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He held open the door for them. The baby was nestled into her mother’s chest now, sucking her thumb. When she glanced at him, she scrunched up her face again, and opened her mouth so wide he could see her tonsils.

The baby was wearing a knitted sweater with a little pink hood and pom-poms.

A memory niggled, so strong, so hard, he nearly shut the door.

Their baby was going to be a girl. The amniocentesis

had told them that. Stacey had begun to buy pink things. Little dresses. Booties.

“Are you all right?” the woman asked him.

No. He wasn’t. Two years, and he still wasn’t. He had accepted it now. That he was never going to be all right. That time would not heal it.

But he lied to her. “Sure. Fine. Come in.”

She stepped hesitantly over the threshold. The baby craned her neck and looked around.

“I’m Abby Blakely,” she said, and freeing a hand, extended it. She was small, but in the full light, she looked older than she had outside. Mid to late twenties. Not the teenager the Cubs cap had suggested. Her figure was delectable—slender, but soft in all the right places.

He took her hand, noting for a hand so small, it was very strong. “Shane McCall.”

“And you really were a policeman?”

“Why do you find that so hard to believe?”

“It’s not the policeman part I find hard to believe. It’s the retired part.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t look very old.”

The mirror played that trick on him, too. He looked in it and saw a man who looked so much younger than he felt.

“Thirty,” he said.

“Surely you’re a little too young to be retired, Mr. McCall?”

“Shane. Uh. Well. Semi, I guess. I’m a consultant on police training, now. Look, do you want to come in and sit down?”

Her eyes found his ring finger, and he saw her register the band of soft, solid gold that winked there. “Are we going to wake your wife?”

“No. I’m a widower.”

“I’m sorry.” After a moment, “You seem young for that, too.”

“Tell God.” He heard the bitter note in his voice, and would have done anything to erase it. “Look, are you coming in or not?”

She hesitated, looked like she was going to cry again, wiped at her face with her sleeve. “I don’t know what I want to do. I’m so tired.” She brightened. “I know, I’ll call one of my sisters.”

He liked the way she said sister, somehow putting so much love into the word that he knew her sister wouldn’t mind her calling at this time of the night. But why hadn’t she thought of that before?

She thrust the baby at him and bent to undo her shoes. It seemed to him he’d been in a better position when she didn’t trust him. He wasn’t good with babies.

He held the chubby body awkwardly, at arm’s length. “Uh, just leave your shoes on.”

“On these floors. Are you crazy?”

He looked at the floors, not sure he’d ever noticed them before. Wood. In need of something. Tender loving care.

The baby was regarding him with a suspicious scowl. Like mother, like daughter. “Me, Belle,” she finally announced warily.

“Great. Hi.” He still held her out, way far away from him.

She wiggled and he could feel the lively energy, the strength in her.

Abby straightened, and he went to hand the baby back. “Could you just hold her for a minute? Just until I use the phone?”

It would seem churlish to refuse. “The phone’s through here,” he said, leading the way, past the closed door that went into the empty main floor suite, and down the hall to the kitchen. The baby waggled away on the end of his held-out-straight-in-front-of-him arms.

“She won’t bite you.”

“Oh.” He made no move to change his position. Belle wiggled uncomfortably.

“Does she smell?” Abby asked.

“Belle no smell,” the baby yelled indignantly.

“Uh,” he managed to unbend his arms a little, draw the baby into him. Sniffed. She did smell. Of heaven. Something closed around his heart, a fist of pain.

And whatever emotion it was, it telegraphed itself straight to the baby, because she stared at him round-eyed, then touched his cheek with soft fingers, took the collar of his jacket in a surprisingly strong grip, and pulled herself into him.

“That’s otay,” she told him, nestling her blond curls under his chin and her cheek against his collarbone, and beginning to slurp untidily on her thumb. Drool fell down the vee of the jacket he hadn’t taken off for fear of reoffending Ms. Blakely’s sensibilities with the view of his naked chest.

“The phone’s right there.”

His intruder gave his kitchen, which was as Spartan as his bedroom, a cursory glance, went to the phone and picked it up. He could hear her calling information. How come she didn’t have her sisters’ phone numbers?

When she hung up she looked discouraged again.

