The desire to kiss her was almost overpowering to Rick. But it was at odds with the renewed feeling of betrayal that seared through him. She obviously had moved on with her life and was now carrying some other man’s child.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice harsh with anger, with hurt.

She started to say something and had her breath stolen away before she could utter an intelligible sound. Her eyes widened as her hand flew to her abdomen.

“What’s the matter?” On his knees beside her, concern pushed aside his anger.

“The baby,” Joanna gasped, pushing the words out as best she could. “I think the baby’s coming.”

“You mean later.”

“I mean now.” Joanna clenched his wrist.

“Hold on,” Rick told her, beginning to rise to his feet. “I’ll go get help.” The death grip tightened on his wrist, yanking him back down to her.

“Rick, you are help.”

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earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA^® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

To Joan Marlow Golan, with thanks for the homecoming

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Rick Masters wasn’t given to cruising around in his car. Certainly not in what was considered to be well past the shank of the evening.

It wasn’t as if he was at loose ends with nothing to do. A stack of reports waited for his perusal, a pile of documents needed his signature and hundreds of people had lives on the cusp of being rearranged, all on his say-so once he made up his mind about the relocation of the present corporate headquarters for Masters Enterprises.

This wasn’t the time to be driving around aimlessly on deserted streets.

Well, not aimlessly.

He hadn’t been aimless in a very long time. And no matter what he tried to tell himself, he knew exactly where he was going. He’d finally given in and looked her up in the telephone book an hour ago.

She still lived there. In the old house. The one he still dreamed about on balmy nights when his mind gave him no peace.

Like tonight.

Maybe it was a mistake, coming back. Maybe this was the one challenge he should have turned his back on.

Too late now.

Besides, leaving a question unanswered was too much like letting the challenge win. Ever since he could walk, he’d always been too competitive to allow that to happen.

He’d taken that light a little too fast. Rick raised his dark eyes to look in the rearview mirror. No dancing blue and red lights approached.

He had to be careful, he told himself. There was no sense in letting his emotions run away with him, stealing away his tendency to be careful.

The way they once had, leading him down a path where he was vulnerable.

It seemed like a million years ago.

It seemed like yesterday.

He glanced along the silent, sleeping streets where he had grown up. It felt strange, being back. Stranger still to know that she still lived here in Bedford. When he’d left, he’d purposely never asked about her. Never given in to his curiosity about just what path her life had taken. It was enough that it was away from him.

Out of sight was supposed to be out of mind.

Right now, the only thing that appeared to be out of mind was him, he thought. Ironic amusement curved his generous mouth as he turned right at the next corner. There was a shopping mall now. He could remember when it was just an orange grove.

Bedford had done a lot of growing up in the last eight years. Why not? He had.

And yet, had he? Part of him didn’t feel like the successful VP of Masters Enterprises. Part of him still felt like that young boy, head over heels in love with the wrong person. Except that then, he hadn’t thought she was the wrong person.

But he had learned.

Learned a lot of things. Mostly how to take the helm of his father’s company. He’d gotten to his present position on merit, not by coasting there because he was the boss’s son. If he’d coasted, no way would he have been able to take over operations after his father’s heart attack last October. The transition in management from father to son in the last six months had been an incredibly smooth one. And why not? All he did was live and breathe business these days. There was nothing else for him, not since he’d been betrayed by the last person in the world he would have thought capable of it.

Served him right for leading with his heart rather than his head. First and last time. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned. Both his parents had told him that someone in his position had to be careful about the friends he made, the women he cared for.

Well, he’d learned all right. The lessons that you paid for dearly in life were the ones that stuck.

So what was he doing driving through her part of town, driving onto the winding streets of her development, threading his way toward her block?

He really didn’t know.

He didn’t turn back.

Self-torture had never been his way. He’d always been the philosophical one. Things happened. You got over them and moved on. And he had. Moved all the way across country to Atlanta, Georgia, the place that, until a month ago, had been the headquarters of his father’s company. Georgia, where his grandfather had originally been from. But certain economical circumstances had arisen in the last year that made that arrangement no longer as advantageous as it once had been. Almost fully recovered from his heart attack, Howard Masters wanted to have the home office of his company moved to Southern California so that he could be closer to its operations. Tax advantages were no longer a factor. Only control was.

The old man still wanted to exercise control over the company his great-grandfather had begun in the back of a barn. Rick couldn’t fault him. Keeping control had something to do with extending a man’s mortality and Rick could sympathize with that.

Even so, he’d resisted the move at first. But then, he’d challenged himself to face up to his demons. After all, he’d been in love with Joanna a long time ago. He was smart enough now to know that love wasn’t something to build a life on.

If he doubted that, he had only to look to his parents. Two icons of the social world who’d looked perfect together on paper, in photographs, everywhere but in real life.

Love, that wild, heady mysterious substance he’d once believed to have taken command of his soul, was only the stuff they wrote songs about. It had no place in the real world, and he was part of the real world. What he did or didn’t do affected thousands of people. Heavy burden, that.

He should be turning back. It was late and he had things to do.

The April night was crisp and clear and unusually warm, even for Southern California. He’d left the windows of his classic 64 Mustang down. His father had urged him to get a car more suitable to his present station, so he drove a Mercedes to work, but he’d refused to get rid of his Mustang. He wanted the car. Even though it had been the one he’d been driving the night he’d wanted to elope with Joanna. Even though they had made love in that car.

Or maybe because of it.

Rick shook his head as he retraced his way through a maze of ever-climbing streets. Hell of a time to be playing shrink with himself.

The houses here all lined one side of the street, their faces looking out onto carefully manicured vegetation that hid the backs of other houses as they progressed up the hill.

One more block and then he’d be passing her house.

Dumb idea, Rick upbraided himself. He needed to be getting back. Those contracts weren’t going to review themselves and he believed in being a hands-on executive.

