Kids on the Doorstep / Cop on Loan. Kimberly Van Meter

a sigh at the fight she’d have on her hands the day the girls had to say goodbye to the ranch and to their Mr. John, Renee shelved the unhappy thoughts and pasted a bright smile on her lips for her daughters’ benefit.

      They weren’t leaving today. Her aunt used to tell her, don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow when there was happiness to be found in today.

      Good advice, Renee realized, for she really didn’t want to think about that day, either.

      LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTER copious amounts of hot chocolate, cider, a dinner of steak and potatoes, games of Uno, and after the girls had been tucked into bed exhausted from the day’s activities, John felt himself reluctant to say good-night to the one woman in the world he ought to steer clear of.

      Funny how those things work.

      “I guess I should turn in, too,” Renee said, although she wasn’t making a move toward the door just yet. He took that as a sign that she was hesitant for her own reasons and much to his shame, he jumped at it.

      “Come sit a minute,” he suggested, gesturing toward the crackling fire in the hearth. The dancing light threw soft shadows into the living room that offset the eerie glow from the snow-packed window. “There’s no need to run off just because the girls aren’t here. I don’t bite.”

      She smiled. “Are you sure?”

      “Am I sure that I don’t bite or am I sure that I wouldn’t mind some company?”

      “Um, both.”

      He chuckled and followed her to the sofa. “I think the girls had a really good day and I want to thank you for making that effort for them. I get the feeling that playing in the snow isn’t your idea of a good time on most days.”

      “It’s not but I didn’t realize it could be so much fun, not to mention one heck of a workout. I think muscles I never knew I had are going to be protesting tomorrow morning.”

      He smiled but his overactive imagination had already snagged the opportunity to be distracting and the effort was forced. Stop thinking about her curves, he instructed his brain, searching wildly for something else to fill the space in his head. Think of taxes, the fence that needs mending—anything! “Tell me a bit about yourself,” he suggested and she faltered, the light fading quickly from her eyes. “You don’t have to. I’m just a little curious about the woman—”

      “Who left her kids behind?” she interrupted sharply, moving to leave but he stopped her with a firm hand.

      “No, that’s not what I was going to say. Are you always in a habit of jumping to conclusions?”

      She bit her lip. “Lately. I guess. What were you going to say?”

      “Just that I’m curious to know more about the woman who is nothing like I thought she was.”

      Renee settled back on the sofa as she said, “What do you mean?”

      “Well, you’re a bit of a wild card, if you know what I mean. Unpredictable. What I knew about you was that you left your girls behind for reasons I don’t know but then you’ve shown your fierce determination to get them back. To win their love. Something tells me that there’s more to Renee Dolling, deep down. Tell me about that woman.”

      She blushed, and in the soft light with her wind-chapped lips and burnished cheeks, she bloomed into an incomparable beauty right before his eyes. He resisted the pull, the urge to sample those lips, to nibble along her collarbone and taste the silken skin, but the effort cost him.

      She cleared her throat and glanced away. “You give me too much credit. I’m just a mother who made a terrible mistake who’s trying to fix it. Contrary to what it may look like, my girls mean everything to me. They’re all I have. I married Jason right out of high school. We were big dreamers with even bigger plans. Unfortunately, neither one of us had the wherewithal to figure out how to make those dreams a reality. And then, I got pregnant.”

      “So Alexis wasn’t planned I take it.”

      “None of the girls were planned,” Renee said drily. “But they were the joy of my life. I was just too…” she drew a deep breath “…too drunk most of the time to realize it.”

      “Drunk?” An echo of her admission in court about rehab came back to him.

      She met his stare. “Yeah. Drunk. I was…I mean, I am an alcoholic. That’s why I left.”

      He digested her admission in silence, taking a moment to let it sink in. “What did you ex-husband think about you wanting to get sober?” he asked.

      She smiled without humor. “What did he think? He tried to talk me out of it. Jason was constantly trying to get me to drink because when I drank I forgot how I wanted to get away from him. I’d been trying to leave him for almost a year when I got pregnant with Chloe.”

      “So you were still having sex with him even though you wanted to leave…”

      “That’s a little personal, don’t you think?” Renee’s mouth hardened.

      “I’m just trying to understand, you know…connect the dots,” he said by way of apology.

      “If you figure out my twisted path from then to now, leave a breadcrumb trail. Sometimes I still don’t know how I got here,” she retorted with a trace of bitterness. Then she sighed and shook her head in answer to his bold question. “No. I wasn’t.”

      Dawning came quickly. “Chloe isn’t your husband’s child.”

      A long moment passed before Renee slowly shook her head again.

      “Yet he agreed to raise her as his own?”

      “He thought it would make me stay and it did…for a while. But the drinking and the fighting just got worse and worse…until the night I blacked out and woke up with a gash in my forehead and the girls crying in the backseat of my car. I’d tried to drive away with them and I was smashed.”

      “You’re lucky you didn’t kill someone.”

      “I know that. That’s why I knew I had to leave in order to get sober. There was a rehab facility with an opening but I couldn’t take the kids with me. I told Jason I had to get sober for our marriage. I lied. But it was the only way he’d agree to take care of the kids. I was in for two months and toward the end of my stay, I finally told Jason when he came for visitation that I wanted a divorce. I never expected him to split with the kids. I thought he might try to intimidate me into staying with him but when he didn’t, I just assumed he agreed with me that it was over. I got out and realized they were gone. Up until that day I found them here, I’d been looking for them ever since.”

      “And Chloe’s father?”

      Shame burned in her cheeks as she answered, “Never knew him. It was a one-night stand that I barely remember.”

      John leaned back into the sofa and exhaled softly. It was a lot to take in. Renee admitted to her mistakes and didn’t flinch from the truth even if she hated her part in it. He had to respect that even if he didn’t understand.

      “You should’ve told the judge all this,” he said quietly. “It might’ve made a difference in the outcome.”

      Her mouth twisted in a sad, wry grin. “Don’t you remember? I tried. He wasn’t interested in hearing what I had to say. He took one look at me and wrote me off as a bad mother who abandoned her kids. Just like everyone else in this town who knows my situation, which seems like just about half the population.”

      Renee misconstrued his silence as condemnation and ice returned to her voice as she said, “I can’t change who I was…only who I am now. If you can’t deal with that, that’s your problem.” She rose stiffly and walked to the back door as if to leave but John wasn’t ready to end the night on a sour note.

      “Hold on now,” he said, hurrying after her. She stopped and he could see the hurt in her eyes even though she was