Coming Home To You. Fay Robinson

from you.”

      “Which are?”

      “First, that you’ll reconsider my request for help with my book.”

      “Don’t—”

      “Wait a minute, now. Let me finish. If you’ll seriously think about my request for…oh…three days, I’ll stay at the motel and won’t bother you. But you have to put aside your dislike for me and not make a decision based on that.”

      “And if I still say no at the end of three days?”

      “I’ll go away.”

      “Forever?”

      “Forever.”

      He thought about it for all of two seconds. “That’s too good to pass up. What’s the second promise?”

      “That sometime today you give me ten minutes to at least try to convince you to cooperate on the book, without your getting all surly and wanting to strangle me.”

      He flashed a quick grin, gone as quickly as it came. “How did you know I wanted to strangle you?”

      “Believe me, I’ve seen that look before on the faces of at least a hundred different men, my father and brothers included.”

      “Morgan, sometimes you’re too much.” This time he didn’t bother to hide his smile. “Okay, you’ve got a deal. Ten minutes, and I’ll try my best to stay calm.”

      “How about now?”

      “Not while we’re with the kids.”

      “Okay, I can wait. Where are we headed, by the way?”

      “The pond first and then the orchard. I want to show you the different ways we’re making money and moving toward being self-sufficient. We keep bees and sell the honey. We grow muscadines and scuppernongs and we sell them to a small outfit locally that makes jelly. The pond is stocked with catfish and we open it for public fishing every Saturday during the warm months.”

      “For a fee?”

      “No, not for fishing, but we charge per pound for the fish caught.”

      “Pish,” Henry said.

      “Catfish,” Hayes corrected. “And what sound does a catfish make?”

      “Gur-ak,” Henry said proudly.

      Kate decided, after hearing Henry imitate various animals at Hayes’s prompting, that this had to be a game they’d played many times before.

      As they continued to the pond, the child ran through the rest of his imitations—sheep, cows, horses, bees and something called a ruby-throated brew guzzler that Hayes swore was a real bird native to the South, but whose call sounded suspiciously like a belch to Kate.

      “Oh, let me guess,” she said, laughing despite her efforts not to. “It guzzles beer and is identified by its red neck.”

      Hayes grinned impishly.

      She groaned. “You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to corrupt this child.”

      “Wasn’t me,” he said innocently.

      “I believe that about as much as I believe…ruby-throated brew guzzlers really fly.”

      He had anticipated her answer. With a mischievous gleam in his eye he bent his head and said, “Henry, let a brew guzzler fly.”

      Henry swallowed air. “Bu-rp,” he said, belching loudly.

      BRET LIKED her laugh. He found it soothing. He knew in the last several years he hadn’t been the kind of man who inspired women to laughter. He was too somber. Depressing, was the word one woman had used. But today he seemed to amuse this woman a great deal, even when he wasn’t trying.

      She laughed often. Loudly. Wonderfully. She made him laugh, something he hadn’t felt like doing in a long time.

      He was having trouble remembering she was the enemy. And even more disturbing, he was having no trouble remembering she was a woman.

      They sat on the pond’s wooden pier, Bret with his back against a piling, Morgan uncomfortably close, so close he could smell the light flowery fragrance that seemed to be a natural part of her. Unable to resist the lure of the water, she had slipped off her shoes and now dangled her feet in it.

      It was one of the few times they’d been alone that afternoon. The children had reached the pond ahead of them and were busy skipping rocks at the far end. Tom had sensed the adults’ need for privacy and had assumed supervision of little Henry.

      Bret looked not at the woman, but out over the glassy sun-lit surface of the pond, trying to keep from being distracted by that stretchy red top she had on and the way it showed off her curves.

      Funny. Smart. Interesting. Attractive. And the kids had taken to her immediately. If she were anyone but Kathryn Morgan…

      “So,” he said casually, “you mentioned last night that you knew my brother. How well?”

      “Not well. I spent a few hours with him one weekend at Columbia in 1987.”

      “Were you lovers?”

      Her eyes narrowed. She hadn’t liked the question. “No, we weren’t lovers. What made you think we had a sexual relationship?”

      “Because that was the only kind of relationship James had with women.”

      “Well, he didn’t with me. Besides, I wasn’t a woman. I was a kid, a teenager with zero experience.”

      “How did you meet?”

      “A reporter from The New York Post was writing an article covering one of his concerts, and apparently James’s manager convinced her to include some of the fellowship students from the university in the photographs. I was among the five or so they brought in to meet him. James and I talked, swapped family stories, and then we went our separate ways. He was extremely nice to me when he didn’t have to be, and I’ve never forgotten it. Period. End of story. No sex involved.”

      “And you said this was at Columbia?”

      “I was in graduate school and he was playing a concert in Manhattan that weekend.”

      “Graduate school? I thought you said you were still a kid.”

      “I was.”

      “You must have been a really smart kid.”

      She simply shrugged.

      “And you never saw James again after that day?”

      “Nope.” She turned to him and folded her legs underneath her. “You know, you could have asked me this last night and saved yourself the trouble of bringing me here today.”

      “I didn’t bring you here to ask about that.”

      “Then why? Last night you were ready to boil me in oil, and then suddenly you’re at my door asking me to go riding. What gives?”

      “You tell me.”

      “I’m not sure. I told you I knew about Pine Acres, and maybe you were afraid I’d show up here. Or you wanted to find out what I might write about you in the book. Is that it? Those are the only two things that make sense to me. Did you think by bringing me out here I’d present you and the ranch in a more favorable light?”

      “You read people pretty well.”

      She looked directly at him. “A lot of the time. But you’re harder to read than most.”

      “Oh? And why’s that?”

      “I haven’t quite figured that out yet. But I will. You’re a contradiction, Hayes. You send out so many conflicting signals I’m not sure what to think of you.”

      “Conflicting how?”

      “Well,