Hands. He could remember the way his hands had felt on her warm, supple flesh, remembered how it felt to lay her down on the cool spring grass and make love with her in the meadow behind his parents’ summer home. It was just the two of them there. The two of them against the world.

Until he discovered what she was really like.

Rick wrinkled his nose. An acrid smell wove its way into the stillness.

Probably just someone using their fireplace. Some people didn’t care if it was warm or not. It was just the beginning of spring and a fire in the fireplace was romantic.

His mind started to drift back again, remembering.

He knew he shouldn’t have come this far. Annoyed with himself, Rick looked around for some place to turn his car around and go back the way he’d come.

The smell didn’t go away.

Instead, it intensified with each passing second. He wasn’t sure exactly what made him push on instead of turn around, but he kept going.

Like someone hypnotized, he pressed his foot down on the accelerator, urging his car up the incline and toward the smell.

And then he saw it.

The sky was filled with black smoke.

Joanna felt herself rebelling.

The dream was back to haunt her. The one where everything and everyone was obscured. The one that had her running barefoot, in her nightgown, through an open field enshrouded in fog and mists.

Everything was hidden from her. Hidden and threatening.

But this time, it wasn’t fog, it was smoke that curled around her legs and crept stealthily along her body.

It didn’t matter, the effect was the same.

She was lost, so very lost. And then she began running faster, desperately searching for a way out. Looking for someone to help her.

There was no one.

She was alone.

Every time she thought she could make out a shape, a person, they would disappear as she ran toward them. The resulting emptiness mocked her.

It was a dream, just a dream, she told herself over and over again as she ran. Her heart twisted within her, aching in its loneliness.

She’d be all right if she could just open her eyes. Just bridge her way back into the real world. Over and over again, she told herself to wake up.

With superhuman effort, she forced open her eyes.

They began to smart.

Joanna woke up choking. Her lungs began to ache. Had the nightmare taken on another dimension? Groggy, she sat up in bed. Her bulk prevented her from making the transition from lying to sitting an easy one. She felt as if she’d been pregnant since the beginning of time instead of almost nine months.

Your own fault. You asked for this.

Her eyes were seriously tearing now. This wasn’t part of her dream. She smelled smoke, felt heat even though she’d shut the heat off just before she’d gone to bed more than an hour ago.

And then she realized what was happening. Her house was on fire.

Stunned, her heart pounding as she scrambled out of bed, Joanna grabbed the long robe that was slung over the footboard. She was hardly aware of jamming her fists through the sleeves.

Barefoot, Joanna hurried to her bedroom doorway, only to see that her living room was flooded in smoke. A line of fire had shadowed her steps, racing in front of her. It was now feeding on the door frame, preventing her flight.

Flames shot up all around her.

Something came crashing down right in front of her, barely missing her. Backing up, she screamed as flames leaped to the bottom of her robe, eating away at the hem. Working frantically, Joanna shed the robe before the flames could find her.

Driving quickly, Rick took the next corner at a speed that almost made the Mustang tip over. He jerked his cell phone out of his pocket and hit 911 on the keypad with his thumb.

The instant the dispatch came in the line, he snapped out his location, adding, “Two houses are on fire, one’s almost gone.”

As the woman asked him to repeat what he’d just said, he heard someone scream from within Joanna’s house. Rick tossed the phone aside. It landed on the passenger seat as he bolted from the car. He barely remembered to cut off the engine.

The scream echoed in his brain.

Somehow he knew it wasn’t her mother, wasn’t some renter or some trick of the imagination.

That was Joanna’s scream.

She was in there, in that inferno. And he had to get her out.

The last house on the corner, next to Joanna’s, was already engulfed in flames. It looked as if the fire had started there and had spread to Joanna’s house. So far, from what he could see as he ran toward the building, only the rear portion was burning.

That was where the bedrooms were, he remembered. And she was in one of them.

Racing to the front door, he twisted the knob. It was locked and there was no way he could jimmy it open. His talents didn’t run in those directions. But he could think on his feet.

Stripping off his jacket, Rick wrapped it around his arm and swung at the front window as hard as he could. Glass shattered, raining down in chunks. Moving quickly, Rick cleared away as much as he could then let himself into the house.

He stopped only long enough to unlock the front door. He left it open, a portal to the outside world. He had a feeling he was going to need that to guide him out. Inside, the inferno grew.

“Joanna!” Cupping his mouth, he yelled again. “Joanna, where are you?”

The flames had momentarily frozen her in place as her mind raced on alternative routes of escape, trying to assimilate what was going on.

Was she dreaming?

She had to be. Why else would she be hearing Rick’s voice calling to her? Rick was gone. Had been gone for eight years.

Without a word to her.

Maybe she was already dead. Maybe the smoke had gotten to her and she was having some kind of out-of-body experience.

A fireman. It had to be a fireman. She only thought it sounded like Rick.

“Here,” she screamed. “I’m in here.” Smoke crowded its way into her throat, slashing at her words, sucking away her breath. “In the back bedroom.” Eyes smarting, she couldn’t make out the doorway anymore. “I can’t get out. Help me!”

Like a behemoth, the fire snarled and groaned, playing tricks on his ears, his eyes. He was sure he heard her, heard her voice, muffled but still strong, calling out. Flames belched out of the rear of the house now.

Despite the temperature, his blood turned cold in his veins.

Think, damn it, think.

And then an idea came to him. Running to the kitchen, he passed through the dining room. Rick stopped only long enough to grab the tablecloth and yank it off the table. He soaked the entire cloth in the sink, then hurried with it to the rear of the house.

Toward the sound of her voice.

There were curtains of fire everywhere. He couldn’t see more than a foot in front of him. “Joanna? Joanna where are you?”

