Secret Baby Santos. Barbara McCauley

divorced.” George glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “You fishin’, Nick?”

      Nick resisted the urge to grin at the good news, then slipped the credit card in his shirt pocket. “Nah, not me, pal. Too busy for females right now.” Nick winked at George. “But you know how that is.”

      “Yeah, right.” George rolled his puppy-dog eyes. “Just last night I had to tell Cindy Crawford I’d have to get back to her.”

      “Iris Sweeney will be disappointed to hear that,” Nick said, deciding that a little matchmaking for George would not only boost the man’s ego, but keep him from looking in other directions.

      “Iris Sweeney?”

      Nick nodded. “Just last week I heard her say you have the best-looking produce section she’s ever seen.”

      “No kidding?” George said with a quick grin, then cleared his throat and gave a reserved shrug of his shoulders. “I am rather proud of the organic vegetable display.”

      “As you should be.” Nick hadn’t seen a vegetable in weeks. Unless you counted tomatoes on pizza or lettuce on hamburgers. He doubted they were organic, though. On an impulse he snatched up two cans of green beans. “Gotta run, George. See you around.”

      “Try a can of mushroom soup and cheese with those beans,” George called after him. “They make a great casserole.”

      Five minutes later, his shopping done, carburetor and pistons forgotten, Nick roared out of Bud and Joe’s parking lot and headed for Belview Avenue.

      

      Nick Santos was back.

      Still in a daze, Maggie had driven back to her parents’ house and squeezed her compact rental into the garage beside her father’s yacht-size 1977 Buick. The radio blasted a loud, heavy-metal song that she never would have listened to under ordinary circumstances, but she’d been too shaken to even notice the earpiercing noise. She shut off the engine, but a loud roar still pounded in her head.

      Nick Santos was back.

      She wouldn’t have believed it, except for the fact that he’d spoken to her and touched her. My God, she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. He’d actually touched her.

      She was still too much in shock to even be embarrassed that she’d dived head first into a display of green beans and landed on her bottom. So much for conquering her childhood awkwardness, she thought dismally. So much for her five years as a confident, assertive journalist. One look at Nick Santos and it all went out the window.

      If there was one person Maggie never expected to see again—one person she never wanted to see again—it was Nick Santos.

      What was he doing here? She pressed her forehead to the steering wheel and let the wave of panic wash over her. Nick had left Wolf River twelve years ago, two years before she’d gone off to Boston for college. He’d become an overnight success with his racing. The media loved him, not only for his good looks and charm, but for his involvement with charities. She even remembered that several years ago he’d done a magazine spread for a blue jeans company and donated his endorsement to a children’s charity.

      Nick Santos, with his heart-stopping smile and his take-your-breath-away eyes. He’d been in countless magazine articles, photographed at celebrity parties, hounded by the tabloids in search of dirt outside the motorcycle racing track.

      But there was one article she remembered above all the rest. The paternity suit he’d been involved in five years ago. There’d been pictures of him beside a beautiful blonde and a caption that read: Santos Soon to Be a Daddy? The Courts Will Decide.

      He’d eventually won that case, his lawyer proving that the woman had lied and was simply looking for some easy money. But the battle had been nasty, as well as highly publicized, and no stone in Nick’s life had been left unturned: his alcoholic mother who’d abandoned him when he was ten, an abusive stepfather, his year at Wolf River’s County Home for Boys when he was fourteen, and his close, lifelong friendship with Lucas Blackhawk and Killian Shawnessy. Nick’s life had been an open book to the world.

      And still he’d smiled through it all, refusing to talk about his past or the court case with reporters, but dazzling them nonetheless with his wit and charm. He was smooth, but rough enough around the edges to make women sigh with pleasure and men grunt with approval.

      And he was back. God help her, he was back.

      She drew in another long, slow breath and stepped out of the car. Her knees still felt shaky, but she was determined not to let her parents see that anything was wrong. When she let herself in the front door, the smell of roast beef filled the house. If there was one thing her mother loved to do besides talk it was cook.

      “Margaret, you’re back so soon.” Her mother came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishrag. In spite of her compulsive need to feed everybody who entered the house, Angela Smith was trim herself, a pretty brunette with warm brown eyes and a flashing smile. “Did you find everything all right? That new stock boy George hired has moved everything around so that my head spins just looking for a loaf of bread. Last week it took me ten minutes to find the prune juice. Which reminds me—” she turned toward the living room “—Boyd, have you had your glass today?”

      Maggie’s father grunted from behind the newspaper he was reading. Bandages circled the knee of one swollen white leg, which he’d propped up on the ottoman of his easy chair, but his blue-plaid bathrobe sufficiently covered the rest of him.

      Maggie realized she hadn’t bought one thing. How could she have gone grocery shopping after seeing Nick? “I...lost the list you gave me. I’ll have to go back.”

      “Never you mind, honey. There’s nothing that won’t keep till tomorrow. Dinner’s almost ready.” Her mother frowned. “You look a little pale, dear. Is anything wrong?”

      “No, nothing. Of course not. I’m fine, just fine.”

      Not wanting her mother to see the lie, Maggie turned away quickly and set her purse on the entry table. Angela Smith knew everything that went on in Wolf River. Hadn’t her mother told her, in detail, about Helen Burnette’s divorce? About Susan Meyers’s argument with Phyllis White over her poodle’s constant barking? About Ralph Hennesy’s fender bender with Walt Johnson?

      How could she tell her all those things and never once mention that Nick Santos was living here again? The man was a celebrity, for God’s sake.

      Maybe Nick wasn’t really living here, Maggie reasoned. Maybe he was just visiting Lucas Blackhawk. Maggie knew that Lucas had married Julianna Hadley a few months back and that Nick had been the best man. Her parents had been invited to the wedding reception, almost everyone in town had been. Her mother had talked endlessly about Lucas and Julianna and what a wonderful couple they made. But when she’d made a fuss over how handsome Nick had looked in his suit, how charming he’d been when he’d asked her to dance, Maggie had quickly made an excuse and hung up the phone. She couldn’t talk to her mother about Nick. She couldn’t.

      She couldn’t talk to anyone about Nick. Ever.

      “Sweetheart, are you sure you’re all right?”

      Maggie realized that she’d been staring blankly into the mirror over the entry table, and that her mother was watching her now, her eyes narrowed with concern.

      “Just a little jet lag, Mom.” She turned and gave her mother a hug. “I’ll go check on Drew, then put the potatoes on.”

      “Drew hasn’t budged from the video you put on before you left, and the potatoes are already boiling. Oh, and that reminds me. Miss Perry, the preschool director from the elementary school called. They have an opening if you’d like to take Drew in on Monday.”

      Thank goodness for that, Maggie thought. A fouryear-old with too much time on his hands was like a tornado waiting to touch down. He’d be much happier playing with other children, and she’d be more sane. At least,