“Camille! Hey! You never came to visit us before!”

“I didn’t exactly come to visit-”

She just couldn’t get a word in. First Sean pounded her on the back, then Simon. Ian took off with her sweater. A box of doughnuts was shoved in front of her-well, part of a box, anyway. There seemed to be two left, not looking too scarily stale. Coffee splashed over the side of the mug. Ian’s sneaky grin reminded her of his son’s-too much so.

“We don’t fuss much in this house. Paper towels do as well as napkins, you know? But you never were the kind to care about those kinds of things-”

“Well, no, of course not.”

“We told you, Gramps. She isn’t like a regular woman.”

Camille touched her forehead, thinking that if she heard that one more time, even one more small time, she might just shriek. Exactly. Like. A. Regular. Woman. “Mr. MacDougal, I’m really glad to see you, but honestly, all of you, I only came about the cat.”

“Cat? What cat?”

Sean said swiftly, innocently, “Dang. I wonder where Dad is.”

“Gramps, you should see what she did with Darby. He’s like this sweet old thing now-”

“The cat,” Camille repeated firmly.

Both boys stole another look at each other. “Yup, we’re gonna get Dad right away. Gramps, you talk to Cam, okay? Like make her have another doughnut, okay? Okay?”

“Okay,” Ian said peaceably, and smiled across the counter at Camille as if he’d been waiting years for her to finally visit. “I remember you from when you were knee-high, Pete carrying you on his shoulders, walking to the bus stop.”

“Yeah?” She heard a door open, Pete’s voice, the door closed, then the muffled sound of two cracked adolescent voices talking double time. “The boys got me the cat, didn’t they?”

“Sean? Simon?” Ian’s jaw dropped as if such an idea shocked him speechless. “They’re sure taken with you,” he said, as if the complete change of subject worked well for him.

“Mr. MacDougal,” Camille said warily, but he interrupted.

“Just call me Ian. You’re practically family.”

She intended to answer that, but her heart suddenly started thudding with such alarm that she could barely swallow. Family? Family? What in God’s name had the boys been telling their grandfather? What had Pete?

And then there was Pete loping toward her from the back study, flanked by his sidekicks. All three of them were wearing flannel shirts, holey jeans, and no shoes. Their feet-my God, apparently that size feet ran in the family. But never mind that; she could feel her pulse zooming off the chart just from seeing him again. It was enough to scare the life out of her.

“MacDougal,” she roared, “I am not keeping that cat!”

“What cat?” he asked amiably.

“You know what cat. No one else in the county would have done that to me but you-”

“Um, wait a sec, Camille,” Simon said honestly, “The truth is-I would have.”

“The truth is, I would have, too.” Sean added hastily, “I didn’t. And Simon didn’t. And Gramps didn’t. And Dad didn’t. But in principle, we would have, because we know you’re one of the few women on the planet who could actually love an animal the way we do. But the thing is, we just have so many animals around here that we can’t adopt any more strays.”

“Our dad would kill us,” Simon explained.

“Especially since he finally agreed to the horse.”

Pete lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “I did not exactly agree to the horse.”

“Yes, you did, Dad,” Both boys insisted, and their grandfather immediately took their side by saying, “Peter, I’m quite certain I heard you agree, myself.”

Pete shook a finger at each of them, then wrapped his arm around Camille’s shoulder and steered toward the door. “We’re leaving to discuss this so-called cat in some privacy.”

“That’s good, Dad!”

“Yeah, that’s real good, Dad!”

“You go, Cam!”

There was more of the same refrain, but once Pete closed the door, neither of them had to hear it. “I suggest,” he said, “that we drive somewhere totally away from the hearing range of my back door.”

“You’ve got that right. In fact, I suggest we go straight to my place so you can pick up the damn cat.”

“That makes sense,” Pete said.


He didn’t, of course, mean it. He managed to finagle the keys to Camille’s car, but only because she blindly assumed he was one of the guys who had to drive. Which was true, but in this case, his male thing about driving had nothing to do with it. He needed her to go along, and she did that because she assumed they were driving to her cottage.

They weren’t. But his mind galloped around a mental racetrack, a thousand miles an hour, figuring out what to do from here. To get her away from the boys and his father-that was a given. But what to do with her then was a complete unknown.