“Here, I’m here,” Joanna called out. She couldn’t get out the door and when she ran toward the window, she found her way blocked there as well. There was no way to get to the window. The rug beneath her feet was burning.

And then suddenly, something came rolling in on the floor, crashing through the flames. As she stared, the figure took shape, rising up to assume the full height of a man.

The room began to spin. She thought she saw Rick Masters, her tablecloth wrapped around his head and shoulders, reaching out to her.

The next moment, she felt herself being wrapped up in the tablecloth. He was pressing it to her face, over her mouth. It was dripping wet. Joanna tried to drag in air and only felt smoke clogging her lungs.

“Let’s go!”

The order echoed in her head, sounding so like Rick. She was going to die in some stranger’s arms, remembering Rick.

The man’s arms were around her as he urged her blindly on through what felt like an entire wall of fire.

Joanna tried to protest that she couldn’t make it, but the words never rose to her lips. The man who looked like Rick was pushing her.

She felt herself stumbling. Falling.

The next moment, she felt his arms encircling her. And then suddenly, she was airborne. He was carrying her, carrying her through the inferno.

The heat was everywhere. She could hear it, feel it. And there was pain everywhere as well. Pain that was radiating not from the outside, but from within.

Something was tearing her in two.

Joanna bit down on her lip, but the scream came anyway. It shook her body, traveling down toward the center, toward the source of the pain. The pain wouldn’t stop.

And then suddenly, the heat was gone.

She was being lowered.

Grass, there was grass beneath her.

Desperate, Joanna clawed her way out of the singed fabric enclosure that was still over her head and face. And then it was off, lying in a heap on the ground next to her.

Gulping in air, Joanna looked around frantically, trying to get her bearings, trying to clear her head of the hallucination that insisted on sticking to her like a second skin.

She blinked several times, but the man sitting on the front lawn beside her, panting, with the smell of smoke clinging to every surface of his body, didn’t resume his shape.

Didn’t transform from who she thought she saw to who he really was.

He stayed the same.

Was she dead? Was that it? Was that why she was still staring up at Rick Masters?

There didn’t seem to be any other possible explanation for it.

Rick dragged air back into his lungs. The house next to Joanna’s was encased in flames. He saw no signs of anyone having escaped. His legs shook as he rose to his feet. He felt her grab his arm, pulling him back.

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Let go, I’ve got to see if I can get anyone out.”

“There’s no one there,” she gasped out. “They’re away on vacation.” Her eyes still burned and she squeezed them shut for a moment, then opened them again. He was still there.

“How about in your house?”

She thought she shook her head. She wasn’t sure if she did or not. “Nobody.”

Rick sank down on the ground again. His heart was slamming madly against his chest. “Are you all right?” he demanded.

He sounded angry. They hadn’t seen one another in eight years and he sounded angry. Why? If anything, she should have been the one who was angry. Angry because he hadn’t come after her the way she’d hoped, prayed that he would.

But he couldn’t be here. Could he? Was she losing her mind?

Shaken, her head spinning, she stared at him, still afraid to believe that she wasn’t somehow hallucinating all this.

“Rick? What are you doing here?”

The desire to hold her in his arms, to kiss her and make the world back off, was almost overpowering. But it was at odds with the renewed feeling of betrayal that seared through him. He might not have moved on with his life in the full sense of the word, but she obviously had. Moved on, married and was now carrying some other man’s child in her body.

The sting he felt was unbelievably sharp and deep. Though he’d never talked about it, he’d thought of having children with her. Lots of children. Children with her face and his sense of logic.

Damn it, Joey, why did you do this to me?

“I asked you a question,” he said his voice harsh with anger, with hurt. “Are you all right?”

Her mouth fell open. She wasn’t dead. She was alive. And he was real. He was here. After all this time, he was here. Looking at her the way she never wanted him to look at her. She’d walked out of his life just to avoid that look in his eyes.

And yet, after all this time, here he was, looking at her as if he hated her.

She started to say something, and had her breath stolen away before she could utter an intelligible sound. What came out of her mouth was a purely guttural cry.

Joanna’s eyes widened as her hand flew to her abdomen. The pain she’d been peripherally conscious of intensified, pushing itself to center stage and demanding attention.

“What? What’s the matter?” On his knees beside her, concern pushed aside his anger.

Rick strained to hear the sound of sirens approaching, but there was nothing. Not only that, but there didn’t appear to be any activity, or even any lights being turned on from the three other houses on the immediate block.

Where the hell was everyone? Had he and Joanna just slipped into some private twilight zone of their own?

Joanna clutched his arm, her nails digging into his flesh, her face drained of all color. She wasn’t answering his question.

This couldn’t be happening, she thought, frantically Not now. She wasn’t due for another two weeks. The doctor had promised her.

Promises were meant to be broken.

The promise between her and Rick had been.

“The baby,” she gasped, pushing the words out as best she could. “I think the baby’s coming.”

Dumbfounded, Rick could only stare at her. “You mean later.”

She couldn’t be saying what he thought she was saying. Rick looked from her face to her abdomen and then back at her face again. That had to be the panic talking, he decided.

Joanna could almost feel her knuckles breaking out through her skin as she clenched his wrist.

“I mean now.” The word rode out on a torrent of pain.

Crouching beside her, Rick carefully peeled her fingers from his wrist. She’d almost cut off his circulation. “Hang on, the paramedics have got to be getting here soon.”

Instinctively she knew that they’d never make it in time.

Joanna shook her head violently from side to side, the pain all but cracking her in half. “Unless they’re invisible and already here…they’re going to be too late.” She looked up at him. God, but life was strange, bringing them together like this, now of all times. “You’re going to have to help me.”

There were a great many things he’d learned how to do, felt comfortable in undertaking. Delivering a baby was not one of them. “Me?”

