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Her Baby and Her Beau
Victoria Pade


A KID FOR A CAMDEN? Teacher Kyla Gibson spends her days keeping kids in line, but it’s not the same as having a family of her own. So, when her baby goddaughter is orphaned, Kyla doesn’t think twice about taking her in.Soon, though, she’s in desperate need of an extra pair of hands! Beau Camden is shocked to see Kyla again – and with a baby! It’s been fourteen years since their last night together. But the former marine has a magic touch with little Immy. Can the soldier and his former sweetheart heal old hurts… and create a new family?









He nodded as if he understood, and she appreciated that he didn’t try to force instant forgiveness, that he was accepting even blame he wasn’t due.


There was a quiet strength in that, and she couldn’t help admiring it.

Some of that same strength she’d seen in him fourteen years ago that had set him apart. That had drawn her to him and made her like him.

And she had liked him.

So much …

She looked at him then and for some reason remembered the first time he’d kissed her.

She hadn’t kissed many boys before him because she’d never been in any one place long enough to have a real boyfriend. But Beau had seemed to have more experience—when it came to kissing, at least.

They’d been at the movies. His arm had been around her shoulders. And he’d just swiveled from the waist toward her and kissed her …

The best kiss she’d had up until then.

And one she’d never forgotten. Not even when she’d wished she could …

The Camdens of Colorado:

They’ve made a fortune in business.

Can they make it in the game of love?




Her Baby and Her Beau

Victoria Pade















www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


VICTORIA PADE is a USA TODAY bestselling author. A native of Colorado, she’s lived there her entire life. She studied art before discovering her real passion was for writing, and even after more than eighty books, she still loves it. When she isn’t writing she’s baking and worrying about how to work off the calories. She has better luck with the baking than with the calories. Readers can contact her on her Facebook page.


Contents

Cover (#ub978cccc-bba7-55b8-8b54-c5f9c4e8918f)

Excerpt (#u6d289e47-05f4-5f3e-898e-215ead01ec32)

Title Page (#u32f796d0-3e56-5b96-a398-bded3354a3b1)

About the Author (#ufedd6d70-27fd-53a6-afb3-037f8095e6dc)

Prologue (#u266691c6-461b-5447-ac43-605ef57ee2aa)

Chapter One (#ud3b3d615-5e57-58b0-a6d0-accfeb171764)

Chapter Two (#uf6e9de24-264a-55d3-870e-2c9e35673f71)

Chapter Three (#uda357983-2c11-5eec-9937-e980d7679309)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


Prologue (#ulink_af87e17a-c769-5806-be8e-f9d9b658ef9c)

Standing at the front door to his grandmother’s Denver home on that sizzling August afternoon, Beau Camden heard a car pull up the drive behind him.

He spun around so fast he might as well have still been in the caves of Afghanistan with a rifle in his hands.

Then he recognized his older brother Cade at the wheel of a blue sedan and relaxed.

Beau watched as Cade parked behind his own black SUV, thinking that maybe Cade would have better luck getting someone to answer the door.

“Beau! Hey!” Cade called as he got out of his car and headed for the landing. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“GiGi asked me to come over. But I rang the bell and knocked, and no one seems to be here.”

Cade raised his chin knowingly. “Oh, that’s right, GiGi said you’d been doing that—knocking and ringing the bell instead of just coming in. Acting like you don’t belong here—that’s what she calls it. She doesn’t like it. This is home, pal. Our home—we grew up here, remember? I know you’ve been gone a long time, but nothing’s changed. We don’t stand on ceremony.”

But standing on ceremony had been ingrained in him in the Marines.

And he had been gone a long time. Thirteen years. The first four of them in college at Annapolis with summers and holidays spent on the Camden ranch in Northbridge, Montana, to toughen up. The last nine years a marine.

Once a marine, always a marine...

“Hard to get back to things,” he muttered.

An understatement.

Beau was having a lot of trouble fitting in again. The few occasions over the years when he’d been home on leave had been vacations from reality. Every waking hour had been filled with activities and seeing family and friends who all wanted to spoil him and show him a good time before he left again.

