me. I didn’t realize I had so many chores I was putting off until I could bend a little easier.”
Though Ben would have happily scooted off her porch only three seconds before, for this he turned and faced her. He had no doubt Nathan would keep Gwen company, but he wanted to confirm Nathan was doing what he was being paid to do. “He helped you?”
“A great deal,” Gwen assured Ben with a nod. “And he’s a wonderful boy.”
Her words were like a soothing balm, a confirmation for Ben that he’d really done right by her. No guessing. No assumptions. His smile was quick and genuine. “Yes, he is.”
“I hope my child is as happy and energetic as he is.”
Hearing the sweet, wishful, motherly tone of her voice, Ben realized why he suddenly felt differently around her than he had before. He’d lost his wall of protection. He’d already admitted to himself that Gwen was a beautiful woman. He’d admitted to himself that he found her attractive. But he’d always had the protection of thinking she must not be a good person to have yanked her child away from its natural father. Now that he had accepted that Gwen herself was abandoned, a good and decent person trying to do the best she could, it seemed his fortress against her appeal was gone. And all the rules had changed.
“Well, I’ll see you around,” he said gruffly, and bounded outside, not wasting another second.
Not only was he attracted to her, but with the knowledge that she was as blameless as she was beautiful, the door was open for him to pursue her…and he wanted to. That was what kept throwing off his concentration and his ability to reason. He really wanted to get to know her. She was pretty, sweet and delightfully charming. What man wouldn’t want to spend time with her?
But there was one little problem.
He had no intention of settling down. None. Never. And a woman with a child on the way needed a commitment. Since Ben was not the kind of man who could make a commitment, he had to stay the hell away from her.
Chapter Two
Gwen didn’t know why she hid her stash of shortbread cookies on the top shelf of her last cabinet behind the old dishes she never used. She didn’t live with anyone, so no one would find her precious treat. And she knew where the darned cookies were. It wasn’t as if she prevented herself from discovering them. She wasn’t fooling anybody or accomplishing anything, only delaying the inevitable.
Thinking that her purpose must be to give herself time to change her mind about eating a hundred buttery calories for every cookie, she dragged a chair to the cupboards and climbed onto the seat. Then she took a minute to catch her breath because she was huffing and puffing from the slight exertion. Twenty pounds didn’t seem like a lot, but when gained in seven months and distributed entirely to her middle, those twenty pounds had really thrown a monkey wrench into physical activity—not to mention her shape and mobility.
Since she wasn’t concealing the cookies from intruders and since she obviously wasn’t deterring herself, she declared herself officially too clumsy to continue this little game at the same moment that someone knocked on her front door.
She groaned. Now she remembered why she hid these things. It was to keep them out of sight of visitors who would take one look at her bulging tummy and one look at the cookies and recognize she had absolutely no will-power.
“I’m coming,” she called, when her guest knocked again. She lumbered off the chair and walked to her front door, realizing that in the city she might have worried about being so casual with unexpected visitors. But here in Storkville, Nebraska, she never gave callers a second thought. She hadn’t met anyone who wasn’t pleasant, and most people went out of their way to be kind and considerate…except for Ben Crowe, she thought with an involuntary sigh. When she had met the Sioux rancher she’d immediately thought he was the most handsome man in Cedar County, with his nearly black eyes and short, shiny black hair. But as they negotiated the deal for his cottage, it didn’t take her long to realize he was also the most bossy, irritating chauvinist she’d come across in a long, long time. Every time she had contact with him his gruffness managed to confirm that opinion, but his behavior the day before had etched it in stone.
When she opened the door and saw Nathan, her bad mood disappeared. “Hey, Nathan!” she said, stooping down so they were eye level.
“Hi, Mrs. Parker,” he said, his gaze dropping shyly.
“None of that Mrs. Parker stuff,” Gwen said, then ruffled his smooth dark hair. “Didn’t I tell you yesterday to call me Gwen?”
He nodded.
“Okay, then,” she said, and attempted to rise, but couldn’t. “Drat!”
“What’s the matter?” Nathan asked, alarmed. “Nothing,” Gwen said. “I just need something to hold on to.”
“Here,” Nathan said, catching her arm. “I’ll help.”
Gwen knew Nathan’s enthusiastic heart was in the right place, but she also knew his slight body could not support her weight. Still, not wanting to insult him, she allowed him to hold her left arm while she actually levered herself up by angling her right hand on the door frame.
“That’s better,” she said, then blew her breath out on a long sigh. “So how come you’re here?”
He shrugged. “I don’t got nowhere else to go. I got no parents. And you said yesterday I could visit anytime I wanted.”
“That’s right,” Gwen said, directing Nathan to follow her into the kitchen, though she had the distinct impression she was being conned. She’d spent an entire afternoon with this kid yesterday and his grammar was perfectly fine. Now suddenly he was talking like a five-year-old.
“I live with foster parents on the reservation,” he continued, as he sat on one of the captain’s chairs by her round kitchen table. His dark hair was bright and shiny, but his dark eyes were dull with concern, as if he was afraid she didn’t believe him. “They’re nice, but they’re old, and they don’t like to play.”
He’d told her as much the day before, but today there was an odd quality to his voice, almost a quiver. If he was duping her, it was only because he wanted company.
Come to think of it, so did she. She was lonely. He was lonely. There was no harm in letting him hang around for a while. In fact, she decided to share her cookies with him and made her way over to the cupboard.
“Do your foster parents know where you are?” she asked as she climbed on the chair again.
He nodded. “I called from Ben’s.”
Ben’s. Great. Did everything in this town revolve around Ben Crowe? “What did they say?”
“They said that I could come over as long as I didn’t annoy you. And Ben said he’d pick me up later to take me back to the reservation.”
That stopped her. She could see the surly rancher letting his little friend use the phone. She could even see him letting this boy follow on his heels because that might feed his ego. But to volunteer to go out of his way to take him back to the reservation? That made him seem almost—well, nice. “He did?”
“Yeah,” Nathan
