Her Baby and Her Beau. Victoria Pade

      Oh, she really was pale, she realized. So pale that it made the bruise on her otherwise-unmarred forehead look even worse.

      She reached for her bangs automatically with her right hand, forgetting that her wrist was badly sprained until the jolt of pain reminded her.

      Then she tried to fluff her bangs with her left hand to cover the bruise. Mostly she just managed to pull them into her face. She wasn’t sure that was an improvement, but she left them anyway.

      Eddie’s secretary had been good enough to get her a few basic necessities that included pajama pants and a top to sleep in, and two pairs of loose-fitting sweatpants to go with two baggy T-shirts for daytime. But that was the extent of her wardrobe. So there was no sense changing out of one pair of sweatpants and T-shirt into the other.

      She stepped farther back from the mirror and took a look at the whole picture.

      If there was a worse way to look meeting Beau Camden again, she couldn’t think of it.

      But there was nothing she could do, so she took some small comfort in the thought that if he’d recognized her when she’d poked her head through the curtains maybe she didn’t look too different than she had at sixteen.

      It was very small comfort, though. Especially when she recalled how fantastic he looked...

      But she refused to let herself care what he might think—or at least tried not to—as she slid her feet into the flip-flops that were her only shoes and reluctantly headed for the door.

      She was careful not to make any noise as she slipped out of the motel room, leaving the door ajar by only an inch in order to be able to hear if Immy cried. And even though it wasn’t easy, she made sure she was standing straight and strong before she turned to face her first love and the person who had hurt her more than anyone in her life.

      “I have a two-month-old baby sleeping inside and I don’t want to wake her,” she informed Beau without inflection, staggered all over again by the man he’d become when she looked at him without anything between them.

      He gave her a once-over glance that didn’t seem to miss a thing—including the bruise on her temple and the wrist brace that went from mid-forearm to her knuckles. “You look like you need to sit. It’s finally cooling down today, so how about the hood of my car?”

      His SUV was big. Normally she wouldn’t have had a problem using the front bumper as a step and climbing onto it. But in her current condition there was no way she could get up there.

      “I can give you a hand,” Beau offered as if he knew what she was thinking, holding out that same giant mitt that had pounded on the door earlier.

      Okay, sure, there was a part of her that was inclined to slip her hand into his the way she would have that long-ago summer. To see what it was like now.

      But it was a very small part of her that was instantly overruled by her sense of independence and her certainty that she would never forgive him for what he’d done.

      “No, thanks,” she said curtly as she moved to sit on the SUV’s bumper. “How is it that you’re here?” she asked then.

      “There’s a lot that goes into that story,” he answered, sounding confused and bewildered—something that did not seem in keeping with the powerful tower of man standing before her. “There’s a lot—so much—that we need to talk about and I can’t even imagine what you must be thinking...what you must have thought about me all these years—”

      “Nothing good,” she told him without compunction.

      “Just let me say that fourteen years ago all I knew was that I’d had an unbelievable summer with an unbelievable girl—”

      “And then lied about it and left me hanging out to dry with the consequences.”

      “Honest to God, Kyla, I didn’t do either of those things. I didn’t even tell anybody about you because I was so wrecked trying to get over you, and I didn’t want to be teased about it by my brothers and cousins—I just let them think I was sorry to be home again.”

      Kyla gazed up at him, but before she could accuse him of lying once more, he said, “We need to talk about it all. But right now isn’t the time. Just give me the benefit of the doubt when I tell you that, until a few hours ago, I had no idea you’d tried to contact me after the day we said goodbye in Northbridge.”

      Kyla glared at him.

      “Honest to God,” he repeated. “And while you certainly don’t owe me anything, not even answers, I just have to ask you one thing—do I...do we...”

      He seemed to stand even straighter and stiffer than he had been—although she didn’t know how that was possible—and she thought he was steeling himself.

      “Do we have a kid?” he finally asked quietly.

      Kyla didn’t want to admit it to herself, but there was an unmistakable tone in his voice that made it sound as if the possibility of that was new to him. Stunningly new to him, shaking this man who appeared to be unshakable.

      So she merely answered his question. “No. I...there was a miscarriage—I lost it.” And herself for a while.

      His expression went blank and he didn’t seem to know how to respond.

      Then he let out a breath that allowed those broad shoulders of his to relax almost imperceptibly and said, “Okay. Can we put a pin in that, then, and deal with it all later so I can just focus on helping you now?”

      “Helping me?” she parroted sarcastically. “You’re going to help me now?” In a week of unfathomable things happening, this was the frosting on the cake. “I don’t even know how you got here or why or—”

      “My grandmother saw a news report about the fire at your cousin’s house. When she heard your name it rang a bell with her because she’d only recently read some things that my great-grandfather wrote in his journal—along with the letter you sent me. The letter I never got.” He shook his head as if he’d veered off track and was redirecting himself. “Anyway, your name and the fact that the news said you were from Northbridge caused GiGi—my grandmother—to do some digging. She called my brother Seth—”

      “Who runs your ranch in Northbridge now—I know,” Kyla said.

      “I didn’t know you’d gone back there.”

      Kyla shrugged. She didn’t owe him any explanations. He didn’t deserve any.

      “Do you know my brother?” Beau asked.

      “Only by name. We’ve never been introduced and if he knows who I am—”

      “He doesn’t. I told you, I never said anything to anyone, so there’s no way—”

      Kyla wasn’t up to arguing this now, so she merely cut him off to say, “No, we don’t know each other. But Northbridge is Northbridge—everybody at least knows of everyone else.” And the belief she’d had for as long as she’d been living in Northbridge that his brother was just pretending not to know who she was held fast.

      “That’s what Seth said—that he knew of you. But after GiGi called him he asked around, talked to someone who I guess is your roommate—”

      “Darla.”

      “She confirmed that you came to Denver to visit family, that you were in a fire, and she said that the only survivors were you and a baby who’s—”

      “My cousin’s daughter—Immy. My godchild.”

      “Who’s now yours to raise?”

      “Rachel and her husband, Eddie, named me as Immy’s guardian in their will.” They’d told her that. She’d taken it only as another honorary position, not thinking for even a minute that the need to actually become Immy’s guardian would ever come about.

      “And