Being back for good was something else.

When Cade joined him at the oversize front door with its arched top and the stained glass in the upper half he reached in front of Beau, punched in the code that unlocked the door and unceremoniously turned the handle.

“Finally! It’s about time, Beaumont Anthony Camden!” came a victorious call from inside before the door was open all the way. “I thought I was going to have to stand here till dark before you got the idea!”

Georgianna Camden, matriarch of the Camden family and the woman who had raised all ten of her grandchildren—the grandmother they called GiGi—stood several feet inside the entry, facing the door as if she’d been there all along.

Spotting Cade, she deflated slightly, her shoulders drooping into her dumpling-like shape, her head shaking enough for her salt-and-pepper curls to shimmy and her frustration showing on the lined face that still bore evidence of beauty.

“Oh, Cade...” she said. “I didn’t know you were coming—you opened the door, didn’t you?”

“Well, it’s open, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?” Cade asked.

Beau knew his older brother was covering for him.

So did GiGi, if her disapproving frown meant anything.

Cade ignored it and said, “I left my sunglasses when we were here Sunday. Just came to pick them up on my way home.”

“Ah. We wondered who those belonged to. They’re in the kitchen on the counter.”

“But you were waiting for Beau?” Cade asked with a glance from GiGi to Beau. “Standing here in the middle of the entry? With a bowl of marshmallows? What’s that, his reward if he came in without ringing the bell or knocking?”

“I was waiting for him to come in, yes,” GiGi confirmed. “I’m trying to get that stick out of his—”

“GiGi!” Cade teasingly cut her off.

“He keeps acting like a stranger around here. It has to stop!” To Beau she added forcefully, “It has to stop!”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Beau apologized automatically.

And for that, his grandmother threw a marshmallow at his chest.

Beau’s reflexes were lightning quick and he caught it as his grandmother’s frustration erupted.

“Every time you call me ma’am that’s what you’re getting!” she warned. “I changed your diapers and wiped your nose and kissed your boo-boos. I am not ma’am!”

Cade laughed again and said, “I told you she wants the old Beau back. We all do. The uniform is off. You’re just one of us again. That’s how we want you to feel.”

Beau kept himself from saying the automatic yes, sir that was on the tip of his tongue and merely mimicked his brother’s earlier tilt of the chin to acknowledge Cade’s comment.

But he was thinking, easier said than done...

Unsure what else to do with the marshmallow, Beau ate it.

“Is this why you invited him over today?” Cade asked GiGi then. “To keep him hostage here and thump him with marshmallows until he’s retrained? Un-boot camp? Marshmallow deprogramming?”

“No. I need to talk to him,” GiGi said more seriously. “I just decided that from now on I’ll leave him cooling his heels on the doorstep until he figures out to come in like everyone else does. And every time he calls me ma’am he is going to get thumped with one of these,” she threatened, jostling the ammunition in her bowl.

Beau thought how like his strong-willed grandmother it was not to accept something she didn’t care for. And he made a mental note to try harder not to be so formal with her. With everyone. But his training went deep and he wasn’t sure what it was going to take to change that.

His brother’s expression sobered suddenly, as if something had occurred to him. “Oh, GiGi, you aren’t thinking about sending him out on one of our missions, are you? Give him a break—it’s too soon for that. He’s only been home two months. You can’t—”

“There’s something he needs to know and he needs to know it now,” GiGi insisted, sounding determined to conquer an unpleasant task.

“I’m fine,” Beau said to Cade, appreciating his brother looking out for him even as it secretly amused him. They weren’t kids anymore and he was a long—long—way from needing his big brother’s protection. Cade was as tall as Beau and in shape, but Beau knew he could have Cade on the ground and out cold before Cade knew what hit him. Certainly there was nothing their seventy-five-year-old grandmother could come up with that he couldn’t take in stride.

“I can handle whatever she needs to tell me. Whatever she needs me to do,” he assured his brother.

“Don’t bet on it,” Cade countered.