“They’re not here yet. My sisters.”

“Here yet?”

“We’re all moving here. It’s a long story.” She looked exhausted and broken.

“All? Like how many dozen are you talking?”

She laughed a little. “Just three. I’m one of triplets.”

Three of her. That was kind of a scary thought for a reason he didn’t want to contemplate. The baby was sleeping against his chest, snoring gently. He registered the warmth of her tiny body, the light shining in her curls, and braced himself, waiting for some new and unspeakable pain to hit him.

“I’ll call a road service for you,” he said, tight control in his voice, “But I wouldn’t count on anything happening right away. This isn’t Chicago.”

She looked at him, startled.

“License plates,” he said. “Parking sticker on the left-hand side of your windshield.”

“You really are a cop.”

“Not now,” he corrected her.

Still leaving him with the baby she began to fish through a bag nearly as big as she was. She came out finally, triumphant, with a piece of wrinkled paper.

She handed it to him.

He awkwardly shifted “Me-Belle” to the crook of his arm and took the piece of paper. He stared at it. Blinked rapidly. Looked again. His own address was written there in a firm, feminine hand.

“There’s some mistake,” he finally said.

“Why?”

“This house is number twenty-two, Harbor Way.”

She looked deflated. “I must have written it down wrong.”

“You must have.”

She slumped down on a chair, took off her ball cap, ran a hand through her straight hair. It was sticking up in the cutest way. “Now what? I have to go. Obviously.”

That was obvious all right. Her hair was tangled and damp, and her face was pale with weariness. And still, all he could think, was that she was damnably sexy. She was wearing jeans that were way too big for her, accentuating the fact she was as slender as a young willow. She couldn’t stay here. Obviously.

“Look, for what’s left of tonight, you can stay here,” he heard himself saying. “The house actually used to be two self-contained units. It also used to be a summer rental. It’s all furnished. There’s linens in the closets. I’ve never even used the bedrooms down here. They’re across the hall.”

“You’re a complete stranger!”

“I admit it. Stranger than some.”

She managed a small, tired smile.

“There’s a lock on the door. Not that I’m in the habit of attacking people. In my underwear.”

He could tell that clinched it. The lock. Not his reassurances. The lock and the fact that she was tired beyond words and probably close to collapse.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Whatever. In the morning, I’ll help you get your car straightened away, and find your house.”

“Shane?”

“Yeah?” He wished she wouldn’t have called him his first name. He didn’t want to be her friend. He didn’t even want to be her rescuer. He just didn’t have any choice.

“You’re making me very sorry I kicked you so hard.”

From behind the locked door, Abby listened to Shane go up the stairs, and wondered if she’d lost her mind. Not only had she packed every earthly possession that she cared about and trekked across a whole country with her baby, now she was under the same roof as a man she knew nothing about.

Well, not nothing exactly.

He had been a cop.

And she had never in her life seen eyes like that. It wasn’t the color, precisely, though the dark chocolatey brown was enormously attractive; it was the look in them. Intense, the gaze steady and strong and stripping.

It was those eyes that had kept panic from completely engulfing her when he had come up behind her as she tried to make her key fit in the front door. His front door.

While part of her had been screaming in pure panic—near-naked man lurking in the bushes at three in the morning—another part of her had registered those eyes and told her that the hard beating of her heart might not have a single thing to do with fear.

Naturally, she wasn’t going to listen to that part of herself. She was resigned to the fact that she was not a good judge of masculine character. Belle’s father being a case in point. Still, even when she’d been desperately trying to think of how to get by that formidable man who had trapped her there on that tiny porch, some traitorous little part of her had been staring at him in awe.

Registering every detail of him. His height, the width of his shoulders, the smooth unblemished skin, the clinging night mist showing off his impressive physique as surely as if he was a bodybuilder, oiled.

Because he had been tense, geared for action, he had seemed to be all enticing masculine hardness. Mounded pecs, the six-pack stomach, the ripple of sinew and muscle in his arms and legs.

She shouldn’t have been so surprised when he’d said he used to be a cop, because he had policeman hair—the cut short, neat and very conservative and the color of cherry wood. And there had been a certain authoritative hardness in his face, too. A look of readiness in the taut downturn of his mouth, the narrow squint of his eyes. He was a man who was prepared to do battle.

