What a Woman Wants. Tori Carrington

squinted at her. Could she really be that understanding? Her expression was anxious but soft, no hint of accusation in her eyes, no expectation in her shaky smile. Which made him hate himself all the more.

      He laughed humorlessly. “This doesn’t seem real somehow, you know? I keep feeling like someone should jump from the shadows and cry, ‘Candid Camera!’”

      She nodded. “I know.”

      Only, if anyone leaped from the shadows right now, John was convinced he’d draw his gun and shoot him.

      He winced, his thoughts only dancing along the edge of what would happen when the town found out what he’d done.

      He glanced first one way, then the other, down the street. Everything moved along much as it should on a weekday in Old Orchard. The shops and buildings that had been destroyed by the Devil’s Night fires last October had been rebuilt to their former, old-style glory and warmly reflected the morning sun. People went about their business as much as they normally did, a wave here, a greeting there. No one had a clue that Darby had just ripped the rug of John’s life out from under him.

      The veracity of his position slammed home when he spotted old Mrs. Noonan slowly crossing the two-lane avenue, heading their way. And if she wasn’t bad enough, next to her walked the new pastor, Jonas Noble.

      “Good morning, Sheriff Sparks. Morning, Darby,” Mrs. Noonan said, drawing to a stop beside them, a gnarled hand tucked into Jonas’s arm.

      “Hello, Mrs. Noonan. Pastor,” John said, reaching up to tip a hat that he’d left inside. He eyed the other man, thinking of the gossip swirling around town about Old Orchard’s newest addition. As sheriff, he’d had no fewer than three requests that he check into Noble’s background, and he’d refused all of them. As far as he was concerned, keeping to oneself was no crime. Even if there was a somber, almost dangerous look to the pastor, a demeanor his pure black garb and longish dark hair only added to.

      “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Jonas said now, his voice low and even.

      Darby smiled but didn’t answer. Mrs. Noonan homed in on her. “Is everything all right, Darby?”

      Darby blinked. “Pardon me?”

      “The girls? The farm? I trust all is well?”

      If Darby’s nod seemed a little too emphatic, John prayed he was the only one who noticed. “Oh, yes. Everything’s fine. Thanks for asking.”

      Mrs. Noonan smiled. “That’s reassuring. Seeing as you’re in town so early and standing in front of the sheriff’s office talking to our young sheriff…well, I was afraid something might be amiss.”

      Amiss. Now there was a word, John thought. Something was amiss. But if he had his way, Mrs. Noonan, Pastor Noble and George Johnson would be the last three to know about it.

      Darby started backing up toward her truck. “Well, I’d better be going. You know, before the twins decide to leave without me.”

      John lifted a stiff hand in a wave. “I’ll talk to you later, Darby.”

      She avoided his gaze, concentrating, instead, on Mrs. Noonan and the pastor. “It was good to see you both. Give my best to the women’s club, Mrs. Noonan.”

      “I will, dear.”

      “Good. Good.” Darby backed straight into the truck bed, then turned around and virtually ran to the driver’s door. Within moments, the truck was rolling away, a short beep signaling a farewell.

      Mrs. Noonan sighed and pulled on the ends of her crocheted sweater. “Pretty girl, our Widow Conrad. Wouldn’t you say, Sheriff Sparks?”

      John tugged his gaze from the truck’s disappearing taillights. “Huh?”

      The old woman smiled at him, then bid him a nice day and continued on down the sidewalk, Pastor Jonas Noble at her side.

      Darby didn’t even have to close her eyes to envision John’s reaction to her news. His face seemed to be etched into her corneas, coloring everything she looked at. The sizzling heat his eyes held whenever he looked at her. The way he tilted his head just so in a teasing, cautious way. His full-on grin when he forgot what they were supposed to be and, instead, enjoyed what they were.

      Given the sharp turn their lives had taken, what were they?

      Over the past three months she’d been trying to come to terms with her ability to feel attracted to another man so soon after she’d lost Erick, much less wanting one as much as she had John that day in the barn. She’d scrambled for every possible excuse to explain her aberrant behavior. There was the fact that she craved human contact with someone, anyone, capable of carrying on adult conversation. That she missed her husband’s touch and yearned for a man to touch her as he once had. Then throw temporary insanity into the mix, and she figured she had all the bases covered.

      The only problem was that her explanations didn’t stop her from wanting John. Worse, she yearned to feel his hot mouth on hers, his hands branding her breasts, even more now than before.

      And now she was pregnant.

      Darby crossed her arms and took a long, calming breath that did nothing to calm her. Absently she found herself wishing John was there with her, was voluntarily facing what she was alone. She caught herself and briefly clamped her eyes shut.

      She looked around the cozy, lived-in waiting area of Dr. Grant Kemper’s old Victorian home on the outskirts of town. He ran his practice here, in an airy room off the foyer. Although he’d officially closed up shop and retired a few years ago, Darby could think of no one else to go to. Her regular ob-gyn was out. To be seen even in the vicinity of the central Old Orchard medical complex would set phone lines on fire within a minute of her appearance. She didn’t kid herself into thinking she could keep her secret for long. She absently splayed her fingers across the flat expanse of her stomach. Oh, no, her little secret would make itself known in her or his own sweet time. But she needed this quiet time to herself for as long as she could hold on to it, if just for the simple fact that her condition was so unexpected. So life-altering.

      She rubbed her brow and glanced toward the still-closed door to her right. To the town she was the poor Widow Conrad, whose firefighter husband died a heroic death nearly twelve months ago, leaving her with two young girls to raise all by her lonesome. But while the well-meaning townsfolk saw her that way, she saw her situation completely differently. She wasn’t poor. Not by way of finances, not psychologically. She’d known that every time Erick walked out the door to go to work she might never see him again. She’d accepted it when she’d married him. And while his being ripped from her life had left a gaping hole she had feared would never be refilled, she never once thought her own life was over. Things would just be…different from there on out. She and the twins and the farm and her photographic art. That was how it would be. If sometimes the loneliness she felt deep into the night seemed to reverberate straight through her, if every now and again she felt overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of her responsibilities…well, all single parents felt that way from time to time, didn’t they? She saw herself as neither unique nor worthy of pity.

      Besides, she had two beautiful girls as a result of her brief time with Erick.

      Her fingers stilled against her stomach. And soon she’d have another child to add to the mix. John’s child.

      “Darby?”

      So immersed in her thoughts she hadn’t noticed the examining-room door had opened and that Doc Kemp stood there watching her expectantly. She smiled and scrambled to her feet. “Sorry about that. Got lost in thought.”

      Doc motioned her into the room. With his portly build, bushy gray hair and full beard and mustache, there was a decidedly Santa Claus-esque look to him she found appealing. Darby entered the room and he left the door open. She darted to it, looked out into the empty waiting area, then softly closed it.

      “Ah. I remember you doing something similar a while back,” Doc said. “Approximately