the bad
guy here. I am.” He tossed the rotten board onto the pile in the corner. “I am.
I don’t know why you can’t bring yourself to believe that.”
Her face looked very pale and small in the bright lights.
“I don’t know, either,” she said with a simple candor. “I just can’t. Maybe it’s
because I haven’t seen a moment’s cruelty from you, in the whole time I’ve known
you. Not to me, not to the birds, not even to Sean.”
“Marriage is different. It’s up close, and it’s ugly. It requires things I
wasn’t prepared to give. Especially when our son…”
Perversely, now, he wanted her to interrupt him. Wanted her to push, to press
for more so that his instinct to resist would kick in, and stop him.
But she didn’t say a word. She watched him with those round, gleaming eyes, and
waited.
“Especially after our son…Danny.”
Shut up, shut up, he commanded himself. But now that he’d started, he didn’t
seem to be able to stop.
“Especially after Danny died.”
“Oh, my God. Logan.” Nora took a step toward him, then checked herself. “I
didn’t know. Your son…?”
And suddenly, he knew what he’d really been doing out here with the crowbar, and
the sweat and the pain. He’d been tearing down the final pieces of the barricade
he’d built around this memory.
Over the past few weeks, it had begun to weaken. The chinks became fissures, the
fissures became a breach. And finally, tonight, it was as if the defenses simply
crumbled, and the long-repressed emotions flooded through.
He backed up, instinctively, as if he could avoid the torrent. When the real
wall of the storage room hit his back, he leaned against it, and accepted that
there was no escape.
“What happened?” Her question was soft, as if she knew she probed an open wound.
“An accident,” he said. “One of those terrible, senseless combinations of
mistakes that strike out of the blue. One of those moments when, if anyone
involved had done one single thing differently, the danger would have passed us
by.”
He didn’t have to wonder whether she understood that. By all accounts, the fire
that had killed Harrison’s first son, Paul, had been one of those cruel
mistakes. It had damaged so many lives, including hers.
And maybe it wasn’t finished working its evil. Sean, too, stood poised to become
its victim.
“What happened?” The repeated question didn’t sound intrusive. It sounded
stunned.
It was an almost unanswerable question. What moment, what decision, had been the
trailhead, leading inexorably to disaster?
“I was supposed to pick Danny up from nursery school that day. I didn’t want to.
Can you believe that? But Rebecca and I were always so busy. Always another case
to argue, another precedent to research, another client to meet. We argued, that
day, about who would have to pick him up. I lost.”
He waited for her to say what everyone had said back then. It wasn’t his fault.
He shouldn’t blame himself. Juggling a career and children was difficult, and
even the best parents wore out and lost patience sometimes.
But she didn’t say any of those things. She looked almost as if she understood.
Could she? Could her intuition tell her what he would always believe, on some
deep, irrational level?
He’d always believe he’d lost the most miraculous thing in his life simply
because he failed to appreciate how lucky he was.
“My meeting ran long. Maybe that was deliberate. Passive-aggressive, proving to
Rebecca that we needed to hire someone to chauffeur Danny around. Or maybe I
really couldn’t help it. At any rate, I was late.”
How clearly he could see it, even now. The familiar, boring pick-up line in
front of the school. The teachers standing beneath the overhang, waiting for the
right car, popping the children in, making sure they remembered their
blue-macaroni artwork and their red superhero lunch-boxes. Smiles and waves,
then the next towheaded child slipped into his mommy’s car like bread into a
toaster.
“But by the time I got there, Danny was the only child left. The teacher was
frustrated, distracted, trying to phone me. I’d been late so many times before.”
All those meetings, all those cups of coffee and empty words. How could he ever
have thought they were more important than listening to Danny chatter about Mrs.
Weickel’s classroom hamster?
“He was so happy to spot my car. He…the teacher wasn’t holding his hand. He
smiled when he saw me.” Logan looked at Nora, knowing that was irrelevant. But
somehow it was almost unbearable, the memory of that beaming smile.
“Then he ran into the street.”
“Oh, no.” Nora’s simple exhalation was filled with pain. “Oh, Logan, no.”
He shut his eyes. Here it was again. The infinite looping of the impossible,
soul-splitting moment when Danny had come dashing out, into the path of the
impatient teenaged driver who decided, in that fateful millisecond, to try to
shoot past Logan’s slowing car.
In the first days after Danny’s death, that image was the only information
Logan’s brain would process. He’d tried to talk, but no words could make it past
the endlessly repeating horror. He’d tried to eat, but nothing would go down.
He’d tried to make decisions, but nothing made any sense.
He’d wondered if someone would come, finally, and take him away to a place where
he could just sit quietly, watching the mental pictures, until his life was
over, too. But no one did. And so he had begun to build the barricade.
Denial, Rebecca called it, as she begged him to talk to her, to cry like a
normal person. To look at Danny’s pictures, to bare his soul to the grief
counselor.
But he called it survival.
Whatever name you gave it, that barrier had worked, for almost four years. It
had allowed him to live among normal people, just as if he were one of them.
But the barricade was in ruins now. He wasn’t even sure what, or who, had been
the catalyst. Was it Chloe? Nora? Sean?
Maybe all of them.
Or perhaps it had been his own half-smothered life force, determined to bust
free at any price.
All he knew for sure was that, for better or worse, there was no going back now.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
NORA HAD NO IDEA WHAT to say.
It was so easy to imagine being where Logan was tonight. What would have become
of her life, if on one of those dangerous late-night escapades, something
terrible had happened to Sean? Would anyone have been able to console her? Would
any platitude, however heart-felt, make even a microscopic difference?
Of course not.
So, though her heart broke for him, she said nothing.
Instead, acting purely on instinct, she went up to him and put her palms against
his bare, wet chest. Maybe a touch could do what words could not.
And oh, how long she’d wanted to touch him.
He made a low sound, and stiffened immediately. “No,” he growled.
The intensity of his response shocked her. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t romanticize this. I told you about Danny because I want you to know I
meant what I said. My marriage failed because of me. Rebecca needed me, and I
wasn’t there for her. I wouldn’t even let her talk about him.”
“But—you’re wrong,” she said.
“I’m not. Rebecca turned to Ben because she was drowning in grief, and I didn’t
do a damn thing to save her.”
She shook her head. “I mean you’re wrong about me. I’m not romanticizing
anything.”
He glanced at her hands. “No? Then what are you doing?”
“I’m—I’m not sure,” she said honestly. She hesitated, then let the words come
out. “I think I’m asking you to make love to me.”
He cursed under his breath. Gripping her shoulders, he held her at a few inches
distance.
“Damn it, Nora. Are you offering me pity sex?” His face was so strained she
almost didn’t recognize him. “Could you possibly think I told you the story of
my dead son to get you into bed?”
She almost laughed, the idea was so absurd. The physical chemistry between them
had always been as dangerous as walking through an electrical storm.
“Of course not. I think you told me about Danny because you were tired of being
alone with your grief.” She felt his heart racing under her palm. “And that’s
the same reason I’m asking you to make love to me. I’m tired. I’m tired of being
alone.”
He kept his face hard, his muscles tight.
“We talked about this,” he said. “We decided it would be a mistake. We have
different needs.”
“Not tonight.” She smiled softly. “Tonight we both want exactly the same thing.
We want not to be alone.”
He shut his eyes tightly for a few seconds, as if looking inside himself for
strength. She waited, letting herself drink in the rugged beauty of his face,
his broad shoulders, his sculpted chest. A warm, slow, melting feeling began to
seep through her, from her stomach to her knees. At the same time, in her neck
and arms, her blood seemed to be moving faster, tingling in her veins.
The combination made her feel intensely alive, deeply female, hungry for
something she’d almost forgotten existed.
But that wasn’t really true. It hadn’t ever existed, not for her. She had never
ached like this inside, longing for a man’s body to fill her. She’d never been
so consumed with the need to feel his fingers, his lips against her skin. Never
on fire with this kind of mindless, urgent passion.
She ought to be frightened. But she wasn’t. Instead, she was deeply, profoundly
grateful that it had come to her at last. She would not have wanted to grow old
without knowing this.
She began to move her fingertips, stroking the damp skin of his collarbone.
Please, she said with her fingers. Please, let him be feeling it, too.
“Nora.” His eyes were open now, their blue shockingly intense in the glare of
the work lights. “Nora, nothing has changed. If you give in to this, this
temporary weakness, you’ll hate yourself tomorrow.”
“No.” She shook her head, firm and slow. “I’ll hate myself if I don’t. I’ve
waited my whole life to feel like this. I’m not afraid of facing tomorrow. I’m
afraid of losing tonight.”
His hands had never let go of her shoulders, as if his sanity depended on
keeping her away even that little bit. But finally, they surrendered. As if
against his will, they slid down her spine roughly, until they were pressed
against the small of her back. Unconsciously, her body tilted into him, and she
felt the hard proof of his desire pushing against his jeans.
Something lurched inside her, a quick spasm of longing that left her shivering
and weak. She moved against him, wanting more.
He groaned. “If you’re hoping I’ll come through with some superhuman nobility at
the last minute, you’re making a mistake. I don’t have any. Not tonight.”
