purse as they returned to the house.
He still didn’t spare Amy so much as a glance when they got back, though. Karis picked up baby and carrier.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
She hadn’t. But something made her not want to admit it, so she said, “I’m not hungry.”
He didn’t pursue it; he merely headed up the staircase that rose against one wall of the entry.
Following him, Karis tried not to notice that right at eye level was a pretty fantastic derriere. This was not the time or place or person for that, she lectured herself.
When they reached the top of the steps, he motioned to his left. “The nursery,” he said as if the words stuck in his throat.
He’d left it up all this time? That seemed odd, but Karis didn’t say anything. She just went into the pink-and-white nursery adorned with cuddly bunny wallpaper and borders around a white crib, bureau, changing table and rocking chair.
She set Amy on the floor again as Luke Walker did the same with the suitcase and box. Then he went about putting a crib sheet on the mattress while Karis eased the sleeping infant out of her coat.
“I’ll put your suitcase in your room,” her surly host said, leaving her to tend to the baby alone.
Amy was barely disturbed by the diaper change or by having her pajamas put on. When that was accomplished, Karis put her niece into the crib and covered her, propping Amy’s favorite toy, a stuffed elephant, in one corner of the crib so it would be within reach if the fifteen-month-old woke up and wanted it.
“Sleep tight, sweetheart,” Karis whispered after kissing the baby on the forehead. Then she silently left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Luke Walker was waiting in the hallway, arms again crossed over his chest.
Without saying anything he led her up a second set of stairs to the attic. It appeared to have been the room of another young girl, because daisy paper lined the wall behind the double-size brass bed.
“Sheets and blankets are clean,” he said of the bedding at the foot of the bare mattress. “The armoire is empty if you want to put your stuff in it.”
Karis nodded again.
“Bathroom is through there—” He pointed to a door to the left of the cheval mirror. “Towels are in a cabinet—I’m sure you can find them. If you decide you’re hungry, there’s food in the fridge. The kitchen is downstairs, at the rear of the house.”
Karis nodded a third time, feeling like a new inmate being instructed by the warden. Thanking him seemed inappropriate so she didn’t do it.
“Do you need anything else?” he asked.
“No.”
And with that Luke Walker headed for the door.
“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, when he reached it and turned to look at her again.
“Unless I make a run for it,” she answered facetiously, not shying away from meeting his cold, hard expression.
He didn’t crack a smile. Instead, he said, “Don’t expect me to take care of her when she gets up.”
“You won’t have to,” Karis said, replacing her sarcasm with defensiveness.
Apparently satisfied with her response, he turned in the doorway and went out.
Before he closed the door behind him, Karis got another glimpse of that great posterior, and admiring it just came as a reflex.
A reflex she curbed the instant she realized what she was doing.
Because regardless of the man’s physical attributes, she reminded herself, they were of no interest whatsoever to her.
She’d come to Northbridge to get her life back on track and what that was going to require would not make her any friends here.
And she certainly wasn’t going to enter into any other kind of relationship.
Especially not with her sister’s wronged and scorned ex-husband.
Regardless of how drop-dead gorgeous he was.
Chapter Two
As he lay in bed early Saturday morning after a nearly sleepless night, Luke Walker was still coming to grips with the fact that his ex-wife had died.
He’d gone straight to the telephone when he’d left Karis Pratt in the attic the evening before. Placing a call to Cutty Grant—a member of Northbridge’s police force who was on duty overnight—he’d asked for the number of the Denver police department. Then Luke had called Denver, identified himself and requested confirmation of a report that a woman named Lea Pratt or Lea Walker or Lea Pratt Walker was one of three fatalities in an explosion there six weeks ago.
Within twenty minutes he’d had the confirmation— Lea really had been killed. Her sister had told the truth to that point anyway.
And Luke had been left with one more shock to deal with when it came to Lea.
He’d wished comeuppance on her when she left him, but he’d never wished her dead. What she’d done here—to him and to the Pratts—was rotten and lowdown and lousy, but not rotten, lowdown and lousy enough for a death sentence.
He just didn’t know what he was supposed to feel now. Grief? Remorse? Loss?
He’d gone through all of that when she’d taken off. All of that and so much more.
But eventually, after what had seemed like an eternity spent in an emotional pit that had felt like the deepest, darkest hallway in hell, he’d come out of it. He wasn’t sure how—he guessed time had taken care of it—but little by little he’d begun to be able to look at the whole thing as one huge mistake. A lapse in his own judgment that he’d paid for—a lot.
Little by little he’d gotten over his feelings for Lea—all of his feelings for her. The good feelings that had gotten him into trouble in the first place, and the bad feelings Lea had left him with.
Little by little, he’d come to see that although she might have shared his house, his bed, his life for a while, he hadn’t really known her at all. Who and what she actually was hadn’t been revealed to him in any way until she’d walked out on him. She’d been a complete stranger. A stranger who had put on an elaborate act. A monumental ruse. A hell of a con job. But a stranger nonetheless. And only a stranger.
Which meant that now, in a way, hearing about her death was like hearing about the death of a stranger. He wasn’t glad, he wasn’t sad. He was just sobered, he thought, by the fact that someone he’d been involved with had come to a violent end.
And that was all there was to it for him now.
So if her sister thought the news of Lea’s death was going to turn him into some kind of bleeding heart and make him an easy mark for a second attempt at passing Amy off as his, she was mistaken. No one would
