Книга - Rogue’s Reform

Rogue's Reform
Marilyn Pappano


HEARTBREAK CANYON–THE MEN OF HEARTBREAK LIVE BY THEIR OWN RULES–PROTECT THE LAND, HONOR THE FAMILY…AND NEVER LET A GOOD WOMAN GO!ONE MOMENT OF PLEASUREEthan James had spend a lifetime looking for trouble. Until he received a photo of a woman who seven months ago, had claimed him, body and soul–for a single night. A woman who was now seven months pregnant…TWO ALTERED LIVESGrace Prescott had always accepted what little she'd been given. Then Ethan resurfaced, proposing marriage for the child's sake. But she wanted the whole dream. The baby–and a husband who loved her. And this time, she wasn't going to settle for less…









“Am I the father of your baby?”


Grace knew the answer Ethan wanted. It was in his scowl, his clenched hands, the sinking feeling in her stomach. It was foolish to be disappointed. She was twenty-five, a woman on her own, about to become a single mother.

There was no room in her life for daydreams or fantasies, no chance that a charming rogue might turn into her very own Prince Charming, no chance at all that something special could develop out of a one-night stand. Yes, he’d come back upon learning that she was pregnant, but only because he wanted her to deny that he was the father.

“No,” she said softly, feeling the ache of the lie deep inside.

He looked startled, then relieved, then suspicious. “No, what?”

“You’re not the father.”

His gaze narrowed, sending heat flushing through her face.

“You’re lying. It’s my baby, isn’t it?”


Dear Reader,

Once again Intimate Moments is offering you six exciting and romantic reading choices, starting with Rogue’s Reform by perennial reader favorite Marilyn Pappano. This latest title in her popular HEARTBREAK CANYON miniseries features a hero who’d spent his life courting trouble—until he found himself courting the lovely woman carrying his child after one night of unforgettable passion.

Award-winner Kathleen Creighton goes back INTO THE HEARTLAND with The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda, a compelling tale of secret identity and kidnapping—and an irresistible hero by the name of Johnny Bronco. Carla Cassidy’s In a Heartbeat will have you smiling through tears. In other words, it provides a perfect emotional experience. In Anything for Her Marriage, Karen Templeton proves why readers look forward to her books, telling a tale of a pregnant bride, a marriage of convenience and love that knows no limits. With Every Little Thing Linda Winstead Jones makes a return to the line, offering a romantic and suspenseful pairing of opposites. Finally, welcome Linda Castillo, who debuts with Remember the Night. You’ll certainly remember her and be looking forward to her return.

Enjoy—and come back next month for still more of the best and most exciting romantic reading around, available every month only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Yours,






Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor




Rogue’s Reform

Marilyn Pappano





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




MARILYN PAPPANO


After following her career navy husband around the country for sixteen years, Marilyn Pappano now makes her home high on a hill overlooking her hometown. With acreage, an orchard and the best view in the state, she’s not planning on pulling out the moving boxes ever again. When not writing, she makes apple butter from their own apples (when the thieves don’t get to them first), putts around the pond in the boat and tends a yard that she thinks would look better as a wildflower field, if the darn things would just grow there. You can write to Marilyn via snail mail at P.O. Box 643, Sapulpa, OK 74067-0643.




Contents


Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12




Prologue


It was a slow night at the Pirate’s Cay. Some joker in the corner had spent the last two hours playing every Jimmy Buffett tune on the jukebox, and two of the worst pool players on Key West were playing a game of eight ball that was never going to end the way they were going at it. The few regulars who had wandered in had wandered back out before long, leaving Ethan James with no one interesting to watch but the redhead alone at a table for two.

He had a weakness for redheads—had ever since he was sixteen and had hitched a ride across Texas with a redhead five years his senior. She’d shown him the sights at damn near every stop, and he’d developed a fine appreciation for flaming hair and fiery passion along the way.

The redhead at Pirate’s Cay was looking at him as if she could show him a few things, too. On a slow night, with nothing else, he was sure he would enjoy the ride.

As he finished wiping down the bar, the owner of the Cay came out of her office, took a look around, then joined him. “Life in wild, wonderful Key West. I don’t know how we survive it.” She tossed two envelopes onto the bar between them. “Here. Happy payday.”

“What’s the other?”

“Letter came for you today. I put it with your check so I wouldn’t forget, and then I forgot.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall, then swiveled her stool around. “Last call, folks. We close in ten minutes.”

No one showed any interest in more drinks. The redhead waited until he was watching her, then stood up, smiled and sauntered to the door. If he were a betting man, he’d give himself better than even odds that she’d be waiting in the parking lot when he walked outside.

Actually, he was a betting man, though it was one of many vices he’d been working at giving up. He’d achieved a higher degree of success with some than others. He’d stopped stealing and drinking, and was honest more often than not. Staying away from the gambling was harder, but he told himself when he slid that at least it was better than earning his money by conning innocent dupes out of theirs. He’d cut back on indiscriminate sex, but he couldn’t give it up completely. Hell, he had to have something to make life worth living. He damn sure didn’t have anything else…except a drop or two of self-respect. He doubted anyone else would be proud of the changes he’d made, but he was, and that was almost enough.

Setting the envelopes aside, he began closing up. By the time he finished, it was only two minutes past closing time and everyone but him and the boss was gone. She didn’t have far to go—through the storeroom door and up a flight of stairs to her apartment on the second floor. His own apartment was a few miles farther in a neighborhood significantly shabbier. He had five hundred square feet over a two-car garage that took too much of his paycheck, but he had nothing else to spend the money on. No family who wanted anything to do with him. No girlfriend. No future besides trying to stay out of trouble.

He waited for the boss to walk him to the door so she could lock up behind him. “See you tomorrow, darlin’,” she murmured as he left.

He responded with a nod and a wave, then glanced at the letter as he started for the parking lot. The postmark was illegible, the handwriting familiar, the return address even more so. His sister-in-law Olivia was the only member of the family who kept tabs on him—whether out of affection or self-protection, he didn’t know. He suspected the latter.

She’d gotten the Cay’s address from the birthday card he’d sent his brother Guthrie last December, and in return, she’d signed Guthrie’s name to a Christmas card, along with an invitation to spend the holidays with them. He’d ignored the invitation, knowing he was about as welcome in Heartbreak as a prairie fire in a drought, but he’d kept the card, and the two she’d sent him since.

As he turned the corner into the parking lot, he saw the redhead draped over the hood of a sharp little ragtop before turning his attention back to Olivia’s letter. He tore a jagged strip from one end and slid two fingers inside to pull out a photograph with a yellow sticky note covering its subject. In Olivia’s elegant hand was a short message: I thought you should know. Know what? he wondered as he peeled the note off.

The answer stopped him in his tracks.

The snapshot had been taken in a parking lot on the main street of Heartbreak. The day had been sunny, the sky barely blue, but he would know it was cold even if the woman hadn’t been wearing a coat, scarf and gloves, even if her breath hadn’t crystallized in the air the instant the photo was taken.

Just as he’d known her instantly, without the long, wild curls, the sexy, tight clothes or the husky, seductive voice.

Just as he’d known that night seven months ago that rowdy bars weren’t her usual hangouts, that no-good con artists weren’t her usual companions.

He steadied his hand to stare at the photo. She wore no makeup, and her thick brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was turned slightly away from the camera to avoid a direct shot. Instead of drawing attention to her face, the stance drew the viewer’s eye lower. To what Olivia wanted him to know. To a not-so-small detail the too-big and unstylish clothes she wore couldn’t disguise.

She was pregnant. About seven months so.

After a long, stunned moment, he returned the photograph to the envelope, then carefully folded it to fit in his pocket. As he walked past the convertible and the beautiful, sexy redhead, he knew there was only one thing for him to do.

He had to go home.




Chapter 1


As towns went, Heartbreak, Oklahoma, wasn’t much, Grace Prescott thought as she walked briskly along the sidewalk. The buildings in what they laughingly called the business district were old and shabby. The sidewalks were cracked, the streets needed repaving, and too many of the parking spaces downtown had been empty for far too long. The ranchers and farmers for whom the town existed had always been in a tough business, and it had become even more so in recent years. Economic prosperity wasn’t even a pipe dream for the stores in town. The reality for most of them, her own included, was mere survival.

But she couldn’t think of anyplace else she’d rather be, of any other neighbors she’d rather have. In the last few months, she’d found a satisfaction in Heartbreak that she’d thought she would never know. For the first time in her life, she fit in. She had friends. She belonged.

And all it had taken was getting pregnant by a stranger and, when her father found out, a punch to the jaw. One moment of pure pleasure leading to a moment of pain, and the end result was this—freedom. Happiness. A bright future, no matter how bleak it might sometimes look.

“Hi, Grace.” Trudie Hampton greeted her as she unlocked the insurance agency door. “It’s a bit chilly this morning for your usual walk, isn’t it?”

“I’m not cold,” Grace said, though it wasn’t true. This morning’s forecast had called for a wind chill of eighteen degrees, and she was pretty sure they’d reached it. In spite of all her cold-weather gear, her reflection in the plate-glass window showed that her cheeks were ruddy. Her nose was sniffly, and her breath puffed into the air like smoke from a signal fire.

“They’re saying we’ll have snow before evening.”

“Really? I didn’t hear that.”

“Not on the radio. The old hens at the café. Bill Taylor says the creaking in his bones means there’s a snowstorm headed our way.”

“I thought it meant rain.”

“Aw, it means whatever suits the old goat’s fancy. I imagine he took one look at that cold gray sky and decided the rest on his own.” Trudie peered inside to make out the clock high on the wall. “I’d best get this place opened up, and you need to get inside before you freeze that young’un’s little toes off—to say nothing of your own toes. Have a good one.”

“I will. You, too.” As Grace walked on, she considered the truth of her statement. Lately she’d had nothing but good days. Sure, she was living on a tight budget and working longer hours at the hardware store than the doctor wanted her to. And, yes, there were still people trying none too subtly to discover the identity of her baby’s father. She had no insurance to cover the prenatal care and delivery of the baby, and no family to turn to for help. Some days she was convinced that she couldn’t possibly be a good mother, others she mourned the fact that there was no father, and too much of the time she was just plain scared by it all.

