LITMIR.BIZ

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a car, you’re going to have to go down the mountain road—there’s only one, as you probably know. Where it ends in a Y shape, turn left. Give or take a half mile, you’ll see a wood sign for MacKinnons—that’ll lead to the house here. Take you ten, fifteen minutes. On the other hand, if you have some way to go cross-country—”

      “A Gator.”

      “Okay, so it’s your choice...with the Gator, you go up that same mountain road...you’ll run into a gravel road, turn right, then zip along that way until you run into a battered old MacKinnon sign, turn in.”

      “So the girls really weren’t far.”

      “I don’t know...they could have circled and backtracked a zillion times if they were trying to outrun a bear. Speaking of which...until you get here, I’ll be talking bear defense with your girls.”

      “Maybe you’d better have that talk with me, too.”

      She laughed, so did he...but when she clicked off the phone, she found both girls sitting side by side on the leather couch, staring at her.

      “Your dad’ll be here in two shakes.” When they kept up with the stare, she cocked her head. “What?”

      “You laughed. And we thought we heard Dad laughing.”

      Rosemary didn’t understand. “He did laugh. But not because he thought your bear was funny. He had to hear that you two were safe. So he was relieved, and naturally he got in a happier mood.”

      Lilly said, “Our dad hasn’t done a whole lot of laughing since Mom died.”

      She didn’t know what to say. The girls had already spilled a lot of information about their personal circumstances that was none of her business. She didn’t want to pry—but actually, she was relieved to understand their circumstances. She could have said something painful or insensitive accidentally, if she’d never known the girls had lost their mom, and that they were trying to have a different kind of Christmas to keep the grieving memories at bay.

      “Hey. Should we call you Mrs. MacKinnon? Or Miss MacKinnon? Or Rosemary? Or what?” Lilly was clearly the one who wanted to know the rules.

      “You can call me Rosemary. And I’m a Miss, not a Mrs.”

      “How come?” That was definitely Pepper. No boundaries on Pepper’s tongue.

      “Because I was happy being single.”

      “Oh. Okay. Can we look around, while we’re waiting for my dad? It’s about the most beautiful house I can remember.”

      “Yes, you can look around...except in the first room down that hall. For a long time it was a utility room, but I turned it into a dark room to develop photographs. When that door’s closed, you’ll see a red light next to the knob, and that means you shouldn’t open the door.”

      “You really develop pictures? Yourself? Right here?”

      It had been a while since she’d “awestruck” anyone...much less had anyone treat her like a goddess. Her family—at least her parents—rarely had a pleasant word to say to her. Since June, whenever they called, it was invariably to make sure she knew her Terrible Mistake hadn’t been forgotten, and probably never would be. Her two brothers would have defended her against the world—and always had—but even they skirted around the question of why she’d done such a “damn fool thing.”

      The girls talked her ears off—and asked more questions than a teacher on a test. But after being raised with two brothers—and working alone all these months since June—Rosemary didn’t mind. She inhaled all the girl talk.

      She never heard a knock on the door, never heard anything until the girls both squealed, “Dad!”

      They’d ended up in the kitchen—both girls had chosen to ignore the table, and instead sat on the counter with their legs swinging—some body part always seemed to be in motion with them. They’d somehow conned her into wrapping up three more cream puffs to take home with them. Possibly she’d been easily conned. Besides, she’d made the full recipe, and even sugar-greedy as she was, couldn’t possibly eat a dozen.

      “Dad! We’re having so much fun! Can we stay a little longer?”

      And then, “Dad, this is Rosemary. Rosemary, this is Dad—”

      “He’s not Dad when you’re introducing him, dummy. He’s Whit. Dad, this is Rosemary. Rosemary, this is Whit. Wait until you taste these cream puffs! Rosemary’s giving us some to take home.”

      “She has a darkroom, Dad. And she has a gun. A big rifle. That she owns. It’s all hers. Everything!”

      Over the bouncingly exuberant girls, their eyes met. She was both laughing and rolling her eyes—there was no shutting the girls up, no chance to temper their exuberance. And his eyes were filled with humor, too....

      But somehow she’d expected the girls’ father to be...well, fatherly looking. A lot older than her twenty-seven. Sure, she’d expected him to be reasonably good-looking, because the girls were adorable, but he’d been married awhile. He should have looked more staid, the way settled down guys tended to get, more safe, less...how would a woman say it?...less hungry.

      Whit radiated all the safety of a cougar just freed from a cage. He was tall, rangy and sleek. He had the shoulder and arm muscles of a guy who was physical and exceptionally strong. He wore an old canvas jacket, jeans and country boots.

      His hair was sort of a dusty blond shade, rumpled from the wind, a frame for the rugged bones in his face. The haircut was the choice for a guy who didn’t waste time on grooming. Straight eyebrows set off his eagle-shrewd eyes—shrewd, except when he looked at his daughters.

      Then his gaze turned into a helpless puppy’s.

      “Did they drive you crazy?” He said it under the relentless stream of eleven-year-old chatter.

      Oh, right. Like she’d kick a puppy in the teeth. The girls were obviously the sun and the moon to him. Besides, even if they had driven her a little crazy, they’d been fun. “They’re wonderful,” she said.

      “Yeah. I think so. But...”

      “I never had a chance to give them the ‘bear’ talk. They should know...you don’t run from a bear. You don’t leave food in the wild, ever, and if you make loud noises, he’ll likely turn tail and take off. A bear doesn’t want to hurt a human—unless it’s spring and it’s a female with cubs. Or it’s fall, and he’s filling up on every berry he can find. So if they spot one from a distance, just move away. Make noise. Trust me, he doesn’t want to eat you. He just wants you out of his space.”

      Pepper had been listening, but she wasn’t buying this advice wholesale. “But what if he’s crazy? You know. What if it’s a people-hater bear. Like the bear in that movie, where the model’s in Alaska—”

      “If he’s crazy, you’re up a creek. But the population of black bears around here doesn’t have a bad reputation. If a crazy one showed on the radar, DNR and rangers would be all over it. So if you just use common sense and do the regular safe things, you should be fine.”

      “Dad, do you see how much she knows? Even about things like bears? And she’s a girl.”

      “I noticed that.”

      Her head whipped toward him again. There was nothing suggestive in his tone. Just in his eyes. There was just something there that sparked a sizzle in her pulse...and Rosemary was too darned practical to feel sizzles—in her pulse or anywhere else.

      “I think it’s time we got out of this nice lady’s hair.”

      “But she likes us, Dad. She said so.”

      “Of course she likes you. You’re the angels of the universe. But we’re still giving Rosemary her life back and going home. It’s already dark.”

      “You sure didn’t call us angels

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