Dedicated To Deirdre

“You’re kidding.” She took the item from him as if it might bite. “You actually started a fire with this?” she said to the boys.

“Yep!” Tommy, less experienced at reading his mother’s ire, swelled with pride.

She didn’t miss a beat. “And is it okay to play with fire?”

Both children visibly sagged. Small voices muttered, “No.”

“That’s right,” she said. “And what’s the rule about fire?”

“There has to be a grown-up with us.” The older boy looked chastened—but not exactly sorry.

“And what happens when you don’t follow the rules?”

As one, two little faces fell, and they turned toward the house. “Go to our rooms,” they said in mournful unison.

“I’ll let you know when you can come out,” she called after them. Then she turned to Ronan. “Mr. Sullivan, I don’t know what to say, except thank you again.” She sighed, looking at the magnifying glass and shaking her head. “They can find things to get into that I’ve never even thought of.”

He couldn’t suppress his grin any longer. “They were pretty proud of that trick.”

She shuddered. “Thank God you came along when you did. I went the other way to look for them because that creek is like a magnet. I was sure they were down there.” She slipped the lens into her own pocket. “You know, if you decide to stay here, you’ll have to put up with them.”

He chuckled. “They aren’t so bad. Just lively.”

“You can say that again.” She shook her head in exasperation and blew out a breath as she shoved stray black curls out of her peripheral vision. Pointing to the stable as she began to walk, she indicated that he should follow her. “I’m sure you’ll think twice about this apartment when you see it. I’ve been planning to fix it up, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. As I said, it needs a lot of work.”

“I don’t mind work,” he said mildly.

“And Butler County isn’t exactly a hotbed of social events. You’ll have to drive back into Baltimore for any kind of nightlife.”

“Definitely not high on my list.” The thought of social events led like an electrical current through a chain of thought that halted at the first time he’d ever met this woman. As he followed her into the barn and up a flight of stairs, he could almost see her sitting in a pool of candlelight, a strained, obviously false smile pasted on her pretty face.

The social event had been the annual Christmas party for the office employees of Bethlehem Steel. His cousin Arden, being between boyfriends, had invited him. He hadn’t had any plans, so he’d agreed to go. They were seated at dinner by name cards, eight to a table. He and Arden had been paired with one of the company vice presidents and his wife, the vice president’s executive secretary and her husband, and Deirdre and Nelson Patten, who was another top executive.

Drink had flowed freely during dinner, too freely, and Patten had gotten slurring and stupid, well before the end of the meal. His wife had sat in embarrassed silence, eyes on her plate unless someone spoke directly to her.

He’d been struck by her unusual beauty, unable to keep his eyes off her—and the first time she’d risen to visit the ladies’ room, he’d realized that she was heavily pregnant. He’d never thought pregnant women were particularly sexy, but his body seemed to forget that when he looked at Deirdre Patten.

Even obviously unhappy, she was strikingly pretty, with soft roses blooming under the fair skin along her high cheekbones and big, long-lashed green eyes beneath strongly defined, arched brows. Her black hair was pulled back into a classic twist, but strands of it escaped to form a halo of curl around her head.

The gown she wore was basic black, plain in contrast to some of the sequined atrocities that decorated some of the other party goers. But in his memory, the color had been the only thing basic about it. The dress had only two teeny, tiny straps, baring her creamy shoulders, showing off her delicate collarbones and her long, pale neck before molding itself to her breasts and falling over her belly nearly to the floor. It had a sort of stole around it that clipped in the front, right at her breasts, and though she was certainly far better covered than many, he could see that she was generously proportioned in that department. Most generously proportioned. At the time he’d wondered if that was due to her pregnancy, but now he plainly could see that she was still well endowed.

The dancing had begun after dinner. He’d taken Arden onto the floor, and promptly lost her to the attentions of a young man. As he returned to his seat, he’d noticed Patten had taken to the dance floor, too. But instead of holding his lovely wife in his arms, he was wrapped in an indecently close embrace with the executive secretary, whose husband was nowhere to be seen. Deirdre sat alone at their table, a small, forced smile pinned into place, her head high.

A real lady, he remembered thinking. He also remembered thinking that if she were his, the last place he’d be was in the arms of some other woman. Especially when she was pregnant. Any idiot knew women needed reassuring when their bodies were stretched out of shape and their waists were nothing but a memory. No, he’d have to take that back. Her idiot husband obviously didn’t know it.

Ronan had taken the seat next to her, but he’d never been good at small talk. Why was it that he could think up dozens of glib lines for his characters to utter, and when he needed them, words always seemed to have dried up? Deirdre had sat beside him in silence, trying gamely to ignore her husband practically having sex with the woman on the dance floor.