But they were still good days. Living on a budget was a piece of cake when you’d never before had a dime to call your own. Long hours at work for her own benefit was a lot different from long hours for someone else’s benefit. She had no family—her mother had fled Jed Prescott thirteen years ago, leaving Grace and Heartbreak behind—but for the first time in her life she had friends.

Also for the first time she’d found peace. She was no longer suffocating under her father’s rigid control, no longer living in fear that her most innocent action might send him into a rage. She no longer felt like an inmate in the grimmest of prisons.

She was a person with opinions to express, with value beyond the long hours she could work for free, and she felt like it.

Prescott’s Hardware, her destination, was located in the middle of the next block. All the other buildings on the block were boarded up and empty, giving her store a rather lonesome air, she thought fancifully as she unlocked the glass double doors. Inside the place smelled of metal and chemicals, with the pleasant aroma of sawn lumber drifting in faintly from the back. A serious builder would have to go to the big lumberyards and home centers in Tulsa or Oklahoma City, but Prescott’s provided everything necessary for the small jobs.

She turned on the lights, flipped the Closed sign on the door to Open, then headed for the counter back in one corner. Conscious of her tight budget, she turned the heat on only high enough to take the edge off the chill, then turned on the radio that sat on the file cabinets. Music, in the store or anywhere else in her life, had been against her father’s policy, so now that he was gone, she defiantly kept the radio playing all day and into the night. She even sang along, though her voice was rusty and always a half note off-key.

By the time she’d shed her winter garments and gotten a pot of coffee perking, the first customer had arrived. Actually, though he made regular purchases, he was more visitor than customer. Reese Barnett was the sheriff and, in some private little place deep inside, her hero. He’d been in the store the day her father had realized that she was pregnant. It was Reese who’d pulled Jed away after he’d hit her, who’d taken her to see Doc Hanson, then helped her settle in at the little house Shay Stephens had left when she’d married Easy Rafferty. It was Reese, with help from Heartbreak’s only lawyer, who had more or less intimidated her father into giving everything to her—the house and the store, though precious-little money—when he’d left town a few weeks later. He’d taken to looking in on her regularly ever since.

“I didn’t see your car in the parking lot,” he commented as he leaned one hip against the counter.

“I walked.” She watched as the last of the coffee dripped into the carafe, then poured a cup and handed it to him, her fingers brushing his, sending a tiny shiver down her spine. She could never admit it to anyone but herself, but she had a bit of a crush on Reese. It wasn’t just that he was incredibly handsome, capable and strong, though he was all three and then some. No, those weren’t necessarily qualities to admire. When her father had been Reese’s age, he’d been handsome, capable and strong, too, but none of that had stopped him from constantly abusing and tormenting his family.

She liked Reese because he was kind. Sympathetic. He genuinely cared about others. He was noble and honorable and decent. He had character, and she admired men with character.

Even though this man viewed her as a very young sister who needed looking after. Right now he was frowning in disapproval at the answer she’d given him. “You shouldn’t be walking that far.”

“It’s only one and a quarter miles each way, and Doc Hanson says walking is good exercise for pregnant women.”

“It’s too cold.”

“I dress warmly.”

“It’s supposed to snow late this afternoon. Then what will you do?”

“I’ll walk faster,” she retorted, then pointed out, “It’s not as if I’m the only one who travels that road. Someone always comes along.” That someone was often him—when it was raining or on the few other occasions this winter when it had snowed. If the snow materialized before closing time, he probably would, too.

He looked annoyed but dropped the subject. Leaning against the counter, he let his gaze slide across the room. “How’s business?”

“Steady. Up a bit over this time last year.”

“Because Jed’s not here,” he replied derisively, then belatedly glanced at her. “Sorry.”

“No need to be.” She’d been afraid of her father for as long as she could remember. Sometimes she’d felt sorry for him. Always she’d wanted to please him. But she couldn’t remember ever feeling what a daughter should feel for her father. She wasn’t sorry he’d left, or for the names he’d called her or the curses he’d heaped on her before going. She wasn’t the least bit sorry that she would probably never see him again, and she was downright grateful that her baby would never know him.

Reese drained the last of his coffee, then threw the foam cup in the trash. “I guess I’d better head to the office. Don’t walk home if it snows.”

“I won’t,” she replied, and they both knew she wouldn’t get the chance. If it was snowing, come six o’clock, he’d be parked out in the side lot. The knowledge brought her a sweet, warm feeling, along with a pang that his concern wasn’t likely to ever be anything but brotherly. She wondered idly as the door closed behind him if any man would ever feel anything but brotherly toward her.

There’d been nothing brotherly about Ethan James’s feelings.

Usually she kept the memories of that night locked away where they belonged. For weeks after her own personal Independence Day last July, she’d fantasized about her hours with him during the day and fallen asleep at night to the memory of his arms around her, his mouth on hers, his body inside hers. They’d been the sweetest dreams and had kept her going at times when she’d thought living with her father might drive her mad.

Then she’d discovered she was pregnant, a development definitely not in her plans. She hadn’t been able to take precautions herself, but she’d ensured that Ethan had each time. She’d thought she was safe, in every way, until the home pregnancy test her friend Ginger had sneaked to her had confirmed what her body had already told her.

Then Ginger had thought to mention the fact that no birth control was a hundred percent foolproof. Then, when the information couldn’t help Grace one bit.

To Ginger the pregnancy had been no big deal. Get an abortion or give the baby up for adoption—or, hey, novel idea, have it, keep it and raise it. End of crisis. Of course, Ginger hadn’t lived twenty-five years under Jed’s iron rule. She hadn’t been treated to a lifetime of warnings on the dangers and consequences of becoming a tramp like her mother. She hadn’t watched her very life drain away under his oppression until there was nothing left but a sad little mouse, afraid of everyone and everything. A pathetic creature pitied by some, unnoticed by most.

Unnoticed by Ethan James for the sixteen years they’d lived in the same town, the ten years they’d gone to the same school. With the school’s mixed grade policy, she’d sat a few seats behind him in biology, across from him in Spanish and had waited on him a time or two in the store. Once, when she’d dropped her books between classes, he’d helped her pick them up, had handed them to her with a careless “There you go,” but he had never even looked at her. He’d had eyes for practically every girl in the school, but he’d never known she existed.

One stifling hot Saturday night last summer, he’d learned…sort of. For the first and only time in her life, her father had gone out of town, leaving her on her own for a full twenty-four hours. It had taken about two heart-stopping seconds to decide what to do with her unexpected gift of freedom.

Go out. Have a drink. Meet a man. Maybe get a kiss, maybe a whole lot more.

Pretend for one night that she was a perfectly normal twenty-five-year-old woman. Experience enough of life in those few hours to sustain her in her prison for the next fifty years.

For help, she’d turned to the friend she’d made behind her father’s back at the grocery store. Thanks to Ginger’s cosmetic expertise, when she’d left the house that night, she’d looked nothing like the real Grace. She’d had rinse-out red highlights in her mousy brown hair, and long heavy curls that had corkscrewed in every direction. Tucking her glasses into her bag, she’d sacrificed seeing for looking good, but Ginger had assured her that the makeup job was flawless, making the most of her lamentably plain features. As for the clothes…she’d never worn a skirt so short or a top so tight in her life, and probably never would again.

But once had been enough. It had gotten Ethan James’s attention, and he’d finally known she existed.

As a rather mysterious redhead from someplace else named Melissa.

She’d crept out of his bed the next morning while he slept, hurried home and showered to scrub away the makeup, the curls, the fake color. The scents of sex, of a man. She’d half feared her father would look at her and know, would sniff the air when she walked by and recognize the cologne she was forbidden to wear, the aftershave she would never wear. He hadn’t.

And she hadn’t seen Ethan since. She hadn’t tried to locate him—hadn’t asked his half brother, Guthrie Harris, where he was, hadn’t told his pregnant sister-in-law Olivia that their babies would be cousins. Frankly, she wasn’t sure they would believe her. For a time the father’s identity had been a popular topic of conversation. Everyone had had theories, ranging from the truth—someone she met in a bar—to the obscene observation that her father was the only man with whom she’d spent time. No one had ever guessed Ethan. No one ever would.

It was her own little secret. And since Ethan wasn’t likely to return to Heartbreak for another several years, and would neither recognize nor remember her when he did, no one else would ever know the truth.

Which was exactly the way she wanted it.



The sky was a dull, relentless gray when Ethan passed the sign marking Heartbreak’s town limits. It was hard to believe that, night before last, he’d been in sunny, warm Florida and now he was right back where he’d started from. Back where all his troubles had begun. Where they certainly weren’t going to end.

He hadn’t needed a map to find his way back to Oklahoma. In all the endless miles he’d traveled, all the big cities and dusty towns where he’d stayed until he wore out his welcome or an impending arrest sent him on his way, he’d always known how to get back home.

At the same time, he’d never known.

He’d started running away from Heartbreak when he was barely fifteen. He was just like his father, his mother had always said with exasperated affection. Gordon James had done more than his share of rambling. In fact, he had rambled so often and so far that one time, when Ethan was ten, he’d never come back.

He was just like his father, Guthrie had always agreed, and with no affection at all. It was common knowledge that Guthrie thought his stepfather was no good, lazy and worthless. It was one of Ethan’s greatest regrets that his brother thought the same of him, and one of his greatest shames that he’d done his best to live down to Guthrie’s opinion. In fact, he’d done his father one better. He’d added crook to his litany of sins. Liar, thief, gambler, con man.

And, coming soon, father-to-be.

His fingers clenched the steering wheel spasmodically as anxiety tightened his chest. He’d always sworn he’d never bring a child into the world. He was indisputable proof that some men had no right passing on their genes to innocent babies. His father had been a loser, and he was a loser, so the odds were good that any child of his would also be a loser. Even if that wasn’t the case, any kid deserved better than him for a dad. He knew nothing about fatherhood, about responsibility or maturity or setting a good example.

