ater sprayed across Dylan’s gray T-shirt, turning it black in spots. “Hey,” he said as he poured shampoo on Adam’s head. “Get your fingers out of the spout.”

“I can do it myself, Dad,” Adam complained, sitting in the empty bathtub, the water running down the open drain.

“I know you can.” Sometimes Adam forgot to scrub his whole head, and Dylan liked to make sure at least once a week that all of Adam’s hair got clean. “What’s in here?” Dylan asked. “A gravel pit?”

“Nope. Wally and me got into a sand fight at his house.”

Like he’d done since the very first time he’d bathed his son as a newborn, Dylan shaped Adam’s short hair into a point on top of his head, then leaned him back and rinsed out the shampoo. “I’m surprised Shelly didn’t beat on your behind.”

“Hope was there,” Adam said as he shut his eyes and relaxed. “Shelly never whacks ya in front of company.”

“Hope went down to the beach with you?”

“Yeah.” Adam raised his hands to his face and cleared the water from his eyes.

“In a swimsuit?”

“Yeah. It was blue and green.”

“One piece or two?”

“One.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how she’d looked, but he guessed he knew anyway. Hope Spencer would look good in a garbage bag. “What did you all do?”

“Hope took some pictures, and then after a while she helped me and Adam build a sand castle. Only it got all wrecked when a beetle flew on her arm.”

Dylan raised Adam to a sitting position, then, using his hands, squeegeed the water from Adam’s head. “Did she scream?”

Adam laughed. “Yep, and jumped around, too.”

Dylan would have liked to see Hope jump around in her swimsuit. He shoved the rubber plug into the drain and poured banana-scented bubble bath into the running water. “There’s the soap and washcloth,” he said, pointing to the soap dish. “Scrub yourself real good.” He set a plastic basket filled with a mask, snorkel, and various action figures on the edge of the tub. “Don’t forget your parts. And,” he added over his shoulder as he stood and walked toward the bathroom door, “clean your ears. There’s enough dirt in there to grow potatoes.”

He moved down the short hall to the kitchen and the stack of dinner dishes waiting for him. He reached into the refrigerator, took out a bottle of Bud, and shut the door with his hip. He twisted off the cap, placed it between his thumb and middle finger, and snapped. The cap sailed under the kitchen table instead of into the garbage can and hit Adam’s dog. The puppy lifted her head, then went back to sleep.

Dylan raised the bottle to his mouth and eyed the dishes stacked in the sink. Sometimes he thought it would be so much easier if he just got married. If he just found someone who could put up with him and be a good mama to Adam. Someone who wouldn’t mind taking her turn doing the dishes, and who would be home when he needed to take off on an emergency. Someone to talk to late at night. Someone to run the tips of her fingers across his belly.

But Dylan knew from experience that there was nothing worse than living with a woman for the wrong reasons. Nothing worse than living in a house with a woman he couldn’t love for the long haul. Lying next to her in bed. Having sex with her because it was available, but no longer making love.

He’d done that with Julie. If it hadn’t been for a broken condom, their relationship probably wouldn’t have survived a year. Except for the fact that they’d both been raised on a ranch and both had hated it, they’d had nothing in common. If it hadn’t been for Adam, the relationship wouldn’t have lasted as long as it had. He loved his son and felt truly blessed to have him. They were buddies, but raising a child on his own wasn’t easy. On him or on Adam, and he wouldn’t have chosen it. He wouldn’t have chosen the sole responsibility of raising his son to be a good boy and a decent man.

He wouldn’t have chosen to see the pain and confusion in his son’s eyes when they talked about why Adam’s mama didn’t live with them and why they didn’t live with her.

Every July when Dylan took Adam to the airport to meet Julie, he always had to answer the same question: “Why can’t you come with Mommy and me?” And every year Dylan had to dance around the truth. He didn’t want to spend time with Julie, but, more important, he didn’t want Adam to get the idea in his head about their living as a family. Adam already had some weird notion that once his mother wasn’t on television anymore, she’d move to Gospel and live with them. But even if Julie’s show was canceled tomorrow, Adam’s dream would never come true.

