LITMIR.BIZ

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smiled to himself. In a way, the town’s history was like one long, intricate nursery rhyme, with one family member following another. Hades now boasted of four Quintanos, three of whom were married to Yearlings, while Alison, who had come to him originally to become an accredited nurse practitioner, was now married to Jean Luc.

      “I’d rather she didn’t. I need the job,” Heather told him, only half joking.

      Hannah, her six-year-old, was struggling to break free and make a dash for the front parking lot. “I don’t want a shot,” Hayley protested vehemently, her lower lip quivering as tears began to fill her eyes.

      “No shots today,” Shayne promised. “Just a check-up to see if that nasty rash you and your sister have been passing to each other has finally cleared up.”

      “A nasty rash?” Ben repeated in mock disbelief as he came forward. He looked from one girl to the other, appropriately wide-eyed. “You two girls don’t look as if you’d have a nasty rash.”

      “We did,” Hayley, the more outgoing of the two, declared. She pointed a finger at her older sister. “Hannah got it first because she was playing in the bushes Mama told her not to.”

      Fear faded as Hannah took offense, embarrassed in front of the stranger. “Was not.”

      Hayley fisted her free hand at her waist the way she’d seen her mother do. “Was, too.”

      Ben got down on one knee, refereeing. “I bet that old bush just jumped up at you and grabbed you, didn’t it, honey?”

      The excuse clearly appealed to Hannah, who nodded her blond head vigorously, sending her curls bouncing up and down. “Uh-huh.”

      “Gotta watch out for those magical bushes,” Ben agreed. “They’re fast. Where did it grab you?”

      Hannah never hesitated. She pushed her sleeve up immediately, exposing her right arm. She pointed to an area that had been an angry pink only a couple of days ago. “Right here.”

      Still on his knee, Ben examined the area carefully. “Looks like it’s gone to me.”

      “Mama rubs this yucky stuff on us,” Hayley told him, moving aside her own sleeve to show him that her skin was clear as well.

      “That’s because she loves you.” Ben looked up at Heather. “Right, Mama?”

      Heather forced herself to nod her head, her eyes almost glued to the man talking to her daughters. Her voice had deserted her around the same time that the temperature in the room had gone up twenty degrees and the lights had suddenly dimmed to the point where she had to struggle to keep from slipping into darkness herself.

      She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, its cadence echoing the refrain that kept repeating itself in her head: He’s back.

      Ben’s back.

      Chapter Three

      “Looks like both your girls are doing very well,” Shayne told Heather. Or the woman that had been Heather until a couple of minutes ago, Shayne thought as he glanced at the shell-shocked expression on her pretty face. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who’d been caught off guard by his brother’s sudden reappearance in town. “Heather,” he added for good measure.

      When the girls’ mother gave no indication that she had even heard him, he repeated her name, a bit more forcefully this time. From all appearances, Ben had lost none of his magnetic pull nor any of his effect on women.

      Shayne shifted until he was directly in front of her. Almost amused, he passed a hand in front of her face. It was a beat before she even blinked.

      “Heather,” he deadpanned, “how long have you had this hearing loss?”

      It took all she had to pull herself out of the mental abyss into which she’d unexpectedly sunk. Shaking off the mental cobweb as best as she could, Heather looked at Shayne.

      “What? Oh, I’m sorry, Doc Shayne, it’s just that, well—” Words deserted her.

      “Yes,” Shayne said, glancing toward Ben, “he has that effect on all of us.” There was only the slightest hint of sarcasm in his tone.

      “No, no, I mean—” Flustered, Heather struggled to get a hold of herself. “I’m just surprised to see—to see Ben back, that’s all.” Trying to address Shayne, her eyes were still drawn to Ben as she spoke.

      Damn, she was doing it again, tripping over her own tongue. But then, as her mother had enjoyed pointing out, she’d never been one of those women for whom composure was second nature. Composure wasn’t even remotely residing in her neighborhood at the moment.

      Heather made another attempt to collect herself. She wasn’t that wide-eyed twenty-three-year-old Ben had made love with by the lake that last summer before he abruptly disappeared. She was years older than the seven that had passed. Life’s requirements had done that to her. They had made her a mother twice over, as well as a wife, then a widow.

      These days she found herself being a caretaker, her mother’s keeper, in addition to being the sole support of her little family. Most of the time, she was also her mother’s chief source of money, as well.

      Her mother.

      Oh, wow. Martha Ryan was going to have a lot of choice things to say once word of Ben’s return reached her. Even if she said nothing to her mother herself, and she didn’t really intend to, the woman would find out. Word always spread in Hades.

      Anticipation coursed through her veins. Her mother had never liked Ben. Whenever she did mention his name, Martha Ryan always compared him to the husband who had first deserted her and then divorced her through a lawyer he’d retained in Wichita, Kansas. As she grew older, Heather ceased to hold her father’s disappearance against him. Instead she began to understand why he’d gone. It had a great deal to do with self-preservation.

      She felt Ben’s deep-green eyes on her and did her best not to squirm. Not to react at all. She succeeded marginally. But then, she’d heard that stone statues reacted to his gaze.

      Heather cleared her throat. “Are you back?” she managed to ask, fervently praying she’d sounded at least a little aloof.

      Her cool demeanor, if attained, was spoiled by Hayley’s very plaintive and accusing wail. “Mama, you’re squeezing my fingers off.”

      Heather instantly loosened her grip. “Sorry, baby,” she murmured under her breath. Even as she uttered the words, she could feel several shades of pink dash up the sides of her throat. The colors spread even more rapidly to her cheeks.

      “No need to hold on to her so tightly,” Ben told her genially. He looked down at the younger girl. “She’s not going anywhere, are you, Hayley?”

      Hayley, like every female over the age of twelve months, instantly responded to both his tone and his smile. She shook her head madly from side to side, her eyes never breaking contact with his.

      “Uh-uh.”

      The next moment she was tugging her hand away from her mother’s grasp. The second she was free, she slipped her hand into his, accompanying the action with a huge smile aimed directly at him. Unknown to her five minutes ago, the man had suddenly become the center of her universe.

      That’s the way it usually was, Heather thought ruefully. Every girl she’d gone to school with had a crush on Ben.

      He didn’t remember her being this pretty, Ben thought. Or this silent. For a moment he forgot that Shayne was her doctor. “Do you have time for a thorough exam?” he asked her. When he saw Heather’s eyes widen in surprise, Ben realized that he had left off a few crucial words that might make the difference. “Of the girls,” he added. “Just to put your mind at rest.”

      Beside him, he heard Shayne’s impatient intake of breath. He’d stepped on toes again. But no one else was in the clinic and there was time to be thorough. What

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