LITMIR.BIZ

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It just felt…emptier somehow.

      She put both hands on the small of her aching back and stretched, letting her head fall back and breathing deeply, in and out, until she felt some of the frustration and loneliness begin to fade away.

      “Now there’s a sight for sore eyes.”

      Janey gasped, straightening so fast she all but gave herself whiplash. That voice…Heat moved through her, but the cold chill that snaked down her spine won hands down. It couldn’t be him, she told herself. He couldn’t simply show up at her house with no warning, no time to prepare.

      “The best scenery in town was always on this street.”

      She peeked over her shoulder, and the snappy comebacks she was famous for deserted her. So did the unsnappy come-backs and all the questions she should’ve been asking. She couldn’t have strung a coherent sentence together if the moment had come with subtitles. She was too busy staring at the man standing on the other side of her wrought-iron fence.

      His voice had changed some; it was deeper, with a gravelly edge that seemed to rasp along her nerve endings. But there was no mistaking that face, not when it had haunted her memories—good and bad—for more than a decade. “Noah Bryant,” Janey muttered, giving him a nice, slow once-over.

      He was taller than she remembered, and had a solid, substantial look to him now. In high school he’d been lanky, slim but wide-shouldered with a bad-boy gleam in his sharp green eyes that made every female heart within range tumble just a little. Except hers, Janey recalled. Her heart had taken the whole long, irrevocable fall the first time she’d laid eyes on him. That would’ve been the fourth grade. And she’d stayed madly in love with him, right up to the moment he’d blasted out of town without so much as a backward glance.

      Ten years ago, that had been. She hadn’t seen him since, but all the times she’d imagined this scene, it had never gone down like this, with him in a suit that probably cost more than she made in a month, while she was decked out in the latest in janitor chic. She reached up to pull the bandanna from her head, then decided against it; flat hair would only complete the fashion statement. “You swore you’d never come back to Erskine.”

      And there was the grin that went along with the gleam. “Things change.”

      “Really? You never could keep your word.”

      His smile dimmed. “Still haven’t forgiven me, I see.”

      “Don’t be ridiculous.” She pulled her bandanna off, after all, to brush at the droplets that had splashed onto her legs. Who was she trying to impress, anyway? A guy who’d claimed to love her a decade ago and then hightailed it out of town without even telling her why? “You haven’t crossed my mind in years.”

      “Well, I’ve thought of you, Janey. You’re the one pleasant memory I have of this place.”

      “Yeah, this is hell on earth,” she said, peering up and down the quiet street. Hundred-year old houses with perfectly manicured lawns and gardens sat behind white-picket or wrought-iron fences. Most of them were businesses now, all but her house and Mrs. Halliwell’s, across the street and a couple down. To him, Erskine, Montana, was tame, boring, forgettable. To Janey it was simply home. “No wonder you couldn’t wait to get out of here.”

      “I’ve always regretted the way things ended between us.”

      Regret? He had no idea what that meant. She glanced over her shoulder even though she knew the front door was safely closed, and then she went down the stairs to be absolutely sure her voice wouldn’t carry inside. “Yeah, well, they did end, so why are you here?” she asked, taking a stance on the front walk, one hip cocked, arms crossed, chin lifted. Noah seemed to get some amusement out of it, judging by his slight smile, but it made her feel stronger.

      “I was passing through on business and when I saw you…”

      All she had to do was look at him and he got the message. He wasn’t stupid, just untrustworthy.

      “I guess I should head out,” he said, but instead of leaving, he had the audacity to step up to the fence and offer his hand.

      Janey was going to take it, too. There was no way she’d back down from the challenge she saw in his eyes, no matter what it might cost her to actually put her hand in his. She took a step forward, then stopped short at the sound of her daughter’s voice.

      “Mom,” Jessie called, racketing out the front door and down the steps, jumping the last three as had become her habit. She hit the ground and barreled into her mother—another new habit—practically knocking Janey off her feet. “Mrs. Devlin called. They’re riding out to bring in the spring calves this weekend, and she asked if I want to go along. She said I could take the bus home with Joey tomorrow and spend the night, if it’s okay with you.”

      “Mom?” Noah said, his jaw dropping. Not that he couldn’t see her as a mom; he couldn’t think of anyone who loved children more or would be better at raising them than Janey. It was only that, in his mind, she was still seventeen, still carefree and single, not a grown woman with a kid eight or nine years old….

      Jessie turned around then and Noah found himself looking into a pair of green eyes, the kind of green eyes he’d seen every morning of his life, staring back at him from his own mirror. His gaze lifted, slowly, to meet Janey’s, suspicion oozing into the tiny part of his brain that shock hadn’t paralyzed.

      Janey pulled the kid back against her, wrapping her arms around the girl’s thin shoulders. The truth Noah saw on her face slid into uncertainty, then misery when he didn’t speak. They stood that way for a moment, eyes locked, nerves strained, enough emotional baggage between them to make Sigmund Freud feel overworked.

      The kid came to everyone’s rescue. She glanced up at her mom, then confidently stepped out of the shelter of Janey’s arms. She stopped halfway between the two adults, fixed Noah with a stare that was almost too direct to return, and said, “I’m Jessie. Are you my dad?”

      NOAH FOUND HIMSELF still at the curb in front of Janey’s house, sitting in his car with no clear idea how he’d gotten there except that raw fury had something to do with it. By the time he fought through the red haze blurring his vision, the dashboard clock told him a couple of hours had passed. The day was no more than a pale crescent over the mountains and lights were burning in Janey’s windows. Homey, inviting lights that weren’t meant to make him feel like an outsider. But he did. He always had, his entire life. Some people would say that nobody could make you feel inferior without your own permission, but when you were the kid of a dirt-poor farmer in cattle country, and you moved to a town like Erskine where the people knew each other so well they were like family, ostracism was the least of what you felt.

      Janey had been the one person he’d counted on to always stand by him, whether they were a couple or just good friends, even if it meant bucking the opinion of the entire town. He’d come back to town believing that hadn’t changed. But all these years she’d shut him out, making a home for herself and her daughter in this small, close-knit community. Without him.

      It wasn’t fair of him to see it that way but he didn’t care. He needed to be angry, because without the strength of that emotion, he’d have to feel the hurt and betrayal—weak emotions that would make it impossible to face her again. And he had to face her again, if for no other reason than that she owed him an explanation about his daughter.

      His half-grown daughter.

      Noah wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Except scared. And angry.

      He let the injustice of the secret Janey had kept carry him to her front door, three inches of solid, sound-deadening oak with a nice, big dead bolt. He’d kick it in if he had to.

      Janey opened it before he could even knock, stepping out on the porch and closing the door softly behind her. “I think it would be best if you didn’t come in.”

      “You can’t expect me to walk away.”

      “I’m not expecting you to walk away, Noah. Just give

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