He wasn’t sure he could learn. Not if he had to do it in Heartbreak, where Guthrie would be watching and judging his every move.

But he had to do something. He’d learned from his own experience that even a father who made nothing but mistakes had to be better than a father who didn’t care enough to even come around. At least he would be trying. Surely that would count for something with his kid. With Guthrie. With pretty Melissa.

Flipping the visor down, he pulled the snapshot free of the rubber band that secured it. If he knew where to look for her, he would go straight there, but the photo gave no clues. After studying it a while, he’d recognized the parking lot as belonging to the grocery store. Since it was the only one for twenty miles, that told him nothing about who she was, where she lived, where he might find her.

In their long, sweet night together, she’d told him nothing, either. It had been the perfect one-night stand.

Except for the baby.

He’d used protection—had never had sex even once in his life without a condom. His dependability on the issue was the one thing about him that Guthrie had approved of. Well, that, plus the fact that every time he’d come back to Heartbreak, he’d always left again.

Not a bad run of luck. Too bad it hadn’t held.

As he slid the photo back under the strap, the road curved and the few blocks that made up Heartbreak proper came into view ahead. He turned onto the first side street and followed a meandering back route to the dirt road that led to the Harris ranch, where they wouldn’t be happy to hear he’d come home again. Where Guthrie would be seriously dismayed that this time he intended to stay.

Provided Melissa would let him.

He’d seen the ranch just seven months ago, but it looked different as he turned in the gate and drove across the cattle guard. The house had a fresh coat of paint, and a wreath of flowers and vines hung on the front door. The flower beds had been cleaned out and mulched for winter, and the yellowed yard looked as neat and trim as it ever had when his mother was alive.

They were Olivia’s changes, Ethan knew. Guthrie had neither the time nor the energy for purely cosmetic work. He had his hands full taking care of three hundred acres of land and a couple hundred head of cattle. There’d been a time, after their mother’s death, when he’d wanted Ethan to share the responsibility with him, and Ethan had tried, he truly had, but he’d only lasted a few months. He wasn’t cut out for ranching, for working from sunrise till sunset, for pinching a penny until it squealed, for dealing with cattle and horses, droughts and floods, fluctuating market prices, luck and bad luck.

He’d sneaked away in the middle of the night to avoid seeing that look on Guthrie’s face—that long-suffering, no-surprise, Ethan-never-could-do-anything-right look. He’d wanted to avoid hearing Guthrie say, “You are just like your father,” and know it was the worst insult his brother could give.

So instead he’d faced the look and heard the insult in his dreams every night for months.

He parked beside Guthrie’s pickup and simply sat there for a time. In spite of the cold, his palms were damp and sweat beaded his forehead. He was twenty-eight years old, he thought with disgust, and scared spitless by the idea of seeing his brother. Worse, he couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t been scared of Guthrie, scared of disappointing him. Of letting him down yet again.

He drew a frigid breath, then opened the door. He wasn’t a lonely little boy anymore. Guthrie’s approval was no longer the most important thing in his life. Belonging someplace—to someone—didn’t matter, except with his baby.

He crossed the frozen ground to the porch, then rapped on the door. He could wait until the count of ten, or maybe five, then assume that no one was home, and he could leave while telling himself that at least he’d tried—

The lock clicked, then the door swung open and his heavily pregnant sister-in-law was greeting him with a surprised smile. “Ethan! Oh, my gosh, you came! I was hoping you would, but…it’s so good to see you! Come on in. Let me get you some coffee to warm up.”

It was a warm welcome from a woman whose husband he had once ripped off. Come to think of it, in that one scam, he’d cheated both her husbands—the one who’d died and left her penniless, and the one who’d taken her in last summer and given her a place to live before falling in love with her. She had good reason to hate him. He wasn’t sure he trusted the fact that apparently she didn’t.

The welcome got warmer as soon as he closed the door behind him, when she caught him in an unexpected embrace. He held himself stiffly, well aware of what Guthrie would think if he saw his precious Olivia in his brother’s arms. When she stepped back, with relief he put some distance between them, then nervously glanced down the hall and up the stairs. “Is…he around?”

“Guthrie? No, he’s out checking the herd. We’re supposed to have snow tonight. He’s getting ready for it.” She started toward the kitchen, then turned back when she realized he wasn’t following. “I have coffee left over from breakfast, or the fixings for hot cocoa, or there’s iced tea and cold pop. Take your coat off and come on back. We’ll talk.”

He didn’t want to obey her, didn’t want to walk through the house he remembered so well but rarely with fondness. He’d lived in it for the better part of eighteen years, but it had never truly been home.

From the time he was a little kid, he’d understood without being told that the house belonged to the Harrises, not the Jameses, just as he’d understood that Vernon Harris had been twice the man Gordon James could ever hope to be. A better rancher, better neighbor, better husband, better father, and he’d turned out a son who would be all those things, too.

Better. Leaving Ethan to be not good enough.

When he finally forced himself down the hall and through the double doors into the kitchen, Olivia was bent inside the refrigerator. She came out with a carton of whipped cream and a pecan pie, then flashed him a smile. “What would you like to drink?”

“Coffee’ll be fine.”

“Sit down. Take your coat off.”

He slid out of his denim jacket and hung it on the back of a chair, then cautiously sat down. He wouldn’t get very comfortable, wasn’t sure that was even possible when Guthrie could come through the door at any minute.

She dished up two slices of pie, poured coffee and milk, then took the seat opposite him. “When did you get in?”

“This morning. I came straight here.”

She buried her pie in whipped cream, then took an extra spoonful for good measure, licking it clean with slow, savoring gestures. When she realized he was watching her, she smiled without embarrassment. “I’ve had terrible cravings lately for whipped cream. Since the rest of the family thinks my eating it on bread is yucky and gross—” she said the last words in a fair imitation of her six-year-old twins “—Mary’s been bringing over freshly baked pies every couple of days.”

“When…” He thought of the photo in the truck, of Melissa, with her stomach almost as distended as Olivia’s, and swallowed hard. “When is the baby due?”

“Next month. Elly says I’ll be as big as a heifer carrying twins before I drop this young’un.”

Elly, he remembered from the few hours he’d spent here last summer, was the older of her daughters—the tomboy, sassy and too smart for her own good. The younger daughter was Emma, sweet, quiet, demure. As different as day and night. As Guthrie and Ethan.

“What does Guthrie say?” he asked, his voice thick and hoarse.

“He says I’ve never looked more beautiful.” Her smile was broad, a bit wicked and full of womanly satisfaction. “My husband’s no fool. He knows better than to get on the wrong side of a woman who hasn’t seen her own feet in months.”

He wondered if there was anyone around to tell Melissa that she looked beautiful. He’d wondered a lot about her since getting the photograph—whether she wanted him to take responsibility for his part in creating their child. Whether she had simply wanted him to know that he was about to become a father. Whether she wanted money, or if she hoped to gain a real live, equal-partners, here-and-now father for her baby.

He wondered if she had a father just waiting for the chance to make the scoundrel who’d taken advantage of his little girl pay. If her family was helping out or if they’d been disappointed enough to turn their backs. He wondered if she even had a family, or if she was as alone in the world as he felt.

Feeling Olivia’s gaze on him, he looked up to find her watching him. “Have you seen Grace?” she asked in a quiet, just-between-us sort of tone.

“Grace?”

“Grace Prescott.” Seeing the blankness in his expression, she impatiently added, “You remember—short, slim, brown hair, thick glasses. The mother of your child. The reason you’re here.”

Melissa. So she’d lied about her name. And why shouldn’t she? New hair color, new style, new clothes and new behavior all deserved a new name, something prettier, less old-ladyish than Grace. Melissa was a hot redhead offering to fulfill wild fantasies in a bar. Grace was an old maid, waiting in vain for that first second look from a man on the prowl.

Olivia’s expression bordered on scandalized. “You didn’t even know her name?”

He didn’t offer a response. What could he say that wouldn’t reflect as badly on Melis—Grace as on him? “Grace Prescott…should I know that name, other than the obvious?”

“She’s lived here forever. You must have gone to school with her. For years her father had owned the hardware store on Main.”

The clues didn’t help him remember Grace, but Jed Prescott… Oh, hell, yeah, she had a father just waiting to make him pay, but there’d be no talk of a shotgun wedding or accepting responsibility. With a well-documented reputation of being the meanest bastard in the county, ol’ Jed would be more likely to take him out and shoot him than to allow him within a mile of his daughter again. Better to have an illegitimate grandchild than to have that worthless James boy for a son-in-law.

But once the shock passed, Olivia’s words sank in. Jed had owned the hardware store, she’d said, as if he didn’t own it now. “So…” His voice was the slightest bit unsteady. “What does old Jed think of becoming a grandfather?”

Olivia took her dishes to the sink and rinsed them before turning back. “I don’t imagine he thinks too highly of it, since he left town as soon as he found out and hasn’t been heard from since.” She folded her arms, resting her hands on her stomach. “Don’t you have any questions to ask about her?”

Only about a thousand, but he’d rather get the answers to most of them from Grace herself. “Why did she ask you to tell me? Why didn’t you just give her my address and let her write?”

She looked as if she wanted to fidget, but she didn’t. “She didn’t exactly ask me to tell you.”

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and his palms got sweaty again. “What exactly did she ask you to do?”

“Exactly? Um…nothing. You see, she hasn’t told anyone who the father of her baby is, but—but she always gets this guilty little look whenever your name comes up, and Shay noticed it, too, and we got to counting, and…it seemed likely, so…”

“So you brought me halfway across the country on the off chance that I could be the father of her baby.”

“We figured if there wasn’t a chance, if that photograph of her meant nothing, then you wouldn’t come. But you did come, because it is possible, isn’t it?”

Oh, it was more than possible. It was damn near guaranteed…for whatever it was worth. He’d come back thinking that Melissa wanted him here when the truth was that Grace didn’t have a clue that he was even in the state. She’d known for seven months that if she wanted to find him, Guthrie and Olivia were the place to start, but she’d never told them anything. She’d kept her involvement with him a deep, dark secret. Because she was ashamed of it? Because she didn’t want him around? Or because she didn’t want her child to bear the burden of having him for a father?