Every year Adam would still go visit her, and every year Dylan would camp out at the Double T for the two weeks that Adam was gone, looking over the books, helping out where he could, and irritating the hell out of his brother-in-law, Lyle. Lyle was a good cattleman and pretty good at the business, too, but even though Dylan had no interest in running the place himself, half the ranch was still his, and it would someday belong to Adam.

Dylan spent the first two weeks of every July going over the price of seed and feed and doing one of a million things that needed doing. But mostly he did it to avoid his empty house.

The water in the bathroom shut off, and Dylan set his beer on the counter. He rinsed the plates in the sink, and as he placed them in the dishwasher, his thoughts turned from his troubles with Adam to his problem with Hope Spencer.

Hope Spencer was a beautiful woman, and there was no denying that he liked the way she filled out her clothes. Even though he would probably never tell her, he liked that she was sort of sassy and smart-mouthed. He liked the smile she brought to his lips, even when he didn’t know why he was smiling.

Kissing her had been a huge mistake. He’d known it even as he’d lowered his mouth to hers. She’d tasted all smooth and boozy. Like a swallow of expensive whiskey, she’d warmed him clear down to the very pit of his belly. The touch of her hands had squeezed his insides until he could hardly breathe. The look in her blue eyes, the passion shining back at him, had nearly sent him to his knees. Sent him there begging her to let him touch her naked skin and kiss between her thighs where she was warm and slick. If he’d had a condom in his wallet, he wasn’t so sure he would have stopped. He wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t have had sex with her right there, in the kitchen, against the refrigerator.

Dylan closed his eyes and pressed a palm to the front of his Levi’s. He wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t have stripped off those Lycra shorts and buried himself deep within her. His tongue in her mouth, his hands on her breasts, and his penis inside where she was hot. Moving with her until her moist walls contracted and squeezed around him.

Beneath his hand, he was hard and he ached, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Well, yes, he did know. He could do nothing or he could take care of business himself. Dylan reached for his cold beer.

Kissing her had been like being struck by lightning. It had raised his hair and burned his insides, but what really worried him about last night was that once he kissed her, he hadn’t given another thought to her profession. She was a writer, and he just happened to be hiding the biggest story since the fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. America’s angel and PTL sweetheart, Juliette Bancroft had an illegitimate son.

Something that was so important, he’d forgotten the second his tongue had swept the inside of her mouth. He was afraid the only thing that had stopped him was the thought of bringing another unplanned child into the world. No way in hell did he want another child under those circumstances.

Dylan looked out the window above the sink. In the dirt driveway, the setting sun cast long shadows on his Ford truck, parked next to the sheriff’s Blazer. He wondered what Hope was doing over on Timberline. He wondered if she was watching TV or getting ready for bed. Adam had mentioned something about her taking pictures. Maybe she really was writing an article for an outdoors magazine. Maybe she hadn’t been lying about that. Yeah, maybe, but that still made her a writer.

He could always run a check on her. He could run an NCIC and see if she had a criminal past. He could also run her license plates through his computer to find out anything he might want to know about MZBHAVN, but he wasn’t going to do that. Not only was it against police ethics, it was against Dylan’s. Unless she broke the law, she had a right to her privacy. She had a right to have all the people mind their own business.

Dylan understood privacy. Unfortunately, in Gospel, he seemed to be the only one.

Hope waited until Monday afternoon to drive to the M & S Market to buy a copy of The Weekly News of the Universe. She grabbed a blue plastic shopping basket and reached for a copy. The headline for her chicken bone article appeared beneath the picture of a crazed-looking chicken in the bottom left corner of the paper. Her gaze lifted to the At-a-Glance box and she flipped to page fourteen. Dang, she’d been stuck behind “Tinsel Town Gossip.” At least the feature was a full page with a photograph of fairly normal looking women dancing around chickens, and the cutline: “Bizarre cult eats the bones of chickens.” As she walked to the produce section, she flipped to the middle of the magazine. Clive Freeman’s alien cow-mutilation article had been given the center spread.

