LITMIR.BIZ

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she’d made his brother so happy.

      Nodding to himself, Patrick got into his Chevy Blazer and headed for Crockett’s hillside cemetery. The sky had the brilliant blue of an early-fall day and the air was pleasant, with an underlying crisp edge. Soon it would be winter and folks would start complaining about the rain. He’d never understood why people lived in the Pacific Northwest if they disliked the weather so much. Though, as his mother said, being Irish he was genetically disposed to liking rain.

      At the cemetery he parked, then used his cell phone to call his brother’s private office number. When Kane answered, Patrick described his meeting with Maddie Jackson…leaving out the part about being attracted to her. No sense in complicating things.

      “This could be great for Beth,” Kane said. “She’s always wished she had her own family, especially now with baby coming.”

      “I know.” Patrick looked across the cemetery. In her turquoise dress Maddie was easily recognizable in the distance. She moved from one stone to another, looking at the inscriptions and occasionally writing something on a pad of paper. At each stone she pulled a flower from the bouquet she carried and laid it on the ground. Once the caw-cawing of a crow caught her attention and she looked up, watching it sail across the sky.

      He sighed, barely hearing his brother on the other end of the phone. Something about Maddie was so fresh and innocent. Hell, he couldn’t remember ever being that innocent.

      “Uh…what was that?” he asked into the phone, shaking himself. The last time a woman had distracted him this much was when he was a teenager. He ought to have better sense now that he was the ripe old age of thirty-three. It was crazy. Even if he was interested in a long-term relationship, it wouldn’t be with a ditzy innocent who probably thought the whole world was like her hometown in New Mexico.

      It wasn’t.

      The world was a hard place, and nobody knew that better than Patrick.

      “I’m coming over to meet Maddie, as well,” Kane repeated. “I’ll notify the helipad and leave in a few minutes.”

      Despite his inner turmoil, Patrick grinned as he slipped the cell phone into a pocket. Few people had a private helicopter and pilot, always ready to make life more convenient. If his brother wasn’t such a great guy he’d be really obnoxious with all that money.

      Not that Patrick had always appreciated the way that Kane had tried to fill their father’s shoes. Rebellious teenagers sometimes weren’t the smartest people in the world, and he’d been a “rebel without a pause,” leading with his chin and begging for trouble. A lot had changed since then, except he still tended to lead with his chin.

      Carrying his bunch of flowers, Patrick headed toward Maddie. He felt foolish, but putting women and the O’Rourke men together frequently resulted in that emotion.

      He cleared his throat when he was ten feet away, and Maddie’s head shot up. Her eyes widened and she took a step backward, which made Patrick’s own feet freeze. He looked down at the flowers and back at Maddie.

      The flowers had been a really stupid idea.

      “I realize how this looks,” he said slowly.

      “No, you don’t.”

      He sighed. “Okay, I don’t. It’s just that my sister-in-law arrived after you left and was really excited when I told her about you. She wants to be sure you’ll come back to meet her.” He let the arm holding the flowers fall to one side so the bouquet of yellow and russet mums wouldn’t be so obvious. “So, how is the search going?”

      Maddie scrunched up her nose and looked at him for another minute, then shrugged, apparently deciding he was harmless. “I found the graves, but they’re really old. If these people are my relatives, they’re pretty distant.”

      “It can be tough tracking down birth parents,” he said. “What do you know about them?”

      She sighed. “Not much, except that my mother’s last name was Rousso, and she was really young. My adoptive parents met when Dad was attending the University of Washington. They knew ahead of time they couldn’t have kids, so they decided to adopt. It was a private arrangement through a church.”

      “You seem comfortable about being adopted.”

      “Why not? I had a great childhood.”

      “Then why look for your birth parents?”

      She gave him an exasperated frown. “I told you.”

      “You told me you wanted to know about their health history in case you decide to have children.” Patrick lifted an eyebrow. “Then you promptly announced you weren’t having any kids.”

      “Oh.”

      Maddie’s teeth sank down on her lip and Patrick regretted ever bringing up the subject. It was somewhere between babies and adoption that she’d started crying the first time.

      “Not that I blame you,” he said quickly. “Who wants to get tied down with a bunch of rug rats?”

      Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you were pleased your sister-in-law is pregnant. Children are wonderful.”

      Damn it all, he knew better than to get into a discussion about kids with a baby-hungry woman. “Let’s go see Beth,” he said quickly. “Who knows, maybe you’re sisters. She was adopted, too.”

      Maddie hesitated.

      Her first instinct was to say “yes,” but her instincts weren’t all that great when it came to men, so she needed to think it over. On the other hand, Patrick wasn’t asking her for a date, he just wanted to visit his sister-in-law. How much trouble could she get into, especially since she’d already planned to go see the other woman?

      Besides, it wasn’t her business if the man didn’t want a family. She didn’t even know why his dedication to bachelordom was so annoying.

      “All right,” she murmured. “Do you want to go now?”

      “Sure. You’d better follow me in your car.”

      She made a face. “You think I’m going to get lost?”

      “We’ve got a lot of twists and turns around here.”

      “I’ll be fine.”

      She turned on her heel and headed back up the hill to the parking lot. When she didn’t hear footsteps behind her, she looked over her shoulder in time to see Patrick put his bouquet on one of the graves, right next to the flower she’d left.

      Her heart skipped a beat.

      It was obvious he’d been embarrassed about those flowers, but instead of throwing them away, he’d left them on someone’s long-forgotten grave. Carefully. With respect.

      Darn.

      She didn’t want her pulse jumping over Patrick O’Rourke. Her life had just gotten completely scrambled, and he was completely the wrong sort of guy for her, even if she hadn’t sworn off romance.

      Right?

      Chapter Two

      Despite Maddie’s assurance that she knew the way back to town, Patrick arrived ahead of her. He got out and leaned against the Blazer as he waited. A few minutes later she drove up, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

      He suppressed a smile as she slammed the door closed. “I know a few shortcuts,” he said.

      Apparently, Maddie couldn’t stay annoyed, because she grinned at him. It was the most relaxed she’d seemed since he’d made the mistake of kissing her, and Patrick had time to notice the six small freckles on her nose, which were adorable.

      Adorable?

      He rolled his eyes and tried to think of something—anything—else.

      Maddie Jackson

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