She lifted her face to his. “Then hurry, please, before I lose my mind. Make
love to me.”
With a dark sweep of passion, his arms closed around her. He spoke her name once
more, and then his mouth claimed hers with a ferocity that swept all thought
from its path.
The room seemed to swirl around her, and she feared her legs wouldn’t hold her
up much longer. Until those hot, hard lips touched hers, she hadn’t begun to
understand how much raging fire had been banked behind his stoic exterior.
Suddenly he pulled away, leaving her mouth thick and lost.
“Come,” he said. He took her hand, and somehow they were out of the
amphitheater, down the stairs and moving across the moonlit grass before she
could even be sure what was happening.
The house was yards and yards away, and twice they had to stop, just so that
they could kiss again, and feel again the heat of their arms around each other.
Night birds hooted mournfully, the wind spoke to the trees, and she was melting.
She didn’t care about getting inside, or lying on cool sheets. She wanted him
now.
But he kept moving, swift and confident through these grounds he knew so well,
and finally they reached the cottage. They went in through the back, because it
was closer, and then, miraculously, they were in his bedroom.
He kissed her again, and her breath came fast against his hard lips. Finally, it
was going to happen. They might not make it to the bed, though they’d come so
close. After all these weeks of iron control, he clearly had no patience left.
He dragged her silk panties down and tossed them aside as if they were just more
useless rubble. He gathered her skirt in his hands and raised it to her waist.
He lifted one of her legs and wrapped it around his lean hips. Then with long,
hard fingers he touched between her legs and found the pulsing heat that told
him she was ready.
He was in total control of her body, and it was hot and wild and wonderful, but
it was too much, and she was going to explode; she was going to fall apart in
his hands if he didn’t stop. She dug her nails into his shoulder, and made
noises she’d never heard herself make.
“Wait,” she whispered, forcing the words out around her panting breaths. She was
fighting the fall, but he was making it impossible. How could he know exactly
where the trigger was, how could he make this happen so fast?
She didn’t want to begin like this. She reached down and ran her hand along the
hard length of him. She wished she could tell him what she wanted, without being
disloyal to Harrison’s memory.
In ten years of marriage, she had never climaxed during the act of sex. But this
time, she knew, would be different.
In every possible way, making love with Logan would be different.
And the biggest difference of all was…
Somehow, sometime over the past few weeks, she’d fallen deeply in love with this
complex and wounded man.
It didn’t seem possible, but she knew it was true. It was also a terrible
mistake. He didn’t love her. He didn’t want commitment or complications. He
wanted only this one night of oblivion, and the release that sex could bring.
She was going to get her heart broken, just as he’d warned her she would.
But she didn’t care about that now.
Tomorrow, she would grapple with the hundreds of implications, large and small.
Tomorrow, she would start learning to live with the heartache of unrequited
love.
But tonight, she refused to be anything but glad that this beautiful chance had
come to her.
Tonight, for the first time in her life, her hungry body and her lonely heart
would belong to the same man.
And that was worth whatever followed.

WHEN HER CELL PHONE RANG, for a minute Nora didn’t know where she was. She heard
its muffled, tinny music, emanating from a distance, but where…?
She sat up in the semidarkness, and the soft cotton sheets that had been
covering her fell away. The cool air-conditioning blew against her bare skin,
and with a sharp inhale she lay her forearm across her naked breast.
And suddenly remembered everything.
She pushed her tangled hair from her face and glanced around. She was in Logan’s
bedroom. They had—
They had just spent the past few hours making love.
Over and over, as if they refused to let a minute of this night, the only one
they would have, be wasted. Over and over, he spun magic with his bare hands,
coaxed her secret dreams from her body with his lips.
And then, though her heart would have come back endlessly for more, her body had
finally given out. She must have fallen asleep.
Moonlight filtered through leafy oak branches and lay in dappled patterns on the
bed. The illumination was dim, but it was enough to show her that Logan was no
longer sleeping next to her. Instead, there was a square of white paper. On it,
he’d written, in bold, black strokes, “Checking on Hank. Back ASAP. Maybe
sooner.”
Could he be the one calling? Did he need help in the sanctuary?
She scrambled out of bed, ignoring her nakedness, and hunted down her dress,
which had ended up across the large, tweedy armchair in the corner. The phone
must be in the pocket. After Rebecca’s troubling visit, Nora had driven away
from Bull’s Eye with nothing but her driver’s license, her car keys and her
phone.
Everything was turned inside out, so she fumbled to find the opening to the
pocket. When her fingers finally closed around the phone, she flipped it open
with one finger and began speaking even before it reached her ear.
“Hello?”
“I know where you are, Nora.”
The voice on the other end was so raspy, so deep with bitterness, that for a
weird instant Nora didn’t realize it was Evelyn.
When she did identify the voice, she had an irrational desire to laugh. Those
words were so cliché, the universal code for menace.
I know where you are, and I saw what you did…
But the impulse lasted only a fraction of a second. Laughing at Evelyn was
stupid, and if Nora hadn’t still been drunk on the bubbling joy of being in
Logan’s arms, she wouldn’t have considered it.
The Nora who had spent those incredible hours in that bed was afraid of nothing.
Logan’s lips had awakened her fairy-tale heart, and turned her soul to gold and
fire.
But that Nora had slept, and she had awakened to the real world, where she was
merely human.
“I know where you are,” Evelyn repeated, “and I want you to come home this
instant.”
Foolishly, Nora picked up her dress and held it across herself, as if she needed
privacy even from her sister-in-law’s voice.
“Why would I do that?” She tried to sound firm but not inflammatory. “Why would
I go home?”
But then she realized that Evelyn hadn’t said “go” home. She’d said “come” home.
Nora’s hand tightened on the phone. “Evelyn. Are you at Bull’s Eye?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“One of Ginger’s puppies died in the night. Sean couldn’t handle it. He insisted
on being taken home to his mother. You can imagine my surprise when, at three in
the morning, we arrived at Bull’s Eye, but his mother was nowhere to be found.”
“Is he all right now?”
“Of course he’s not all right.” Evelyn sounded disgusted. “I don’t know what
that therapist says he’s doing with all the money he’s stealing from you, but
obviously it isn’t working. The boy has no ability to handle death of any kind.
He’s in his room right now, weeping his heart out. I told him Harrison would be
embarrassed to have a son who acts like a five-year-old girl—”
“You told him what?” Nora’s temper erupted. “How dare you say such a thing? I
never shame the boys for crying.”
“Well, you weren’t here, were you? I was. I’ll say it one more time. Come home.
I’ve invented a story to cover for you with the boys. I don’t know if they
believe it. When we saw you weren’t here, Sean’s first thought was that you
might be with Cathcart. You can thank me for not bringing them over there in the
flesh, so that they could see what a tramp their mother is.”
A hundred furious retorts screamed through Nora’s mind. But the time for words,
kind or cruel, was over between the two of them.
And so, instead, she merely hung up the phone.
She pulled on her dress, then grabbed the white square Logan had left on the
pillow and prepared to add her own words at the bottom.
It was beautiful, she wanted to say. It was magic.
But instead she wrote the words she assumed he needed most to hear.
Don’t worry. I understand that nothing has changed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE MEETING AT EVELYN’S lawyer’s office seemed like a waste of time to Nora.
What was there left to say?
The line had been drawn in the sand. Nora had no more concessions to make, no
compromises to offer.
If Evelyn really tried to take the boys away from her, she’d find out exactly
how badly she’d underestimated Nora all these years.
But Frederick Corrado, the attorney Jim Stilling had recommended, believed that
Nora should make every effort to appear cooperative, in the hopes that they
could still avoid a court hearing.
So she had put on a red dress, to show she didn’t intend to be cowed into
donning sackcloth to prove her virtue, and arrived at Eastcreek’s swankiest
downtown office building ten minutes early.
Then she’d proceeded to spend a full half an hour pretending she didn’t hear the
thinly veiled insults in every sentence Evelyn uttered.
Even her conciliatory lawyer was starting to show his irritation. “Is Mrs.
Gellner implying that Mr. Archer’s will is somehow suspect?”
“No, of course not.” Vince Begetti, Evelyn’s lawyer, looked miserable.
As well he should. He’d been a guest at Bull’s Eye a hundred times, and he knew
damn well Nora had been a good wife and mother.
She’d even been a good sister-in-law, which was more than anyone could say about
Evelyn.
“But there’s some indication,” Vince continued, “that, by the time Harrison
died, his judgment—”
Corrado, her lawyer, waved his hand dismissively. “Irrelevant. The will was
drafted following the birth of his second son, years before Mr. Archer became
ill.”
“He would have changed it,” Evelyn said acidly, staring at Nora. “If he’d been
thinking clearly, he would never have left his children in the care of a
cheating, lying b—”
Vince put his hand on Evelyn’s arm. “Now, Evvie. There’s absolutely no proof
that Nora was unfaithful to Harry.”
“I am the proof. He told me. He told me she wanted to sleep with Logan Cathcart.
And now, with my brother dead less than six months, she is sleeping with Logan
Cathcart. Is that not proof enough?”