Probably all of the above. And he couldn’t even blame her. If he had a bad reputation, he had no one to blame but himself. When his name was a burden that even he didn’t want, how could he blame her for not wanting it for her baby?

It would be better all around if he just climbed back into his truck and left the state again. He could head out west, or maybe go south into Mexico, and this time he could stay gone long enough that no one would ever connect his name to Grace’s, not even remotely.

But he knew without considering it that he couldn’t do it, not without seeing Grace first. If she didn’t want him around, if she truly thought that the best thing he could do for his kid was disappear, then he would do so. He would feel like a bastard, but he’d do it.

And if she thought the best thing he could do was stay here, make a respectable name for himself and pass it on to the kid? He’d do that, too. At least, he would try.

And he would ignore the fact that almost everything he tried failed. He’d give himself maybe thirty-seventy odds of succeeding.

If he was a gambling man.




Chapter 2


Because she worked such long hours, Grace was under doctor’s orders to spend much of the day with her feet propped up, which was easier than a person would suspect, given the nature of folks in Heartbreak. Most of her customers had been customers so long that they knew their way around the shelves and were perfectly willing to help themselves. They would even make their own change from the antique cash register if she gave them the chance. Last week old Pete Davis had brought her a thermos of his granny’s famous chicken soup because he’d thought she looked a bit peaked, and Mavis over at the five-and-dime had brought her a puffy quilt to warm up under on dreary, gray days like this.

But she rarely felt the need to stretch out with her feet up. In fact, she’d had more energy in the last few months than ever before. Doc Hanson said it was because she walked every day. Callie, the midwife who would deliver the baby when it was time, credited the primarily vegetarian diet she’d started Grace on.

Personally, Grace believed it was her father’s absence. Living day in and day out with overwhelming bitterness and anger could suck the life force right out of a body. Life without Jed not only was different, but it felt different. Even the very air smelled different. And Callie swore her aura was totally changed, too.

Life was darn near perfect.

While the store was empty, she dragged a stepladder out so she could combine straightening the shelves with taking inventory. Jed had always insisted on doing inventory on the last day of the month, so Grace spread it out over several days at the beginning of the month. He’d made her sweep the floors first thing in the morning; now she did it last thing at night. He’d never extended a penny’s credit to anyone in his life. She offered it to everyone.

The further her pregnancy progressed, the harder taking inventory got. Not because she had a problem, but because people fussed at her for climbing ladders, lifting boxes, being on her feet. She’d learned to do it in quick snatches when the store was empty and liked doing it that way. It gave her time to wonder over the fact that all this was hers—well, hers and the suppliers’. She, who’d grown up with constant reminders that she owned nothing, not even the clothes on her back, owned this store. She marveled over it every day.

She was standing on the top step of the ladder when the bell over the door dinged. “I’ll be right with you,” she called as she quickly sorted and counted the boxes used to restock the shelves below.

Footsteps crossed the store and came around the corner into her aisle as she made notations on her clipboard. “Take your time, Melissa,” a quiet voice said, then deliberately added, “Or should I call you Grace?”

Ethan James. She froze in place. She hadn’t heard his voice in seven months, but she would have recognized it after seven years. A woman who’d lived her life without affection, without even a kind word from anyone else, wouldn’t soon forget the first voice to call her darlin’, or to tell her she was beautiful.

She would never forget the voice of the man who’d fathered her child.

Her hands were trembling as she carefully laid the clipboard and pen on the shelf, then turned on the narrow step to face him. He’d stopped ten feet away and was watching her with a totally unreadable expression.

He looked more handsome than ever, with unruly blond hair and wicked blue eyes, with a stubborn jaw and cover-model-perfect features. Every young man in the state owned the same outfit—faded Wranglers, a white T-shirt, jeans jacket, scuffed work boots—but he wore them with more ease than she imagined anyone else could. Snug and comfortable, like a second skin.

As she looked at him, appreciating the sheer beauty of him, he looked back. Was he disappointed, she wondered uneasily, that the wild, curly red hair, the sexy clothes, the lovely woman on the make—Melissa in her entirety—had all been an illusion? Was he dismayed that he’d spent a good part of a long summer night naked and hot with her? Was that why his features were schooled into such blankness? Why his blue eyes were so cold? Why his voice had been so flat?

She wished she had the nerve to lie, to swear that he was mistaken, that she didn’t know him. But, except for that night, she’d never lied, and she didn’t have the desire to start now. Slowly she came down the ladder, relieved when she felt the floor solid under her feet.

Folding her hands tightly together behind her back, she said in the calmest voice she could muster, “I…didn’t expect to see you.” Again. Ever. She didn’t add the qualifiers, but he heard them. It showed in the tightening of his jaw.

“You can thank Olivia and Shay Stephens for it. They thought I should know—” his gaze raked her up and down “—about you.”

“Rafferty,” she said nervously.

“What?”

“Shay Stephens. Rafferty. Easy came home last fall, and he and Shay got married in November…or maybe October. I’m not sure. It was before he started buying the horses for his ranch but after her birthday. October, I think, but—”

“Forget Shay,” he said sharply, and she sucked in whatever rambling words she might have spoken with a startled breath. He gave her another hard look up and down, one that made her fingers knot where he couldn’t see them. “Olivia tells me I’m…responsible for this.”

In Heartbreak responsible was not a word people used in reference to Ethan James. Irresponsible, yes. Trouble. Lazy. Dishonest. Disloyal. Selfish. She could stand there the rest of the day, listing every negative quality she could think of and still not cover all the failings attributed to him.

But he was waiting for a response to his comment. Which did he want—yes or no? How did he feel about being a father? How did he feel about fathering a child with her?

He was here. That said something, didn’t it? He’d come back to his least-favorite place in the world because he’d been told his one-night stand had produced an eighteen-year commitment. Surely that meant he wasn’t totally averse to the idea.

Unless he’d come back to buy her silence. To give her some reason not to make demands of him. Maybe he wanted her to continue to keep his identity secret. After all, he had a reputation to protect. Charming rogues like Ethan James did not get suckered into one-night stands with plain Janes like Grace Prescott. Or maybe he’d settled down somewhere, with someone special, and didn’t want word of an illegitimate child leaking out to tarnish his future.

“Well?” Impatience colored his voice and gave her the courage to shrug carelessly and start toward the counter.

“I never mentioned you to Olivia or anyone else.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.” He leaned on the counter as she circled to the other side. “Is that— Am I—” He dragged his fingers through his hair, muttered a curse and tried again. “Did we…?”

After studying him for a moment, she knew the answer he wanted. It was in his scowl, his clenched hands, the sinking feeling in her stomach. It was foolish to be disappointed. She was twenty-five, a woman on her own, about to become a single mother. There was no room in her life for daydreams or fantasies, no chance that a charming rogue might turn into her very own Prince Charming, no chance at all that something special could develop out of a one-night stand. Yes, he’d come back upon hearing that she was pregnant, but only because he wanted her to deny that he was the father.

“No,” she said softly, feeling the ache of the lie deep inside.

He looked startled, then relieved, then suspicious. “No what?”

“You’re not the father.”

“Who is?”

“That’s between my baby and me.”

His gaze narrowed, sending heat flushing through her face. “You’re lying.”

“I don’t lie.”

“Everything about the night you spent with me was a lie,” he said scornfully.

The heat intensified. Did the fact that it was a necessary lie count for anything? It was a simple truth that without the makeup, the clothes, the hair, she never would have found the nerve to walk into that bar. It was another truth that without the makeup, the clothes and the hair, he never would have looked twice at her.

She had desperately needed for someone to take a second look at her.

“It’s my baby, isn’t it?”

She thought of all the emotions she’d experienced since finding out she was pregnant. Shock. Panic. Dread. Fear. Heartache. And, finally, joy. She’d had such dreams, made such plans. She’d fallen in love with her daughter—she liked to think it was a girl—soon after learning of her existence. She couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful, any gift more precious, than the one she’d been given.

“Do you want a baby?” she asked, hearing the wistfulness in her voice. It would be an even more precious gift if he answered yes honestly and sincerely. Even if she was the last woman he would choose to play the role of mother, she would be forever grateful if he could truthfully say yes, he wanted their baby.

For a moment, he couldn’t say anything at all. He opened his mouth twice, then closed it again. Finally, with a stiffness that vibrated the air between them, he said, “It’s a little late to be considering what I want. This baby’s going to be here in two months, whether I want it or not.”

“But you don’t have to be here in two months.”

Once again she’d startled him. He blinked, then refocused on her as she continued.

“I do want this baby. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I want to change diapers and have 2:00 a.m. feedings and teach her to walk and talk and ride a bike. I want to be such a good mother that she’ll never miss having a father.” In spite of the awful examples her parents had set for her, she knew she could do it. She had more love to give than any little girl could ever need. She could easily be mother and father both, especially when the father she was replacing had no desire to be a father.

“So I’m not needed here. That’s what you’re saying.” Ethan heard the bitterness in his voice, felt it deep in his gut, but didn’t understand it. He should be grateful. She was offering him the opportunity to walk away and never look back. She didn’t want his name, his money or his presence. Hell, she didn’t want anything to do with him.

He should be used to it by now. He’d been living with it most of his life. His mother had loved him, but she’d loved Guthrie more. His father hadn’t loved him at all, and Guthrie had wished that he’d never been born. Now he was neither needed nor wanted in his kid’s life.

“You don’t want to be here,” she said quietly. “You don’t want to be a father.”

The truth, plain and simple. And not so simple. It was true that he’d never wanted kids—but that was speaking in terms of possibilities, prospects, somewhere down the line. This baby wasn’t a prospect. It—he or she—existed, a real, live part of him and Grace. It wasn’t fair to apply theoretical ideas to reality. Whether or not he wanted to be a father didn’t matter, because the simple fact was, in another eight weeks, he would be one. Wanting or not wanting couldn’t change that.