Good, alien features were still hot. She’d sent off her own alien article the day before, complete with the slightly blurred shore of Gospel Lake and a few fuzzy aliens she’d retrieved from her CD-ROM library. She’d lined them up behind a rustic-looking table, and beneath the photograph she’d written the cutline, “Aliens place bets on unsuspecting tourist in Northwest wilderness area.” She was extremely happy with the way the feature had come together and was already working on a follow-up article.

She’d also read the newspaper articles she’d photocopied at the library, and she’d thought there was an interesting story to be told. Not about the salaciousness of it all, although there was plenty of that, but of a man whose personal and public lives were so diametrically opposed. How his personal choices had slowly consumed him until he’d become morally bankrupt in the end.

Hope slid the paper into her basket and picked through the sorriest bunch of avocados she’d ever seen. She’d been invited to the Aberdeen boys’ eighteenth-birthday barbecue that night, and afterward she planned to ask Shelly a few questions about Hiram Donnelly.

The cantaloupe weren’t much better than the avocados, but the lettuce was decent. Shelly had told her they were serving hot dogs, hamburgers, and the boys’ favorite—Rocky Mountain oysters. Hope was taking a salad with sweet dressing, which was wonderful with seafood. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made her famous salad. Well, actually, when she thought hard enough, she could remember, but it had been a long time ago and was a sad commentary on her social life. Funny, she thought as she picked up a few household items, how moving to such a small town had emphasized the empty holes in her life. Funny how a few lunches with a woman she hardly knew, and an invitation to barbecue with her neighbors had left her wanting to get out more.

She thought about taking a bottle of wine to loosen Shelly’s tongue, but Dylan and Adam had been invited, and she didn’t want the sheriff to think she was a big boozer. She didn’t know why she cared, and she didn’t know what to think of the man who glanced at her from beneath the brim of his hat and stopped her heart. It was probably best not to think of him at all.

Hope took her place in line behind a couple decked out in REI and holding bottled water. Behind the counter, Stanley Caldwell rang up the purchases while his wife, Melba, bagged.

When it was Hope’s turn, she set her basket on the counter.

“How’re things out at the Donnelly place?” Stanley asked.

“They’re good. How are you, Mr. Caldwell?”

“I’ve got a bit of lower back pain, but I’m doing okay.” He took the avocados out of the basket and rang them up. “I hear you’re a writer.”

Hope raised her gaze from the basket to Stanley’s face. “Where did you hear that?”

“Regina Cladis,” he answered as he handed his wife the avocados to bag. “She says you’re writing a story about Hiram Donnelly.”

She glanced at Melba, then looked back at Stanley. “That’s right. Did you know him?”

“Of course we knew him. He was the sheriff,” Melba replied. “His wife was a good Christian woman who never knew sin.”

“At least that’s what she told everyone,” Stanley scoffed, ringing up the cantaloupe. “Makes you wonder, though.”

“Makes you wonder what, Mr. Caldwell?” Hope asked. Melba took the melon and placed it in the bag.

“Well, I don’t think just because a man’s wife dies, he goes so far off the deep end that he wakes up one morning and suddenly wants to put on leather underwear and get his hairy backside paddled.”

Melba shoved one hand on her hip. “Are you saying Minnie was like Hiram? For the love of Pete, her daddy was a preacher.”

“Yep, and you know how they are.” He handed Melba Hope’s copy of The Weekly News of the Universe.

Melba’s brows lowered and then a light seemed to dawn in her eyes. “Well, that’s true.” She shrugged and glanced at the tabloid in her hand. “There’s a really good story in there about an eighty-pound woman giving birth to a twenty-pound baby.”

Finally, a person who admitted to reading a tabloid.

“And another good one,” Stanley added, “is that article on aliens doing all those cow mutilations in New Mexico. Sure glad we don’t have alien shenanigans going on around here.”

