with the decorations, hoping no one would notice her disorganization. She should have stayed up later last night, but then, she hadn’t expected the horde to get here this soon. She stuck another heart-shaped decal on the back of a dining room chair. And gave thanks for the blessings she still had.
Her friends. Her family. Her widowed father. Thomas—also known as Pop—was already in his element, riding small children on his knee, telling corny jokes to the teenagers, ignoring his diet to drink a beer or two with the men. Molly wouldn’t spoil his fun.
The family—most of all Pop, who still mourned her mother—relied on her. She was great at holding them together, and proud of it. If this was her fate in life now, instead of a house full of babies to care for and a husband to love, so be it. Molly didn’t expect to find love again. Her family and her day care center, Little Darlings, had to be enough.
And they would be. Molly already needed to expand the center. If all her current plans went well, she could take in more children, hire more assistants to improve her already good teacher-to-student ratio and enhance her program.
Still, she couldn’t shake this stubborn foreboding, her feeling that something was about to happen that would change her life again.
And as if someone had just been cued, the doorbell chimed once more.
In a last attempt to alter her mood, she dabbed one remaining shiny red heart decal at the corner of her mouth, like a beauty mark. Then she shoved the now-decorated chairs back under the table and went to greet her newest guest, determined to enjoy herself if it killed her.
But when she plowed through the crowded living room and opened the front door, her smile vanished. Molly froze. She knew exactly why she had felt such foreboding.
In the doorway stood a tall, all-too-familiar man. His piercing blue eyes met her gaze of recognition, equally shocked.
Molly’s heart tripped on itself as too many memories flooded her mind. She tried to focus on his rain-dampened hair, dark and sleek against his head, but his gaze kept drawing hers back. She had to admit he was still the most attractive man she’d ever seen.
Molly exchanged a glance with her sister, who stood on the other side of the living room, a party hat in one hand. Ann lifted her eyebrows, and Molly stifled the urge to flee. She was no longer a naive twenty-two-year-old. He might still be handsome, but at thirty and a widow, she was immune, she reassured herself. Why let his abrupt reappearance shake her?
Yet the bluish circles of fatigue under those eyes threatened to undo her. If only she could hide behind the red heart pasted at the corner of her mouth, cool the heat that rose in her face. The last person she’d expected to see was the man she had once loved to distraction, the man who hadn’t wanted to make that final commitment to Molly on their wedding day. Brigham Collier. Her ex-fiancé, the first terrible loss in her life, had come back.
Holding a baby!
* * *
THE PARTY WENT downhill from there. After Brig walked in, Molly was definitely not in a festive mood. The good thing was, nobody noticed except Pop, whose back went rigid with disapproval as soon as he spied Brig. Apparently he hadn’t forgotten, either, what had happened eight years ago.
“Look at this adorable baby,” one of Molly’s cousins cooed, crossing the room with her arms outstretched. “Take off that soaked trench coat and give this poor child to me.”
Looking disoriented, Brig didn’t move except to relinquish the baby. Like Molly, he seemed numb. He was an only child, and his smaller family never had get-togethers of such utter chaos. Then, too, he wasn’t a homebody like Molly, who had never been out of Ohio. No. Brig had left Liberty Courthouse right after he’d run out on her. To this day, according to his worried mother, he preferred flying around the world, getting in and out of trouble on behalf of some quasimilitary outfit no one was supposed to know about. Trying to get himself killed.
Brig was all about risk.
Molly, who had suffered enough loss, hated the very thought of risk.
For years, she reminded herself, she and Brig had literally been worlds apart. The last she’d heard, he was somewhere in Afghanistan.
If he expected her to welcome him warmly, he had some nerve. She peered behind him but didn’t see a wife, which didn’t mean he didn’t have one somewhere. Before she had all her defenses in place, Brig walked right toward her, his gaze as piercing as a laser.
His deep voice sent an unwanted shiver down her spine.
“Hey, Molly.” He bent as though to kiss her cheek, but Molly stepped back to avoid contact. Seeming to sense her rejection, Brig glanced away. “I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said. “Or that you’d still be putting on this show every year. Sorry to burst in—”
“No, really, it’s a party. The more, the merrier.” She pasted a smile on her face but folded her arms across her chest. “Actually, I haven’t been here,” she went on, “but things change...life changes...and now I’m back.”
Apparently so was he. But why? And for how long?
Not that it mattered to Molly.
“My parents weren’t exactly expecting us,” he said, then explained about new locks and the key he didn’t have. “Do you know where they are?”
She hesitated. “No, but since your dad retired, they come and go all the time.” Unlike Thomas, Molly thought, who stayed home way too much. She paused again, wishing Pop had other interests besides the house and, above all, Molly. “We invited them to the party. I thought they were coming, but maybe they made other plans.”
Brig frowned. “Do you or Thomas have the new key to their house?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Last summer Molly had watered the Colliers’ garden while they were on vacation, but that hadn’t involved her going inside.
She risked a peek at the baby in her cousin’s arms and felt a familiar, deep ache. Surely Brig’s parents would have spread the word about their first grandchild. If that had been Molly’s baby, Pop would have trumpeted the news.
As for Brig, she hadn’t heard a word about any wedding, either.
“I didn’t know you were married,” she murmured, unable to stop herself.
“Me? In my line of work? No, I’m not.” He shifted, looking uncomfortable at the reminder that he’d once left Molly. Across the living room the baby, who was being passed around and admired, began to cry. Brig quickly retrieved the tiny bundle and picked up a bulky diaper bag. “Long story,” he said with a harried glance toward the kitchen. “I’ll tell you later. She’s hungry. I need to fix her a bottle. May I—?”
“Follow me,” Molly said with a sinking feeling.
She didn’t usually turn away from people. Right now that meant Brig.
And, to Molly’s utter dismay, a tiny, helpless infant she couldn’t bear to even look at full-on.
* * *
BRIG STOOD IN the kitchen doorway, the diaper bag weighing down one shoulder and Laila fussing in his arms. Two laughing