Realizing that his hand was cramping, he slowly eased his fingers flat against the counter. He didn’t know what to say. Obviously she would be happy if he accepted her offer to give up any claim he had on her baby and left town, but he knew instinctively that he would regret it if he did. Leaving would only prove that he was no better than his own father. Guthrie would never forgive him. His child would grow up to hate him. He’d have no choice but to hate himself.

And if he stayed? Maybe the kid would still hate him. He wasn’t exactly prime father material. He’d made too many mistakes, disappointed people too many times. No matter how hard he tried, he would never be a father to make a kid proud.

Across the counter, Grace shifted uneasily, drawing his gaze that way. She looked so different from before. Truth was, if he’d met her without meeting Melissa first, he wouldn’t have paid her any attention. He wouldn’t have sat down at her table, bought her a beer, asked her to dance. He certainly wouldn’t have taken her to the motel next door.

And it would have been his loss.

The hair that had been gloriously red and wild that night was really brown, pulled straight back from her face and braided to her waist. The brown eyes that had seemed so soft and hazy then had actually been unfocused. Judging by the thickness of the lenses in the glasses that kept slipping down her nose, she’d been damn near blind that night. That explained why she hadn’t run the other way when he’d approached her.

She wore no makeup, not even lipstick, and her dress was shapeless except where it draped over her belly on its way to her ankles. The sweater she wore over it was equally shapeless, with sleeves that fell three inches past her wrists.

She wasn’t pretty, and she wasn’t homely, either. She was just plain. And yet it had taken him mere seconds to recognize the lovely, sexy Melissa in her.

But Melissa, who had wanted him, didn’t really exist, and Grace, who did exist, didn’t want him. At all.

She fidgeted under his gaze, drawing the front edges of the sweater together and holding them with her arms folded tightly over her chest. “Listen, Ethan,” she said, and he recognized sexy Melissa in the way she said his name. “You came back, you did what was right. You can go now. I’ll convince Olivia and Shay they were wrong. No one will hold it against you. No one will ever even know.”

And because he was irresponsible, worthless, no good, that was supposed to satisfy him. It was supposed to ease his conscience, assuming he had one, and get him back on the road out of town.

He gazed away from her to the dusty plate-glass window that looked out on the parking lot and wondered if his mother had ever encouraged his father to go away and stay away. There was no doubt that Nadine had regretted her marriage to Gordon James. That last time he’d left, she’d waited only days—ten, maybe fourteen—to file for divorce, and though she’d never changed her name legally, she’d gone back to using Harris again. Being ten years old and stupid, he’d asked if he could use the Harris name, too. After all, they were a family, right? And families should have the same last name. But Guthrie had objected, and their mother had made some excuse about needing his father’s permission, and he’d known then that he wasn’t really part of the family.

Now it was payback time. He’d wanted to give up his father’s name, and now his own child was never going to be allowed to know his name. Grace and the baby were one more family that he wasn’t welcome in.

Unless he changed her mind. Unless he proved to her that he was fit to be a part of their lives. The hell of it was, he didn’t know that he wanted to be a part of their lives. He didn’t know if he could live up to the responsibility, or if he would run true to form, disappoint them and run away. Like he always did.

Hell, if he couldn’t trust himself to stick around, how could he ask her to?

He glanced at her but didn’t make eye contact. “I…I don’t think I can do that, Grace.”

He could tell by her voice and no more that she was alarmed. “Why not? You’ve been doing it for years.”

“I don’t know. I just can’t… This is different. Before it was always people I walked out on—adults who didn’t want me around, anyway. This is a baby—”

“My baby,” she interrupted sharply.

“And mine.” He felt the bitterness swell until it threatened to choke him. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone that. I’ll keep your little secret. But I’m not leaving. Not until I figure some things out.” Like what he wanted, and why, and whether he had a right to want anything at all.

He took a few steps toward the door, then turned back. “Olivia has offered me use of the cabin out at their place, if Guthrie doesn’t throw me out. I’ll be around.”

Before she could respond or react in any way, he turned and walked out.



So much for the creaking in Bill Taylor’s bones.

Grace stood at the window in her dark, still bedroom, wearing a nightgown of flannel and wrapped in a quilt, staring out into a quiet, cold and incredibly clear night. She should have been asleep hours ago, but her mind wouldn’t stop spinning long enough to let sleep creep in. She’d prayed for snow all the way home in the Blazer that served as Reese’s sheriff’s car, for the rare kind of blizzard that Oklahoma never saw that would bury her house to its eaves and leave her safe and protected from the world—from Ethan—until the spring thaw.

But there was no snow. No protection, either.

Expect the worst, her father had always preached, and you won’t be disappointed. Never trust anyone, never take chances, never count on someone doing what he should. She’d always thought it was a sad way to live, so sad that she’d gone a hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction. Her motto, since his leaving, had been simpler. Don’t Worry. Be Happy.

She’d thought years would pass before Ethan’s next return, had thought he’d never recognize her as Melissa, and even if he did, he would never have any interest in playing daddy to her child. After all, he was the irresponsible one, the immature one, the selfish one out for himself and to hell with everyone else. Like everyone else in town, she’d been so convinced of it that she almost felt cheated that the image wasn’t entirely accurate. He had a conscience. He felt some sense of obligation, some duty.

How long would it last? A few weeks? A few months or, heaven forbid, a few years? There was no way of knowing. Long enough, though, for everyone in town to guess the truth. Long enough to saddle her child with the burden of the James name, the James reputation.

Long enough to put Grace herself at risk. She’d proven her susceptibility to daydreams and fantasies. Lord knows, she’d lived enough of her life in them. She’d already proved her susceptibility to handsome con artists. Toss in the idea of creating a family—husband, wife, child, in-laws, nieces, maybe soon a nephew—and in a blink of an eye, she just might forget all about her hard-won independence.

But Ethan James wasn’t a family sort of man. He’d been running away from his own family for half his life. He wasn’t likely to accept any ties that might hold him down. Sure, he felt some sense of obligation, probably some unresolved issue from his abandonment by his own father, but it would never be enough to keep him here. At best, he’d stick around just long enough to screw up everything, and then he would leave Grace and their daughter to deal with it while he went on to greener pastures.

Sighing, she turned away from the window and faced her room instead. Until her father had found out she was pregnant and thrown her out, she’d slept every night of her life but one in this room. She’d huddled in the closet over there, hands over her ears, to block out the sounds of her parents’ fights. She’d curled up in the rocker and dreamed about catching the eye of someone at school. Boy or girl, it hadn’t mattered, just someone who would be friends with her and make her feel less desperately alone. She’d lain awake nights in that cramped little bed, lamenting the healthy, normal relationships missing in her life—the boyfriends, the dates, the little intimacies—and she’d wondered if anyone would ever truly love her.

Now, she thought, patting her stomach reassuringly, she had an answer.

And she had Ethan James to thank for it. Even if she did wish she had never seen him again. Even if some traitorous little part of her hoped to see him again and again.

Suddenly chilled, she returned to the bed, snuggled in under layers of blankets and closed her eyes for a series of deep-breathing exercises. She kidded herself that simply relaxing, resting and breathing were almost as good as sleep, which she certainly wasn’t going to get tonight. She was too wide awake, too worried.

But the next time she opened her eyes it was morning, and the sun was shining brightly in the east. Refusing to think about anything other than her normal routine, she got ready for work, cooked and ate her breakfast, then began dressing in the layers necessary for the walk to the store. It was just another day, she told herself. Like the last ninety or so, nothing special, nothing to be dreaded.

Maybe saying it made it real. Her walk was uneventful, even a bit boring. The usual vehicles were parked outside the Heartbreak Café, where Shay Rafferty gave her usual wave through the plate-glass window. Trudie Hampton called a hello as she unlocked the insurance agency door and commented on the cold temperatures and toes freezing off. The store looked exactly as it had when she left the day before.

Life hadn’t changed. It was ordinary. Routine.

Until 10:32 a.m., when Ethan walked through the front door.

She was busy with customers when the bell rang. She didn’t glance up. She didn’t need to, thanks to their murmured comments.

“Well, look at that. When do you suppose he came back?”

“Better question would be why do you suppose he came back.”

“Y’think Guthrie was expectin’ him?”

“Sure. Guthrie always expects trouble. ’Least, from that one.”

At that, Grace didn’t even try to resist looking at Ethan. He was in the last aisle before the far wall, pretending interest in a display of dead-bolt locks, his head ducked so that all she could see was tousled blond hair and a denim collar. No doubt he knew he had everyone’s attention. She hoped he was smart enough to stay over there until the others were gone, but she wouldn’t hold her breath.

She rang up the sale, took the cash, made the wrong change, then corrected it. She bagged the purchase in a sack large enough to fit it five times over, then dropped it on the counter instead of handing it to the customer. When they left, she straightened the few items on the counter, breathed deeply and straightened them again, then summoned the nerve to approach him. Before she’d taken three steps, he started toward her.

He was dressed much the same as the day before, but somehow he looked even better. Sometime in the last seven months she’d forgotten just how gorgeous he was. Looking at him now, she was amazed that she’d been able to catch his eye, even dressed up in Ginger’s flashiest clothes. He could have crooked his finger at any woman in that bar and she would have gone running, but he’d chosen her. The fake. The fraud.

He was disappointed that she wasn’t pretty. She’d read that in his expression yesterday. Part of her felt insulted. They were adults. They were supposed to prefer things like character, honesty and personality over good looks. And part of her couldn’t blame him. Was it so wrong to want the character, honesty and personality wrapped up in a pretty package? Would she honestly have been so quick to go to the motel with him that night if he hadn’t been drop-dead gorgeous?

Well…yes. But she’d been desperate, remember?

Finally he stopped on the opposite side of the counter. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Her gaze settled on his hands, resting on the scarred countertop. They were bigger, longer, than hers, but they could manipulate a deck of cards or remove a woman’s clothing with smooth, easy grace, never fumbling, never making a mistake. They were so strong, so certain of every move. And soft, like silk against her skin. Capable of seducing a never-been-kissed virgin right out of her clothes and her fears. Talented enough to make her thank him when it was over.

Her face grew warm, and she had to clear her throat before she could speak. “I take it Guthrie didn’t throw you out.”

