Lonergan's Secrets. Maureen Child

smart blood.”

      “I do?” She sniffled, wiped her red eyes with her free hand and stared at him.

      “Yep. Your blood’s cleaning your cut for us. Very smart blood.”

      “Mommy,” she said, delighted to know how intelligent her body was, “I’m smart.”

      “You bet, baby girl,” Susan said, watching every move Sam made.

      “Here’s your bag.” Maggie stepped up close and set the bag down beside the little girl. Then she lifted one hand to smooth silky-soft hair off the child’s cheeks.

      She watched Sam, impressed and touched by his gentleness with the little girl. She’d been around him for three days now and this was the first time she’d gotten a glimpse of his heart.

      “Thanks,” Sam said and pulled a paper towel off the roll, gently patting the cut dry. “Katie, you just sit right here for a second and we’ll fix it all up.”

      “‘Kay.”

      He delved into the bag, pulled out a small package and opened it up. “These are butterfly bandages,” he said as he pulled the backing off the tiny adhesive patches.

      “Butterflies?” More curious now than afraid, Katie watched him as he pulled the skin of her wound together and carefully applied the bandages.

      His fingers smoothed over the edges of the bandages, carefully making sure they weren’t too tight, weren’t pulling too closely. Then he lifted his gaze to hers and smiled into her watery eyes. “All finished,” Sam said. “You were very brave.”

      “And smart,” she added with a sharp nod of her head that sent a tiny pink barrette sliding toward her forehead.

      “Oh,” Sam said despite the warning twinge of danger inside him, “very smart.”

      She flashed him a smile that slammed into him like a sledgehammer, and Sam had to remind himself to emotionally back up. It was the little ones that always got to him. The helpless ones. The ones with tears in their eyes and blind trust in their hearts.

      At that thought, he straightened up, lifted her down from the counter and set her onto her feet. Then he closed his bag and glanced at the child’s mother. “She’ll be fine. But you should still get her in to Doc Evans for that tetanus—” He broke off with a glance at the girl, then finished lamely, “For the other thing I talked about earlier.”

      “I will,” she promised, gathering up her daughter and holding her close. “And thank you. Seriously.”

      “It wasn’t bad,” Sam assured her, uncomfortable with the admiring stares of both Susan and Maggie.

      “She’s my baby,” the woman said, hugging the girl tightly. “Which means, everything is serious to me.”

      “I understand.” And he did. All too well. Which was exactly why he needed the emotional distance that was, at the moment, eluding him.

      When they were gone, Katie waving a final goodbye from the safety of her mother’s arms, Sam felt Maggie’s curiosity simmering in the air.

      “You’re very good with children,” she said.

      He forced himself to glance at her and saw the shine of interest in her eyes. Ordinarily having a woman like Maggie look at him like that would be a good thing. But not now. Not when they’d be in close quarters for the summer. Not when he’d be leaving in three months and she’d dug her own roots deep into the Lonergan ranch.

      “I almost never bite,” he said, choosing to make a joke out of her observation.

      She tipped her head to one side and studied him. “Jeremiah told me that you work with Doctors Without Borders.”

      “Sometimes,” he said, trying to head her off at the pass before she started making what he did into some kind of heroics.

      “And,” she continued, “he said when you’re not doing that, you work in hospital E.R.s around the country.”

      True. He kept on the move. Never staying in one place long enough to care about the people he treated. Never making the kind of connection that could only lead to pain somewhere along the line.

      Frowning, Sam only said, “Jeremiah talks too much.”

      “What I don’t understand,” she said softly, keeping his attention despite the voice inside telling him to leave the room, “is why someone like you doesn’t want to settle down in one place. Build a practice.”

      His chest tightened and his lungs felt as though they were being squeezed by a cold, invisible fist. Of course she didn’t understand. The woman had been at the ranch less than two years and she’d already put her stamp on the place.

      Little touches—flowers, candles—decorated the big rooms. The house always smelled of lemon oil, and every stick of furniture in the place gleamed from her careful attention. She’d nested. Put down roots here in the land that had nurtured him in his youth. Of course she couldn’t comprehend why he wouldn’t want the same things.

      And if things had been different, he probably would have. But he’d learned early that loving, caring, only meant that you could be hurt, torn apart inside by a whim of fate. So now he chose to stand apart. To keep his heart whole by keeping it locked away.

      “I like to be on the move,” he said and heard the gruffness of his own voice scratching at the air. Here, in this kitchen that shone and glistened in the morning sunlight, a part of him wished things were different. Wished he were different.

      But no amount of wishing could turn back time.

      “Before,” she said, apparently unwilling to let this conversation end and allow him an escape, “you told me that you weren’t a nice man.”

      He stilled, his hands atop the medical bag that went with him everywhere. “It’s the truth.”

      “No,” she said softly. And he couldn’t help it—he had to look at her.

      The sun shining in behind her silhouetted and lined her form with gold. Their gazes locked. She looked deeply into his eyes, and Sam wanted to warn her that what she would see in his soul wasn’t really worth a long look.

      “It’s not the truth at all,” she was saying, her gaze on his, a small smile curving her lips. “I think you’d like to believe it’s true, but it’s not.”

      “You don’t know me,” Sam countered and deliberately forced himself to break the spell somehow linking them. He grabbed up his bag and took the few steps to the doorway leading out of the kitchen.

      Her voice stopped him.

      “Maybe not,” she said quietly. “But maybe you don’t know you very well, either.”

      “You shouldn’t come here alone.”

      Maggie’s rhythm was shattered and she came up out of her swim stroke to look at the man standing at the lake’s edge. Under the light of a nearly full moon he looked… amazing.

      All day she’d been thinking of him. Didn’t matter that he’d managed to keep out of her way, busying himself with tasks around the ranch yard. He’d mended fences, repaired a loose board on the back porch and cleared out the empty stables where Jeremiah used to keep horses.

      And when he hadn’t known she was watching, Maggie had taken the opportunity to indulge herself with a good stare. He worked like a man trying to keep himself too busy to think. In the heat of the afternoon he’d stripped off his black T-shirt, and Maggie’d been mesmerized by the sight of his tanned flesh, muscles rippling with his every movement.

      Heat had settled deep inside her and didn’t show any signs of dissipating. She’d moved through the rest of her day in a fog of confused lust. Not that she was confused about the lust. That was really clear. Gorgeous man, dark, haunted eyes, deep voice, gentle hands. What woman