Even with the throbbing sound echoing in her head, Joanna could hear the wariness in Rick’s voice. She couldn’t very well blame him. This wasn’t exactly her idea of ideal circumstances, either.

“I don’t…like this any better…than…you do, but this baby…is coming…and I need…someone…on the other end.” It was getting more and more difficult for her to talk, to frame complete thoughts. The pain kept snatching away her breath, railroading her mind. Panic was attempting to push its way into her consciousness.

Desperate, Rick looked over his shoulder at the other three houses on the block. They were all dark. Why hadn’t any lights gone on? Why wasn’t anyone home?

Where the hell was everyone?

Where they were didn’t matter. What did matter was that he was here and so was she. And she needed him.

It occurred to him that for the second time in his life, he hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. And both times had involved Joanna.

Someone had to be home on the next block. “Hold on,” he told her, beginning to rise to his feet. “I’ll go get help.”

The death grip tightened on his wrist, yanking him back down to her with a strength he didn’t think she was capable of.

“You are help…” She raised her eyes to his. “Please.”

Damn it, she still knew just how to rip into his heart. Even after all this time. Rick knew he had no choice.

“Okay. I—” He saw her jerk and stiffen, her eyes opening so wide, they looked as if they could fall out at any moment.

Joanna bit down on her lip so hard, she thought she tasted blood. A scream welled up in her throat, its magnitude nearly matching the agony assaulting her. It felt as if she were a holiday turkey and someone had taken a buzz saw to her body.

“I have to push…I have to push…I have to push.” The words came out in a frantic rush.

He knew next to nothing about what was involved in delivering a baby, but it had to take longer than this. She had to be wrong. “Are you sure?”

Clutching his hand as if it were her very lifeline, Joanna managed to pull herself up into a semi-sitting position. “I’m sure…oh God…I’m sure.” How did someone feel like this and still live?

Fear gnawed at her. Belatedly, recalling something Lori had said to the Lamaze class about not being able to pant and push at the same time, Joanna began panting hard. Praying that the action would at least temporarily divert this overwhelming urge she had to push the baby out.

Nothing she’d read or heard had prepared her for the reality of this. Before she’d ever walked into the sperm bank, she had read about every possible scenario that could happen at this juncture.

Every bad one now flashed before her, stealing away her courage.

She’d been so sure about this. So sure. She hadn’t even regretted her decision when the local school board had tactfully “suggested” that she take an unpaid leave of absence until after her baby was born. Since she was a high-school English teacher, her condition in the somewhat conservative town was a source of discomfort and embarrassment to a number of the parents. But even then, she’d been sure about her choice to go this route alone.

Now she wasn’t sure about being alone or even the route itself. Now there was only a sense of panic tearing into her with steel claws.

Here she was, her house in flames, her life in shambles, giving birth to a fatherless baby on the front lawn with the only man she’d ever loved inexplicably standing over her.

She felt as if she’d lost her grasp on reality.

“Ricky…I’m…scared.”

“Yeah, me, too,” he admitted.

His words echoed back to him. Joanna had been the only one he’d ever let his guard down with, the only one he’d ever allowed to witness his more human, vulnerable side. To the rest of the world, even from a very young age, he’d always presented a strong, unflappable front. It was expected of him. He was a Masters. Only Joanna had seen him as Ricky, as the boy he’d been and the man he was struggling to be.

But all that was behind him. Years behind him.

Rick squared his shoulders. He had to set the tone. What was there to be afraid of, anyway? Taking her hand, he looked down at Joanna. “Babies get born every day, right?”

Yes, but this one was different. This one was coming out of her. Shredding everything in its path. “Not this one.”

He needed a blanket, a sheet, something. Feeling helpless, Rick looked around. There was nothing available except for the tablecloth he’d used to shield Joanna’s face. Taking it, he tucked the material under her as best he could.

“Not exactly sterile, but better than the grass,” he explained when she looked at him with huge, questioning eyes.

Oh lord, here came another one. Joanna wrapped her fingers around the long blades of grass, ripping more than a few out of the ground as she arched her back, vainly trying to scramble to a place where the pain couldn’t find her.

But there was nowhere to go. The pain found her no matter how she twisted and turned, found her and constructed a wall all around her, imprisoning her.

There was no escape.

Panting again, Joanna tried to recall what she’d learned in her Lamaze classes. Nothing came to her. All she could remember was that the four of them, she, Chris Jones, Sherry Campbell and the instructor, Lori O’Neill, referred to themselves as the Mom Squad, four single women who’d bonded because they were facing life’s most precious miracle alone.

None of that helped now.

She froze, hardly hearing what Rick was saying to her, her body enveloped in one huge contraction.

What was it that Lori’d told the class the last session? Relax, that was it. Relax.

Right, easy for Lori to say. Of the four of them, she was the one who had the longest to go. Lori didn’t know what it felt like to be a can of tuna with a jagged can opener circling her perimeter.

But she did.

Joanna let loose with a blood-curling scream as another contraction, the hardest one yet, ripped into her on the tail of the last one. There was no end in sight. She was going to keep on having these contractions until she died.

Rick jerked back, covering his ear. She had risen up and screamed right against it. He could still feel the sound reverberating in his head.

“Good thing I’ve got two ears. I’m not going to be using my left one for a while.”

He shouldn’t be the one here, helping her give birth to another man’s baby, he thought. This should have been their child fighting its way into the world.

A sadness gripped his heart. He looked at her. “This is all wrong.”

With what little strength she had, Joanna dragged her elbows into her sides and struggled to raise herself up again.

“What…? What’s…wrong? Something wrong…with…my baby?”

“No, no,” he assured her, pushing her gently back down. “Just that your husband should be here, not me.” Or at least the paramedics, he added silently.