Corrado smiled. “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Gellner. And I think you know that.” He
turned his placid gaze toward Vince, who was looking flushed, his forehead damp
with perspiration.
“And so do you, Mr. Begetti. No judge is going to take these boys away from
their mother. Her husband trusted her. The children trust her. We have maybe a
hundred character witnesses who will testify to her dedication to Sean and
Harry. And you have…?”
Evelyn narrowed her eyes. “I have what I know. I have what my brother told me. I
have Logan Cathcart. Make him testify under oath, and then we’ll know what
really happened. We’ll know that she intends to be this man’s lover, and God
only knows what will become of the boys. She spends all her time over there
already. She even drags Sean into it. He’s her excuse.”
Corrado glanced subtly at Nora. She’d explained everything to him, and he knew
that the likelihood of an ongoing relationship with Logan was nearly zero.
Nora hadn’t seen or heard from Logan since she left his house last Friday night.
Tomorrow it would be a full week.
The lawyer would like to offer that promise now, to calm the waters. But Nora
refused to placate Evelyn with promises that she’d never get involved with Logan
again.
Never was a long time. Someday, the horror of Harrison’s last months would be a
distant memory. Someday, the boys would be older and less vulnerable. Their
world would steady, and their confidence would return.
They would be able to trust their mother to love someone else, without thinking
it meant she no longer loved them.
And then, who knew what might happen? If Logan were still free…
And still interested in her…
Her heart dragged, well aware what a long shot that was. When would this Eden of
peace and freedom finally arrive?
Another six months? A year? Five years?
There was no way Logan would wait that long for her, especially when he’d made
it clear the interest was purely physical. The sex had been transforming for
her…but a man like him could find a hundred more talented, more desirable lovers
in Eastcreek alone.
Women who didn’t come with the kind of baggage Nora brought.
But even if she was destined never to touch him again, she wouldn’t promise
anything that closed the door forever.
Hope was all she had.
The lawyer nodded. They had strategized all this together earlier in the week,
as soon as Evelyn had asked for the meeting. They would have to come at her
another way.
Nora had put her trust in him. Jim Stilling was a good man, and he said Corrado
was the best.
“So,” Corrado picked up smoothly. “What your side has is the word of the boys’
aunt. A woman who, it might be argued, is hostile toward my client for reasons
that have nothing to do with the welfare of the children.”
Evelyn sat very erect. “Reasons like what? What are you implying?”
“I’m implying that a ten-thousand-acre ranch is an extremely valuable asset. And
that, as Harrison’s only sister, you might reasonably have expected to inherit
at least some interest in it. And yet, as I recall…”
He shoved around some papers, as if he needed to confirm the facts, which was
obviously absurd. He knew full well that Evelyn had inherited nothing. Why
should she? She was a rich woman in her own right, having married into a ranch
half again as big as Eastcreek.
“Yes, here it is. Apparently your brother left the ranch in its entirety to his
widow. My client.”
Evelyn’s black eyes were sparkling with rage, and red spots appeared on her
cheeks. “You think this is about money?”
Corrado pulled a dignified, long face, making himself resemble an elegant basset
hound. “I’m not sure what it’s about, Mrs. Gellner. I find it difficult to
believe that a woman of your intelligence really believes she can successfully
contest custody of Mrs. Archer’s children. Thus, I have to deduce you’re after
something else. That much money is a fairly powerful incentive.”
Evelyn transferred her furious glare to Nora. “This is what you think, as well?”
Nora kept her voice cool. She thought Corrado was on the wrong tack, but he was
in charge.
For now.
“I honestly don’t know what to think, Evelyn. In your heart, you must know Sean
and Harry are safe with me. And yet, you seem willing to put them through the
distress of a custody hearing. You want them to see their only two living
relatives squabbling over them like dogs over a bone.”
Corrado broke in smoothly. “Perhaps we should deal in specifics. It might move
things along a little more expeditiously. We’re prepared to offer ten thousand
cash, and ten acres on the western edge of Bull’s Eye Ranch.”
Nora’s mouth opened. What?
But she didn’t have time to speak. Evelyn’s head snapped back as if the lawyer
had slapped her.
“How dare you?” Her voice was shaking, with either pain or rage…or both. “Ten
thousand dollars? Is it your intention to insult me, Mr. Corrado? That ranch is
worth millions.”
Nora looked at her hands. She had told the lawyer she’d allow him to follow any
strategy he believed would result in Evelyn’s surrender, but this was almost too
painful to watch.
Evelyn might think Nora didn’t deserve to be mistress of the Archer family
ranch, but her objection had nothing to do with greed.
“Very well,” Corrado said. “For obvious reasons, Mrs. Archer wants to spare her
sons the ordeal of a custody suit. She is prepared to offer fifty thousand
dollars, and fifty acres. But this is her final offer.”
Nora looked up in time to see Evelyn’s eyes narrow.
She tried to speak. A sputtering noise was all that came out.
Then, appalled, Nora witnessed a sight she’d never seen before—and wouldn’t have
believed was possible.
Tears spilled from Evelyn’s hard, black eyes and trailed slowly down her cheeks.
At first, the woman seemed unaware.
“You fool. I don’t want my brother’s money.” Evelyn shook her head, and two more
tears fell. “I don’t want—” Her voice broke. “A single goddamn cent.”
Corrado sighed, resting his hands palms down on the table. “Then perhaps you can
tell us what it is you do want.”
Evelyn made a choking sound, an inelegant noise that seemed to confuse her, as
if she couldn’t imagine it had come from her mouth.
“I want…” She frowned, and dashed the tears away with an angry hand. But more
fell to replace them, and she didn’t seem to be able to control it. “I want…”
“What do you want, Mrs. Gellner?”
She pounded her fists on the table. “I want my brother back!”
The room froze, silence thick in the air. Vince tried to reach out and touch
Evelyn’s arm, but she jerked away.
She was staring at Nora, shaking her head. “You took him away from me ten years
ago. I want those years back. I want his love back.”
“Evelyn, no.”
“Yes, you did. It was never the same between us, after you came. He knew I
didn’t trust you, and it drove a wedge between us. From the minute you got
there, I was nothing. And now…now you want me to be nothing in his sons’ lives,
too.”
She lowered her face into her hands, her shoulders shaking. Harsh, unnatural
noises escaped. She remained that way a minute, then, scraping her chair back
violently, she hoisted herself up and left the room.
Vince cleared his throat. “I think perhaps I need to confer with my client, and
reschedule—”
Nora stood.
“No. No more meetings.”
She moved toward the door, hoping she could catch Evelyn in time.
She found her sister-in-law standing rigidly by the elevator, fumbling in her
purse, probably hunting blindly for a tissue. The tears were no longer flowing,
but her face was wrecked.
She jabbed the down button, and refused to look at Nora.
“Evvie, please. Listen to me,” Nora said. “You’re so wrong about Harrison. He
always adored you. Always.”
Evelyn thrust her shoulders back and her chin out, like a soldier.
“Don’t you dare patronize me, Nora. Just don’t you dare.”
Nora refused to be intimidated. “He idolized you. Didn’t you know that? You were
his brilliant big sister. You were the best at everything that mattered. He told
stories about you, about when you were children together, every day of his life.
Your scholarship to school. Your chili that won all the ribbons. How you rode a
horse to your senior prom, and how your husband came to him, lovestruck, begging
for your hand in marriage.”
And there were so many more, hundreds and hundreds of Evelyn anecdotes. It would
take a month to repeat them all.
And suddenly Nora realized that she should have been doing exactly that, in the
months since Harrison’s death. She’d been so wrapped up in her own grief, her
own inadequacies, her own fears for the boys.
She hadn’t understood how terrified Evelyn was that, now that Nora didn’t have
Harrison to answer to, she would shut her unloved sister-in-law out entirely.
“Oh, Evvie.” She shook her head. “The ironic thing is that I always knew I
couldn’t measure up to you. I could never ride like you, or cook, or run a
ranch. Harrison loved me, and he loved that I could give him sons, but he didn’t
really respect me, not the way he respected you. In fact, just before he died,
he made me promise to ask you for help, if the ranch became too much for me.”
Evelyn shifted her head a quarter turn, just enough to glance at Nora out of the
corner of her eye.
“But you don’t. You’ve never asked for my help. Never.”
“No,” Nora admitted, pushing her pride out of the way for once. “I’ve been too
afraid to admit any weakness. You already thought so little of me.”
The elevator chimed softly, and the doors opened. Her time was up.
Evelyn hesitated. She fiddled with her purse.
“I have to go,” the older woman said finally.
Nora didn’t protest.
She’d said all she could, for now.
“I have to go,” Evelyn repeated awkwardly. She looked at Nora. “I have to fix my
face. But maybe…maybe we can talk more later.”
Nora nodded.
Evelyn got onto the elevator, but at the last minute she put out her hand to
prevent the doors from closing.
“You didn’t know your lawyer was going to offer me money, did you?”
Nora shook her head. “I did give him carte blanche to see if he could change
your mind. But if he’d warned me what he had planned, I could have told him you
weren’t after money.”