“I’ll be glad for more to do,” Beau added, meaning it. He wasn’t working for Camden Incorporated yet and had too much idle time on his hands. He was lifting weights and working out for hours these days just to expend his pent-up energy. And even after all that he still couldn’t sleep at night.

“We need some privacy to talk,” GiGi said to Cade.

“And I’m supposed to make myself scarce, is that it, ma’am?” Cade said facetiously.

GiGi threw a marshmallow at him.

Cade’s reflexes were good, too, because he also caught the confection, popping it into his mouth before he said, “Come on, GiGi, cut him a little slack—”

“Your sunglasses are in the kitchen,” the woman repeated. “Beau and I are going into the den.”

For a moment Cade locked eyes with GiGi, but when she raised one eyebrow at him Beau knew his brother had lost the standoff.

Cade apparently had the same realization. “Looks like there’s nothing I can do for you, little brother. You know how she is when she sets her mind to something—”

“More determined than Afghan rebels,” Beau confirmed. “But I did all right with those. I think I’ll be okay.”

“I hope so,” Cade said, as if he wasn’t too sure. Then to their grandmother he added, “Really, GiGi, give it to someone else—”

“Kitchen,” she commanded Cade. Then to Beau she said a definitive, “And you, this way.”

“Good luck,” Cade said.

“Thanks,” Beau responded as they both followed orders, going where they’d been told to go, with GiGi herding Beau into the paneled den.

She closed the door behind them before she let out a deep sigh and moved to the desk.

“Sit,” she said, indicating the tufted leather sofa against the wall of the large, stately room.

Beau followed that order, as well.

GiGi unlocked a drawer in the enormous antique mahogany desk in the center of the room and removed what looked like an old leather-bound book. She brought the book and her bowl of marshmallows to sit at the other end of the sofa, angling toward Beau.

“There’s something you need to know,” she said then. “Something I read in H.J.’s journals just before you were discharged. I wanted to wait to tell you until you really were settled in. But as of today it can’t be put off.”

Beau knew what his grandmother was talking about when she mentioned H.J.’s journals. Beau’s oldest brother, Seth—who ran the Camden ranch in Northbridge and oversaw all the other Camden Incorporated agricultural interests—had come across journals kept by H. J. Camden, Beau’s great-grandfather and the founder of the family’s fortunes.

H.J.—as well as his son, Hank, and grandsons Mitchum and Howard—had long been accused of ruthless and unscrupulous practices. H.J. had gone to his grave denying all accusations, but apparently his journals told a different story.

Beau had been in Afghanistan when the journals were found, but he’d been told about the information they held. Many things were done that shouldn’t have been.

Underhanded deals, backstabbing, string pulling, sabotaging, payoffs, lying and cheating that had cost other people property or livelihoods, that had wrongly altered and sometimes destroyed lives and futures, and even had ripple effects on later generations.

Since finding the journals and realizing the truth, the current Camdens were endeavoring to make amends where amends could be made. It was being done quietly to avoid scandal or lawsuits against Camden Incorporated.

But if Beau was facing the prospect of one of these missions, he was more eager for it than his brother suspected. A mission with a direct target, a plan of action he could devise and put into effect—it was all actually familiar territory to him. And it felt good to have a purpose again.

“Whatever you need, ma’a—” He caught himself when he saw his grandmother reach into the bowl in her lap. “Whatever you need, GiGi,” he corrected himself with a wry laugh.

But his grandmother’s expression remained solemn as she removed her hand from the bowl and went on.

“I’m sorry, Beau. It’s been bad enough reading what I’ve read in H.J.’s journals and learning that some of the worst that’s been said of him, of my own husband, of my sons—your dad and your uncle—is true. But this...”

Another sigh. Another shake of her head. Her brow furrowed and she clearly didn’t want to reveal whatever it was that she’d discovered.

“It didn’t occur to me as I was going along,” she said in a quieter voice, “that H.J. had wronged one of his own family...”

Beau watched his grandmother purse her lips and she seemed to age right before his eyes.

But then she bucked up like a good soldier and opened the book she’d taken from the drawer, turning to a page marked with a paper clip.