Oh, you’re about to, Hope thought and wondered if they’d recognize themselves in her alien story. “Did you read about the cult of women who eat chicken bones? One of them choked to death and they tried to revive her in a ritualistic chicken ceremony.”

“Didn’t get to that one yet.” Stanley laughed and shook his head. “Who makes that stuff up?”

Hope laughed, too. “Someone with a creative imagination.”

“Or,” Melba said as Stanley hit total on the cash register, “someone who’s crazy.”

Hope recognized the music pouring from the boom box as country; other than that, she didn’t have a clue. She’d dressed casually in a khaki skirt, white tank top, and flat sandals. She’d put her hair into a ponytail and pulled it through the back of her Gap baseball cap.

The early-evening sun cut a blinding trail across the lake as Hope stepped through the Aberdeens’ back door. In her hands she carried her paper plate, half filled with the salad she’d brought and one of Shelly’s deviled eggs.

A dozen teenage boys and girls ate at one of the two picnic tables sitting in the partial shade of the backyard. The smoke billowing from the big Weber barbecue enveloped the two men manning the grill. Only their lower halves were visible from behind. One wore his Wranglers at the crack of a flat butt; the other wore Levi’s riding low on his hips. A breeze cleared the wafting smoke as both men stared down at the burning hamburgers, hot dogs, and Rocky Mountain oysters. Wally and Adam stood behind them with empty plates.

Paul turned at the waist and plopped a black weenie in each boy’s bun.

“It’s burned, Dad,” Wally complained.

“Put lots of ketchup on it,” Paul advised. “You’ll never know the difference.”

“I told him not to put so much charcoal in that barbecue,” Shelly whispered out of the side of her mouth as she and Hope made their way toward the grill. The breeze waned and the men were once again clouded with smoke.

From behind, all that appeared were two male butts and a glimpse of one green T-shirt, the other white. Hope didn’t need to see their faces. After following Dylan around her house the night he’d brought her home from the Buckhorn, she easily recognized the width of his back beneath his white T-shirt, the pockets of his Levi’s, and the worn denim hugging his hard buns.

Dylan looked over his shoulder at their approach, and the smoke curled beneath the brim of his beat-up straw hat. “What are you ladies up for?” he asked.

“Which are burned the worst?” Shelly wanted to know.

“The hot dogs are pretty crispy, burgers are extra well done, but the oysters aren’t too bad.”

“Keep those oysters away from me.” Shelly frowned. “Burger, I guess.”

Dylan flipped a patty into a bun and handed it to Shelly.

“Paul is gonna give us all cancer,” she grumbled as she walked away.

Dylan turned his attention to Hope, and through the smoke, his green eyes stared into hers. “What about you, Miz Behavin‘?”

“I’ll risk cancer and take a dog,” she told him.

“One black weenie.” He plopped a sizzling frank into a bun and set it on her plate. “Paul says to put lots of ketchup on it.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Paul added.

“Actually, this is just right,” she assured the cook. “I like black weenies. I don’t eat raw meat.”

Dylan chucked, but he didn’t say anything.

“Are you gonna try an oyster?” Paul asked her.

“Are they well done?”

“Sure are. How many do you want?”

“Just one.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dylan told her while Paul placed a small breaded oyster next to her burned weenie. “Have you ever eaten one of those before?” he asked.

“Sure.” She’d eaten seafood cooked all sorts of ways. “Lots of times,” she added, then carried her plate across the yard and sat at the table with Shelly and the two little boys. At the other table, the teenagers were all in a deep philosophical discussion about who was the “baddest badass,” Freddy Kruger or Chucky. The twins had finished eating and now had identical knots of Copenhagen bulging their bottom lips. The girls sitting next to them didn’t seem to mind. In fact, their lips bulged, too.

“Look at them,” Shelly said and shook her head. “Those boys were so cute when they were babies. I used to dress them alike. They had little sailor suits that were just so adorable. Now they’re grown and they have nasty man habits.” As if on cue, Andrew spit a stream of tobacco into a Solo cup.

