Lone Star Baby. Cathy Thacker Gillen

iced tea. “Do you really think the age cutoff for applicants should be thirty-five instead of forty?”

      Back to Ava and their joint responsibility, which was where their attention should be. Violet met his eyes, her mood suddenly introspective. “You think twenty-five to thirty-five is too narrow a range for prospective parents?”

      “I don’t want to go any younger, but I don’t think it would hurt to go a little older. There’s something to be said for maturity.”

      She nodded tensely.

      His blue gaze roved her face. “You don’t look happy.”

      Her appetite fading, Violet put her fork down. “It’s a big decision.”

      “We’ll find the right family,” Gavin promised as an intimate silence descended between them.

      “You sound so sure.”

      He quirked a brow. “You doubt that?”

      Violet sat back in her chair. “On an intellectual level I know that, statistically, given how many people there are in this county alone who are ready, willing and able to adopt a newborn child, it should be no problem to find a home for Ava.”

      “But?” He finished his iced tea in a single draught.

      “Knowing that doesn’t make the prospect of selecting parents for Ava any easier.” It was such an overwhelming responsibility! More so since she’d actually met the precious newborn and held her in her arms.

      Gavin touched her hand.

      Violet swallowed and pushed on around the sudden parched feeling in her throat. “What if we choose the wrong family? What if there are too many potential adoptive parents who fit the criteria perfectly? How will we choose just one set of parents without feeling like we are somehow being unfair to whoever didn’t get chosen?”

      He shrugged, let go of her hand and sat back, too. “How about we cross that bridge when we get to it?”

      “You’re right. I know that.” She sighed as the waitress delivered their check.

      And, as promised, Violet paid it.

      Luckily, they now had things to do to keep them busy.

      The wardrobe components, which were supposed to be ready for her, had not yet been pulled off the shelf. So she and Gavin went around the store with a flatbed-style cart, selecting the appropriate shelving and hardware.

      “How many clothes do you have?” he asked with a bemused smile.

      Aware she’d gotten everything she needed, Violet took a place in one of the checkout lines. Gavin stood behind her. “You saw them last night. All those suitcases, plastic storage containers and duffel bags around my bed.”

      He stacked the heavy boxes containing the movable closet onto the end of the conveyer belt. “Ah, yes, the feminine mess of it all.”

      Violet set the accessories on top, then turned to him as they waited for the customer in front of them to finish. She propped her hands on her waist. “Excuse me?”

      He waggled his brows, teasing, “I’ve got three sisters. I know what it looks like when they have a wardrobe crisis.”

      Guilty as charged, unfortunately.

      Flushing, Violet added more accessories to the conveyer belt. “I wasn’t having one,” she fibbed, unwilling to admit how the crisis she was having had spread to all areas of her life. “I just lugged the stuff up there so I could lay it all out on my bed and sort through it. Which I started to do this morning—”

      “Meaning it’s even more cluttered now than it was last night?”

      The young male clerk grinned as he finished ringing them up.

      Violet gave an indignant sniff. “I couldn’t find what I wanted to wear to the hospital this morning. And I was in a hurry to get there.” She handed over her credit card, then stepped up to sign.

      Finished, she took the receipt, smiled and thanked the clerk, then followed Gavin out the automatic doors to the parking lot.

      Aware how cozy and right this was all beginning to feel, she stopped at the tail ends of their vehicles and picked up the threads of the conversation as she opened her SUV. “Although I would have rushed even more had I known I was going to have the opportunity to hold Ava for the first time this morning.”

      He paused in lowering his tailgate and turned to her, an expression of unbearable tenderness on his handsome face. “It was a moment,” he admitted with surprising reverence.

      Violet wasn’t surprised to hear Gavin admit that. He was compassionate, as well as practical and forthright, down to his very soul.

      She was surprised, however, to see him look so personally affected. He’d never been one to lust after having kids, the way some guys his age did. Yet in this particular instant, she could almost swear he’d started to want a family as much as she once had with Sterling.

      Only, that part of her relationship with him hadn’t worked out, either, she thought as her cell phone vibrated.

      She looked at the screen and frowned.

      “Problem?”

      “I need to go back to the hospital. Carlson Willoughby and his wife are asking to speak to me.”

      * * *

      “WE NEED MORE information before we’ll be able to say for certain what’s going on,” Violet told the senior couple forty-five minutes later when she joined them in Carlson’s hospital room.

      “But some of the results are in, aren’t they?” Wanda asked, wringing her hands. Today’s tracksuit was a daffodil yellow, with white racing stripes running up the sides of the pants and sleeves. “I heard some of the nurses talking...”

      Violet glanced over at her patient. He looked tired and washed-out. The stress of the tests had definitely taken a toll on the eighty-two-year-old. “We’re still waiting for the radiologist’s report on the X-rays that were done today, but we do have the blood work.”

      “And?” Wanda asked.

      Violet consulted the chart. “Some of the numbers—white count and calcium, for instance—are up.”