He turned the key on her car and heard the engine hesitate. He had to bite back a comment about her needing new tires and a tune-up. Only the man in her life had a right to nag her that way. To yell at her about stuff like that. To watch over her.

And that sure as hell wasn’t him.

She suddenly turned to look at him. “Pete, you passed right by the road to the cottage.”

“I know. I figured we’d go somewhere quiet for a few minutes. Not for long-but I’d like to talk to you where no one’s likely to interrupt us, and that includes both my family and yours.”

“Oh, well…” She looked as if she considered objecting, but then changed her mind.

That didn’t surprise him. There was showdown written all over her. Her eyes were snapping fire. Her jeans were as threadbare as everything else she wore, but there was attitude in her hips-pure female attitude, and she was tossing her hair every step-until she got in the car, when she folded her arms in that make-my-day-mess-with-me posture she could get.

He knew-he’d always known-that they couldn’t continue on the track they were on for long. Being a climb-in-her-bedroom-at-night-lover had been a lot of fun the first time. And the second. But a romantic impulse was one thing, and not being straight about something important was another. Subterfuge wouldn’t work in his life. She couldn’t tolerate it in hers. And he’d known a showdown moment was coming. He just wasn’t prepared for it at this precise instant.

He drove the back farm road that skirted the acres of the lavender, then farther back, past his McIntosh and Red Delicious orchards, then back to the far nestle of woods.

Several acres of old, virgin hardwoods scattered across a high knoll, then gently sloped down to a spring-fed pond. The MacDougal boys and Campbell girls used to sled that hill every year when they were growing up, the girls trying every girl flirting trick they knew to get the boys to carry their sleds uphill again. The tricks usually worked.

A smile whisked across her face. Although God knows she didn’t know it-or admit it-she was getting those unshakably sexy smiles of hers back.

“Yeah,” Pete murmured, as he braked and climbed out of her car. “I remember a dozen winters from when we were kids. Just this spot. In fact, I specifically remember Daisy begging my oldest brother to pull her toboggan. He couldn’t say no to her and breathe. Heck, he couldn’t say yes to her without stuttering and turning red as a brick.”

“Daisy could make any boy stutter. And oh, brother, I loved all those winters. I was the young one, tagging after all of you older kids, but I loved every minute. Skating on the pond. Sledding that hill.” For an instant she seemed to forget how mad she was, because she ambled next to him, looping her hands in her back jeans pockets. “You haven’t mentioned your brothers in a while.”

He wanted to mention that her asking such a question was a sign that she was seriously ready to join real life again. Weeks ago, she wouldn’t have given a thought to his brothers-or anyone else. It was all she could do to get up in the morning. Unfortunately, now that she was better, she seemed unquestionably in a fast hurry to throw him out of her life. And he was bracing for that-he’d expected that point to come for weeks. But temporarily, he hoped some general conversation would ratchet down the tension between them.

“Both my brothers are doing great. Webster’s standing in front of a classroom at Stanford. He’s married, got two kids and a station wagon kind of life. I don’t think his feet have seen mud since he left the farm. Griff’s just the opposite-he’s in North Dakota. Married a woman with a big ranch in her family. He seems to love the life and the work-and the two of them seem to attract kids like mosquitoes. Last count, they had four of their own and another three that seem to be just living with them.”

In spite of feeling like an axe was about to fall on his head, Pete almost started to relax. Both of them instinctively seemed to follow the trail down to the water, Cam so easily hiking next to him. No matter how hard she was trying, it just wasn’t an easy morning to stay mad. The temperature had already kicked up in the past hour. A warm breeze fluttered the leaves, allowing sunshine to shiver through the forest canopy in yellow polka dots. A rabbit scrambled across their path. The air was soft, tender with spring smells, and the farm pond was just below them, a diamond, with a whisper of morning mist still dawdling on the far side.

In a curve in the path, they startled a doe and her young fawn, who froze at the unexpected intruders. He glanced at Camille. It hurt his heart, how easily he could share a smile with her, share the magic morning. She belonged on this land no different than he did.

He’d fooled himself into believing she belonged with him. No one to blame for that, of course, but himself.

The mama deer finally freaked and bounded off, her fawn gamboling right behind her, breaking that moment of magic silence…but at least Camille was still talking to him.