Hope quickly looked at Shelly. “Are you feeling nostalgic today?”

“Old.” Her eyes got sad. “I miss the way they used to smell. They don’t smell like little boys anymore.”

“I do, Mom,” Wally said from Shelly’s other side.

“That’s right.” She put her arm around her son and squeezed. “You’re my little stinkweed.”

Sitting across the table from Wally, Adam lifted his eyes from the black hot dog on his plate. “You can smell me if you want, Shelly.”

“Now, why would anyone want to smell you?” Dylan asked as he set a can of Coke on the table and swung one leg, then the other, over the bench seat and sat next to his son. “You always smell like your dirty dog.” The tip of his boot touched Hope’s bare toe and she slid her foot back.

“That’s ‘cause she likes to kiss my face.” He laid his head against Dylan’s shoulder.

Dylan looked down at Adam and the brim of his hat cast a woven shadow across his nose and one cheek. “Probably because you taste just like a pork chop.”

“Uh-uh, Dad.”

Hope bit into her crispy hot dog and studied Dylan’s profile, looking for similarities with his son. Adam’s hair was darker, his mouth and nose were different, but his eyes—his eyes were his father’s.

Shelly pointed to Dylan’s Coke. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

He looked up and the shadow moved to cover the top half of his face, drawing attention to his mouth. Hope watched his lips as he spoke. “I choked down a few weenies before they got incinerated.”

Paul placed a plate heavy with food on the table and sat on the other side of Wally. “I guess Hope is the only woman who appreciates my cooking.”

Actually, the hot dog was even a bit too burned for her. She liked them black, not crunchy, but she didn’t say so. Instead, she took a bite. “Mmmm.” One corner of Dylan’s mouth lifted in a dubious smile, and when she swallowed, it felt like the crispy hot dog got stuck in her chest.

Shelly pointed to her husband’s plate. “Eat some of Hope’s salad. You need to get healthy if you’re going to win the toilet toss this year.”

“You going to enter that again?” Dylan asked.

“Yep, first prize is a big-screen TV.”

“That’s right, and I want that TV,” Shelly said. “So, starting tomorrow, I’m putting Paul on those steroids they feed cattle. He needs to be strong like a bull.”

“What if I wind up hung like a bull?” Paul wanted to know.

“Actually, those steroids will mess with your sex drive and can shrink your who-hah,” Dylan informed everyone.

“What’s a who-hah, Dad?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Hope took another bite of her crunchy hot dog and lowered her gaze to her plate. With complete certainty, she could honestly swear that she’d never been surrounded by dinner companions who chewed tobacco, discussed slicing and dicing body parts, and talked about shrinking who-hahs.

While Hope ate her salad, she listened to Shelly and Paul plan their strategy for winning the toilet toss, which involved last-minute weight training and vitamin consumption. Again the tip of Dylan’s boot touched her toe, and she drew her foot back with the other. She glanced up, but his attention was focused on Adam and Wally, who’d left to skip rocks across the lake.

“Stay where I can see you,” Shelly called after them.

Hope sprinkled a little salt on her oyster and reached for a plastic knife. She wasn’t so sure she wanted it anymore.

“Are you really going to eat that?” Dylan asked from across the table.

“What?” She raised her gaze as far as his hand wrapped around the Coke can. A bead of condensation slid down the red aluminum and disappeared behind his knuckle.

He lifted one finger from the can and pointed at her plate. “That’s not a real oyster, you know.”

“What is it, fake?”

“You could say that.”

This time she raised her gaze as far as the white T-shirt stretched across his broad chest. “Like some packed crab is really whitefish?”

“No, honey. Like Rocky Mountain oysters are really balls.”

There it was again. Honey, and the way he said it sort of poured over her like honey, too. “Balls of what?”

“Jesus, I knew you didn’t have clue. Balls as in testicles.”