It was probably that strength, a core-deep thing, that had convinced her to take a chance and trust him. Her instincts told her that of all the places she could choose to stay tonight, admittedly limited, she would not find one safer than this.

Her adopted mother would, of course, be horrified. Poor Judy wanted life to be so neat and tidy. She had worked so hard to give Abby a decent home, even though she herself had been a single mother.

Judy had thought it was insane to go to the lawyer’s office, even more insane to accept the gift. What would she think of this latest twist?

The situation tonight, Abby reminded herself, had been desperate. What else was she going to do? Sleep in her car? If it was just herself, that might have been okay. But with Belle? It was a terrible night out there, damp and cold. Even her mother would understand why she had chosen to stay here. Wouldn’t she?

Abby went unseeingly through the plainly furnished apartment, found the first bedroom, lay her sleeping daughter in the center of the big double bed, and went to pull the drape. As she did, she realized she was facing the street. Miracle Harbor didn’t look at all like it had looked when she’d been here a month ago. It had looked so beautiful then, with its quaint, weathered houses lining steep, narrow avenues that all led to the ocean. The main street had redbrick shops, with colorful awnings, big picture windows looking out on the beach and the ocean they fronted.

Tonight, with the swirling mist, it looked more like a scene out of a horror movie, set in the fog-shrouded streets of Gothic London.

How could she have written down the address of the house she had inherited incorrectly? How could she?

And how could a town that had looked so cheery and welcoming in the light of day look so distinctly formidable at night?

And how could her traitorous car just give up like that? Of course, it was old, and she had asked a lot of it, carrying her across the country dragging all her earthly possessions along behind it. Maybe it was a miracle that it had made it this far before it had quietly quit.

Miracles, she thought, and turned from the window. She checked the corners and under the bed for spiders or webs, and finding none, tumbled into the bed beside her daughter, too tired to find the bedding. Miracles, she thought again with a sigh. Isn’t that why she had come here, really?

Some part of her wanted to believe, more than anything else, that this old world could still work a miracle or two.

She thought of the conditions of her inheritance, the inheritance that would allow her to give her daughter everything she wanted for her. A home, a safe place to grow up.

If you didn’t count perverts in the bushes. She giggled tiredly at the thought.

Of course, there were those conditions. One to live here in Miracle Harbor for at least a year. No problem. But two?

Preposterous. How could someone get married just for personal gain? What kind of marriage would that be? And given her history with Ty, Belle’s dad, she simply knew she couldn’t trust herself in the all important department of mate selection.

So, why had she come, uprooted her whole life, knowing she had no intention of fulfilling that second condition?

During her brief visit with her sisters, she had learned they had been separated at about age three. She had no memory of them, but Corrine said she had foggy memories of something. And Brit’s adoptive parents had told her she was three when she came to them.

Abby had come because she wanted to know her sisters better, had to know them, had felt as soon as she had seen them, a deep sense of having found herself.

And maybe, in some small, lost part of herself, she really wanted to believe in fairy-tale endings, wanted to believe in a place with a name like Miracle Harbor, maybe she could expect anything to happen.

Maybe it had already started, with her at the wrong house, and the car not starting, all things linked together, part of a larger plan.

For her.

And what about him? How would he fit into that plan?

He wouldn’t. He’d done the decent thing tonight, she suspected because his training would allow him to do nothing else.

By tomorrow, he would be part of her history, somebody she could nod to when she passed him on the street.

There had been mile-high barriers in that man’s cool eyes, and she felt no desire to try and penetrate that mystery.

But even if she did decide to try and fulfill that ridiculous condition placed on her gift, she would never pick a man like him. She wanted someone sweet and kind. Someone who would make a good father for her daughter.

A little pudgy fellow with glasses, who took lunch in a paper bag to his office.

Upstairs, she heard the groan of a bedspring, and felt the oddest little stir in her stomach. A stir that a little pudgy fellow with glasses would never be able to create.

Which was just as well. That stir, she knew, led to nothing but trouble.

