His Best Friend's Baby. Molly O'Keefe

newly painted a creamy yellow color. There were red flowers in window boxes and a shiny white front porch.

      “What the hell…?” His mouth fell open as he peered through the open passenger window at the vision.

      His heart squeezed uncomfortably.

      Man, I wish Mom could have seen it like this.

      Jesse pulled up to the curb, and stared, stunned, at 314 Wilson.

      That was his old house all right, but it looked nothing like it once had.

      Years ago, he’d thrown a rock through the front picture window after a fight with his father. His mom had covered the hole with cardboard because they couldn’t afford a new piece of glass that size.

      Now, the cardboard was gone, the replacement window surrounded by flowers nodding in the breeze.

      The porch where his father used to sit many nights drinking Scotch and getting mean no longer sagged, threatening to fall away from the house. And the hole Jesse had used to crawl under the porch on nights when Dad kicked him out was covered over. He’d learned later that his mother had kept the back door open for him the way she had for Rachel, when his sister had been the one thrown out into the cold desert night.

      All of his surprise and regret quickly boiled down to something much more familiar. Anger.

      His mother had left him the damn place as some kind of chain, forcing him back here. Worse, Rachel had been repairing it and shining it up pretty.

      Wonderful. A gold-plated chain.

      If Rachel thought she could stop him from getting rid of it—tearing the damn thing down if he had to—she was wrong. Rachel could dress up the house all she wanted, repair it and cover up the ugly parts, but underneath it was still the violent and angry home of his youth. There was not enough paint in the world to cover that.

      “Let’s go, Wain.” Jesse climbed gingerly out of the Jeep.

      Wain barked with an enthusiasm Jesse was far from feeling and trotted ahead to sniff and urinate on a hydrangea bush.

      Jesse pulled the key from around his neck, where it hung with his dog tags.

      He bent and picked up one of the solid decorative rocks that lined the walkway. He tested its heft and then hurled it through the front window. The glass shattered and Jesse smiled.

      Now, it looks like home.

      CHAPTER TWO

      JULIA ADAMS managed to eat three bites of the cinnamon roll she had grabbed from the motel vending machine then tossed it in a garbage can outside the Vons grocery store. She took another sip of the stale coffee from the motel lobby and dumped that out as well.

      She couldn’t get food past the slick bitter taste of nerves at the back of her throat. The anxiety had gathered steam as she and Ben walked into town from the motel and now she was a kettle about ready to blow.

      “I think Momma has made a mistake, Ben,” she said to her two-year-old son, even though he was sound asleep in his stroller.

      One mistake? How do you figure just one? The voice belonged to Mitch, her dead husband, always there to count her failings.

      She hit a crack in the sidewalk and the stroller under her hands swayed, thanks to the loose screws she’d tried repair a million times—the whole thing was just about shot.

      The streetlights blinked on and the world past the street receded to shadows. Dusk arrived to the desert town with a beauty Julia had never seen. The enormous sky turned purple and blue and the temperature finally cooled to a tolerable level.

      She and Ben had missed the worst of the heat, having spent most of the day inside their motel room. Ben had napped and fussed, confused by the time change, and she’d stewed—replaying Agnes’s phone call in her head, wondering if she’d gotten the invitation all wrong.

      The smell of eucalyptus filled the air and Julia, trying to calm the twisting of her stomach, pulled off one of the flat round leaves and rubbed it between her fingers. The oil soaked into her skin, but it wasn’t enough to calm the raging nerves.

      She turned left and the reality of what she was doing came down on her like a hammer.

      She was about to knock on Mitch’s parents’ door. Her in-laws, who had never liked her, and say…

      “What?” she asked herself aloud. “Surprise! Can I stay a while? Here’s your grandson. Do you mind if I take a nap?” She took a deep breath. “Remember when you asked me to come for a visit? When you said you would be here for me?”

       I’ve finally lost it. I’m talking to myself!

      “Your mother’s a lunatic,” she told her sleeping son, just to prove the point.

      With Mitch gone, Julia only had her own mother, Sergeant Beth Milhow. Julia and Ben could have gone to live with her mom and continue the life she had known forever.

      A military daughter. A military wife. A military widow.

      But she couldn’t do it anymore. She wanted a family. Friends who had more in common with her than what their husbands did for a living. She wanted more than duty and loneliness so sharp it sliced at her. She had to try and find a better way, which was why she’d come to New Springs.

      What she really wished, if she were completely honest with herself, was that Jesse Filmore would be here. Last she had heard he was in the hospital in San Diego, which was close enough that he might head home if he still had family in the area. She’d settle for any kind of anchor that would pull him back to New Springs.

      This was her new life—a fresh start, and she wanted desperately to have Jesse in it.

      She was being foolish. She had enough on her plate dealing with her in-laws. The very last thing she needed to do was cloud up her head with romantic illusions…or delusions. Particularly about her dead husband’s best friend.

      But if she closed her eyes, she could still see Jesse’s dark eyes burning bright through the shadowy dawn.

      She pulled the envelope from Agnes and Ron’s last Christmas card out of her jeans pocket and checked it against the numbers on the houses. She turned at the corner at Wilson and Hemlock, walked down half a block until she found 12 Hemlock Street, a two-story brick house that was triple the size of the small army house she and Ben had called home in Germany for the past two years.

      She swiped at the sweat that beaded up on her forehead. Oh, God, why didn’t I call? What if Agnes changed her mind?

      She turned up the beautiful slate path toward the house. Her heart clogged her throat and with every heartbeat she saw spots in the corners of her eyes.

      The last thing she needed was to faint on the Adams’ doorstep. She tried to focus on the concrete reality: the flowering vines clinging to the red brick, the overgrown garden filled with jade plants and gorgeous lupine that were nearly choked out with weeds.

      Losing a son must put you off lawn work for a while.

      She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the hysterical giggle that was nearly a sob. She was coming unglued. She stopped at the door—a wooden one, simple and solid with a small window at the top.

      She tried to smooth her short, dishwater-blond hair to get the worst of the haywire strands to settle down. Julia never bothered with makeup, and now she wished she had at least put on a little blush.

      Yeah, she laughed at herself, because your hair and makeup are really going to make her love you.

      She leaned down and looked at sleeping Ben. He’d woken up a few hours ago but his internal clock was screwy from jet lag.

      Julia tried to see her son with unbiased eyes, to find imperfections, but she couldn’t detect any. Even dead to the world he was still the cutest kid she’d ever seen. He had Mitch’s thick, white-gold hair with just