She finally looked up into his face, behind the shadow cast by his hat, and into his eyes. “Sure they are. And next you’re going to tell me that my hot dog is really a who-hah.”

His brows rose up his forehead and laugh lines appeared in the corners of his eyes. “You don’t believe me?”

“Of course not. That’s repulsive.” She speared the oyster and lifted it to her lips.

“If you think so, you better not put that in your mouth.”

She gave it a slight sniff, then turned to Shelly, who was in a heated discussion about where she and Paul would place the big-screen television. “Shelly, what is this?”

“What?”

“This.” She shook her fork.

“A Rocky Mountain oyster.”

“Is it a shellfish?”

“No, it’s a testicle.”

“Oh, my God!” She dropped the fork as if it had suddenly zapped her. “Whose?”

Dylan burst out laughing. “Not mine.”

“They came from the Rocking C. I bought ‘em during castration season,” Shelly told her.

“You bought them? Oh, my God!”

“Well,” Shelly answered as if Hope were the crazy one, “they don’t just give away free oysters, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. I’m from California. We eat real food. We don’t eat cow balls.”

“Steer.”

“Whatever!”

“They taste just like chicken,” Dylan informed her.

“You said the same thing about lizard!” She felt as if she’d been drop-kicked into an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. Next they would probably break out the roasted squirrel.

“I was kidding about the lizard.”

“Dylan’s right,” Paul added from down the table. “Rocky Mountain oysters taste like chicken— crunchier, though. Like a gizzard.”

“That’s what I hear,” Shelly said. “Of course, I’ve never eaten one.”

Finally, some sanity. Hope raised her hands to the sides of her face. Her stomach was suddenly queasy, but she was saved from further culinary description by the twins.

“Mom, we’re heading downtown,” Thomas informed his mother.

“What’s going on downtown?”

“Probably nothin‘. We’ll probably end up playing pool over at Zack’s.”

“If you drink and drive, I’ll take your car away,” Paul warned.

“And be home by midnight,” Shelly added, which set off a debate on whether the twins were old enough now to do away with a curfew altogether.

While the Aberdeens argued, Hope carried her plate into the house and dumped it into the garbage can beneath the kitchen sink. She tossed her hat onto the counter and placed the plastic wrap on the salad she’d brought. She glanced out the window into the backyard and watched the teenagers move from the yard toward their cars. A few of them still wore braces on their teeth. Some suffered from teen acne. They looked so normal, but they weren’t. They chewed tobacco and ate testicles. In her wildest imagination, she could not have made up something like that. But even if she had, no one would have believed it. Walter would have told her the story was too far-fetched, even for a tabloid that specialized in the farfetched.

The back-door screen opened and Hope looked over her shoulder. Dylan walked toward her carrying several paper plates. She slid to the corner of the counter, and he dumped them in the garbage.

“Paul is a good guy,” he said, “but he can’t cook worth a damn. You didn’t have to eat that hot dog.”

“It wasn’t the hot dog I minded.” Hope reached for a mayonnaise lid and screwed it on the jar. “How can you all eat testicles?” When he didn’t answer right away, she turned her head and looked at him. He stood beside her, one hip shoved into the counter, his arms folded across his chest, his attention pinned to her behind.

He slowly raised his gaze to her face, past her mouth to her eyes. He shrugged and just smiled at having been caught staring at her butt. “To tell you the truth, I never could work up an appetite for Rocky Mountain oysters.”

She imitated his casual poise. Arms folded beneath her breasts, hip resting against the counter. Outside, she heard snatches of conversation, engines racing, and the crunch of gravel beneath tires. Inside, it all receded to the peripheral of her brain, and she found herself completely focused on him. The sound of his voice, the exact color of his eyes, and the way he pushed his hat up his forehead.

“Personally,” he said, “I never felt right about chewing on some steer’s left nut.”

“How many have you eaten?”

“One.”

She looked at his mouth. She’d kissed a man who’d confessed to eating a “steer’s left nut.” She should have been repulsed.