“Don’t…have…one,” she gasped. She felt lightheaded and fought to keep focused and conscious. Here came another! “Now, Rick, now!”

Rick saw her face turn three shades redder as she screwed her eyes shut.

This was all happening too fast.

He didn’t have to tell her to push. He didn’t have to tell her anything at all. Suddenly, whether he was ready or not, it was happening. The baby was coming.

Rick barely had enough time to slip his hands into position. The baby’s head was emerging. He could feel the blood, feel the slide of flesh against flesh.

Wasn’t giving birth supposed to take longer than the amount of time it took to peel a banana skin back?

And why hadn’t the fire trucks arrived yet? Were they the last two people on the earth?

It felt that way. The very last two people on earth. Engaged in a life-affirming struggle.

“Pull…it…out!” Joanna screamed. The baby was one-third out, two-thirds in. Why had everything stopped?

She fell back, exhausted, unable to drag in enough air to sustain herself. Beams of light began dancing through her head, motioning her toward them.

Toward oblivion.

In mounting panic, Rick realized that she was going to pass out on him. One hand supporting the baby’s head, he leaned over and shook Joanna’s shoulder, trying to get her to focus.

“I can’t pull it out,” he shouted at her. “You can’t play tug of war with a head, Joanna. You have to push the baby out the rest of the way.”

“You…push it out…the…rest of…the way. It’s…your…turn.”

And then she felt it again. That horrible pain that she couldn’t escape. It bore down on her, tying her up in a knot even as it threatened to crack her apart. It didn’t matter that she had no strength, that she couldn’t draw a half-decent breath into her lungs. Her body had taken over where her mind had failed.

“Oh…God…it’s not…over.” How was she going to do this with no strength left? How was it possible?

Panting, gasping for air, she looked at Rick. He was right. This was wrong, all wrong. She should never have decided to have this baby, never agreed to leave Rick without explaining why.

Too late now for regrets.

The refrain echoed in her brain over and over again as heat surrounded her, searing a path clear for more pain.

The tablecloth below her was soaked with blood. “Push,” Rick ordered gruffly, hiding the mounting fear taking hold of him. What if something went wrong? Should there be this much blood? She couldn’t die on him, she couldn’t. “C’mon, Joanna, you can do this!”

No, she thought, she couldn’t.

But she had to try. She couldn’t just die like this. Her baby needed her.

From somewhere, a last ounce of strength materialized. She bore down as hard as she could, knowing that this was the last effort she was capable of making. If the baby wasn’t going to emerge now, they were just going to bury her this way.

Fragments of absurd thoughts kept dancing in and out of her head.

She thought she heard sirens, or screams, in the background. Maybe it was the fire gaining on them. She didn’t know, didn’t care, she just wanted this all to be over with—one way or another.

She felt as if she was being turned inside out and still she pushed, pushed until her chest felt as if it was caving in, as if her very body was disintegrating from the effort.

And then she heard a tiny cry, softer than all the other noise. Sweeter.

Her head spinning from lack of oxygen, Joanna fell back against the tablecloth, the grass brushing against her soaked neck. She was too exhausted even to breathe.

Rick stared at the miracle in his hands. The miracle was staring back, eyes as wide and huge as her mother’s. He felt something twist within him. He was too numb to identify the sensation.

“You’ve got a girl,” he whispered to Joanna, awe stealing his voice away.

He dripped with perspiration, but he knew it was chilly. There was nothing to wrap the baby in. He stripped off his shirt and tucked it around the tiny soul. The infant still watched him with the largest eyes he’d ever seen.

Several feet away from him, a fire truck came to a screeching halt. He hardly acknowledged its arrival. All he could do was look at the baby he’d helped to bring into the world.

Joanna’s baby.

The scene around them was almost surreal. People were shouting, firefighters were scrambling down from the truck, running toward them. Running toward the fire.

In the midst of chaos, an older firefighter hurried toward them, his trained eyes assessing the situation quickly. Squatting, he placed a gloved hand on the woman on the ground as well as one on the man holding the newborn. “You two all right?”

“Three,” Rick corrected, looking down at the new life tucked against his chest. “And we’re doing fine.” The smile faded as he looked at Joanna. “I mean—” She’d gone through hell in the last few minutes. He might be fine, but she undoubtedly wasn’t. “She needs to get to a hospital.”

Rising to his feet, the firefighter nodded. “I can see that.” Turning, he signaled to the paramedics, who were just getting out of the ambulance. The firefighter waved them over, then glanced back at Rick as the two hurried over with a gurney. He nodded toward the burning buildings. “Anyone else in there?”

“I don’t know.” Rick looked to Joanna for confirmation. She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I just got here myself,” he explained.

“Not just,” the firefighter corrected, looking at the baby in Rick’s arms.

Rick had no time to make any further comment. A paramedic took the baby from him. He felt a strange loss of warmth as the child left his arms.

“We’ll take it from here,” the paramedic told him kindly. “Thanks.”

The firefighter and a paramedic had already lifted Joanna onto the gurney. Strapping her in, they raised the gurney and snapped its legs into place.

“You the father?” the first paramedic asked.

Rick was already stepping back. He shook his head in response. “Just a Good Samaritan, in the right place at the right time.”

He avoided looking at Joanna when he said it.

She and the baby were already being taken toward the ambulance. The rear doors flew open. Rick remained where he was, watching them being placed inside. For one moment, he had the urge to rush inside, to ride to the hospital with her.

He squelched it.

He was in the way, he thought, stepping back farther as hoses were snaked out and firefighters risked their lives to keep the fire from spreading.

“Lucky for the little lady you were in the neighborhood,” the older firefighter commented, raising his voice to be heard above the noise.

The rear lights of the ambulance became brighter as the ignition was engaged. And then it was pulling away from the scene of the fire.

Away from him.

“Yeah, lucky.”