“Only because Olivia talked him out of it. He knows better than to get on the wrong side of a woman who hasn’t seen her own feet in months.”

Grace’s smile was small and tentative. She liked Olivia Harris a lot, but that didn’t stop her from also envying her. Olivia had everything Grace had ever wanted. Her husband worshiped the ground she walked on, and no one could love her daughters more than he did. Their baby, due a month before hers, would receive a warm, loud and enthusiastic welcome into the world, and he—for Olivia insisted it was a boy—would know from his first breath how dearly loved he was.

On the other hand, Grace’s daughter would likely have no one but her, and she was no prize under the best of circumstances. Just ask Ethan.

Her smile fading, she turned away from the counter to the desk behind her. “I thought you might have left.” It was a lie, although she’d certainly hoped he would leave, taking her secret with him. She’d known it wasn’t likely, though. He hadn’t come from—well, wherever he’d come from, only to take off again immediately. That wasn’t the way he worked. According to rumor, he never left without stirring up trouble of one sort or another. This time that trouble would surely involve her.

Ignoring her comment, he looked around. “Do you work alone?”

“Yes.”

“Must be tough.”

She shrugged. “I’m a hard worker.”

“That can’t be good for…”

The baby, she silently filled in. Just say it. The baby. But instead he merely gestured toward her middle, as if the words were too difficult. Too damning. “Doc Hanson says I couldn’t be healthier. Callie agrees.”

“Who’s Callie?”

“My midwife.”

That brought his gaze to her face. “You’re seeing a midwife?”

Grace eased into the wooden chair behind the desk, propped her feet on the stool underneath the desk and folded her hands over her belly. “She’s going to deliver the baby.”

“Why not let Doc Hanson? He’s been doing it for fifty years.”

“Precisely why he’s not doing it anymore. He’s turned that part of his practice over to Callie.”

“So why not go to Tulsa or Oklahoma City?”

“Why would I do that when Callie is right here in town?” A scowl knitted her brows together. “She’s not some old granny that country folk turn to because they don’t know better or can’t afford a real doctor. She’s an R.N., a nurse-midwife. She practices in Doc Hanson’s clinic.” She paused before adding the one comment that would make a difference to him. “She’s delivering Olivia and Guthrie’s baby.”

It did make a difference. She could practically see the change in attitude. Oh, well, if Guthrie says it’s all right, then it must be all right. On the one hand, it annoyed her. It was her baby, her delivery, and if she said it was all right, it was. On the other, it was touching that, despite all the trouble between them, he obviously still had a great deal of respect for his brother.

But all that respect hadn’t stopped Ethan from fraudulently selling Guthrie’s ranch out from under him a year or two ago. Though the very idea of it was amazing, if pressed, she would have to admit that it was a good thing he had. Otherwise, he never would have developed a guilty conscience, he wouldn’t have come back last summer to undo his wrong, and he wouldn’t have been in that bar on her first night of freedom. She wouldn’t have such sweet memories, her friends, this business, the house or, most important, her baby. She owed a lot to his disreputable ways.

Still, “disreputable” didn’t come high on her list of qualities desired in her baby’s father.

Hands in his pockets, he came around the counter and circled the small space that served as her office. He glanced out the window at her view—the dock where customers backed up their pickup trucks to load lumber and wall-board—then thumbed through a catalog offering every hand tool known to man before finally speaking. “Tell me something. What was Jed Prescott’s little girl doing in that bar dressed like a—” He broke off, then substituted a less-harsh description, she suspected, than what had initially come to mind. “Like a woman looking for a good time?”

“If I’d gone in there dressed like this, I wouldn’t have gotten the same response.”

The hint of a smile crossed his face, then disappeared. She remembered his smiles best of everything about him. They’d come so quickly, so easily, from sweet, gentle smiles to broad, oh-so-cocky grins. She’d thought halfway through the evening how incredibly wonderful it was to spend time with a man who expressed pleasure so naturally. Her father was not a smiler. Living with him, she hadn’t been, either.

Finished with the office, he turned and leaned back against the counter. “No,” he agreed. “Going in looking like that—” once again he gestured toward her stomach “—would have scared all the men away, including me.” Crossing his ankles, folding his arms across his chest, he waited for the real answer to his question.

She considered ignoring it, and him. She had end-of-the-month invoices to prepare, a couple of orders to call in, tax records to update, inventory to finish. If she chose, she could find any number of excuses for not answering, and she couldn’t think of one single reason for telling him.

So she told him, anyway. Go figure. “Do you remember me?”

He gave her a puzzled look. “From…?”

“High school. Middle school. Grade school. Church, when my father still let me go. When your mother still made you go.” She shrugged. “From growing up two years apart in the same small town for sixteen years.”

Ethan didn’t need to think about his answer. For all he remembered, she could have sprung into existence full-grown yesterday, with absolutely zero contact between them before then. He didn’t offer the response immediately, though. It seemed cruel to be so quickly certain that she hadn’t existed in his world—in their mutually shared world—for all those years.

But finally he couldn’t delay any longer, and so he shook his head. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“I’m the most forgettable person in Heartbreak. People who have known me all my life don’t know my name. My own father called me ‘girl’ rather than make the effort to remember ‘Grace.”’ Her smile was thin and bitter. “He called his dog ‘girl,’ too. He took her with him when he left.”

For a moment she seemed lost in that thought. Missing the father who’d apparently never loved her? Maybe regretting all the years she’d spent with a man who’d walked out when she needed him?

At least it gave them something in common—they’d both had lousy fathers. And they both wondered whether he could do better. And she had good reason to think her child would be better off with no father at all.

“That day last summer was the first time in my life that I was free of his control.”

It was an outrageous statement, but she said it so flatly that he knew it was true. Ethan couldn’t imagine living a life so restrictive. From the time he was fifteen, he’d taken such freedom that his life had been virtually without rules. Sometimes he’d wished his mother would put her foot down and hold him to the same rules she’d held Guthrie to. He’d figured that she thought he wasn’t capable of living up to them, so why even try.

“So you transformed yourself into someone else—” beautiful, sexy, sultry Melissa “—and determined to live all you could in that one day.” How many firsts had she experienced? First bar, first drink, first dance? Definitely first kiss. Sweet, a bit awkward, as if she’d expected their noses to bump or their mouths not to fit. It had taken only one kiss to convince her that wasn’t the case. The next had been sweet and steamy, full of promise, and at the motel, virgin or not, she’d delivered on that promise.

And he had definitely been her first man. Her only man, he suspected. There was something old-fashioned and satisfying about that knowledge.

“And that’s why you disappeared in the middle of the night.”

She shook her head. “Not in the middle of the night. Early, just before dawn.”

She was right, of course, Ethan thought, because in the middle of the night, they’d been making love again. She’d liked it better the second time. He’d fallen asleep wondering how much more she was going to enjoy the third time, only to awaken alone. The only thing she’d left behind was the faint scent of her cologne perfuming the sheets wrapped around him.

It was the first time in years that the roles had been reversed. He was the one who woke early and slipped away. He was the one who didn’t want to face goodbyes, demands, recriminations. He was the one who kept his sexual encounters as anonymous and short-term as possible.

And Grace had shown him how it felt to be the one walked out on.

“So…I woke up alone, and you…?”

“Went home. Washed the color and the curls out of my hair. Scrubbed the makeup off. Gave the clothes back to my friend. Put away the memories and prepared to convince my father that I’d been a good girl while he was gone.”

“And he believed you.”

“For a while. One day I was over there—” she gestured to the shelves that flanked the side windows “—getting something off the top shelf for Miz Walker and…I don’t know. The light was right. My clothes were a little snug. Something about the way I was standing… He realized I was pregnant.” She lowered her hand to her stomach in a touch that Ethan suspected was totally reassuring. “A few weeks after that, he left town. But before he left, he signed the store and the house over to me.”

There was more to the story than that. Ethan was sure. Jed Prescott never gave anyone anything but grief. He wouldn’t have spit on his neighbors if they were on fire. He wouldn’t even call his only child by her name. He certainly wouldn’t have voluntarily given her everything he’d worked a lifetime for, especially after she’d disappointed him.

But if she wanted to leave it at that, who was he to push it?

Just the only man she’d ever been intimate with.

The father of her baby.

A virtual stranger.

“So, how’s business?”

Her gaze narrowed. “Fine for Heartbreak.”

“I—” His face flushed hot, and he turned away, pretending interest in the store to hide it. “I have some money set aside if…”

“No, thank you.”

Something about the prim tone of her voice raised his defenses and made him face her again. “It’s not tainted. I didn’t steal it or win it in a crooked card game, or scam some poor sucker out of it. I earned it at an honest job, tending bar in Key West. I’ve been working since I left here last summer, and I’ve saved everything I didn’t need to live on.”

She looked embarrassed, too. “I didn’t mean—I’m fine right now. I don’t need money.”

“What do you need?”

She thought about it a moment, then shrugged. “Nothing.”

That sounded damn near perfect, he thought bitterly. That was all he was, and all he could offer. Nothing.

The bell over the door rang, drawing their attention that way. The man who came through the door was white-haired and stoop-shouldered, and though Ethan hadn’t seen him in ten years, he would have recognized him anywhere. It wasn’t easy to forget the man who’d laid his mother to rest a good fifty years before Ethan was ready to let her go.

“Pastor.” Grace eased to her feet, pulled her sweater tighter across her front and went to stand at the counter. If Ethan were asked, from a purely analytical standpoint, he would say she was trying to hide her pregnancy from the old man. But seven months was a lot to hide, especially on someone as delicate as she was. “What can I do for you?”

“Mama wanted me to pick up two gallons of paint, and she wants it to match the green on this paper.” The old man laid a swatch of wallpaper on the counter between them. “She’s redoing the guest room again. Our son and his wife are coming for a visit next month to help us celebrate our forty-fifth anniversary, and she seems to think the house needs to look different every time they come.”

“I’ll mix this up for you,” she said with a flash of a smile before grabbing the paper and walking off with it.

Pastor Hughes turned his attention Ethan’s way. “Ethan.” He bobbed his head in a disapproving nod. “I heard you were back. It’s been a long time.”