“I thought so. Damned lawyers.” Evelyn raised her brows. “I think I might fire
mine. How about you?”
Her expression was poker-faced, but something in her eyes made Nora want to
smile.
“Well,” she said, pretending to think it over. “Tell you what. I will if you
will.”

WHAT A WEEK.
If Logan had thought things would calm down after the open house, he’d been an
idiot.
But then, what was new about that?
Calm? If anything, the exact opposite was true. The phone had rung off the hook,
with people wanting to schedule demonstrations, or tours, or volunteer to help.
And then, right in the thick of it, Vic’s wife had decided to go into labor.
She’d delivered a ten-pound baby boy on Monday, and Vic had set off on a
four-week daddy-leave, effective immediately.
So now Logan was doing his manager’s work, too.
Max had already been scheduled for three education demonstrations this week.
This one, Friday afternoon at the Eastcreek Elementary School, would be number
four.
It was the one Logan felt most ambivalent about. Sean would be one of the kids
sitting in the auditorium seats, and that was good. He had something he wanted
to talk to him about, if some private time could be managed.
But he also knew that Nora might be there, too.
And he wasn’t sure he was ready for that.
As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. Obviously Nora wasn’t ready to face
him, either. She wasn’t anywhere in sight. She was as thoroughly gone as she’d
been the night he came back from the sanctuary to find an empty bed.
And a Dear John letter on the pillow.
He’d told himself that night to count his blessings. A vanisher was obviously
preferable to a clinger. What if he’d made the mistake of letting Annie Arden
into his bed?
At least he didn’t have to worry about how to keep Nora from hanging around
making him pancakes in the morning.
Yeah. That’s what he told himself.
The elementary school show wasn’t his best, but luckily the kids were receptive,
fairly easy to please.
Even a bird as egotistical as Max could get enough of a good thing, though, and
by the end of the demonstration, the old buzzard actually turned his head away
from the treats.
But the kids didn’t notice, or didn’t care. Their applause was thunderous—a
hundred kids in an uncarpeted auditorium could definitely make some noise. The Q
and A session afterward went on at least five minutes beyond schedule, though
Logan didn’t let it go to his head. He knew kids would do anything to avoid
having to go back to class.
Eventually, the principal made her way onto the stage and invited one more round
of applause. Max shrieked his annoyance, which delighted everyone into further
clapping.
“How about if one of our students helps you get Max packed up and out to your
truck?” The principal, whose name he couldn’t remember, was already scanning the
auditorium, clearly looking for one of her pet overachievers to reward with the
mission.
“Great.” He could have kissed her. “How about Sean Archer?”
The woman’s eyebrows went up. “Sean?”
“Yeah. He’s been helping out at the sanctuary, and he knows the birds. Max can
be…funny…with kids he doesn’t know.”
He cast an apologetic glance at Max, who was busy grooming his feathers and
didn’t care that he’d been maligned. Max loved everyone, as long as they had a
treat in their hand. But the principal didn’t need to know that.
“Oh, of course. All right, then.” She went up to the microphone and tapped to be
sure it was live. “Sean Archer. Sean Archer? Where are you, dear?”
A small commotion at the back signaled his position. It took a minute, but
finally the boy stood, raising his hand. He didn’t look as thrilled by the honor
as one of the overachievers might have. He looked surprised, and frankly kind of
ticked.
Logan didn’t take it personally. Most normal kids—the ones who weren’t
professional kiss-ups—hated being singled out at school.
But when the principal called, Sean couldn’t very well refuse. So he made his
way out of his row and up onto the stage.
“Thanks,” Logan said with a smile. “You know what to do, right?”
Sean mumbled something back that might have been “you’re welcome,” but it was
hard to tell. He didn’t look Logan in the eyes. He just went to work, packing up
Max’s supplies in the box provided.
As they exited the auditorium, Sean carried the supply box, while Logan hoisted
the much heavier Max. They didn’t speak at all until they reached the truck and
got everything settled.
“Thanks,” Logan said again. He looked at Sean’s face, trying to judge his
emotional state. It felt strange, not seeing him often enough to keep his finger
on the pulse. The boy was up and down so often. “How are things going?”
“Okay.” Sean cut a quick glance at Logan. “Not great.”
“No? How come?”
“I don’t know. Mom seems kind of upset.”
He scraped at a speck along the door, just above the handle. “I think she might
be mad at Aunt Evelyn. She won’t let Harry and me go spend the night there
tonight. But we always go on Fridays.”
Logan was suddenly uncomfortable. He didn’t want Sean to talk about Nora. Above
all things, he didn’t want to stoop to pumping the boy for information about his
mother.
Wasn’t that exactly what Sean had accused him of?
Besides, he had something else he wanted to tell Sean, before he had to report
back for classroom duty.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” he said. “People fight all the time, and
they get over it. Your mom and your aunt will, too.”
Sean didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t openly disagree. He just shrugged and
went back to picking at the spot on the door.
“Hey. There’s something I wanted to show you.” Logan reached into his back
pocket and pulled out a piece of sketch paper. He unfolded it and held it out.
“What do you think of this idea?”
Sean took the paper reluctantly, as if having a grownup ask for his opinion made
him suspicious.
He squinted down at it in silence for a long minute. Then he looked back up at
Logan. “What is this?”
“It’s a new area for the sanctuary,” Logan said. He bent over and traced his
forefinger along the simple diagram. “It’s a wildlife trail. It starts over by
the pond.”
Sean frowned. “But why does the paper say ‘Harrison’s Pond’?”
“That’s what I’m going to call it. Your dad used to take you fishing there a
lot, didn’t he?”
“A long time ago,” Sean said, and Logan’s chest tightened, realizing how
different a child’s frame of reference was.
When he’d first moved here, Logan had been annoyed to see Harrison and his son
march out, poles and tackle boxes in hand, to fish in Logan’s pond.
When Logan called Harrison on it, the man had explained that Doreen had given
them permission. He clearly autocratically assumed that the rights had been
granted in perpetuity. And although Logan hadn’t been inclined to indulge his
arrogant neighbor, he’d taken one look at the excitement in Sean’s eyes and
decided not to complain.
To Logan, the memory was as clear as yesterday. To the boy, it was already
receding. Which meant that someday, all Sean’s memories of his father would be
as faded and unclear as photos in a dusty scrapbook.
Poor kid. Eight and a half was just plain too young to lose your father.
Sean had gone back to staring at the picture.
“It wasn’t both of us,” Sean said thoughtfully. “Just me. Harry was too little
to fish, and he couldn’t ever be quiet. But Dad was really good. He always
caught something for dinner, and Milly would cook it.” He bit his lower lip. “It
was a lot of fun.”
“I know. That’s why I thought the pond should be named for him.”
Logan had never forgotten the poignant moment when Sean had said no one would
ever even talk to him about his father anymore.
That it was as if his dad had never existed.
Well, Logan couldn’t bring the man back, but he could at least show Sean that
his father wasn’t forgotten. Maybe, eventually, the boy could still be proud to
be Harrison Archer’s son.
Sean gave Logan a searching look. “There’s going to be a sign right out there?
Where everybody can see it?”
Logan nodded. “Yes. If that’s okay with you.”
For a minute, Logan thought Sean might actually say no. His brows drew together
over his moody hazel eyes, and his lips pinched together.
His fist tightened on the paper. Then he shoved it back into Logan’s hand.
“Do whatever you want,” he said. “It’s your pond.”
He took off running toward the front door of the elementary school.
Great. Logan had to laugh at himself. Nicely done, Mr. Psychiatrist. That
certainly went well.
Leaning against the truck, Logan watched until the goofy red curls had
disappeared into the building.
Didn’t matter if Sean had pretty much spit his offer back into his face. No way
that darn kid was going missing on his watch.
Max let out a screech, clearly tired of being out in the hot spring sun. He
tilted his head and grumbled at Logan, sounding exactly like a cantankerous old
man.
“I hear you, Max.” Logan looked once more at his sketch, then folded it back up
and slid it into his pocket. “And for once I have to agree with you. It is
seriously time for me to just give up on that kid.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NORA HAD BEEN EXPECTING to feel better, now that relations had calmed down with
Evelyn.
They’d all eaten dinner together Friday night. Evelyn had agreed to make her
famous chili here at Bull’s Eye, though she’d rarely set foot in the kitchen
since Nora took over as mistress. Sean and Harry had helped with the cooking,
and then had eaten like trenchermen, asking for seconds, then thirds, with a
genuine enthusiasm that obviously pleased her.
After dinner, they’d played Monopoly with the boys until their bedtime. Evelyn
had left the minute the boys climbed the stairs, obviously not ready for any
private time with Nora.
That was okay. After all these years of tension and resentment, it would take a
lot longer than one day to reach full détente. For now, Nora was content to
enjoy this single glimmer of hope.
But that meant when she woke Saturday feeling headachy, tired and drenched in
melancholy, she couldn’t lay the blame at her sister-in-law’s feet.
The truth was, Evelyn had, in some ways, been a distraction. As long as Nora
stayed completely focused on preparing for the custody battle, she’d been able
to keep thoughts of Logan at bay.