Rick turned and walked toward his car. Behind him, the firefighters hurried about the business of trying to stave off the fire before it ate its way down the block and up the hillside.

There was no doubt about it, Rick decided. He should have his head examined.

After he’d gone out to look over the proposed site for the construction of the new corporate home office, instead of returning to the regional office he was temporarily working out of, he’d taken a detour. Actually, it had been two detours.

He’d gone to see just how much damage there’d actually been to Joanna’s house. He was hoping, for her sake, that it wasn’t as bad as it had looked last night.

In the light of day, the charred remains of the last house on the block—a call to the fire station had informed him that the fire had started there with a faulty electrical timer—looked like a disfigured burned shell. But the firefighters had arrived in time to save at least part of Joanna’s house. Only the rear portion was gutted. The front of the house had miraculously sustained a minimum of damage.

Still, he thought, walking around the perimeter, it was going to be a while before the house was livable again.

With a shrug, Rick walked back to his car and got in. Not his problem. That problem belonged to her and her significant other, or whatever she chose to call the man who had fathered her baby.

As far as he was concerned, he’d done as much as he intended to do.

For some reason, after Rick had gone to what was left of Joanna’s house, he’d found himself driving toward Blair Memorial Hospital, where the paramedics had taken her last night.

Joanna didn’t look surprised to see him walk into her room.

The conversation was awkward, guarded, yet he couldn’t get himself to leave.

He had to know.

“You said last night that you weren’t married.”

He’d promised himself that if he did go to see her, he wasn’t going to say anything about her current state. The promise evaporated the moment he saw her.

“I wasn’t. I mean, I’m not.”

“Divorced?” he guessed.

“No.”

“Widowed?”

She sighed, picking at her blanket. Had he turned up in her life just to play Colombo? “No, and I’m not betrothed, either.”

She was playing games with him. It shouldn’t have bothered him after all this time, but it did. A great deal.

“So, what, this was an immaculate conception?” Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “What’s the baby’s father’s name, Joanna?”

She took a deep breath. “11375.”

He stood at the foot of her bed, confusion echoing through his brain. “What?”

“Number 11375.” She’d chosen her baby’s father from a catalogue offered by the sperm bank. In it were a host of candidates, their identities all carefully concealed. They were known only by their attributes and traits. And a number. “That’s all I know him by.”

Trying to be discreet, Joanna shifted in her bed. She was still miserably uncomfortable. No one had talked about how sore you felt the day after you gave birth, she thought. Something else she hadn’t come across in her prenatal readings.

She raised her eyes to Rick’s. His visit had caught her off-guard, but not nearly as much as his appearance in her bedroom last night had. All things considered, it was almost like something out of a movie. A long-ago lover suddenly rushing into her burning bedroom to rescue her. After that, she doubted very much if anything would ever surprise her again.

What kind of double talk was this? “I don’t understand. Is he some kind of a spy?”

“No, some kind of a test tube.” She saw his brows draw together in a deep scowl. He probably thought she was toying with him. This wasn’t exactly something she felt comfortable talking about, but he’d saved her life last night. He deserved to have his question answered. “I went to a sperm bank, Rick.”

If ever there was a time for him to be knocked over by a feather, Rick thought, now was it. Maybe he’d just heard her wrong. “Why?”

“Because that’s where they keep sperm.”

This was an insane conversation. What are you doing here, Rick? Why are you eight years too late?

She ran her tongue over her dry lips. “I wanted a baby.”

For a second, he couldn’t think. Dragging a chair over to her bed, he sank down. “There are other ways to get a baby, Joanna.”

Suddenly, she wanted him to go away. This was too painful to discuss. “They all involve getting close to a person.”

Memories from the past teased his brain. Memories of moonlit nights, soft, sultry breezes and a woman in his arms he’d vowed to always love. Who’d vowed to always love him.

Always had a short life expectancy.

“They tell me that’s the best part,” he said quietly.

She looked away. “Been there, done that.”

Her flippant tone irritated him. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if there’d been money involved in this transaction, as well. But the question was too cruel, even if she deserved it. He let it go.

Rick rose, shoving his hand into his pockets as he looked out the window that faced the harbor. “So there’s no one else in your life?”

“My baby.” Her baby would make her complete, she thought. She didn’t need anyone else.

Rick looked at her over his shoulder. “Someone taller.”

She knew she should be fabricating lovers, to show him that she could go on with her life, that it hadn’t just ended the day they parted, but she was suddenly too tired to make the effort.

“Not in the way you mean, no.”

Funny, whenever he’d thought of her in the last eight years, he’d pictured her on someone’s arm, laughing the way he loved to see and hear her laugh. It had driven him almost insane with jealousy, but he’d eventually learned how to cope.

Or thought he had until he’d seen her last night, her body filled out with the signs of another man’s claim on her.

He turned and looked out on the harbor again. The sky was darkening, even though it was only two in the afternoon. There was a storm coming. Unusual for April. Boats were beginning to leave. “I went by your house this morning.”

Her house. Her poor house. Joanna held her breath. “And?”

There was no way to sugarcoat this, but he did his best. “It was only half destroyed by the fire.” Rick turned to look at her. “But it’s not habitable.” He saw the hopeful light go out of her eyes.

“Damn, now what am I going to do?”

He approached the matter practically. “Well, it’s not a total loss. It might take some time to rebuild—you do have coverage, right?”

Yes, she had coverage, but that wasn’t why she was upset. Fighting back tears, she sighed. “That’s not the point. I was going to take out a home loan on it.” The appointment had been postponed from last week. She fervently wished she’d been able to keep it. Now it was too late. “Nobody gives you a loan on the remains of a bonfire.” Joanna struggled against the feeling that life had just run her over with a Mack truck. She’d been counting on the money to see her and the baby through the next few months until she could go back to work and start building their future. “Now I don’t have the loan or a place to live.”