As if he’d read her mind, he said, “I brushed my teeth for about an hour afterward, and I flossed real good.”

She couldn’t have prevented her smile even if she’d thought to. “I’ve always been a sucker for a guy with good oral hygiene.”

He reached for her hand and his warm fingers closed around hers. She tried to ignore the hot tingle warming her skin and spreading to her wrist. “And I’ve always been a sucker for a sucker, especially if she’s wearing a short skirt.”

She glanced down at herself, at the hem of her skirt resting about an inch, no more than two, above her knees.

“Did you know that when you bent over to set your plate on the table, I could almost see the color of your underwear?”

No way was her skirt that short. She looked back up into his face. “You’d have to stand on your head to see the color of my underwear.”

“Actually, if I tilt my head just a little...” he confessed with an evil glint in his eyes as he brushed his thumb across her palm.

It was just her hand, nothing sexual about that, but for some unexplainable reason, the simple touch felt much more intimate. There was nothing to get excited about, she told herself even as her pulse leaped. No, nothing. “That’s kind of pathetic, Dylan. The last guy who tried to guess the color of my underwear was Jimmy Jaramillo. That was in fourth grade.”

“Now, I’m sure you’re wrong about that. I’m sure there are a lot of guys standing around guessing the color of your underwear.”

“Just you and Jimmy.”

“No, me and Jimmy are the only ones who have told you what we were up to.”

“You’re obviously bored. It sounds like you need a girlfriend.”

“Nah, a girlfriend is the last thing I need.”

“Why is that?”

He turned her hand over and studied each of her red fingernails. “Why is what?”

“Why is a girlfriend the last thing you need?”

He shrugged. “A lot of reasons. I don’t have time. I don’t want a serious relationship right now, and I’m not very good at it anyway. Adam keeps me really busy.” He turned her hand back over and stared at her palm. “But I do miss having a woman around sometimes.”

She bet she knew what he missed. She missed it, too. Ever since the night he’d stood in her kitchen and kissed her, she’d thought about how much she missed it.

“I really miss feeling the weight of a woman’s hand in mine as I walk down the street.”

That wasn’t exactly what she’d been thinking. He looked at her, and in an instant, she recognized the emptiness and longing gazing back at her. Dylan Taber, the very eligible and extremely handsome sheriff of Pearl County, the man who drove women crazy with his easy smiles and causal endearments, was lonely. Just like her.

Incredible but true, and something deep inside Hope swelled and answered the yearning in his green eyes. His lids lowered a fraction, and he stared at her lips. Her breath caught in her throat, and her chest got tight. She raised her face as he slowly lowered his mouth toward hers.

The back door was thrown open hard enough to hit the wall. The moment shattered, Hope and Dylan jumped apart as Paul and Shelly raced into the kitchen. Paul held Shelby’s hand above her head as blood ran down her arm and dripped from her elbow.

“Shelly cut her hand with my hunting knife,” Paul yelled before anyone had the chance to ask. He grabbed a towel off the counter and wrapped it around her hand.

“That’s dirty,” Shelly protested calmly. “Hope, behind you in the third drawer down are the clean towels.”

“What happened?” Dylan asked Paul.

“I put my knife in a bucket of soapy water she had out there for the kids to put their dirty dishes in. Before I could tell her, she stuck her hand in it.”

Under the circumstances, Hope didn’t think she could have remained as composed as Shelly. In fact, she was sure she’d be screaming her head off. She pulled a towel from the drawer and handed it over. “Is it deep?”

“She’ll need stitches for sure,” Paul answered. His breathing was shallow, and he was clearly more panicked than his wife. “I’m going to run her to the clinic.”

“I’ll drive you,” Dylan offered. “We’ll get there quicker.”

“What about the little boys?” Paul wanted to know.

“I’ll watch them,” Hope volunteered.

Dylan turned to her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ll call someone.”

“I can handle two small boys,” she assured him, slightly offended that he didn’t think her capable.

“Are you sure?” Dylan asked.

“Sure.”

How hard could it be?