son.
It was Valentine’s Day.
Sara knew this because last night she had helped her five-year-old son, Liam, print his name laboriously on twenty-one Valentine cards complete with cartoon-art mutant creatures saying, “Be Mine” and “I’m 4 U.”
She knew it because together they had covered a shoe box with white paper and red hearts to be his own “mailbox” at kindergarten and because she had baked cupcakes—chocolate ones with chocolate frosting and red and white candy hearts on them—as right before he went to bed Liam remembered he had volunteered to bring the cupcakes for the class party today.
And she knew because—for the first time since Liam was born—she actually had a date.
Adam Benally had asked her to dinner. He was the foreman out at Lyle Dunlop’s place. He had come to the valley a few months ago from Arizona. A widower with a past he didn’t often talk about, he was at least candid about “trying to outrun his demons.” He’d brought the ranch accounting work in for Sara, and that was how they’d got to know each other.
No stranger to demons herself, Sara thought she and Adam might have a lot in common. He at least was getting past his demons. It was about time she got past hers.
“You can’t be a recluse forever,” her mother, Polly, had told her more than once. “Just because you had one bad experience…”
Sara let her mother talk because that’s what Polly did. A lot. And her mother was probably right about the recluse part. It was the “bad experience” part that was the sticking point.
It hadn’t been bad. At least not while it was going on. While it was going on it had been the most amazing three days of her life. And then…
Nothing.
That was the bad part. That was the part that made her gut clench every time she thought about it. The part that spooked her, that made her hesitant to ever open up to another man, to ever try again.
But finally she’d said yes. She’d made up her mind to try again with Adam. A dinner date. A first step.
“About time,” Polly had said when Sara told her the plan. “I’m glad. You need to banish some ghosts.”
No. Just one.
One Sara saw in miniature—right down to the tousled black hair and jade-green eyes—every time she looked at her son.
She shoved the thought away ruthlessly. Now was not the time to be thinking about that. About him.
Liam might be a reminder, but his father was past. Ordinarily she went whole days without thinking of him at all. It was just today—because it was Valentine’s Day, because she’d accepted Adam’s invitation, determined to kill two memories with one night out—that he kept plaguing her thoughts.
“Don’t,” she told herself out loud. The past was over. She’d rehashed it often to kill it from over scrutiny. It had done no good. Now she needed to concentrate on the future—on Adam.
What would Adam expect? She paced the kitchen, made tea, thought about what to wear, how to be charming and make conversation. Dating was like speaking a foreign language she had no practice in. It was something she’d done very little of before—
No! Damn it. There she went again!
Determinedly she carried her mug of tea to the table and laid out files so she could work. If she could get the hardware store accounts finished before Liam got home from school, then she could take a break, maybe go out and build a snowman with him, have a snowball fight. Do something to distract herself.
Liam was going to spend the night at her aunt Celie’s who lived up the street with her husband, Jace, and their kids.
“Why all night?” she’d demanded when Celie had offered. “We’re only going to dinner. I’m not spending the night with him!”
“Well, you might want to invite him in after,” Celie said innocently. “For a cup of coffee,” she added with a smile. It wasn’t what she meant.
Sara knew it as well as she knew that she wasn’t up for anything beyond dinner. Not now. Not yet.
How on earth could she have let six years go by without a single date?
Well, really, she rationalized, when had she had time?
She’d spent the first three years after Liam’s birth finishing a degree in accounting, then setting up in business. Between her son and her schooling and the jobs she’d taken to make ends meet, she’d had no time to meet eligible men.
Not that she’d wanted to.
Once burned, twice shy and all that. And while she supposed there was wisdom in the notion of getting right back on a horse once you’d been thrown, there was also wisdom in being a damn sight more cautious the second time around.
She’d been too reckless the first time. This time she was taking it slow and easy and that meant dinner, perhaps a quick peck on the lips. Yes, she could do that.
But first she had to get to work.
One of the pluses of her job as an independent certified public accountant was that she could set her own hours and work from home. That made it easier to be home when Liam was. The downside, of course, was that it was easy to get distracted—like today. There was no boss to crack the whip, to make demands. It was more tempting to think about checking her closet to see what she wanted to wear or to put in a load of laundry, make a cup of tea and talk to Sid the cat when she really needed to focus on work.
So she started again, made herself settle down at the kitchen table, which was also her desk, and spread out the accounts from the hardware store. Adding columns of figures required that she pay close attention and didn’t allow her mind to wander, to anticipate, to worry.
A sudden loud knock on the front door made her jump. She slopped tea all over her ledger sheet. “Damn!”
She went to the sink and grabbed the dishrag, mopping up the spill, cursing the delivery man, who was the only one who ever came to the front door. He left her office supplies when she ordered them. But she didn’t remember—
Bang, bang, bang!
Not the delivery man, then. He only knocked once, then, having awakened the dead, he always jumped back into his delivery truck and drove away. He never knocked twice.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Let alone a third time.
“Hold your horses,” she shouted. “I’m coming!”
She stalked to the door and jerked it open—to the ghost of Valentine’s past.
Oh, God.
She was hallucinating. Panicking at the notion of dating again, she’d conjured him up out of the recesses of her mind.
And damn her mind for making him larger than life and more appealing than ever. Tall, rangy and narrow-hipped, but with shoulders even broader than she remembered.