Rick studied her face for a long moment. And then he said the last thing that she expected him to say. The last thing he must have expected himself to say.

“You can come and stay with me.”

She stared at Rick, momentarily speechless.

As far as she knew, prenatal vitamins did not fall under the heading of hallucinogenic drugs and she’d had nothing else to throw her brain out of alignment. Why, then was she hearing Rick make an offer she knew he couldn’t possibly have made?

“What did you say?”

Her eyes were even bluer than he remembered, bluer and more compelling. He had to struggle not to get lost in them, the way he used to.

“I said, you can come and stay with me—until you get on your feet again,” he qualified after a beat, feeling that the offer begged for a coda. This wasn’t meant to be a permanent arrangement by any means. He was just temporarily helping a friend. For old times’ sake.

If she could have, Joanna would have walked away. As it was, all she could manage was a pugnacious lift of her head.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t take charity.”

He felt as if she’d insulted him, insulted the memory of what had once been between them. Or had that only been in his own mind? Right at this moment, the chasm that existed between them seemed a hundred yards wide. Sometimes, it was hard to remember how it had gotten this way.

“It would have been charity if I’d just put a wad of bills in your hand and told you not to pay it back.” He shrugged, struggling to rein in anger that had materialized out of nowhere. “This is just putting a couple of empty rooms to use.”

She assumed by his offer that he was staying at the estate. It was the last place she wanted to be. Not with the past vividly rising up before her. “I really don’t think your father would exactly welcome the invasion with open arms.”

“One woman and an infant are hardly an invasion—or an intrusion,” Rick added before she could revise her words. He guessed at part of the problem. His parents had never treated her with the respect that he’d felt, at the time, that she deserved. His mother was gone now, but there was still his father. “And my father is Florida on vacation.” An extended one, he thought. His father hadn’t been back to California for several months, actually.

A vacation meant that the man was returning. “So, what’s that, a week, two?”

“More like three months or more.” With things like teleconferencing, there was not as much need to appear in the flesh anymore, Rick thought. He couldn’t say that he disliked the arrangement. The less he saw of his father, the better.

Her mouth curved with a cynicism that was ordinarily foreign to her. “Oh yes, I forgot, the rich are different from you and me—” She glanced up at him. “Well, from me at any rate.”

He heard the bitterness in her voice. Was that directed at him? Why? He hadn’t said anything to trigger it. But then, as his father had once pointed out, he really didn’t know Joanna at all.

Something within him made him push on when another man would have just shrugged and walked away. He wasn’t even sure why.

Maybe because, despite the bravado, she looked as if she needed him. Or at least, someone. “Mrs. Rutledge is still there.”

At the mention of the woman’s name, Joanna’s face softened. She and his parents’ housekeeper had gotten on very well during the days when he had invited her to his house.

“How is Mrs. Rutledge?”

Like a fighter returning to his corner between rounds, Rick gravitated toward the neutral topic. “Still refusing to retire. Still thinking that she knows what’s best for everyone.”

Joanna smiled, remembering. “She always reminded me of my mother.”

More neutral territory. Rachel Prescott had been the woman he’d secretly wished his mother could have been. He’d spent a great deal of time at Joanna’s house over the three years that they went together. He’d half expected to find her in Joanna’s room when he came to visit. “How is your mother?”

“My mother died last year.” Joanna looked down at her hands, feeling suddenly hollow. Thirteen months wasn’t nearly enough time to grieve.

The news hit him with the force of a bullet. “Oh, I’m sorry.” What did a person say at a time like this? How did he begin to express the regret he felt? The world was a sadder place for the loss. He looked at Joanna, his hand covering hers in a mute sympathy be couldn’t begin to articulate. “She was a very nice woman.”

“Yes, she was.” Joanna fought the temptation to stop this awkward waltz they were dancing and throw herself into his arms, to tell him that she’d really needed him those last few months when she had stood by her mother’s side, watching the woman who had been her whole world slip away from her. Instead, she looked up at him and said, “I read about your mother in the paper. I’m sorry.”

Rick shrugged, letting the perfunctory offer of sympathy pass. It was sad, but he really didn’t feel the need for sympathy. He’d never been close to his mother, not even as a child, and consequently, hadn’t felt that bitter sting of loss when she died. He’d returned for the funeral like a dutiful son, remaining only long enough for the service to be concluded before flying out again. The entire stay had been less than six hours.

In part, he supposed, he’d left so quickly because he’d wanted to be sure he wouldn’t weaken and do exactly what he’d done last night. Drive by Joanna’s house. Looking for her.

Joanna tried to fathom the strange expression on his face. She had almost gone to his mother’s funeral service at the church, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But somehow, that had seemed too needy. So instead, she’d shored up her resolve and remained strong, deliberately keeping herself occupied and staying away.

There was another reason she’d kept away. To come to the service would have been to display a measure of respect and she had none for the deceased woman, none for her or her husband. Not since the two had joined forces that August day and come to her bearing a sizable check with her name on it.

All she had to do to earn it was to get out of their son’s life, they’d said. To sweeten the pot, they’d appealed to her sense of fair play, to her love for Rick. Between the two of them, they’d projected the future and what it would be like for Rick if he married her. They were adamant that he would grow to despise her. He belonged, they maintained, with his own kind. With a woman from his social world, with his background and his tastes. Someone who could be an asset to him, not a liability. They’d even had someone picked out. A woman she knew by sight.

They argued so well that she’d finally had to agree. She hated them for that, for making her see how much better off Rick would be without her.

“Actually,” Rick commented on her original protest, “if there is any charity being dispensed, you’d be the one doing it.”

He always was good with words, she thought. But he had lost her this time. “Come again? I think I pushed out my hearing along with the baby.”

