LITMIR.BIZ

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people disagreed. His secretary, Marletta, was making retirement noises, even though she was only forty-eight. And his sister-in-law—

      Josh snorted softly at the way Matt’s wife had taken his inventory last month when he’d gone back to Montana to attend his newest nephew’s christening. When his younger brother, Dan, showed up with Mei Li, his new Amerasian bride, Annie had teased Josh about being the last unmarried Walker. Told him he’d better get moving.

      He’d snarled back that hell would freeze over before he’d get involved with a woman again—and stalked out of the house.

      Annie had strolled outside after him, folded her arms on the top rail of the corral and calmly asked him when he was going to stop feeling sorry for himself.

      It wasn’t self-pity, he’d protested. It was wisdom won the hard way.

      As he put the car through a curve, Josh shook his head, recalling how Annie had just steamrolled on. You don’t hold the patent on being hurt, Josh. Everybody gets wounded. It’s part of living. If you want to suffer, that’s your choice. But if you want to heal—stop picking at the scab!

      The best way to do that is to find someone who’s hurt worse than you are and help them.

      Nonsense, of course. But somehow Annie’s words had stuck in his head. Even now, weeks later, he couldn’t seem to forget them.

      He didn’t understand what her suggestion was supposed to accomplish, though. Was he supposed to feel smug and self-satisfied for doing a good turn? Or grateful because he was so much better off by comparison?

      Besides, Josh thought as the rumble of thunder drowned the CD’s music, he didn’t know anyone who’d been hurt worse than he had....

      

      As the old pickup coasted to a stop, Dani Caldwell guided it toward the edge of the pavement. Unless she missed her guess, the truck had thrown a rod, which meant...

      Dani swallowed the panic rising through her, since there was no point to it The disaster had already happened; now she just had to pick up the pieces and move on.

      “I should be getting good at this,” she muttered as she collected the small sack of groceries she’d spent her nearlylast dollar on, then clambered awkwardly down from the pickup cab. “I’m sure getting enough practice! Maybe that’s what I’ll do after the baby comes—give seminars in coping.”

      To keep her mind occupied with something besides the stifling afternoon heat, her crippled finances, the terminally ill truck or her real problems, Dani elaborated on the silly theme as she trudged down the narrow, seldom-used state road toward the primitive cabin that was now both refuge and prison.

      “I’ll start small, with free lectures to church groups. Then hotel ballrooms at a fee. In no time at all, I’ll be the Queen of Coping, with infomercials, books, videos—”

      Her foot slipped on a stone and she had to fight to stay upright. That might do it, Dani conceded as she shifted the groceries to the other arm and continued on. So far, she’d fought her difficulties to a standstill, but a broken ankle—out here in the middle of West Texas Nowhere—might actually convince her to give up.

      But her ankle wasn’t broken, she reminded herself firmly. And she was young, strong and determined. Also broke, widowed, pregnant and just about job skill-less....

      The baby kicked her so hard she staggered. Dani grinned and patted her bulging abdomen. “That’s your first comment today,” she said, “and you’re right, tiger. No self-pity. We’ll figure something out. Besides, we’re almost home.” Just before the next dry streambed, she turned off the road at the odd half-palm, half-yucca tree. It marked the beginning of the narrow rocky path that followed the wash for a few yards, then curved around a big boulder before rising to her latest hiding place, a one-room hunting cabin that belonged to a schoolmate’s uncle.

      Dani had to pause to rest at the boulder. The book said that tiring easily was natural so close to delivery.

      “Just a couple more weeks, darling,” she whispered to the precious burden she carried beneath her heart. “Then we’ll begin our new life together.” As she rested, Dani stared out over the stark desert landscape, so unlike the lush Piney Woods of East Texas where she’d grown up.

      A wave of homesickness swept over her and she allowed herself one minute for wishing things were different. For wishing she could have stayed in Lufkin to have her baby.

      For wishing her baby could have known its father.

      Dani closed her eyes, but the pain she’d once felt over Jimmy’s death had faded to weary acceptance in the six months since he’d caught a bullet meant for one of his hotheaded barroom buddies. When the doctors declared him legally dead the next day, the very last of her hopes and illusions had died too.

      And she’d had so many! She’d fallen in love at first sight—the instant she’d bumped into Jimmy Caldwell while filing into the high school cafeteria for freshman orientation. Within weeks they’d been going together, and four years later, on her eighteenth birthday, she’d married him and settled down to live happily ever after.

      Dani sighed. “Ever after” had turned out to be five years. As for the happily part, well... They’d been happy for a while, but Jimmy had changed so much—especially in the last two years—that by the time he’d disappeared into the night that final time, the boy she’d loved had become a complete stranger.

      “But don’t worry, baby. I won’t make the same mistake twice.” Dani didn’t have time to nurse another broken heart; she had a baby to bring into the world and raise.

      Oh, she wasn’t naive enough to think that doing it alone would be easy, but she had no choice and that at least made it simple.

      No choice. Dani smoothed her hand over the baby. Her parents were gone, killed in a car wreck only weeks after her wedding. And Jimmy’s folks... Dani held them largely responsible for her husband’s unhappiness and self-destructive behavior. They’d pressured him relentlessly to be the first, the best, the most. When he couldn’t measure up, he’d sought comfort with casual drinking companions instead of his wife.

      Well, they weren’t getting a chance to damage her child with their heavy-handed treatment.

      Unfortunately, her in-laws had different ideas. They also had money, powerful contacts throughout the state, and no qualms about using any means necessary to get what they wanted.

      And what they wanted—now that their only son was dead—was sole custody of their grandchild. Dani refused to give up her child, but she had no resources to fight them.

      So she’d run. And run. And run again.

      She’d planned to wait out the last of the waiting here, then head for a good-size town and use her tiny emergency fund to pay for a midwife and a night or two in a cheap motel. After the due date, she was going to clean houses or baby-sit while she worked out the details of a real career path.

      “So much for plans,” she muttered. The truck breaking down had not been in her scenario. Now what?

      A deep rumbling made her look up. Dark clouds filled the sky, flashing streaks of lightning over the desert like party streamers.

      “Thank you.” Dani addressed the thunderheads with a little laugh. “I was just about to waste my time worrying—as if that ever created a solution.”

      The first, chilly raindrops splattered the dust around her. “I do have a roof to put over us,” Dani told her unborn child, pushing off from the rough limestone and resettling the grocery sack. “And I think I’d better hurry up and do itl”

      As she hustled up the path, making it through the cabin door just before the rain started in earnest, Dani welcomed the distraction of the storm. She tried to think positively for the baby’s sake, but she didn’t honestly know how much longer she could keep up her brave front.

      With no car, no job, no money, alone and a baby coming...

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