Now, she had no shield, and here it came…the heartache and regret he’d warned
her about.
She had gone to bed aching for his arms, dreamed of him all night and woke up
whispering his name.
She pulled the pillow over her head, disgusted with herself. So much for all
that warrior bravado. So much for the stoic assurances that one night would be
enough, that she could easily handle whatever happened—or didn’t happen—between
them after.
When tears of self-pity began to burn at the back of her eyes, she jumped out of
bed. She would not do this. She would not, under any circumstances, let herself
act as wimpy and pathetic as he’d predicted she would.
This was a big house on a big ranch, with big responsibilities. She’d tackle a
few of them. She would keep herself so darn busy she didn’t have time to think
Logan Cathcart’s name, much less say it.
The boys wondered what had gotten into her, of course. Saturdays were usually
lazy days around Bull’s Eye, set aside for Little League games or swim parties
or trips downtown for milk shakes and superhero movies.
But today, she worked like a fiend, vacuuming under furniture that hadn’t been
moved in years, pulling down drapes that needed to go to the cleaners, emptying
drawers of clutter accumulated since long before Harry was born.
“Mom, are you okay?”
Sean wandered into the second-floor guest bathroom, dangling his guitar and
frowning anxiously at the sight of his mother crouched in the tub, applying
caulking to a bare spot along the tiles. “Did Aaron quit or something?”
Aaron was one of the ranch hands who just happened to be a genius with repairs.
He’d been doubling as handy-man for as long as Nora could remember.
“No,” she said. “But he’s busy. There’s no reason I can’t do some of these
chores myself.”
Sean lingered in the doorway, obviously unsatisfied with that answer.
“I was thinking,” he said, a little too casually, “do you want to go over to Two
Wings later? Logan did a demonstration at school yesterday, and he said I could
come see Hank, as long as I got a grown-up to bring me.”
She turned. “Is that how he put it? As long as you got a grown-up to bring you?”
Sean nodded. “Yeah, you know. He meant I couldn’t just run off without telling
you.”
Yes, and he’d also been very careful not to say “get your mother to bring you.”
He obviously didn’t want to encourage that. Well, he needn’t worry. She wasn’t
going to behave like a lovesick teenager, inventing excuses to drive by his
house.
“Not today,” she said. She didn’t look at her son, because she didn’t want to
see the disappointment on his face. “Today’s not a good day. We’ll work
something out soon, though, I promise.”
“All right.” Sean started to leave, but at the last minute he turned back. “But
you’re okay, right, Mom? There’s nothing wrong or anything, is there?”
She put feeling into her smile. The last thing she wanted was for him to worry.
“Of course not. Everything is fine, honey. Honest.”
She must not have been as convincing as she’d hoped, because an hour later, when
she went into the great room with a rag and a bottle of leather cleaner, she ran
into…
A six-foot, mustached man with Harry’s face and Sean’s feet, lurching around in
one of Harrison’s old coats and a Texas Rangers baseball cap.
“She’s here!” Harry’s stage whisper hissed through the room. Then the “man”
wobbled over to the CD player and pushed a button.
Immediately, the sounds of Frank Sinatra, Harrison’s favorite, flowed through
the room, smooth as oil. He was singing about having too few regrets to mention,
because he’d always lived his way.
Nora had always hated that song. But of course, because Harrison loved it, the
boys had never heard her say so.
Obviously they believed she needed an emotional lift. This dance at the open
house had been their most glorious moment.
And they’d decided to re-create the triumph.
Harry came bobbing toward her, and as he drew close she saw that they’d been far
more heavy-handed with the black marker than Logan had been.
The inch-thick mustache dominated his tiny lip, then crawled onto his freckled
cheeks, ending in the upturned curlicues ordinarily associated with cartoon
villains.
“May I have this dance, Mrs. Archer?” Harry didn’t stammer this time. He had
obviously perfected his technique with practice.
Nora nodded, smiling. But her heart had begun to ache again, because suddenly
Logan was everywhere. The room was full of him. She held her son’s small, sticky
hands, but this was Logan’s dance.
His idea. His gift. She remembered the smile in his eyes as he watched his
surrogates twirl her across the amphitheater stage.
When Sinatra’s last note died away, she put every ounce of energy she had into
her applause.
“Thank you,” she said, laughing warmly. And she kissed her boys, one after the
other, as she had the night of the open house. “That was a lovely break from my
work, kind sir.”
But as Sean lifted Harry from his shoulders and let him leap like a frog onto
the sofa, she could tell that once again she’d failed. Sean’s bewildered frown
said that he knew her delight was at least partly feigned.
He just didn’t know why.
She would have to do better.
“Hey,” she said, affecting excitement, uncomfortably aware that she might be
overdoing it a little. “If you guys will help me clean the sofa, maybe we can go
to the movies after dinner!”
Harry started to cheer, but when he saw that Sean looked unmoved, his enthusiasm
quickly subsided. He always took his cues from his older brother. He didn’t want
to commit a gaffe that made him appear babyish and uncool.
“If we’ve got time to go to the movies, we’ve got time to go to Two Wings.” Sean
jutted his chin out slightly. “Right?”
Oh, Lord.
“Well, not really,” she said, thinking quickly. “Because Two Wings closes at
dark. We’ll be going to the movies much later than that.”
Sean compressed his mouth, rejecting her logic for the specious dodge it was.
“Then no thanks.”
He dropped his father’s coat onto the sofa and turned away. “I’ve got some stuff
to do myself.”

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, she decided to try one more time. He might have forgiven
her by now. He might be ready to be philosophical.
A movie adventure was better than none at all.
She was even willing to toss in dinner at that terrible pizza place they loved
so much. Remembering guiltily that she’d let them eat hot dogs for lunch, she
was glad Evelyn wasn’t here. She mentally promised herself that she’d feed them
nothing but vegetables the whole day tomorrow.
But Sean wasn’t in his room.
She wasn’t terribly alarmed by that. He’d been so much better the past couple of
weeks. She assumed he must have decided to hang out with Harry. He’d been
teaching his little brother some guitar chords lately….
Although she would have heard that, surely. Harry’s guitar lessons
were…memorable.
She opened Harry’s door.
“Hey, sweetie,” she said. He was playing with his action figures on the floor.
“Where’s Sean?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. He made a crackling noise, like a million pieces of
glass breaking, then swept his hand through a line of plastic monsters, knocking
them over with a string of ever more grisly sound effects.
Maybe downstairs, then.
Maybe in the kitchen with Milly.
Nora started to back away when Harry lifted his head suddenly.
“Oh!” He made his “oops” face. “Mom, wait! I forgot!”
“What?”
Harry dropped his superhero and clambered up to his feet. He ran over to his
nightstand and grabbed a piece of paper that had been lying there.
“Sean said to give you this.”
Something hitched in her chest. Oh, God, she thought. Not again…
“Are you mad because I didn’t tell you he was leaving?” Harry held out the paper
bravely, but his expression was wary. “He said it’s just a game. He promised he
wasn’t being bad again.”
“It’s okay, honey,” she said. She took the paper and read what Sean had written
there.
ALL ABOUT SEAN, he’d put in full capitals across the top.
Then, below that, How well do you know me? If you know where my favorite tree
is, that’s where you’ll find your next clue.
So was it some kind of test? Was he putting her love on trial?
If she could answer the questions right, she could find him?
And if she couldn’t?
But this wasn’t a test she could ever in her life fail—these two boys had been
her whole life for the past decade. She knew more about Sean Robert Archer than
he knew about himself.
“Harry, come with me, honey. I want you to help Milly in the kitchen while I
play Sean’s game.”
“Can’t I come?” Harry looked crestfallen. “I like games.”
“Next time, maybe,” she said. “But right now Milly needs your help.”
“Okay.”
She tousled his curls affectionately, grateful for at least one child who could
resign himself comfortably to any decision.
It took Nora only about two seconds to give Milly a general idea of what was
happening.
“That is one high-maintenance boy,” the housekeeper muttered under her breath,
as she glanced at Sean’s “game.”
Then she turned to Harry, smiling broadly. “Come on, sunshine! I’ve been
wondering who was going to lick this bowl for me.”
She went outside, thinking about the first clue.
Sean’s favorite tree.
That didn’t even require thinking. Harrison had built the boys an elaborate fort
in the arms of a hundred-year-old oak, and the three of them had slept up there
in comfort many a night.
After Harrison got sick, Sean climbed up into the fort whenever he wanted to be
alone.
It was just on the other side of the foreman’s building. Nora walked, hoping she
might see Sean along the way. But she saw only the normal, bustling life of the
ranch.
It was only about four in the afternoon, still piercingly hot. She gathered her
hair in the back, then looped it around itself in a makeshift ponytail. It
probably looked dreadful, but she had to get the thick curls off her neck.
She wished she’d taken a minute to change into sneakers, too. She’d been
housecleaning in sandals, which didn’t handle the sand and pebbles very well.
But the tree wasn’t far.
As she neared, she was relieved to see a small brown paper bag lying in a nook
of one of the large, twisting roots. She wasn’t crazy about heights, and though
she would have climbed up to the fort if she had to, she wouldn’t have enjoyed
it.