The laugh was soft. He began to feel a little more comfortable. Despite the hurt feelings that existed between them like a third, viable entity, Joanna had always had the knack of being able to make him relax.

“If Mrs. Rutledge finds out that you’re homeless,” he explained, “and that I knew about it, she’ll have me filleted.”

“I’m not homeless,” she protested. “Just temporarily unhoused.”

It was an offer, she supposed in all honesty, that she couldn’t refuse. She knew she could probably crash on any one of a number of sofas, but she would also be bringing her baby and that was an imposition she wasn’t willing to make. Babies made noise, they took getting used to. It was an unfair strain to place on any friendship. Rick had the only house where the cries of a child wouldn’t echo throughout the entire dwelling. Where she wouldn’t be in the way as she struggled to find her footing in this new world of motherhood.

Joanna chewed on her lip, vacillating. “You’re sure your father’s away?”

For a moment, Rick was transported back through time, sitting in math class, watching her puzzle out an equation. He smiled, fervently wishing he could somehow go back and relive that period of his life.

But all he had available to him was the present.

“I spoke to him this morning via conference hookup. He’s having a great time marlin-fishing off the Florida Keys.”

Joanna tried to picture the stuffy man sitting at the stern of a boat, a rod and reel clutched in his hands, and failed. “Marlin-fishing? Your father?”

He knew it sounded far-fetched, but it was true. Howard Masters had undergone nothing short of a transformation. “The heart attack turned him into a new man. He might not be stopping to smell the roses, but he is taking time to do almost everything else.”

The man had always been consumed with making money. She’d heard that he’d only taken one day off when his wife died. “What about the business?”

“Mostly, it’s in my hands.” He wondered if that made her think that he’d become his father. The thought brought a shiver down his spine. “He likes to look over my shoulder every so often and make ‘suggestions.’ But mostly, he leaves it all up to me.”

She wondered if Rick would eventually turn into his father. There was a time when she would have said no, but that was about a man she’d loved. A man who had failed to live up to her expectations. “Is that why you’re here?”

Eyebrows drew together over an almost perfect nose. “In the hospital?”

“No, in Bedford. Did the family business bring you to Bedford?” He nodded. She knew she should leave it at that, but she couldn’t help asking, “And why were you outside my house last night?”

He gave her the most honest answer he could, given the situation. “I’m not really sure.”

Fair enough. Joanna blew out a breath, shifting slightly again, trying not to pay attention to the discomfort radiating from her lower half. This too, shall pass.

“Well, I can’t say I’m not glad you were.” She raised her eyes to his. “Otherwise—” her voice, filled with emotion, trailed off.

He stopped her before she could continue. “I’ve learned that ‘otherwise’ is not a street that takes travel well.” There was nothing to be gained by second-guessing. “You get too bogged down going there.”

He heard the door just behind him being opened. Welcoming the respite, Rick turned and saw a nurse wheeling in a clear bassinet. Inside, bundled in a pink blanket, sleeping peacefully, was possibly the most beautiful baby he’d ever seen.

“Someone’s going to be waking up soon and it’s feeding time,” the woman announced. Her smile took in both of them.

Rick moved out of the way as the nurse brought the bassinet closer, his eyes riveted to the small occupant. “Wow.”

The single word filled her with pride. Joanna couldn’t help smiling. “I believe that’s her first compliment.”

“But not her last,” Rick guaranteed. “She cleans up nicely.”

“You got to see her at her worst,” Joanna pointed out. She didn’t add that he’d seen her at possibly her worst as well.

Rick sincerely doubted that the word worst could be applied to a miracle. Something stirred within him as he watched the nurse lift the infant from the bassinet and hand her over to Joanna.

He was in the way, he thought. “Well, I’d better be going.” He began to edge his way out.

Suddenly, she didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. “Would you like to hold her?” Joanna asked.

Somehow, the baby looked far more fragile now than she had last night. And his hands were large and clumsy. “I already did.”

“I mean now that she’s not messy.” Joanna read his expression correctly. “She won’t break, you know. Not if you’re gentle.”

“I won’t slam dunk her,” he promised. The quip was meant to hide what was really going on inside him. There were emotions there that he wasn’t sure he understood or knew what to do with. Certainly none that he could label properly.

Very carefully, he slipped his hands under the baby’s back and neck, making the transfer. He unintentionally brushed his fingers against Joanna’s breasts. Their eyes met and held for a moment before he backed away from her, holding the infant to him.

The nurse looked on and nodded with approval. “You’re a natural.”

“He should be,” Joanna told her. “He’s the one who held her first.”

The woman’s smile brightened. “Oh, are you her father?”

“No.” The nurse’s innocent question dragged him away from the formless region he’d momentarily found himself inhabiting and back to the real world. He wasn’t the little girl’s father and that was the whole point. “I’m not.” He handed the infant back to Joanna. “I’ll be back before you’re discharged.”

There was a formal note in his voice that she didn’t understand or like. The temporary bridge between their two worlds was gone and they were back to being wounded strangers again.

“We’ll see,” she called after him. She had the satisfaction of seeing him momentarily halt before continuing out the door.

Like a commando unit making a beachhead, the three other women who comprised the Mom Squad descended upon Joanna as one later that afternoon, brightening her spirit as well as her room.

They came bearing gifts, and, more importantly, they came bearing good will and cheer. Something she was finding temporarily in short supply.

The baby was awake and alert and seemed very willing to be passed from one woman to the other like a precious doll.

Sherry Campbell, newly returned to the working world as a reporter for the Bedford World News and a brand-new mother in her own right, was the first to hold her. The baby was almost as big as Sherry’s own three-month-old son. But then, Johnny had been a preemie.

“She’s beautiful.” She beamed at Joanna. “Of course, that’s not a surprise. Look at her mother.”

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