LITMIR.BIZ

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his own son. He’d been Uncle Jace, who baby-sat and brought gifts, who played with Willy and took him on outings to the ranch. Uncle Jace who’d discovered through those tiny tastes of parenthood that he had a pretty strong urge to become a father himself.

      Unfortunately, the desire to become a parent was not shared by the woman who had been his wife at the time, so instead of looking forward to having a child of his own when Billy and Kim had died, he’d been trying to put a divorce behind him.

      But that was all over now. And he might not have a child of his own making, but he had Willy and he intended to concentrate on being the best dad he could be to the boy.

      Sure, he supposed Clair Fletcher could complicate that, if she had a mind to, but she wasn’t going to change it. He’d do whatever he had to do to go on raising the boy, even if it meant war.

      It would be too bad if it came to that, though, he thought. Not only didn’t he want a custody battle with her, but there were a whole lot more pleasurable things he could think of to do with her….

      An image of her drifted into his mind’s eye, that first image of her when he’d opened the door to find her standing on the porch. No, thoughts of custody battles had definitely not been what she’d initially inspired in him.

      She was damn beautiful. A knock-out—that had been what he was thinking when she’d said her name and he’d suddenly recognized the resemblance to Kristin and Willy.

      Her hair was darker than theirs. Richer. It didn’t have the pumpkin shades of her sister’s hair or her nephew’s, it was the red of cherry wood. And it was a stark frame to the color of her skin. Flawless, porcelain skin so luminous it almost hadn’t looked real in the porch light.

      Her eyes were something, too. Big, wide, green eyes, so light they were like looking at meadow grass through spring frost.

      And there was sure nothing wrong with the rest of her. Delicate features—a thin nose, high cheekbones, lips so soft looking and so sweetly curved, the only thing they could be called was kissable.

      Plus, her body—what he’d been able to see of it through the opening in the coat she’d never taken off—was great. She had long legs for a relatively short person—he guessed her to be not more than five foot three or four. Small hips and waist. Just the right size breasts…

      Oh, yeah, she was not at all hard on the eyes.

      But that didn’t make any difference, he reminded himself. Willy was his priority. Raising Willy. And regardless of what Clair Fletcher had on her mind, raising Willy was exactly what he was going to do.

      Cherry-wood-colored hair and stunning green eyes or no, Jace swore to himself that he would keep the lovely Miss Fletcher at arm’s length—at arm’s length and in his sights so there wouldn’t be any surprises from her.

      And that was all there was to it.

      Except that even with his determination in place, it was still hard to get her out of his head….

      As Clair stared into her open suitcase trying to decide what to wear to the ranch, she realized that her options were limited.

      She’d only packed one pair of blue jeans, so that narrowed that choice. But what to wear with them was more difficult since she wasn’t sure how dirty she might get.

      She opted for the oldest sweater she’d brought with her—a hunter-green V-neck that she wore with a white T-shirt underneath—in case it was ruined.

      Once that decision was made and the clothes were laid out on the bed, she took a shower and shampooed her hair, all the while trying once again to calm those familiar jitters in her stomach.

      The cause was two-fold today—thoughts of Jace Brimley and thoughts of Willy—as her nephew was apparently called.

      Although it wasn’t something Clair would ever admit to Jace, she’d never been much of a kid person. Not that she didn’t like kids. She did. She just hadn’t had very much experience with them.

      She’d baby-sat for Kristin. Their ten-year age difference had made her perfect for that. But her younger sister had been the only child with whom Clair had had contact. And that had been a long time ago. So she wasn’t altogether sure how to relate to Willy. How to make friends with him. How to get him to warm up to her. Especially when he seemed to have been totally oblivious to her the previous evening, during the brief time before he’d been dispatched to watch his Barney tape.

      Would he even notice she was there today? And if he didn’t, how would she draw his attention? Because she needed to have his attention. She needed him to like her. She needed to win him over. If she could accomplish that, she’d have a firmer footing to stand on when she put in her bid to take custody of him from Jace Brimley.

      Jace Brimley. Another cause of her jitters.

      Clair didn’t like not being perfectly honest and up-front with him. She wasn’t a deceptive person, and practicing even a small deceit made her uncomfortable. But even if she hadn’t been sure before, she knew that after seeing Jace with Willy last night, he wouldn’t just give her the little boy for the asking.

      In fact, she was convinced that if she’d been open and aboveboard about why she was really in Elk Creek, Jace wouldn’t have welcomed her the way he had or allowed her free access to Willy. That would have kept her from bonding with her nephew the way she hoped to and would have left her on shakier ground both in getting Jace to agree amicably to give the boy over to her and in winning any court battle, if it came to that.

      She definitely hoped it didn’t come to that, though. She hoped that she and Willy would hit it off and that she could develop the kind of relationship with him that Jace seemed to have. She hoped that, when Jace saw it, he would concede that a blood relative should have precedence over someone who was merely a designated guardian.

      Clair towel-dried her hair, then fluffed and scrunched it with her fingers, thinking that gentle persuasion, finesse, tact, and diplomacy were most certainly the routes she wanted to take with Jace Brimley.

      After meeting him, after seeing him, she knew that he would not be an easy person to do battle with. Not with those big, bulging biceps and those broad, broad shoulders and those penetrating, blue eyes…

      Clair paused in the middle of brushing a light dusting of blush on her cheeks and shook her head disgustedly at her own reflection. What was she thinking? That Jace Brimley would pummel her with those massive muscles or that lasers would shoot from his eyes to burn her alive?

      Of course there was no physical danger from Jace Brimley. Any man who could so tenderly handle a toddler a fraction of his size was hardly likely to react with some kind of he-man, World Wrestling Federation antics when she finally admitted openly that she wanted to raise her nephew.

      If he decided to fight her over Willy he would likely be a force to be reckoned with. But he wouldn’t present any danger to her.

      No, if she were honest with herself, she had to admit that what was really dangerous about Jace Brimley was the fact that her own thoughts kept wandering to things like his bulging biceps and broad shoulders and penetrating blue eyes. Not to mention the rest of his incredibly handsome face and well-built body and even the deep baritone of his voice…

      Clair paused again, this time with her mascara wand halfway to her eye. She’d been so lost in thoughts of Jace Brimley that she hadn’t even realized she’d moved on to eyeliner and mascara.

      Oh, yes, there was definitely danger in her own wandering thoughts, she told herself as she finished her makeup and abandoned the small vanity table to go to the bedside to get dressed.

      In essence, Jace Brimley was the enemy, and it certainly wasn’t good strategy to think about the enemy in terms of staggering good looks and a spectacular body, she reasoned. Even if staggering good looks and a spectacular body were what the enemy had. It also wasn’t good strategy to be distracted by the thrumming of her own heart every time he so much as flashed through her mind. That was truly where the danger lurked. And she wasn’t going

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