The bag held Sean’s MP3 player, and another note.
It was an anagram. She had to smile. Either this wasn’t a real test, or Sean
must not have much faith in her puzzle-solving skills, because he’d given her a
hint, too.
The first song I learned on my guitar, was the hint.
She laughed, not needing even to look at the anagram. She’d heard that song at
least a million times.
“The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
Another easy clue. At the western edge of the property, right where it abutted
the eastern edge of Two Wings, wild yellow roses grew in profusion, climbing an
old, sagging fence.
The roses were called Harrison’s Yellow, and had nothing to do with the Archers,
but the boys refused to believe the beautiful flowers hadn’t been named for
their daddy.
Harrison wasn’t sentimental about sharing a name. Every time they passed the
area, Harrison would click his tongue and say, “I’ve got to get Aaron to take
that damn fence down,” and Nora would protest, petitioning for the life of the
roses.
The walk to the fence was a little longer. Her feet were dusty beyond saving
now, though, so it didn’t much matter. Whatever small part of her had been
worried about Sean relaxed, and she decided to enjoy the game.
Sure enough, beside the yellow roses lay another little brown paper bag. In this
one, she found a small box of chocolates and yet another note.
She looked at the chocolates. None of them had melted much. They hadn’t been
here long.
She glanced around her, in case Sean was still nearby, but nothing moved except
the leaves of the overhanging elm. They blew the scent of the roses everywhere.
No other sign of activity. She heard a lawnmower purring in the distance, but
this side of the property wasn’t the business end. All the stables and barns
were east of the hacienda.
Finally, she gave up and looked at the note.
If you remember what my favorite card game was when I was a kid, you’ll know
where to go next.
When he was a kid…
She found that line bittersweet. All children believed they were more grown-up
than they really were. But for Sean, the days before his father’s illness
probably did seem like a glorious Eden from a far distant past.
So, what had he loved, back “when he was a kid?”
She remembered quickly. He’d been obsessed with Go Fish. For months, he’d
insisted on card games instead of bedtime stories.
Go Fish.
Oh…of course. The little blue pond.
Harrison had often taken Sean there to fish, even though it didn’t belong to
them. With his first son, he’d fished at Green Fern Pond, but after Paul died
Harrison refused to go back there…until that terrible day.
Instead, the little blue pond had become the new fishing hole. The pond wasn’t
even on their property, but somehow Harrison had coaxed Doreen…
And, just like that, light dawned.
The pond was a few yards over the property line dividing Bull’s Eye from Two
Wings.
The pond belonged to Logan.
She couldn’t decide whether to laugh, or to be seriously annoyed.
Sean had been hell-bent on visiting Two Wings today, and, with this silly,
serpentine treasure hunt, he’d managed to lead her right where he wanted her.
No wonder the clues had been so easy.
When she found the little scoundrel, she’d let him know exactly what she thought
of this…
But she did want to find him.
She picked her way through the overgrown path. Now that Harrison was gone, the
brambles had begun to reclaim their own.
The Archers didn’t come to the pond anymore.
Nora didn’t fish, just as she didn’t do any of the other things a traditional
Texas rancher’s wife should do.
“I’m sorry, Harrison,” she said impulsively. She felt close to him, out here on
the land he’d loved so much. And she felt that he understood, perhaps, how glad
she’d be, someday, to turn this ranch over to the boys.
Maybe, from the broader, wiser perspective of the afterlife, he even understood
about Logan.
The rail separating the two ranches was low and easy to step over. After another
two or three minutes, she was within sight of the pond. It was a beautiful body
of water, small but perfect, fed from Clayton’s Creek, bowing out in a perfect
oval among the wildflowers and the pines.
She wondered if Sean would be here, or whether there would be still another
clue.
Something about an owl, probably. She had no doubt that her stubborn son was
going to lead her right to that clinic door, one way or another.
“Nora.”
She came around the wide, rough trunk of a poplar, and there he was.
Not Sean, but Logan.
She stopped in her tracks, dismayed.
She cringed at the thought of how scruffy and unkempt she must look, after hours
of housework, and then all this tramping around in the dust and heat.
But that prick to her vanity was nothing compared to the misery of realizing
that, in spite of her superhuman efforts to avoid pining and obsessing, and
hungering for a glimpse of anything that belonged to him, it would now
undoubtedly look as if she’d been doing exactly that.
“Logan. I—” Oh, how to explain anything as silly and tortured as Sean’s trail of
brown paper bags? “Sean…he created this crazy game—”
“I know.” Logan’s smile was oddly bemused. She realized abruptly that he didn’t
seem one bit surprised to see her.
She paused, looking at him carefully for the first time.
He, too, was holding a little brown bag.
And half a dozen yellow climbing roses.
“Oh, no,” she breathed. “He didn’t…”
“Yeah.” Logan extended the roses to her. “I think he did.”
It didn’t make any sense, but instinct took over. She accepted the roses, which
smelled as sweet as ever, though they’d wilted slightly in the heat.
“Thank you,” she said awkwardly.
He smiled. “And I see you have something for me.”
“What?” She looked down. “Oh. The chocolates?”
“My favorites. How did you know?”
She flushed, but then she saw that his eyes were twinkling. He was kidding.
“I didn’t know, of course,” she said. “But apparently Sean did.”
“He’s a very observant kid,” he said, still smiling. “You’ve got to give him
that.”
She laughed. “Oh, I’ll give him something, all right, when I finally find him.”
Logan tilted his head. “I’m afraid that might not be for a while. You see, he
seems to have arranged it so that I’d get here first, and he left me a whole
sheet of instructions.”
She felt stupid, because this wasn’t making much sense.
“Instructions about what? Please, don’t let it be another string of clues. If it
is, I’m calling the police, and they can put that slippery little eel in a jail
cell, for all I care, because he—”
“Nora.” Logan cleared his throat. “Let’s see what he says. Okay. First, I’m
supposed to tell you that Sean is okay. He’s back at home with Harry, playing
video games. Milly is going to order them pizza for dinner, so there’s, and I
quote, absolutely nothing to worry about.”
“What?” She couldn’t make up her mind whether to laugh or strangle her son. “If
Sean is back at home with Harry, then what is all this—”
“That brings me to the next item, I think.” Logan consulted his list. “No, the
second thing is to give you the flowers. I already did that.”
He took a step closer. “But now you have to give me the chocolates.”
It was like being inside a fun house. Nothing made sense, and she wondered if
she should just stop trying to make it do so.
She extended the box numbly.
“Okay. And then,” he said, reading carefully. “Then I’m supposed to dance with
you. He put some of your favorite songs on the MP3 player. He says you have it.
Do you?”
She looked down at the little bag. “Yes.”
“Good. We’ll have to share the earphones, he says, but he says to tell you it’s
okay, because he did wash them first.”
She laughed, in spite of herself. She’d nagged him so many times about that.
“Logan—” She shook her head helplessly. “I have no idea what Sean thinks he’s up
to.”
“Well, it seems to me he’s actually been pretty clever. Clearly he wants to make
sure we stop dithering around and finally say some of the things we need to
say.”
She couldn’t tell exactly what he meant. His face was so mock-serious, as if he
were dedicated to carrying out Sean’s instructions to the letter.
“I’m sorry he’s dragged you into this game,” she said. “I refused to bring him
over here today, and he wanted to come so badly. I think he was just—”
“Why wouldn’t you bring him?”
“Because…” She decided just to say it. “Because I didn’t want to…to cling. I
wanted to give you space.”
“You’d already given me a whole week.” He raised one eyebrow. “That’s space
enough for a man to go mad in.”
“But—” She gazed at him, afraid to read too much into anything he said. “Logan,
I—”
“Wait,” Logan said firmly, waving Sean’s letter toward her with that
pretend-earnest attitude. “There’s one more instruction. And it’s the most
vitally important one of all.”
She waited. She felt the butterflies trying to lift her off the ground, but at
the same time she was so afraid.
What if he didn’t mean what she thought he meant?
“Okay. Apparently I have to tell you I love you.”
She stopped breathing.
“Yeah, I’ve got to.” He shrugged. “I was hoping to wait until we were alone
together, preferably in bed, but I can’t disobey a direct order, right?”
“Logan…you don’t have to—”
“Well, it says right here.” Logan looked up, grinning. “Yes, I’m afraid I
absolutely have to.”
Had Sean really…?
She grabbed the paper from his hand.
“It says nothing of the sort,” she said, laughing. She handed him back the list.
“So I guess you’re off the hook. I’m happy to have the roses, but you don’t have
to say a single word about love.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, I do.” With a low growl, Logan pulled Nora into his arms. “I
have to say a great many words, in fact. I’ve spent too long holding it in, and
now I’m not sure I can shut up about it.”
He kissed the side of her mouth. “I’ll start with love.” He kissed the other
side. “And joy.”
She had begun to smile. She was suddenly aglow with happiness. She wondered if
she’d ever stop smiling…
“And love again.” He drew back, and looked deep into her eyes. “I love you,
Nora. I’ve loved you since the day I met you, when I had no right even to think
about you.”