“I’m going to let you read this for yourself. And all I can do is apologize to you on behalf of H.J. and say that—mistaken or not—he honestly thought he was doing what was best for you...”

She shook her head again. “It’s still inexcusable, but that’s what was behind it. And I would never—ever—have let it happen if I’d have known,” she added remorsefully. “When you’ve finished reading I have to tell you why this is information that couldn’t wait even a day longer.”


Chapter One (#ulink_01b653bc-9009-50b8-9561-d26e6402218e)

Kyla Gibson moved gingerly to one of the truck-stop motel room’s two beds and eased herself onto it to sit with her sore back against the headboard. She couldn’t settle into place without flinching at multiple aches, pains, bruises and cuts. Then she pulled a pillow to her lap to prop the sprained wrist that was also throbbing from the strain of using it more than she was supposed to.

It was only eight o’clock on Tuesday night. Even though she was completely worn out it was too early to go to sleep. But she didn’t dare turn on the television for fear that it might wake up the two-month-old infant finally asleep in the crib a few feet away.

Immy. Who had been crying since they’d both been released from the hospital and arrived at the motel a little after five.

Having no real experience with babies, Kyla didn’t know why Immy had been so unhappy. She had received a clean bill of health from the hospital, where she’d behaved normally.

But now, at the motel, in Kyla’s sole care, Immy hadn’t wanted to eat or sleep.

Was it possible for such a tiny baby to understand that something awful had happened? To miss her parents? To realize on some level that she’d lost them?

But if that was the case, wouldn’t she have also been inconsolable at the hospital?

It was only since Kyla had taken over tending to the baby that Immy had become so unhappy.

Maybe she knew...

That’s what Kyla kept thinking. Maybe Immy sensed that she was now in the hands of someone inept at caring for her, someone who didn’t have the foggiest idea what she was doing or how she was going to do what needed to be done from here on.

Or maybe Kyla’s own fears and insecurities about this job that was now hers were somehow infecting the baby.

But regardless of the cause, the baby had just gone on crying and crying and crying and Kyla had been useless—too battered, too weak, too afraid she might drop Immy to walk and jiggle her the way her parents had when Immy was upset.

So Kyla had been at a loss. And tired and hurt and frustrated and sad.

And at one point Kyla had just cried right along with Immy.

But she’d finally persuaded Immy to take a few ounces of formula—much less than she was supposed to be eating, but still, something—and then Immy had fallen asleep.

And now here Kyla was, afraid to even breathe.

Terrified, actually, of everything she was facing.

Terrified and terribly, terribly worried that she wasn’t going to be able to handle what was now on her plate even once she was well again.

Before this, Kyla had been a childless kindergarten teacher who shared an apartment in the small Montana town of Northbridge with a roommate. She came and went as she pleased. She dated now and then. She and Darla—her roommate and best friend—got along well and had a good time together. She enjoyed the community she’d become a part of. And she lived a simple, uncomplicated life.

A simple, uncomplicated life that she’d left behind a week and a half ago in order to spend the end of her summer vacation in Denver. Rachel—her cousin and only living relative—had invited her, asking her to become the godmother of Rachel’s daughter, Immogene.

Kyla had been enjoying her time with the small family that also included Rachel’s Australian husband, Eddie Burke. She’d been enjoying watching Rachel with Immy. Enjoying holding Immy herself for a few minutes here and there, awkwardly giving Immy an occasional bottle, then handing her back to one of her parents if Immy fussed.

Kyla had been honored to become Immy’s godmother, and had even offered to take Immy to sleep in the guesthouse with her after the christening.

She’d been happy to give Rachel and Eddie a night of romance rekindling and uninterrupted sleep. Immy was down to needing only one feeding during the night, and with the prepared bottle in the fridge and the bottle warmer on the counter, Kyla had been confident she was up to the task. After all, the guesthouse had occupied the top half of the garage just behind the main house and one call over the intercom would have Rachel or Eddie there in minutes if there were any problems.

But instead of Kyla having problems with Immy, the problem had been the fire that started at the very large, luxurious main house.

That horrible night had cost Rachel and Eddie their lives. Kyla barely escaped with Immy from flames that jumped to burn the guesthouse and garage to the ground, too.