Chapter Two

A streak of sunshine had crept through a crack in the drape, and lay in a stripe across her face, making her blink lazily awake. Abby stretched luxuriously, looked around the room. Even in the full light of day there was not a spiderweb in sight.

The furnishings were plain, in keeping with what Shane McCall had said about the house being a summer rental, but the room itself was lovely. High, plastered ceilings, wood floors, wide oak window casings.

Would the house that had been given to her as a gift by a complete stranger be as beautiful?

She thought of last night, and Shane McCall, and she felt, again, that funny little shiver of pure awareness.

“Abby,” she told herself. “You are now rested. You are immune to that man. You know the truth about another pretty face. Isn’t that right, darlin’?”

She reached out to pull her daughter to her, reached further, patted the mattress, and as the awful truth sank in, she sat bolt upright in bed. Only a little dent remained where her daughter had slept snugly beside her last night.

“Belle,” she called, leaping from bed, “where are you?” She fumbled for buttons on her homemade blouse that had sprung undone during the night, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. This place wasn’t child-proofed like her modest apartment in Chicago. “Belle?”

She raced into the next room. A chair had been pulled up to the door, the kind that had the twist style of lock on the handle. The door was now open into the hallway that led to the outer door and the kitchen they had been in last night.

Did the door to the outside have the same kind of lock? Abby tried to think from last night. She was sure the lock she had tried to fit her key into was a deadbolt. Even her precocious daughter would have trouble with that.

But, as she scrambled into the hallway, her heart sank. The front storm door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even closed, a brisk, sea-scented breeze coming in through the screen.

“Belle!”

“In here.”

Only it wasn’t Belle who answered. It was him, his voice loaded with irritation.

She catapulted into the kitchen, and skidded to a halt.

Immune, she reminded herself.

But really that rush of relief that her daughter was here and not happily exploring the streets of Miracle Harbor, getting closer and closer to the ocean, seemed to have lowered her defense system again.

She was suddenly not sure she had registered his full impact last night. Just looking at him made her feel hot and flustered, like a woman who had a sign flashing on her forehead that said: I Need A Husband. Desperately.

He was a man who didn’t seem to like much clothing. This morning he had on navy blue running shorts that showed off tanned, muscular legs, and a flat, hard fanny. A grey sweatshirt with some sort of police emblem on it stretched tight over the broadness of his chest, sleeves cut off at the shoulder so that every inch of his powerful arms were on display.

Could a woman look at that and not wonder what it would be like to be held by him? Only if she wasn’t human!

He had a white towel strung around his neck and his hair was dark with sweat, curling at the tips even though it was so short.

His facial features, she decided, were nauseatingly perfect. High cheekbones, straight, strong nose, faintly jutting chin. He hadn’t shaved yet today, and for some reason that only made him look better, faintly roguish, untamable.

She knew all about this kind of man. They could have anything, and they took it. And when they were done they threw it back.

Only one thing stopped her from hating him completely—the look of muted panic that was in those amazing dark eyes as he surveyed her daughter.

“What does this kid eat? We’re about out of options, here.” He snapped this at her, like a military man on a mission that was about to fail.

Abby dragged her gaze away from him. Belle was settled happily on top of a stack of books on a chair, at a kitchen table covered with cereal boxes and bowls.

“You mean she’s sampling everything?” Abby asked, aghast.

Her daughter took a regal bite of the offering in front of her, which looked like chocolate covered raisins in milk, swallowed, frowned and pointed autocratically at her next choice.

Which he, heartthrob of the universe, rushed to get for her.

“What are you doing?” Abby said, folding her arms across her chest. As if that would protect her. From what?

Her desire to laugh that’s what, she told herself firmly. At the sight of one hundred and ninety pounds of one hundred percent menacing, masculine ex-cop being commanded by a baby.

“I’m feeding the kid.” He glowered at Abby.

“Why?”

“When I came in from my run, she was just coming out the door of your suite. I tried to stuff her back in, but she wasn’t having any of it. She announced she was hungry, and she damn well expected me to do something about it.”

“In those words?” Abby couldn’t resist teasing him.

“She doesn’t need words! All she needs to do is screw up her face and show me her tonsils! When I told her to go back to Mommy, she yelled at me. Loudly.”

“Belle!”