“Not long enough, from what I understand.”

“What brings you home this time?”

Ethan shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, then lifted his shoulders in a shrug as he parroted the preacher’s words. “It’s been a long time.”

“I didn’t realize you and Grace were friends.”

Not friends. Not even acquaintances. Just accomplices in a night’s sins that had changed both their lives. But of course he couldn’t tell the preacher that. “We went to school together. I couldn’t come back and not say hello.”

Pastor Hughes looked as if he didn’t quite accept the explanation, but he didn’t look as if he suspected the truth. No, that would surely widen his old blue eyes with shock and distaste, with a self-righteous This-is-no-more-than-we-expect-from-you for Ethan and a dismayed How-could-you-with-him for Grace.

“Where have you been this time?” Pastor Hughes asked.

“Florida.”

“I understand it’s warm there this time of year. Too warm, perhaps?”

Ethan felt the damned guilty flush start again. “I wasn’t run out of town, if that’s what you’re asking. I left on my own.”

“And how long will you be staying?”

“That depends.” He watched Grace set two paint cans on the counter in the distant corner. With quick, efficient movements, she pried the tops off the cans, then began measuring in tints. He would offer his help for no other reason than to get away from the preacher, but he couldn’t help her. He knew nothing about mixing paints or matching colors. He knew nothing about anything but causing trouble. Certainly nothing about making it right.

“I assume Grace has told you about her predicament.”

Afraid of what might show in his face if he continued to watch her, Ethan turned his gaze back to the preacher. “Her predicament? You mean being pregnant?”

“And unmarried. Abandoned by both her own father and the baby’s father. Left to suffer the consequences alone.”

He hadn’t abandoned her, he wanted to protest. He knew too well how that felt, had been through it with his father, with Guthrie, even with his mother. God help him, he would never do it to someone else.

But Grace had made it pretty clear that neither she nor her baby needed him, that she didn’t want him. So if he left again, that wasn’t abandonment, was it? Even if it felt like it?

“She can’t be the first unwed mother Heartbreak’s ever seen,” he said, injecting a touch of scorn into his voice to cover his guilt.

“No, sad to say she’s not. Which doesn’t make her situation any less fortunate.”

Her misfortune was not running the other way when she met him that night. It was not telling him to go to hell when he’d invited her to the motel. It wasn’t the baby. She insisted she wanted the child, even though it was his child, and he believed her.

He wanted to believe her.

Before the pastor could say anything else, Grace returned with the paint. She rang it up, then waited while the old man wrote out a check. As soon as he was gone, she let out a long sigh.

“I know the good pastor doesn’t think highly of wayward sons. I take it he’s not much kinder to unwed mothers,” Ethan said flatly.

She tilted her head side to side, stretching the muscles in her neck. “Actually, he is. He sees me as an innocent victim, taken advantage of and betrayed by some unrepentant scoundrel.” Abruptly, her gaze widened, as if she’d belatedly seen the insult in her words, and she opened her mouth to apologize.

“I’ll admit to the scoundrel part,” he said, his tone more casual than his emotions. “But I’ve always been repentant.”

“Just not enough to stop being a scoundrel.”

“Not until recently.”

“Why recently?”

“It was time,” he said with a careless shrug, but that wasn’t the real answer. He’d started trying to change because one morning he’d awakened from a three-day drunk and realized that he’d sold his brother’s ranch—his livelihood, his family history, the one thing Guthrie loved most in this world. The fact that land fraud was taken seriously in Oklahoma ranching country hadn’t concerned him, nor had the fact that he could go to prison for it. He’d been in jail before. It hadn’t been his favorite place, but truth be told, it hadn’t been his least favorite, either.

It was the idea that he’d committed the ultimate betrayal against Guthrie that had sobered him. Virtually anything else in the world could eventually be forgiven, but stealing his brother’s land was unforgivable.

He’d thought he might have a chance to set things right without Guthrie even finding out, and so he’d headed for Atlanta to find David Miles, the smug businessman who’d been one of the easiest marks Ethan had ever fleeced. He hadn’t had much of a plan—to admit that the sale was fraudulent, return what was left of the money and face whatever consequences Miles wanted to dish out.

In Atlanta, though, things had gone from bad to worse. He learned that Miles had been killed in an accident, leaving his wife and twin daughters penniless and homeless. The last anyone had heard, they were on their way to Oklahoma to claim the only thing left them—the ranch. Guthrie’s ranch.

Ethan remembered sitting in a seedy motel on the outskirts of the city, trying to gather the courage to pick up the phone and call his brother. But his hands had trembled and his throat had closed off. Even if Guthrie would have talked to him, he wouldn’t have been able to say a word.

And what words could he have offered? I’m sorry? I didn’t think you’d ever find out? I’ll never do it again? He’d said them all so many times before that they didn’t mean a thing.

In the end, it had worked out well, for Guthrie, Olivia and the girls, at least. They’d turned tragedy into triumph—had fallen in love, gotten married and created a new family that was a million times better than the old families that had let them down.

Maybe it had worked out well for Grace, too. Instead of making that phone call from Atlanta to Heartbreak, he’d made the drive, arriving in time to catch the last few minutes of Guthrie and Olivia’s wedding. He’d given Miles’s money to Olivia, given Guthrie the deed to the portion of ranch that had been his for a time, then left them to celebrate their wedding with their friends while he sought the comfort of a few beers and a willing woman in the bar in Buffalo Springs. And there he’d met Grace.

In the end, everyone involved—Guthrie, Olivia and Grace—had gotten the one thing they valued most. A family. Someone to love, someone to love them.

That was the one thing Ethan had always wanted, too.

It was the one thing he didn’t think he would ever get.




Chapter 3


Because many of her customers dropped in on their lunch hours, Grace couldn’t close up at noon. Instead, she’d gotten in the habit of bringing something from home to eat in what she jokingly called the break room. During her father’s reign, it had been a storeroom, but she’d cleaned it out, added a compact refrigerator and microwave, purchased cheap from Reese’s nephew, who’d just graduated from college, and a tiny table and chairs picked up at a yard sale. In a few more months, she planned to bring the playpen she’d bought at the same garage sale so the baby would be able to nap there, undisturbed by the activity in the store.

Sometimes on her days off, Ginger joined her, and some days Shay Rafferty brought two daily specials from her café down the street to share. Though she enjoyed their company with all the saved-up pleasure of a woman who’d long been denied the companionship of other women, today she hoped no one dropped in, not even customers. Today she already had company, she thought, as she took her lunch out of the fridge and put it in the microwave to heat up.

But she wasn’t sure if she wanted to keep Ethan to herself a bit longer, or if she was afraid that seeing him would make everyone remember his last visit home and put two and two together, or if she was…

Stubbornly setting her jaw, she forced the word out. Ashamed. Just a little. He had such a reputation, and she didn’t want it tarnishing her baby before it was even born. Grace didn’t want people to look at her child and say, Oh, that’s Ethan James’s kid. She won’t amount to anything, that’s for sure. Grace didn’t want people shaking their heads when they saw her and repeating some version of what she’d heard plenty of times about Ethan’s mother. Poor Nadine. All she wanted was a father for her son, and all she got was a no-good husband who ran out on her and stuck her with his no-good brat.

She’d gotten enough poor Graces in her life, thanks to her father. She didn’t want Ethan to supply her with more.

The microwave dinged, demanding her attention. She removed the bowl of stew, spooned a portion into a large coffee mug for her lunch guest, then carried both to the table. There was also corn bread, reheated in a damp paper towel, steaming now as butter melted over it, and a half dozen of her favorite cookies for dessert. She believed in eating hearty these days, she thought with a suppressed smile as she realized how easily her lunch for one could feed two.

Of course, she was eating for two and carrying more than enough weight for two.

“So…what are your plans?” Ethan asked as she sat down across from him. The table was so small that her knees bumped his as she settled in. She swore she felt a tingle. He didn’t even seem to notice.

“Plans for what?”

“Living. Working. Making ends meet.” He pointed toward her midsection with a spoon. “After the baby’s born.”

“I plan to continue doing what I’m doing now. There won’t be many changes.”

“A baby changes everything,” he said, as if he knew from experience. Maybe he did. Maybe there were little blond-haired, blue-eyed kids with James blood flowing in their veins all over the country. Maybe that was a part of the trouble he was so famous for leaving in his wake.

If that were the case, then he’d be accustomed to notifications of impending fatherhood, wouldn’t he? But when he’d come in yesterday morning, that definitely wasn’t the impression she’d gotten.

“I can’t afford to let it change everything,” she said as she seasoned her stew. “I’ll still work six days a week. I’ll still live on a budget. I’ll still take care of myself. The only difference is I’ll be taking care of her, too.”

“What about a baby-sitter?”

“I can’t afford one. I’ll bring her to work with me. I’ve got a playpen that’ll fit in that corner. When she’s sleepy, she’ll stay in it. The rest of the time, she’ll be out there with me. It’ll be fine—no different from now, except I’ll have someone to keep me company when it’s slow.”

“And, of course, when it’s not slow, she’ll patiently wait while you take care of customers, order supplies, do the books, straighten the shelves.” He sounded skeptical. “You haven’t spent much time around babies, have you?”

She was embarrassed to admit that the answer was no. The closest she’d ever been to an infant was passing one with its mother in the aisles of the local grocery store. She’d never held one, never fed one, never changed a bottle, but she could learn. There were how-to books covering every subject under the sun, and Callie, the midwife, would teach her enough to get her started. The rest would come naturally. She had maternal instincts, didn’t she? Wouldn’t she give her life to protect this baby? Wasn’t she ready to devote the next twenty years to loving and caring for her?

“And just how much do you know about babies?” she asked crossly. And had any of those babies he’d learned from been his?

“I know that they cry and require a lot of attention. I know they disrupt everything around them when they’re not happy.” He scowled. “I know that raising one alone in a hardware store isn’t a great idea.”

“But I am alone,” she pointed out quietly, “and I work in a hardware store, and I can’t change that.”

“You could get married and give her a father.”