Around eleven o’clock the pair had disappeared altogether for a time. Arden had come floating by, whispering in his ear that this might just be The One, and would he mind very much if the fellow took her home, at which he’d laughed and told her to call him in a few days.

He could have left then, but no power on earth would have dislodged him from that table while Deirdre Patten sat there all alone. Finally, when midnight came and her husband was still nowhere in sight, he’d said, “I’d be happy to see you home, Mrs. Patten.”

She’d looked at him then, and he had the feeling she was really seeing him for the first time.

“Thank you, but I can call a cab. I’m used to it,” she’d said. She’d risen then, and so had he “Good evening.”

There was no reason for him to stay longer, so he’d followed her out of the ballroom. He had no idea when her baby was due but she looked like she couldn’t be far away from delivering. God forbid she should fall. Catching up to her in the hallway, he’d offered her his arm at the top of the steps. She’d hesitated, whispered, “Thank you,” and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.

Outside the front of the lavish hotel in which the party had been held, the doorman hailed a cab at Ronan’s signal and he helped her into the back seat. And as the cab drove her away, he’d thought it was a damn shame for a woman like that to be wasted on a jerk like Patten.

Now he waited, a step below her as she unlocked the door to the rooms above the stable. Dressed in a butter yellow tank top tucked neatly into a pair of belted khaki shorts, she didn’t resemble the elegant woman from that Christmas party. But as he eyed the neat hourglass figure, the curve of her buttocks beneath the shorts and the thick ponytail that confined most of her black curls, he decided she was equally attractive like this.

He’d fantasized about her for months after the party, picturing her with him, how he’d handle her like spun glass, how she would respond.... It had been a harmless fantasy; he’d never expected to see her again, though he’d wondered if her baby had been a girl or a boy. And, if he was honest, what she’d look like when she wasn’t pregnant.

Now he knew. She looked damn good. No, she looked fantastic. Running into her at that store had given him a jolt because she’d looked incredibly close to the way he’d recreated an unpregnant Deirdre Patten in his agile mind.

Immediately, he began hoping that he would see her again and her children...but not because he wanted to get to know her. Although she’d been a pleasant, harmless fantasy, he wasn’t looking for romantic entanglements. That was the absolute last thing on his mind, of course. No, he was interested in her sons. His knowledge of kids was limited. Being around her children would be exactly what he needed to give life to his current novel. True, the boys were a little younger than the kids he’d first envisioned in the plot he was working on, but it actually would make the story even more compelling if the children were preschoolers.

Her rental property was a stroke of incredible luck. And it wasn’t a lie—he was looking for a place to live. Bolton Hill, right in the center of downtown Baltimore, was an enclave of wealth a few blocks wide. But it was surrounded by crime and squalor, and shrinking every year. And while he loved the area, he had found it getting more and more difficult to write in that setting.

He needed space; space to walk and think without the constant vigilance of warding off muggers, to sleep without gunfire and sirens, to work without well-meaning neighbors constantly interrupting his work hours to prove to their friends that a bestselling author really did live next door.

He craved anonymity. He craved the simple ability to walk out of his home without being recognized, a respite from the women who constantly planted themselves at his elbow, hoping for a relationship or even a night with him.

And after the experiences he’d had recently, being hard to locate was highly desirable.

“I warned you.” Deirdre stepped aside to let him enter the first room.

She wasn’t kidding when she said it needed work, was his first thought. The main room was a large one, with an old wall-mounted sink and an ancient refrigerator at one end—presumably what passed for the kitchen-living area. The floors were unfinished lumber, the walls unpainted. But two skylights as well as a wide window at the near end gave the room a light and airy feel. Through a door at the far end, he discovered a smaller room—a bedroom?—and a bathroom. A real bathroom, with a claw-footed tub and white porcelain fixtures. This room also boasted a large window at its end, though it had no skylights.

Rustic, definitely. But with a few modifications, he could make it work.

“It really is awful,” she said from behind him. “I need to fix it up a little before I rent it. It was built more recently than the rest of the buildings here, about sixty years ago when the owner had racehorses. His head groom lived here.”

Sixty years ago. Recent, by the standards of the house and the big barn, both of which had to be well over a century old.

Nodding his head, he walked around the empty space. He already knew he was going to take it but he didn’t want to appear too eager. Finally he said, “I think it will do if I work on it, add paint and paper, maybe sand the floor.”

“You want it?” She eyed him as if he weren’t quite sane.

He laughed. “It’s solid, looks well insulated. The rest is cosmetic. Would you mind if I fix it up a little?”

“You can do whatever you like with it,” she said. “I would offer to reimburse you for any expenses, but—” she swallowed and looked him straight in the eye “—my finances are a bit too strained.”

He nodded. “I can understand that.”

“You can?” Her expression warmed, and the beginnings of a tentative smile appeared.

“Umm-hmm.”