Kyla still couldn’t believe it had happened...

A tiny whimper from the crib sent a fresh wave of panic through her right then.

Please stay asleep...

Please, please, please...

Kyla sat frozen and closed her eyes as though, if she pretended she was asleep herself, the tiny baby girl might opt not to disturb her.

She knew that was really dumb. But she was desperate.

When there were no more sounds from the crib after a few minutes, Kyla opened her eyes to mere slits to spy on the infant from a distance and found Immy still asleep.

Thank God...

Kyla breathed again. And felt guilty.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love the adorable baby with her head of wispy copper-colored hair, her enormous blue eyes, her button nose and beautiful Cupid’s-bow mouth. Because she did love her. She loved Immy and had envied Rachel. Especially when holding the baby in her arms had stirred old feelings of Kyla’s own loss that she’d thought were resolved a decade ago.

But the truth was that she wasn’t much more prepared to have a baby now than she had been when she was sixteen.

Only there Immy was, in the crib. All hers now...

Along with the responsibility of managing what Immy had inherited.

A baby. A huge business. What exactly was she supposed to do with either of those things?

Even if she was in tip-top shape, even if she wasn’t banged up and grieving the loss of her cousin, it would still be overwhelming. And she honestly didn’t know if she could do it. Any of it. All of it.

She closed her eyes again, this time in the futile hope that when she opened them she’d be back home in Northbridge, hearing Rachel’s voice on the other end of the phone saying she’d just given birth to Immy...

If she pictured it vividly enough maybe she could turn back time.

The knock on the door startled her and when her eyes shot open again she was, of course, still in the motel room.

Her first thought was that the knock could have disturbed Immy.

Thankfully it hadn’t. Yet.

Her second thought was that they were in a truck-stop motel. Yes, the business had belonged to Immy’s parents and Eddie had talked about striving for high standards in everything about his travel centers, but it still didn’t seem to Kyla like an ideal place for a woman alone with a baby.

And she certainly wasn’t expecting anyone. How could she be, when the only people she knew in Denver now were the few strangers who had offered help since the fire?

She considered ignoring whoever was there and keeping the door safely closed. But she couldn’t risk a second round of those heavy knocks, so she got off the bed as fast as she could and made her way to the window beside the door.

She was careful to only open the drape a crack, just enough for her to peek at whoever was out there before revealing herself.

There were lights in the overhang outside each room’s door, so she could see that there was a man just outside.

A really big man. Tall, broad-shouldered, standing ramrod straight, muscles barely contained by a white polo shirt that stretched tightly over his shoulders and biceps.

He didn’t look like the truckers she’d seen when she’d arrived. This guy was meticulously groomed and there didn’t seem to be a relaxed bone in his impressive body. In fact, between the way he was standing there—almost at attention—and the short cut of his espresso-colored hair, there was something about him that said military.

Military and strikingly handsome.

He had a square brow, deep-set eyes that stared straight ahead at the door, a nose that was a little flat across the bridge and somehow ruggedly distinguished, full, sensuous lips and a jawline that a sculptor’s knife couldn’t have shaped any better.

Good looks—a serial killer’s best asset, Kyla thought.

But as he raised his massive fist to knock a second time she decided she was less afraid of a serial killer than of waking Immy, so she poked her entire head past the curtain, opened the window just a crack and said a hushed, “Can I help you?”

His head alone turned in her direction, giving her a fuller view of his face.

Oh yeah, he was fantastic looking...

Now that he was peering directly at her, she could see that those deep-set eyes were an incredible, intense cobalt blue. A remarkable, unusual blue.

And it was those blue eyes that suddenly sparked familiarity.

“Kyla?” he said.

It couldn’t be...

“Can I help you?” she repeated as she convinced herself that she was imagining things.

“You don’t recognize me?” the man outside said.

“Who are you?” she asked even as she began to think that she knew.

“Beau. Beau Camden,” he said.

Despite confirmation, Kyla stared at him in disbelief.

