The Housekeeper's Daughter. Laurie Paige

she had believed him.

      She would have laughed at how foolish she’d been, except she felt too raw, too vulnerable at this moment and might end in tears. She wouldn’t go to the table with weepy eyes and increase her parents’ worry over her.

      Knowing she had to, she rose, squared her shoulders and dressed. She would be expected to join the ranch staff who ate in the big dining area at one end of the kitchen. As someone had once remarked, life goes on.

      The Colton family and friends usually ate in the formal dining room or in the sunroom that separated the living room from the patio cupped in the center of the U-shaped house. Drake would be with them, so she wouldn’t have to face him on top of everything else.

      She dried her hair, pushed it back with butterfly clips and checked that her two charges were ready for dinner. They, too, were relegated to the kitchen now during meals, except for special occasions when their mother wanted to show them off.

      Maya suppressed the cynical thought about her employer. The Coltons paid her salary as well as her tuition to college. Another few months and she would have a degree in early childhood education. Then she would take her child and leave the ranch.

      Her heart gave a painful lurch at the thought of going away from all she knew and loved. Her parents would miss her. So would the boys. She would miss all of them dreadfully. However, she was twenty-six, old enough to make her own way in the world without depending on anyone.

      When she, Joe Junior and Teddy entered the kitchen, an instant silence fell over the group gathered there. Glancing around, her eyes met the golden ones of her nemesis. “What are you doing here?” she blurted.

      Heat rushed into her face at the quick stares she received from the house staff. He was a Colton. He could eat anywhere he pleased.

      “Waiting for my brothers,” he explained easily. “I wanted to thank them for their help this afternoon.”

      “Huh, it wasn’t anything,” Joe said. “You’re the one who saved Maya.”

      “Yeah,” Teddy agreed. “You were really quick. Can you teach me to jump on a horse like that, without using the stirrup to get up?”

      Drake laughed, his teeth flashing white against his deeply tanned skin. “You only need to grow another few inches and you’ll have no trouble.”

      The boys, tall and rangy for their ages as all the Colton men were, claimed seats on either side of their older brother, their eyes filled with admiration as they gazed at him. Drake stood and pulled out a chair on the other side of Teddy for her. When he was seated again, the boys asked a thousand questions about his life in the SEALs.

      “Where ya been this time?” Joe asked.

      “Central America.”

      “I wish I could go there,” Teddy said, envious.

      “No, you don’t,” Drake told him. “It was hot, the mosquitoes were as big as magpies and I had the boniest donkey God ever created to ride over the mountains.”

      He told funny stories during the meal, distracting them from the dangerous nature of his duties with the elite unit. Maya wondered what new scars he might have on his strong, lithe body.

      Immediately, visions of his six-one, sinewy frame flooded her mind. She’d touched him all over, discovering every mole, every tiny imperfection…and every scar that spoke of a life lived dangerously close to the edge.

      There’s no place in my life…

      He’d made love to her, then written those words as she lay sleeping, innocently believing in a future that included them and their children and a lifetime of sharing. The table blurred. She held the anguish in by dint of will. No one would see her cry, she had vowed eight months ago, after that first awful storm of grief had passed.

      She ate the delicious meal without tasting it. Every time her eyes met Drake’s over Teddy’s blond curls, a shiver rushed through her. His gaze boded no good for her.

      Drake stood at the window of his dark room and stared at the windows across the central courtyard patio. Maya’s room. He knew it well. Once it had been his.

      A flurry of emotion ran through him. Need. Anger. Despair. Loneliness. Name it and he’d felt it during the past eight months, even during hot nights in the humid jungles of Central America when he should have been concentrating on the business at hand.

      His mission: rescue an American diplomat kidnapped by drug dealers and held in a mountain stronghold. He’d nearly lost two good men on that trek, but in the end, the mission had been a success.

      A new scar from a bullet wound suddenly throbbed in the fleshy tissue of his hip. He’d been lucky. The bullet had missed his pelvic bone by half an inch. With a shattered hip, he wouldn’t have made it out.

      He laughed silently, sardonically. Yeah, he led a charmed life. There was just one problem at present. Maya.

      Past emotions hadn’t held a candle to the ones he’d felt upon seeing her on a runaway horse. Fear had clawed its way to his throat and stayed there until she was safe and secure in his arms.

      Safe?

      From her condition, she obviously hadn’t been very safe in his arms eight months ago.

      The irony of the note he’d left on the table beside her bed struck him. He’d told her his job was too dangerous, his life too busy, to include a wife.

      Right. What about including a child? He shook his head, unable to answer that question just yet.

      Staring at the window across the way, he set his jaw and headed out. It was time they had a serious talk. He entered the long hall running along the other wing of the house and rapped on the door.

      Every nerve in Maya’s body jumped when the knock sounded. “No rest for the weary,” she muttered, a gallows attempt at humor that did nothing to lift her spirits.

      She’d supervised the boys’ studies, then read to them after their baths. Their mother demanded they be in bed and the lights out at nine. Maya was careful to comply. To fail was an invitation to wrath from Ms. Meredith.

      Upon returning to her room, Maya had half expected Drake to be there, waiting for her. Finally, after almost an hour of fruitless study, she’d closed her textbook and prepared for bed. She should have known better. Coltons were a stubborn, unpredictable lot, and Drake was no exception.

      She would live through this, she told her flagging spirits. She’d lived through his leaving and finding that awful note, then realizing she was pregnant and telling her parents. What more could life throw at her?

      Warily, she approached the door after tightening the belt to her robe. She opened it and peeked out.

      “I want to talk to you,” Drake announced in a low tone.

      She considered locking the door. He probably knew how to unlock it without a key. The room had once been his before he struck out on his own.

      Last summer, lying in bed with her, he’d told her of his childhood escapades, of sneaking in past curfew, of the hiding his father had once given him that had caused his mother to cry, making him feel so bad, he’d stopped skipping school and started studying. Now he slept in a room across the patio in the other wing of the house, a guest in his former home.

      Surprised by an unexpected rush of sympathy, she moved back. He entered and closed the door.

      His eyes, dark in the soft lamplight, as unyielding as a granite cliff, roamed over her. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

      The question annoyed her. “Yes.” Her answer seemed to stir his temper.

      He scowled. “Only a fool would be out on a horse in your condition.”

      “The doctor said I could continue all my normal activities,” she said, tilting her chin defiantly as resentment swept over her. “I always ride with the boys—”