LITMIR.BIZ

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slowly, thinking. She’d called the sheriff’s office, asking for help, but if no one showed up soon, she was going to climb up into the tree herself.

      The way she used to, she thought with a half smile. When she’d been young and fearless and every day had been an adventure. The problem with growing up, she mused, was that you realized the consequences of your actions. If she fell out of the tree, who would take care of her children? Her father had taken them in, but she knew that was only temporary.

      When had life gotten so complicated and difficult?

      “Tell you what, let’s get you and the rest of the motley crew down for your naps and Mr. Whiskers’ll be back in the house, looking down his nose at you, by the time you’re up.”

      Hands on the tiny shoulders, she turned her protesting daughter toward the back door and herded her into the house.

      Melinda had bought Mr. Whiskers when Maggie and the others had fallen in love with him at the animal shelter, chanting “cat, cat,” over and over again until she’d broken down and brought the animal home for her children.

      All kids needed a pet, she reasoned. Even a finicky one.

      Mr. Whiskers was more Mollie’s cat than her siblings’, which explained why two-thirds of the triplets were holed up in front of the television set, glued to every word that a big yellow dog was saying.

      An advertisement came on for the latest video games, blaring every word at her. Three sets of eyes grew huge as they watched the animation.

      She should have gotten them a mechanical cat, Melinda thought belatedly. No kitty litter, no finicky behavior, no trees scaled.

      Too late now, she thought.

      She shut off the television set to a chorus of groans. “Naptime,” she announced. The groans intensified.

      Shutting out all feelings except those that belonged to a deputy sheriff sworn to uphold the law, Carl rang the doorbell. He rang it two more times before he decided that the din coming from inside the house was completely drowning out the chimes of the doorbell.

      Fisting his hand, he knocked, loud and hard. He wasn’t about to back away and leave. That would be cowardly and he’d never been that before. Mentally he called Quint a few choice names.

      The front door opened a few seconds later.

      It was hard keeping his mind on his role and not on the woman in front of him.

      The girl who had left Serendipity at eighteen was beautiful. The woman who had returned at twenty-five was stunning.

      Finding his tongue, and the wits that were threatening to scatter from him like so many marbles on a board that had suddenly slanted, Carl said, “I’ve come about the cat.”

      Chapter Two

      In a single heartbeat, she was eighteen again, looking up at a young man she trusted more than she trusted anyone else in the world.

      It took Melinda a moment to focus back on the present. On the three children clustered around her like chicks around a hen—if chicks could babble incoherently and cling—and on the man standing on her doorstep.

      He’d filled out, she thought. A lot. And gotten taller, too. She remembered him a few inches taller than she was, now there seemed to be almost a foot’s difference between them. The thin shoulders were broad now, and the forearms she saw peering out from beneath the rolled-up sleeves were strong and muscular.

      It couldn’t be him. And yet, it had to be. Carly. Carly Cutler.

      Melinda realized she was staring and blinked, trying to rouse herself.

      “Carly?”

      It just didn’t seem fair. There should be some kind of law on the books about women who broke your heart getting more beautiful as time went by, Carl thought. It would have helped a little if she’d been tired and at least a tad worn, but she wasn’t. She was radiant. Except for her eyes. There was a sadness there, a sadness that wisdom gotten at too great a price brought.

      He squelched the impulse to take his hat in his hand. That would have seemed penitent somehow.

      Instead he gazed steadily into her eyes, reminding himself not to drown there. It took a bit of effort to succeed.

      “It’s Carl now.”

      “Carl.” She wrapped her tongue around his new, adult name.

      Carl.

      No, he wasn’t Carly anymore. There was no boyishness about the man who stood before her. The years had hardened his body and made his face leaner, bringing out cheekbones she’d had no idea had been there.

      Nostalgia and a dram of sorrow seeped into her for the boy she had once known. She smiled at him, even though there was no smile on his face to greet her.

      “No hello?”

      “Hello,” Carl echoed civilly, then repeated what he’d said previously, as if it were a mantra that could keep him impervious to the light, airy charm that was Melinda Morrow. “I’ve come about the cat.”

      Melinda half turned toward the back of the house, as if to look toward the backyard where the tree and the trapped feline existed in discord.

      Still partially catapulted into the past, she tried vainly to ignore the urgent tugs on her clothes by the munchkins who surrounded her.

      “You? But I called the sheriff’s office…” Why had he come in response?

      Carly. She’d thought about him a great deal lately, thought about getting in contact with him more than a dozen times since she’d returned to Serendipity. Despite numerous friendships, he’d been the one she could always rely on. She’d even looked up his name in the telephone book to see if he still lived in town. He did and his number hadn’t changed.

      Apparently, she thought, looking at him again, that was the only thing that hadn’t changed.

      Every time she’d begun to press his number on the keypad, she’d aborted the call, afraid of what he’d say to her. Afraid that the hard feelings she’d left in her wake would still be there.

      And now she stood looking at him like some wide-eyed schoolgirl instead of a woman with a college degree and three children to support.

      “And the sheriff sent me,” he told her.

      His answers were clipped, his voice almost nothing like she remembered. But then, Melinda supposed she deserved that.

      Logic and merit notwithstanding, it still hurt to hear the cool tone. Especially since what she needed right at this minute, she admitted to herself, was a shoulder to lean on for just a moment, until she caught her breath and found her bearings.

      Her eyes swept over him. She hadn’t noticed the uniform Carl wore, but now she thought it seemed made for him. “So when did you become a deputy sheriff?”

      Before answering, he glanced at the blond trio that had all but sealed themselves to her body. All three sets of blue eyes were looking up at him inquisitively. Damn, but they were adorable.

      Kids had always been his undoing. He’d always wanted a tribe of them himself, but without a partner, that didn’t seem as if it was ever going to happen.

      Carl curbed the urge to squat down to the triplets’ level and ruffle their hair. Instead he answered their mother’s question.

      “When Quint became the sheriff.”

      “Quint’s the sheriff?” Melinda’s eyes widened in surprise at the information. She thought she’d vaguely recognized the voice on the phone, but couldn’t place it. Now she knew why. The town bad boy was now the sheriff. Would wonders never cease? “Quint Cutler?”

      “That’s the one.”

      Carl wanted to cut this short, not knowing how much longer he could just stand

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