LITMIR.BIZ

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candy.”

      “Wine, then?”

      “Wine,” she confirmed.

      He growled something under his breath. “You still want me to put on a pair of boxing gloves and fight him?”

      Olivia smiled. “I never wanted you to get into a fistfight,” she said. “I just wanted you to prove you cared about me.”

      “Okay,” he said. “Should I call him or do you want to do it?”

      “Call Stan?” Jack wasn’t making any sense.

      “I think we should duke it out, just the two of us. Man to man.”

      “Jack Griffin, that’s ridiculous! Tell me you’re not serious.”

      He paused, and she thought she could hear him shadowboxing in the background. He was definitely moving around.

      “You could simply declare me the winner,” Jack suggested hopefully.

      “I could,” she agreed, “but first you’d have to win my favor.”

      Jack groaned again. “And exactly how am I supposed to do that?”

      “You don’t know?” She feigned surprise.

      “Apparently not, but I’ll study on it.”

      “You do that.” Olivia gave a full-throated laugh. “I have a feeling you’ll find a way.”

      Oh, yes, it was good to have him back in her life.

      Ten

      Maryellen was going back to work. She dropped her ten-week-old daughter off at her sister’s on Monday morning, the last week of October. She’d resumed a nine-to-five schedule at the gallery.

      “She’ll be fine,” Kelly assured her, as Maryellen lingered anxiously at the front door.

      “You’ll phone if there’s a problem?” Leaving her daughter was harder than Maryellen had dreamed possible. It was difficult enough to let Jon take Katie for his regular visitation. She’d assumed that leaving Katie with her own sister would be easier than this. Tears filled her eyes at the prospect of being away from her baby for more than eight hours a day.

      “Every new mother goes through this,” Kelly assured her. “It’s hard leaving our babies, even when we know they’re getting the best care in the world.”

      “She usually needs to be fed around ten,” Maryellen said, although she’d gone over Katie’s schedule twice already. She’d expressed the milk earlier and had filled several bottles.

      “I know, I know. Now, get out of here before you’re late for work.”

      Her sister was right, but still Maryellen hovered there in the doorway. Then, before she could change her mind about the whole thing, she turned and hurried to her car. Within a few days, dropping the baby off would become part of her daily routine. She’d considered bringing Katie to the gallery with her, but an infant would be distracting. While not openly forbidding it, the owners had been discouraging.

      She hated being away from her baby for a large part of every day, hated the sick sensation it left in the pit of her stomach. Doubts haunted her, fears that she was a bad mother. She couldn’t help feeling that while Kelly was Katie’s aunt, she couldn’t possibly love her as much as Maryellen did. Despite her regrets, she knew this was necessary, and she had to face these demons sooner or later.

      By ten that morning, Maryellen had phoned her sister no less than three times. Katie had slept for most of the morning, just as she normally did. During her last phone call, Kelly had told her she was warming Katie’s bottle and would be feeding her right on schedule. Maryellen trusted her sister, but she worried that Kelly might not hold the baby the same way Maryellen did. Worried that the strange environment might disrupt her routine. Worried that Katie would intuitively know she wasn’t in her own home, her own bed.

      The bell chimed above the gallery door just as Maryellen replaced the receiver. Taking a moment to calm her pounding heart, she made an effort to look friendly and professional. As she stepped into the gallery’s main room to meet her first customer of the day, she managed to smile.

      Her business facade crumbled the instant she saw it was Jon. She was so pleased to see him, so glad to have someone to talk to about Katie.

      He took one look at her and frowned. “I thought so.”

      “Thought what?” Her hackles immediately rose. Her pleasure at seeing him vanished. The last thing she needed was a lecture.

      “I figured I should check up on you your first day back to work. It was hard to leave Katie, wasn’t it?”

      She wanted to pretend he’d completely misread her, but she wasn’t sure she could pull it off. She found it increasingly difficult to disguise her feelings from Jon. Before Katie, she’d been adept at fooling her mother and sister about her thoughts and emotions. But Jon had the innate ability to see straight through her.

      “It was awful,” she admitted.

      “Did she put up a fuss?”

      Maryellen shook her head, and to her horror, tears sprang to her eyes. This was mortifying.

      With his hand at her elbow, Jon led her to the back room. Turning her so she faced him, he placed his hands on her shoulders. “Katie will be perfectly fine with your sister.”

      Maryellen nodded. “It’s just that I hate not being with her.”

      Jon expelled a sigh, and slowly, as if against his will, he drew Maryellen into his embrace. “I know…”

      “How can you possibly know?” she challenged, needing his comfort and yet resenting the fact that she did. She closed her eyes and welcomed the feel of his arms, savored his warmth, his masculine scent. She didn’t want him to realize how weak his nearness made her. The only way she could combat these feelings was to react defensively.

      “I know, Maryellen,” he said evenly, “because every week I have to leave my daughter with you and then walk away.”

      “Oh.” It couldn’t possibly be this hard on him, she reasoned. He couldn’t suffer the same regrets and doubts she did. Could he?

      “I…I must be a terrible mother.” Being this close to Jon was intoxicating; there was no other word for it. She needed to escape that intoxication, to ease away from him, and she needed to do it now.

      This emotional hold was exactly what she’d been afraid of ever since the day they’d kissed. He made it far too easy to rely on him. If she didn’t break away now, he’d become a permanent part of her life. And that was something she couldn’t risk. That wasn’t part of the deal. He was Katie’s father—not Maryellen’s husband.

      “You’re not a bad mother, you’re just a new mother,” Jon told her confidently. “You have a lot to learn. We both do.” He stroked her hair with such tenderness that she could hardly move out of his arms.

      With a wrenching effort, she put some distance between them. Crossing her arms, she leaned her hip against the desk. “I’ll be fine now.”

      “You sure?”

      Not making eye contact, she gave a slight nod. “I…it’s just the first day. It’s bound to be the most difficult.”

      “That’s what the books say.”

      She managed a weak smile. “It was…thoughtful of you to stop by.”

      Jon slipped his hands in his pockets. He did that, she’d noticed, whenever he was unsure of himself. She sensed that he didn’t want to be here and at the same time couldn’t stay away. She understood perfectly. She’d prefer to keep Jon out of her life—she couldn’t keep him out of Katie’s—but he was there. And wonderful. The day Katie was born, they’d formed a bond, as parents and as friends, and neither

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