“Not a bad girl,” Belle said, anticipating what was coming. “Belle bad?” she asked Shane and blinked at him with sweet coyness.

“Yes!” he said, but when Belle blinked again, he said, “Maybe not bad. Just stubborn, strong-willed, loud and fussy.”

“She is not fussy,” Abby addressed the only accusation that was not totally accurate. “She’s taking advantage of you.”

“A two-year-old?” He paused in his pouring of yet another sample into a bowl and drew himself to his full height, which was formidable, at least six feet, and gave Abby a disdainful look. “That seems unlikely.”

“Really, you didn’t have to feed her. You could have come and got me up.”

“I thought of that.” He added milk to the bowl, paused thoughtfully, and then added a sprinkle of brown sugar.

“And?” she asked, watching as he pondered for another moment, then dropped another dish of sugar on the cereal.

“You looked done in last night. I thought maybe you needed to sleep. Also, given that I promised you a secure room, I didn’t think you’d appreciate waking up with a strange man hovering over you.”

The very thought made her mouth go dry, actually. Did he have to be so devastatingly attractive?

Suddenly an uncomfortable reminder of what she must look like shot through her. Her hand flew to her hair. She could feel it standing straight up, and not in those cute little spikes she could accomplish with a tub of gel and a lot of patience. She glanced down at the rumpled clothes she had slept in. The buttons were done up crookedly on her blouse.

Naturally, he looked like he was ready for a photo-shoot, even with the shadowed face, and sweat forming dark stains on his sweatshirt.

“One black shin is enough,” he told her, with a side-long look from under sooty, tangled lashes.

Abby looked at the leg she had kicked last night. It was sporting a rather large purple and blue bruise. Somehow, she doubted a kick would have been the first thought that would have come to her mind if Shane McCall had been the first thing she saw this morning.

“I hope that doesn’t hurt too much.” She thought she sounded very stiff, a woman transparently anxious to let a man know she could not be swayed by him, no matter how devastatingly attractive he was.

“To an old warrior?” he growled, then sighed. “Yeah, you bet it hurts.”

“Mommy kiss better,” Belle suggested wisely.

“Okay by me. What’s Mommy have to say?” He said it casually, a man who knew the lines, but there was no emotion attached to the words, not even friendly teasing.

She kept her own features carefully bland. “Mommy’s kisses are reserved for Belle. Only.”

“That makes me feel real sorry for Belle’s daddy,” he said.

“A man less in need of your pity, you will never meet,” she shot back, and then was sorry for all that she had revealed about herself with that one line. “Belle and I are on our own.”

Still something about being in the same room with this scantily clothed man, and that word kiss hanging in the air between them, made the most bizarre thought crowd into her head.

I’m looking for a husband.

Her sister, Brittany, had said she was going to place an ad in the newspaper with similar wording after the three sisters had heard about the conditions placed on their gifts. And then Brittany had laughed with devil-may-care ease when Jordan Hamilton had treated her to a look of formidable disapproval.

But Abby wasn’t Brittany. Not even if they did look identical.

“I think we’ve intruded quite enough,” she said, the stiffness still in her voice. “We can be on our way now.” Before I make a complete fool of myself, not for the first time.

Really, she had thrown herself at Ty, Belle’s father, bowled over by his good looks and his easy charm, thinking they meant something. No man had ever made such a fuss over her before.

Besides, Ty’s attentions had meant something. He wanted something. And as soon as he’d gotten it, the chase was over. Still, pregnant and afraid of being alone, she had stayed with him longer than any woman with an ounce of self-respect should have. He claimed, right up until the end, to love her madly, but still no offer of marriage had been forthcoming.

“I’ll have a look at your car,” Shane said.

Anybody, she reminded herself, could be charming. Anybody could seem like someone he was not.

“No,” she said, watching as he stood there, carefully monitoring Belle’s reaction to his latest offering. “That’s unnecessary.”

Brit would not approve. After all, hadn’t she sent Abby that ridiculous book, How to Find the Perfect Mate? Abby had vowed not to read it, but found herself reading it anyway, with a kind of horrified fascination.

Had Brit sent one to Corrine as well? Corrine seemed a little clumsy in the man department, just like Abby.

