LITMIR.BIZ

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You can stay there, with your own room and bathroom, while you decide on a permanent place. You don’t need to sell your house here right away. Best for both of us if you have some fall-back in case this doesn’t work out.”

      “You’ve thought it through, haven’t you?” There was a note of controlled accusation in her voice.

      “Didn’t take long,” he answered. “Most of it’s obvious. Makes sense that neither of us burns our bridges. Makes sense for you to have the time you need.”

      “And is there a deadline on my decision?”

      He shot her a closer look. Was she angry? Her voice was still just as sweet and steady. Her cheeks were still just as pink. He didn’t know what to think, didn’t understand what was going on in her head.

      When Mom was angry or upset, she said exactly what was on her mind. Loudly. When she tried some underhanded tactics and he confronted her with them, she confessed at once. He appreciated that.

      With Stacey, in contrast, it had been like building a house on quicksand. She’d lied. She’d pretended to have emotions she didn’t feel in order to get her way. She’d played on the beliefs she knew he had about duty and honor. She’d splashed around her emotions—genuine and false—like a one-year-old throwing food.

      He waited for a mild, Miss Minnesota Princess version of either Mom or Stacey, but nothing happened, and this left him at a loss. Colleen shifted in her seat and looked uncomfortable. She provided a welcome change of focus. The restaurant was filling fast, and the noise level was rising, along with the smell of pizza in the oven.

      “I think she’s working on a diaper,” Brady and Libby both said in unison.

      Libby added, “I’ll take her out. Eat all you want of the pizza and salad because I’m done.”

      “You haven’t eaten very much,” he pointed out, although this wasn’t the issue he wanted to confront her on. “You haven’t finished a single slice.”

      She shrugged and gave a polite smile. “I wasn’t very hungry.”

      Holding her daughter’s hand, she walked in the direction of the bathroom, still giving no indication of what she was feeling beyond her well-mannered facade.

      Brady watched helplessly after her, wondering whether he’d won tonight’s most important victory, Ohio State Buckeyes over Minnesota Gophers, or whether instead he’d just stared down the barrel of his own defeat.

      Chapter Three

      Libby shifted her life to Ohio on a Thursday in late October with Colleen, after five weeks of making lists and telephone calls and announcements, of talking to Realtors and moving companies, of packing and sorting and giving away.

      Brady had told her back in September that she could “wait until spring” to make the move, as if this was some sort of a concession from him, or as if he were giving her permission, but this was her own decision, and she saw it differently. She hadn’t wanted to wait. It was six months until spring, and that was a long time in a child’s life.

      She found all the concerned and curious questioning from friends and co-workers stressful, too, and needed a definite date on which all that would stop.

      Mom had been skeptical and discouraging about the move, and had asked Libby over the phone more than once, “Is it really that important to give Colleen a sister?”

      “Brady and I both think so,” Libby had told her.

      “But you always insisted on how self-sufficient and happy and well-adjusted you were going to be, just the two of you, even though I always thought it would be harder than you expected. Now you’re doing a complete about-face.”

      Well, it wasn’t like that, Libby considered, but she didn’t say so.

      Her emotional compass was pointing steadily in one direction—toward Ohio, where the girls could be sisters, where they’d have a chance to establish what could be the most enduring relationship of their lives, and where she wouldn’t ever have to just send her daughter off on a plane. She couldn’t predict in advance if the move would succeed or fail. She just had to jump in with both feet and do it.

      To give Brady credit, he seemed to understand. “Send your stuff on ahead, and I’ll arrange to be there when it arrives. I’ll have your room ready for you. Let’s focus on the practical things. The rest can wait.”

      She and Colleen took two days to make the drive from Minnesota, staying in a motel in Bloomington, Illinois, on Thursday night. Colleen awoke early the next morning, and Libby dressed her in the cute outfit she’d packed specially—a long-sleeved cotton knit dress in pink and white, high-waisted and full in the skirt, with matching leggings.

      After a breakfast stop just outside Champaign, Colleen napped for three hours in the car and Libby was able to make good time. They hit Columbus midafternoon, with Miss Bright and Beautiful getting bored and fretful in her car seat after so long.

      Libby could easily have fretted, also. Her legs were stiff, her head ached, her eyes felt as dry as ash. And she was nervous, with a sinking, queasy stomach and clammy hands.

      Brady had given her clear directions to a neighborhood she discovered to be quiet and tree-filled. The day was smoky and cool—undeniably fall, with piles of leaves in rust and tan and orange and gold carpeting the grass beneath the bare trees. It was much milder here than it had been two days ago in St. Paul, however.

      As Libby drove down Brady’s street, a middle-aged man worked a leaf blower, and a helmeted child clattered along the sidewalk on a purple bicycle. She was looking for number 1654, and here it was—a house of sand-colored Ohio stone, with pale blue ornamental shutters, a steep slate roof, a sweep of gently sloping lawn out front, shaded by a couple of big trees and a fenced rear yard.

      She parked in front of one half of the double garage and walked to the front door at Colleen’s pace, holding her warm little hand. Almost as soon as she rang the bell, she could hear Brady’s heavy footsteps, and the door opened seconds later.

      “Hi.” His eyes met hers for just a second, looking slate-blue and preoccupied, and he lifted a hand in greeting.

      She was swamped with memories of the time they’d spent together in St. Paul, and didn’t know what to do with them. She’d forgotten the aura of strength that surrounded him, and the way her body responded to it.

      He had a cell phone pressed to his ear, and he was reeling off what sounded like building specifications. Something like that. Figures and quantities and codes. He wore jeans, a black sweatshirt and a waterproof gray jacket, as if he’d just gotten home, or was about to go out. There was no sign of his daughter.

      Libby felt cold after the heated car, and she was tired, prickly and ready to find fault. Capping the upheaval of the past six weeks, she’d wanted more than a “hi” and a glance, and she hadn’t wanted the powerful pull Brady seemed to exert on her body without even trying.

      Now he was nodding, listening to the voice at the other end of the line, trying to get a word in. “Yes…yes, Nate. I got that. You tell me what you have, okay?”

      Libby picked up Colleen.

      Still listening and saying, “Yes,” every few seconds, Brady stepped back, reached around to flatten a hand between her shoulder blades, and pulled her inside.

      He had big hands, and his touch was warm and heavy on her back. Her shoulder nudged the curve where his arm met his body and she remembered too many moments back in Minnesota when she’d felt this pull and this awareness.

      He had that same earthy, resinous smell that she’d first noticed, like fresh-cut wood, and the same faint sheen of reddish beard just beginning to grow out against his rugged skin. As she passed him, moving ahead into the hall, she could easily have reached out and brushed her hand across that strong, square jaw.

      She wasn’t usually so conscious of how her body shaped itself near a man’s, and

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