Her spoon trembled and a chunk of potato slid back into the bowl, splashing broth. She darted a glance at him, but he was staring into his own bowl as if he could stir up a whirlpool that might suck him in and spit him out again someplace far away.

Did he think she hadn’t thought about marriage at any time in the last seven months—heavens, in the last thirteen years? Ever since her mother had left her to bear her father’s oppression alone, marriage had been her fondest dream, as much for the escape it represented as for the love it promised. After that hot summer night, she’d spun unbearably romantic tales of Ethan: Unable to forget the most incredible one-night stand he’d ever experienced, he tracked her down against impossible odds like Prince Charming searching for his Cinderella. Once her pregnancy had become common knowledge, she’d fantasized a time or two about Reese Barnett discovering a distinctly unbrotherly side to his feelings for her, falling in love with both her and her baby and claiming them for his own. It could happen. It had happened in Ethan’s own family, with Guthrie and Elly and Emma Miles.

But it wasn’t likely to happen again in his family. Ethan was the only man who’d ever given her a second look, and it wasn’t as if he were volunteering—

Was he?

She sneaked another glance at him. No, of course he wasn’t. Of all the single men in the state of Oklahoma, Ethan James was probably the least likely to transform into marriage material. He was a drifter, unable to stay in one place long enough to even think about putting down roots. He lived by his wits and did things as a matter of routine that were illegal, unthinkable and unforgivable. He used people until he got what he wanted, and then he disappeared from their lives. He may have had enough conscience to bring him back to Heartbreak, but it was a sure bet he didn’t have enough to make him stay. It certainly wasn’t enough to turn him into a husband or a devoted daddy.

And a devoted father was the only kind she would accept in her baby’s life.

“Well?” he prompted when the silence went on too long.

His insistence on a response roused her temper. He wasn’t stupid. He knew she’d been a virgin until that night with him, knew that no man before him had ever paid her any notice. He’d made it clear that even he wouldn’t have gone near the real her. It was Melissa he’d wanted, Melissa he’d spent the night with. To his great disappointment, it was Grace he’d gotten pregnant, Grace he was now stuck with.

Grace he would like to see married to someone else so he wouldn’t feel burdened.

“Oh, I turn down two or three proposals every week,” she said, shooting for an airy lack of concern. “There’s just no end to the number of men who want to marry me and raise my illegitimate child as their own, but I’m holding out for that one truly special man to come along. Until he does, my child and I will do fine on our own.”

“Too bad you didn’t hold out for Mr. Perfect last summer,” he said snidely. “Then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“True,” she agreed. “But when your options are limited, you have to be satisfied with what you can get.”

He flinched as if her words had the power to hurt. But how could they? She meant nothing to him—less than nothing. She had little doubt he regretted ever laying eyes on her, no doubt at all that he wished he’d never touched her.

It had been the sweetest night in her twenty-five years…and he wished it had never happened.

His expression cleared, cooled, as easily as if he’d pulled a mask over his face. He rested his spoon inside the bowl, then pushed it away and fixed his gaze on her. “Well, it looks as if your options are pretty limited again, so…how about it?”

“How about what?” she asked cautiously, not liking the nervous shiver that crept down her spine.

“Getting married.” Ethan’s hands were sweaty and unsteady under the table. He clasped them together, then swallowed hard before finishing his answer. “To me.”

He’d never proposed marriage before, had never even given it any thought. If he had, he would have supposed the woman’s response might be on the pleasantly surprised side. Well, he’d been half right. Grace was surprised.

Moment after moment slipped past while she stared at him. Maybe surprised was too mild a word to describe the look in her brown eyes. Stunned might be more accurate. Or shocked. Maybe just plain horrified.

Hell, that was no surprise. He’d never been anyone’s first choice—at least, not for anything good. There wasn’t a person alive who trusted him, not a soul who could accept him the way he was, without wishing he was better, kinder, more honest, more decent. He’d spent his whole damn life wishing he was better. There was no reason Grace Prescott should be any different.

She looked as if she was torn between hysterical laughter because he couldn’t possibly be serious or hysterical shrieks because he was serious. With her hands shaking, she cleared the table, then looked out into the store as if a customer might appear and save her. When the door remained closed, she finally had no choice but to look at him—or at least in his direction. She couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye. “Why-why in the world w-would we g-get married?”

Why in the world would I marry a liar, thief and loser like you? He had little doubt that was the question bouncing around in her head, but she’d had the courtesy to tone it down, to make it sound as ridiculous for him as for her.

“Because you’re pregnant,” he said flatly as heat flooded his face.

“Marriage isn’t a requirement for giving birth,” she pointed out cautiously.

“Maybe it should be.”

“I admit that in a perfect world everyone would be happily married before having babies, but this is hardly a perfect world. You don’t even know me.”

“So we do it backward. First we had sex, then we get married, then we get to know each other.”

She was shaking her head in dismay. No doubt she’d had a few dreams about some incredibly perfect hero who would sweep her away from the bleak misery of life with her father, who would treasure her in ways no one else ever had and make up for all the boys who’d never noticed her, all the dates she’d never gone on, all the affection she’d never gotten.

Well, he was nobody’s hero. There had never been any shortage of women in his life, but not one of them had ever dreamed of falling in love with him and spending the rest of her life with him. He wasn’t that kind of guy. Women liked him fine for short-term flings, but when it came to permanence, they always looked to men like Guthrie.

But Guthrie was taken, and no one like him was offering, and nothing changed the fact that Ethan had a claim on the baby, which gave him some small sort of claim on the mother.

“Look, I know this isn’t the sort of marriage proposal most women hope for,” he said gruffly. He wasn’t into gestures—romance, flowers, bended knee. He couldn’t offer heartfelt declarations because his heart wasn’t involved, couldn’t make sweet promises because he’d never kept a promise in his life. He could lie, he supposed. He’d always been good at that—even so, he doubted Grace would believe him. “But most women aren’t about to give birth to a stranger’s child.”

“And most women have a reasonable expectation of marriage. Unlike those few of us who are supposed to feel great gratitude at ever receiving a proposal—any proposal.” Her face was pale, her brown eyes magnified by the glasses that were inching down her nose.

“I don’t want your gratitude,” he said sharply. He knew she must feel cheated—hell, he felt cheated for her, and that made him feel guilty, when he already had enough guilt to deal with.

“And I don’t want your name.” The instant the words were out, bright spots of color appeared in her cheeks, making her look even paler in contrast, but she didn’t back down. “You grew up here as Gordon James’s son, and it wasn’t easy. I know, because it was just as hard being Jed Prescott’s daughter. My baby can’t escape being Jed’s granddaughter, but she can escape the stigma of being Gordon James’s granddaughter…or Ethan James’s daughter.”

The stigma. That was what he’d lived twenty-eight years to become. There was less shame in his daughter being born illegitimate than in bearing his name. Less embarrassment for Grace to be pregnant and abandoned by some anonymous bastard than pregnant and married to him.

She stood utterly still, looking as if she wanted to crawl into the corner and not come out again. When he stood up, she stiffened as if expecting some show of temper, but otherwise she didn’t move.

He went to stand in the doorway, gazing out across the empty store. What did you say to a woman you hardly knew who’d just told you that you weren’t fit to give your child your name? He could think of only one thing.

Looking over his shoulder, he offered the words he knew she wanted to hear. “Then I won’t bother you anymore. Goodbye, Grace.” In that instant before turning away, he saw the relief sweep over her, and then he walked out.

On the sidewalk outside, he stood motionless a moment, staring at his old truck. He could head back to Key West, where the days were warm and living was so much easier, or he could try someplace new. There were plenty of towns in the country where people had never heard of Heartbreak, Oklahoma, where the names Gordon and Ethan James meant nothing, where he could learn to pretend that Grace Prescott meant nothing.

But he was tired of new places. He was tired of constantly moving, of never having a place to call home, of never being welcome in his own home. He was tired of being a stranger to the only family he had, tired of being a bad brother, a worse son, a totally unacceptable, unwanted father. He wanted more.

The thought brought a mocking smile to his mouth as he climbed inside the truck. Ethan James, who’d never been able to deal with what he already had, wanted more. Wasn’t that a hoot?

He started to drive straight through town, then on impulse stopped at the grocery store to call Guthrie’s number. Olivia answered on the second ring. “Hey, it’s Ethan,” he said grimly. “I’m about to head out that way. Do you need anything from town?”

“Bless your heart, I do. I was planning to drive in and pick the kids up at school so I could stop at the grocery store, but if you’d save me the trip, I’d be grateful. You’ll join us for dinner tonight, won’t you?” she asked, then went on with her list before he could answer.

At the grocery store he selected Olivia’s items first, then added his usual week’s shopping to the cart—canned soup, sandwich makings, bacon and eggs, frozen dinners. He debated tossing in a six-pack of beer, a perfectly innocent purchase that half the men in town made on a regular basis. But half the men in town didn’t have the stigma of his name or his history. They didn’t have teetotaler Guthrie for a brother, and they hadn’t gotten the shiest, quietest little mouse in town pregnant.

The beer stayed on the shelf.

Back at Guthrie’s place, he parked in front of the cabin, put his own purchases away, then carried Olivia’s bags across the broad spread of yard. She opened the door before he’d knocked twice and gave him her usual welcoming smile.

“Hey, Ethan, come on in.” She opened the door wide, then closed it behind him before leading the way into the kitchen. The instant he walked through the doorway, he literally felt the welcome disappear, diminished by the force of the disapproval directed his way from the opposite door, where Guthrie stood in the laundry room, tugging off one muddy boot, watching him as if he were some dangerous criminal come to do harm.

Ethan had never been able to win with Guthrie, not since they were kids. Guthrie had never wanted him in his house, but when Ethan had disappeared for weeks at a time, he’d gotten angry about that, too. If he knew that Ethan was the father of Grace’s baby, he would be furious that Ethan hadn’t stayed hell and gone away from her, but he would also be angry that he’d come back when she obviously didn’t want him, and he would be even angrier if Ethan walked away from both Grace and the baby. Where Guthrie was concerned, Ethan was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.





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