Or maybe clumsy wasn’t the right word. Corrine was more—aloof wasn’t quite the right word. Reserved?

More like scared, Abby thought, wondering if only a sister would see behind the barriers in Corrine’s eyes. Even a sister who had never known her. Well, who could blame her if she was scared? They were being asked, the three of them, to leave everything they had ever known and start over. With only each other.

It still shocked Abby that somebody who looked exactly like her could act like Brit.

Outgoing, bubbly, confident. Brit moved and talked and acted as if she believed she was incredibly beautiful.

And how could Abby look at her sister and see how beautiful she really was, and then look in the mirror and not see it at all in herself? Maybe, she should try her hair like Brit’s—grow it out, let those curls go wild. A little more makeup, a little more style—but for what?

To attract that perfect man? she asked herself scornfully.

Abby bet Brit had sent Corrine a copy of that dreadful book, too. The book which had a whole chapter devoted to man-trapping grooming and dressing techniques.

And said absolutely nothing about what to do with wild, sticking-straight-up hair, and a morning-after look that was notably missing the night before. What use was a book that didn’t deal with emergency situations?

Unless she just hadn’t gotten to that chapter yet.

Abby, she reminded herself, you hate that book and everything it stands for.

Her mission was not to attract this man in front of her, even if he was just about as close to a perfect male specimen as she could probably hope to find in this lifetime, but to get away from him, leave him to his own life, and to find her own.

She could afford a mechanic, she reminded herself. Her meager savings were soon to be supplemented, because she had been given a house like this one, divided into two suites.

And her upstairs suite was inhabited by a reliable tenant. He’d been on the premises for nearly a year, and showed no signs of leaving, according to information she had from the management company.

With the income from him, and if she could pick up a bit of sewing, she and Belle would be just fine. Rich, by her standards.

Rich enough to have someone else come look at her car.

“I’ll just call a service station,” she said. “We’ve put you out enough.”

“That now,” Belle crowed, having rejected what was in the bowl in front of her.

“To be honest,” he said, in a stage whisper “I think I’d rather look after the car than her.”

“You don’t have to do either. I’ll take her out for breakfast. We don’t need to trouble you any—”

“Nooo,” Belle wailed. “Me like here.”

“I guess, you would, you little minx. Don’t you dare push that away! You love Sugar Pups!”

“Don’t,” Belle said mutinously.

And while Abby tried to do the impossible, reason with someone who had not yet fully developed reasoning skills, Shane picked her keys up from where she had left them on the table the night before and went out the door, whistling, one of those aggravating men who took control of everything.

Her feminist heart was appalled of course.

But her human one admitted wanting nothing more than to be looked after every now and then.

He felt, as he went down the walk, as though he had been hit over the head with a sack of bricks.

First, twenty pounds of tiny female wrapping him around her little pink finger with complete ease, and then her mother coming in to finish the job.

How on earth could a woman look that good first thing in the morning?

Her hair going every which way, her blouse with the buttons done up crooked, her jeans all rumpled and so ridiculously large they were ready to fall off.

And she looked like a damned beauty queen.

Like with a flick of her finger, she could have had him pouring cereal for her, too.

He recognized this feeling as one he did not like and would not tolerate.

Shane McCall would not be vulnerable. Isn’t that why he was here? In a little town where he didn’t know a soul, and planned to keep it that way?

Correction: didn’t know any girl souls.

He’d known Morgan for years, from when they had worked together on a temporary assignment on a drug smuggling case in Portland. Morgan had moved back here, to his hometown of Miracle Harbor, to get married and have babies. Morgan had invited him to come for dinner one night. Meet his wife, his kids.

The wife he might have been able to handle, but kids?

He couldn’t be around kids.

He didn’t want to feel things. Guys talked about basketball scores and work. Kids related on a different level entirely. And women, well, he wasn’t even going to go there.

An old pal on the Drug Unit, Drew Duarte worried about him, had pulled him back from a life of complete loneliness and despair by begging him to help out with training. So he did specialized training sessions a few times a year, which is why he ran and lifted weights. He wasn’t letting any young buck ten years his junior run him into the ground. Now, Drew had him taking it a step further. He was working on a chapter on drug detection procedures for a Federal enforcement agency training manual.

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