She couldn’t help wondering if she was hallucinating. She’d refused pain medication because she hadn’t wanted to be impaired in any way when she had to take care of Immy. But she still wondered if something they’d given her in the hospital had come back to haunt her.

That seemed more likely than that Beau Camden could have materialized from the past. At just that moment. And here, of all places.

Yet, as she studied the man outside, she began to see in him small images of the boy she’d once known.

Most definitely in the eyes. Although while the color was the same, the innocence she remembered was lost.

There were also hints of the boy in the features that time had fine-tuned and chiseled, accentuating cheekbones and giving a leaner line to the face that had had more roundness to it fourteen years ago.

At seventeen, Beau Camden had been tall. Maybe not quite as tall as this guy, but close. And his hair had been the same color—though there had been more of it as a teenager that summer.

More hair and far, far smaller muscles...

Still, the longer she looked at him, the easier it was to believe that this was, indeed, Beau Camden.

And with that belief, resentment came back to life.

“Beau...” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m not sure where to start,” he said. “Could I come in?”

Had the hospital given her anything that could cause weird flashbacks and hallucinations? Because she just didn’t know how this could possibly be happening.

“Are you for real?” she heard herself ask.

He took a wallet from his back pocket, opened it and held his driver’s license close enough to the window for her to see it.

It looked new and the picture was exactly of the man standing there. Beaumont Anthony Camden.

Beaumont...

She’d teased him about that that summer...

A good memory all twisted up with bad ones, causing a pain that had nothing to do with the escape from the fire.

“Or it’s nice out here—you could come out,” he suggested as he put his wallet away.

Since she didn’t think hallucinations had driver’s licenses, and it began to sink in that he really was who he said he was, she didn’t have reason to fear him. He wouldn’t hurt her—not physically, anyway. And resentment or no resentment, she was curious about what he was doing there, not to mention how and why.

But she couldn’t let him into her room and take the chance that Immy would wake up.

So she said, “Give me a minute and I’ll come out.”

“Take all the time you need.”

Kyla ducked behind the curtains and held them tightly closed in front of her.

Then she opened them just a slit and peeked out again to see if Beau Camden really was out there.

He was. She hadn’t imagined this. She wasn’t hallucinating.

And he was waiting for her, now standing near a big black SUV parked outside her room. Still posture-perfect, with his long, thick, jeans-encased legs spread shoulder width apart and hands behind his back.

Military for sure.

But now that she knew who he was there was no surprise in that.

She closed the drapes tightly again, suddenly realizing that she didn’t know how presentable she was.

She went to the mirror over the small bureau near the bathroom.

Once she got there and took a look at herself she thought maybe she shouldn’t have.

She’d showered at the hospital that morning, but everything she’d brought with her from Northbridge had been lost in the fire. That meant no makeup, let alone anything to camouflage the dark bruise on her temple or any blush to put color into the pallor that the trauma had left her with.

Luckily there was only one bruise on her face—the rest of her injuries were under her clothes.

Her dark amber eyes weren’t blackened or swollen—she counted that as a good thing. Her thin, straight nose was unmarred. And while she wished she had lip gloss, her lips were a natural pink color that hadn’t paled along with the rest of her face.

Basically she looked like what she was—someone who had just finished a hospital stay. But there wasn’t much she could do about that, so she focused on her hair.

It was about an inch longer than chin length, cut to turn under at the ends, with long bangs that she wore swept to one side. She’d had highlights added to its reddish-brown hue just before leaving home, and neither her hair nor her eyebrows had been singed.

But without her own shampoo and styling products or a curling iron, her hair was lackluster and just hung there limply. The best she could do was brush it with the cheap hairbrush she’d been given and sweep it behind her ears.

Oh, she really was pale, she realized. So pale that it made the bruise on her otherwise-unmarred forehead look even worse.

She reached for her bangs automatically with her right hand, forgetting that her wrist was badly sprained until the jolt of pain reminded her.

Then she tried to fluff her bangs with her left hand to cover the bruise. Mostly she just managed to pull them into her face. She wasn’t sure that was an improvement, but she left them anyway.