She touched his face. She didn’t speak, because she was terrified of stopping
this glorious flow of words. This, from a man who never spoke of feelings…
“And I need you, Nora. I need you desperately. In my bed, in my life, in my
heart.”
She realized that she was holding her breath, but she couldn’t remember how to
start breathing again. Happiness had expanded like a bubble and it took up all
the room in her chest.
“Sean has clearly given us his blessing, Nora. Now it’s up to you.”
At that moment, her cell phone, snugged deep in the pocket of her shorts,
chirped.
The sound of an incoming text message.
He smiled, aware that no declaration of love, no proposal of marriage, would be
more important than hearing from her boys.
She pulled the phone free and, tilting her head, tried to read it in the bright
afternoon sunlight.
It was from Sean.

is he there? did he kiss u?

She held it out so that Logan could see.
“What a little devil.” He took the phone and typed in his own text. He offered
it to Nora, to get her approval.

I want to, but I think she’s worried about you. You okay with me kissing her?
And maybe even being her boyfriend? Like all the time?

He smiled. “Send?”
She looked into his sexy eyes. She saw the kindness there, the understanding
that nothing, not even this crazy, newfound passion, could make her do anything
that might harm her boys. She even saw something nurturing in those eyes, as if
he, too, felt the need to protect Sean and Harry.
And then she nodded. “Send.”
The several seconds it took to get a response seemed to last forever.
Finally, the phone chirped again.

Heck, yeah, I’m ok with that!

Logan smiled at Nora. “Well?”
His voice didn’t sound as if it belonged to him. She realized suddenly that he
hadn’t been breathing normally, either.
“What’s your answer, Nora? Will you let me be a part of your life? Of their
lives, too?”
Somehow, she managed to keep her face sober and thoughtful, as pseudo-serious as
his had been before. She glanced one more time at her son’s text. Heck, yeah…
She slipped the cell phone into her pocket.
“Nora…” Logan reached out and pulled her in. “Answer me! I can’t wait much
longer. I’ve waited a hundred years already, just in the past seven days.”
She gazed into his intense blue eyes, trying to see the future. He would not be
an easy lover. He had grown used to being alone. He found it difficult to share
his emotions. The tragedy from his past would always haunt him.
Evelyn would always be suspicious of him, and she’d be a burr under their
saddle, probably for the rest of their lives. All of Eastcreek would gossip, at
least a little.
And then, she had her own personal fears and insecurities to overcome.
He was younger than she was…and so beautiful. He could have anyone.
Would he regret this moment someday, when he faced the reality of taking on a
needy widow and two feisty boys with abandonment issues?
His lips were so close to hers she could feel the warm mint of his breath. His
hands pulled her in, with the same gentle mastery she’d seen him use so often on
the wounded birds.
“Nora. Don’t torture me. Give me your answer.”
She took one last deep breath. She lifted her chin.
“My answer is…”
His arms tightened around her, and she smiled.
“Heck, yeah.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Six months later
THE NOVEMBER SUNSHINE was fading, but the brick courtyard of the hacienda, which
had absorbed the heat, was still pleasantly warm. Looking for privacy, Logan,
Sean and Harry each grabbed a lounger and spread out so they could talk over
Logan’s dilemma comfortably.
Evelyn was inside, cooking dinner as this was Milly’s night off. Nora would be
home from her faculty by five o’clock—she’d taken a teaching job this fall.
They had maybe another half an hour alone, so they had to stay focused.
“I didn’t know you had any choice about how to ask a girl to marry you,” Sean
said, shrugging as he popped his last piece of contraband taffy into his mouth.
“I thought there was like a rule, you know, that you had to kneel down and get
all sappy and hold out a ring and kiss her feet or something.”
Harry frowned. “Gross. Kiss Mom’s feet?”
Sean brushed his little brother aside irritably. “Or maybe her hand. I don’t
know. Do I look like I’ve asked anybody to marry me lately?”
Harry turned to Logan, bright-eyed. “Maybe you should buy her a puppy from Aunt
Evelyn. Mom really wants a puppy, so that would probably make her say yes.”
Logan and Sean exchanged a knowing smile. It was an open secret that Harry was
dying to get one of Ginger’s new litter when they were weaned.
“That’s a pretty good idea,” Logan said. “And of course I’m definitely going to
do the knee thing. Anything else occur to you guys? I want to get this right.
Think how embarrassing it would be if she said no.”
Sean laughed. “Yeah, right. Like she’d ever say no. I wish you could have seen
her while you were gone. Whenever the phone rang, she nearly fell down trying to
get to it. And then she’d be all goofy and smiling when she hung up, and she’d
laugh for no reason. It was like talking to you made her dumb.”
Logan felt a pretty stupid smile creeping across his own face. He was mighty
glad to hear that. The two weeks he’d spent in Maine had seemed like an
eternity. The last few days, he’d been such a mess he started dreaming that
Denver Lynch was dating Nora, and that Logan had come home to find her engaged
to the vet.
But, hard as it had been to leave her, he’d needed to make the trip.
He had to be sure he was ready. This marriage was the biggest, scariest step
he’d ever contemplated taking. He’d been a terrible husband the first time
around. Had he grown up enough to make this time any better?
Would he know how to make Nora happy? Not just in bed, not just in the honeymoon
haze of passion, but for the long haul, in sickness and in health, in tragedy as
well as in joy?
And, scary as being a husband sounded, it was a walk in the park compared to
fatherhood.
Was he ready to provide what Sean and Harry needed? Was he free to love them
without reservation?
He couldn’t ask to be their father if his heart was still buried with the son
he’d lost.
Nora and the boys had suffered because of that kind of half-love before. He
wouldn’t put them through it again.
So he’d traveled to Maine to make peace with his past. He’d stayed with his
parents, but he’d spent hours, days, with Ben and Rebecca and Chloe, just
talking.
Facing the years of repressed feelings with honesty, and speaking them out loud.
Finally.
He was there for Chloe’s second birthday. After the party, the four of them had
made a pilgrimage to the cemetery to put flowers on Danny’s grave. Logan had
been so afraid of that moment. He’d been terrified that he wouldn’t be able to
hold it together, that he might fall apart…
And he did. God help him, he did. He went entirely to pieces, on his knees,
right there in front of all of them. But to his surprise, it didn’t feel crazy,
or weak. It felt long overdue.
No one tried to stop him. In fact, Rebecca had turned her face into Ben’s chest,
and her shoulders were shaking, too.
Chloe, who still wore her birthday crown made of bits of ribbon from her
packages, watched Logan silently for a long time. And then, she had come up and
kissed his cheek.
It was hard to explain the effect that gesture of innocent affection had on him.
It had been as sweet, as healing, as if it had been Danny’s kiss, transmitted
through his little half sister’s lips.
And, somehow, on the way home, Logan found himself telling her stories about
Danny. About the time Rebecca thought Danny had swallowed a lizard and left
incoherent, panicked messages with Logan’s secretary. About the day Danny ate
five bananas and then would never eat a banana again. About the night he coaxed
a chipmunk in through his bedroom window and named him Frankie Furball.
Once, he’d even found himself laughing. At that moment, Rebecca had reached out,
and he had taken her hand without hesitation. They had laughed together,
remembering the good times.
And he knew, finally, that he was ready.
The next day, Ben went with him to the jewelry store, to pick out the ring.
Logan spent too much, though he knew price didn’t matter to Nora. She didn’t
care that she had a lot of money, and he didn’t. They’d talked about all this,
as they had about so many things, over the past six months.
In her eyes, she’d said, the Archer money wasn’t hers, anyhow. Though Harrison
had attached no strings, trusting her utterly, Nora had always believed she was
merely the guardian for the boys.
But Logan wanted the ring to be worthy of her, so he bought a blue sapphire with
a clear, rainbowed diamond on either side. He thought she’d like it. And
besides, it reminded him of her, the deep, peaceful strength of her love placed
protectively between her two sons.
He pulled it out now and opened the blue velvet box. He extended it toward Sean
and Harry. “What do you think?”
The boys jumped out of their loungers and came over to get a closer look. They
made the appropriate oohs and aahs, though they probably would have liked a
rhinestone gumball prize just as well.
“So, where are you going to do it?” Sean glanced around, chewing on his lip
thoughtfully. “Out here?”
“I don’t know,” Logan said. “That was what I was hoping you guys could help me
with. Can you think of anywhere really romantic?”
“How about in the tree house?”
“Maybe at a fancy restaurant?”
“I know—” Sean held up his hands excitedly. “How about by the owl house, in the
dark? You could—”
A sudden noise sounded in the archway that led to the living room. Logan looked
up to find Evelyn standing there, her oven mitt in her hand. She had clearly
been watching them, her face expressionless and her body language guarded.
Both boys tensed, as if they thought they might get in trouble. Sean scooped his
taffy papers into his palm and squeezed hard, making so much rustle he
practically guaranteed he’d get caught spoiling his dinner.
Even Logan had to resist an urge to flip the velvet box shut and tuck it behind
his back. Instead, he smiled politely and waited. He knew Evelyn had heard what
they were talking about.
If she had something to say, she might as well get it off her chest.
For a long moment, she looked from one of them to the other slowly. No one made
a peep. Logan thought Harry might be holding his breath.
As they waited, Evelyn slapped the oven mitt into the palm of her hand a couple
of times, rhythmically. The moment hung heavy, fraught with unspoken
implications.
Then, acting on instinct, he held out the box.
“I bought this for Nora,” he said. “Do you think she’ll like it?”
Evelyn hesitated. Then she gazed into the box, still poker-faced, and studied
the ring.
“Very nice,” she said stiffly.
“Thanks.” He continued to wait. One way or another, he knew she wasn’t finished.
She and Nora had made great strides in their relationship over the past months,
but Logan had tried not to intrude on that. He had no idea how she really felt
about the idea of a new husband for Nora, a new father for the boys.
“Logan, I—” Evelyn stopped. She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and
moved out into the courtyard.
“I don’t know if you knew this, but my father proposed to my mother out by the
fountain in front of the house.” She wandered a few feet away, picking dead
leaves from the creeper that covered the south courtyard wall, obviously not
quite ready to meet his eyes.
“Did he?”
“Yes. At midnight. It’s lovely in the dark. It’s quite romantic, really, with
the fountain murmuring, and the stars like silver glitter overhead. And you know
the fountain has colored lights that…”
She seemed to realize she was wandering off point. “Anyhow, later, Douglas took
me there when he was ready to propose. So you might say it’s something of an
Archer family tradition.”
Logan hesitated, treading carefully. “But…”
She turned finally, and met his gaze straight on. “But what?”
“But Nora isn’t an Archer.”
Harry sat up straight, clearly shocked. “Of course she is,” he insisted
indignantly.
Logan looked at Evelyn.
And finally, she smiled.
“Of course she is,” she echoed. “She’ll always be an Archer, even when she’s
also a Cathcart.”
Logan stood, and without asking permission he walked over and wrapped his arms
around the older woman. She bristled, but after a couple of seconds she unbent
at least a millimeter.
She actually patted his back, murmuring, “Well, well. That’s all right, then.”
And then she pulled back, looking uncomfortable as hell.
But Logan felt like singing.
“Hey, guys! What’s going on here? Oh—Logan!”
Suddenly, her keys still in her hand, Nora came flying out to the courtyard, her
face aglow with smiles. “Logan, I didn’t know you were already home!”
He swept her into his arms, his heart soaring, and swung her around, just from
the sheer joy of seeing her again. He had so much to tell her. The proposal, the
ring…all that was only part of it. The ring just was his way of guaranteeing he
had their whole lifetime to talk, and laugh, and love.
“I came early,” he said, kissing her neck. “I missed you too much.”
Harry grabbed on to his mother’s waist, eager to be part of the group hug.
“Logan bought you a ring, Mom,” the boy babbled happily, “and it’s real, and he
said a puppy is really romantic, and he’s going to take you to the fountain
because you are, too, an Archer, but Aunt Evelyn isn’t mad, so it’s okay, and—”
Sean growled at his brother. “Harry, you are such a loser! Haven’t you ever
heard of a secret?”
“Enough!” Evelyn cleared her throat loudly. “I expect two helpers in the kitchen
right this minute. In this household, any little boys who want to eat taco
casserole had better be willing to cook it.”
“But—”
“Kitchen,” she said firmly, and though she’d mellowed over these past months she
still could trot out the tone that brooked no opposition. “Immediately.”
Sean dragged his reluctant brother into the house, following in their aunt’s
authoritative wake. Once they cleared the courtyard, there was much giggling,
and whispering, and fussing back and forth.
Nora looked at Logan, a question in her eyes. “And what, exactly, was that all
about, Mr. Cathcart?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “Not till midnight.”
“Pretend it’s midnight now.”
He looked at her, and he knew she knew. Her eyes were sparkling, and her lips
were soft and ready….
“Okay,” he said. He pulled her close, her back against his chest. He ran his
forefingers over her eyes, smoothing her eyelids shut. “But we have to do it
right. We’re outside. It’s midnight. It’s chilly and clear, and the night is
full of silver stars.”
She leaned her head back against his shoulder. She murmured, a small, purring,
blissful sound. “Okay. I like that. You look very sexy by starlight.”
“So do you.” He ducked his head and kissed her neck, then her collarbone, her
ear, her hair…. It was all he could do to stop.
“Okay. Now pretend we’re out front, beside the fountain.”
“Why the—”
“Shh.” He wrapped his arms tighter across her rib cage, just under the warm
swell of her breast. “We’re beside the fountain. It’s whispering to us. It
splashes in the starlight. Now and then, little drops of water land on our
faces.”
“And you kiss them away.”
He felt his groin tighten. “Yes,” he said. “I kiss them away, because I don’t
want you to be cold.”
She tilted her head back, trying to smile up at him. “And because you want to
kiss me.”
“Yes.” His voice had deepened, as he realized once more how much he loved this
woman, how desperately he wanted to protect her, and bring her the happiness she
deserved. He said a quick prayer that he would be able to do those things, in
spite of the fact that he wasn’t nearly good enough for her. “Yes, I always,
always want to kiss you.”
“Good.” She took a deep, satisfied breath. “And then?”
“And then…I give you this.”
Though he was reluctant to let go of her, he found the jewelry box and opened
it.
“I give you this ring, and I ask you if you’ll do me the honor of being my
wife.”
For a frozen second she was completely still. And then, slowly, she turned in
his arms. “Logan,” she said, staring at the ring. “It’s…it’s beautiful. But,
Logan, are you sure?”
“Sure that I want to be married to you? That I want to spend the rest of my life
with you and the boys? Yes. As sure as I am that I want my heart to keep
beating.”
“But we—” She hesitated, glancing toward the living room, as if she feared Sean
and Harry might be listening. “We are a complicated package. It won’t be…easy.”
He smiled. “Maybe not. But it will be a heck of a lot easier than trying to live
without you. That’s something I could never do.”
She opened her mouth, but shut it again almost immediately. Her eyes clouded
over, and he sensed that she was troubled.
What was wrong? It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. She’d proved that, over and
over. And she wanted to say yes. He could feel the yearning inside her, because
it echoed the same hungry longing that pulsed inside of him.
But something was holding her back.
“What is it, sweetheart?” He pulled her close again, this time facing him so
that he could search her eyes. “You love me, I know it. Is there some reason
you’re afraid to say yes? I promise you, I’ll work hard to deserve you. If
you’re ever unhappy a day in your life, my love, it won’t be because of me.”
“I know.” She touched his face. “It’s just that… You see…I would like another
child, Logan. Someday. Your child.”
He almost laughed, from sheer relief. Of course…that was her fear. He should
have known. He should have talked about this first. He should have told her that
he’d brought no ghosts home with him from Maine. Only memories, bittersweet but
beautiful memories of his first son.
But he’d been in such a hurry…
He smiled, washed through with happiness. The past couldn’t come between them.
Not anymore.
He kissed the side of her mouth. “Just one child?”
“Just one…?” She frowned, as if she weren’t sure she’d heard him correctly.
“You want only one more child?” He brushed back her curls and kissed the pulse
at the edge of her temple. “I was thinking maybe two, at least. Two girls,
perhaps. To keep Sean and Harry from getting too big for their britches.”
Her fingers tightened on his arms. Her smile was tremulous still, but it held
the promise of a brilliant intensity, like the sun struggling out of the clouds.
“Logan, have you thought—”
“I’ve thought of nothing else, Nora. Nothing but you and Sean and Harry, and the
crazy, wonderful family we can make together. I love you. I love Sean and Harry.
Please. Say you’ll marry me, and let’s get started.”
“Logan, I—”
With a stampede of feet, Harry suddenly appeared in the doorway. Sean was right
behind him, grabbing at his arm.
“Mom,” Harry said plaintively, his face woebegone in the shadows as he struggled
to resist his big brother’s efforts to pull him away. “Please, Mom. Tell Logan
yes.”
She smiled at her son. “Is that what you want, honey? Do you want me to say
yes?”
“I do!” Harry wrestled his arm away from Sean’s.
“Harry, come on—”
“I really, really do, Mom,” Harry insisted. “Because Aunt Evelyn says we can’t
eat her taco casserole till you and Logan are done. And I’m starving.”
Sean groaned with disgust. “You moron! This isn’t about food!”
“Well, that’s easy for you to say,” Harry whined, his voice receding as Sean
finally managed to haul him back into the house. “You had about a million
taffies, so you’re not even…”
The sounds faded away. Logan and Nora exchanged looks, and then, simultaneously,
they burst into helpless laughter.
“I told you,” she said, wiping the moisture of mirth from her eyes. “It’s not
going to be easy. It’s going to be positively insane.”
“Maybe so.” He held out the ring, a question in his eyes. “But your starving son
and I beg you, Nora. Say yes.”
Shaking her head and laughing softly still, she extended her hand.
As he slipped the sapphire and diamonds onto her fragile finger, he felt that it
was trembling. His fingers might have been shaking, too, a little.
“My love,” he whispered. “My wife.”
“Yes,” she answered, finally saying the word he’d waited so long to hear. “With
all my heart, yes.”