Eddie’s secretary had been good enough to get her a few basic necessities that included pajama pants and a top to sleep in, and two pairs of loose-fitting sweatpants to go with two baggy T-shirts for daytime. But that was the extent of her wardrobe. So there was no sense changing out of one pair of sweatpants and T-shirt into the other.

She stepped farther back from the mirror and took a look at the whole picture.

If there was a worse way to look meeting Beau Camden again, she couldn’t think of it.

But there was nothing she could do, so she took some small comfort in the thought that if he’d recognized her when she’d poked her head through the curtains maybe she didn’t look too different than she had at sixteen.

It was very small comfort, though. Especially when she recalled how fantastic he looked...

But she refused to let herself care what he might think—or at least tried not to—as she slid her feet into the flip-flops that were her only shoes and reluctantly headed for the door.

She was careful not to make any noise as she slipped out of the motel room, leaving the door ajar by only an inch in order to be able to hear if Immy cried. And even though it wasn’t easy, she made sure she was standing straight and strong before she turned to face her first love and the person who had hurt her more than anyone in her life.

“I have a two-month-old baby sleeping inside and I don’t want to wake her,” she informed Beau without inflection, staggered all over again by the man he’d become when she looked at him without anything between them.

He gave her a once-over glance that didn’t seem to miss a thing—including the bruise on her temple and the wrist brace that went from mid-forearm to her knuckles. “You look like you need to sit. It’s finally cooling down today, so how about the hood of my car?”

His SUV was big. Normally she wouldn’t have had a problem using the front bumper as a step and climbing onto it. But in her current condition there was no way she could get up there.

“I can give you a hand,” Beau offered as if he knew what she was thinking, holding out that same giant mitt that had pounded on the door earlier.

Okay, sure, there was a part of her that was inclined to slip her hand into his the way she would have that long-ago summer. To see what it was like now.

But it was a very small part of her that was instantly overruled by her sense of independence and her certainty that she would never forgive him for what he’d done.

“No, thanks,” she said curtly as she moved to sit on the SUV’s bumper. “How is it that you’re here?” she asked then.

“There’s a lot that goes into that story,” he answered, sounding confused and bewildered—something that did not seem in keeping with the powerful tower of man standing before her. “There’s a lot—so much—that we need to talk about and I can’t even imagine what you must be thinking...what you must have thought about me all these years—”

“Nothing good,” she told him without compunction.

“Just let me say that fourteen years ago all I knew was that I’d had an unbelievable summer with an unbelievable girl—”

“And then lied about it and left me hanging out to dry with the consequences.”

“Honest to God, Kyla, I didn’t do either of those things. I didn’t even tell anybody about you because I was so wrecked trying to get over you, and I didn’t want to be teased about it by my brothers and cousins—I just let them think I was sorry to be home again.”

Kyla gazed up at him, but before she could accuse him of lying once more, he said, “We need to talk about it all. But right now isn’t the time. Just give me the benefit of the doubt when I tell you that, until a few hours ago, I had no idea you’d tried to contact me after the day we said goodbye in Northbridge.”

Kyla glared at him.

“Honest to God,” he repeated. “And while you certainly don’t owe me anything, not even answers, I just have to ask you one thing—do I...do we...”

He seemed to stand even straighter and stiffer than he had been—although she didn’t know how that was possible—and she thought he was steeling himself.

“Do we have a kid?” he finally asked quietly.

Kyla didn’t want to admit it to herself, but there was an unmistakable tone in his voice that made it sound as if the possibility of that was new to him. Stunningly new to him, shaking this man who appeared to be unshakable.

So she merely answered his question. “No. I...there was a miscarriage—I lost it.” And herself for a while.

His expression went blank and he didn’t seem to know how to respond.

Then he let out a breath that allowed those broad shoulders of his to relax almost imperceptibly and said, “Okay. Can we put a pin in that, then, and deal with it all later so I can just focus on helping you now?”

“Helping me?” she parroted sarcastically. “You’re going to help me now?” In a week of unfathomable things happening, this was the frosting on the cake. “I don’t even know how you got here or why or—”

“My grandmother saw a news report about the fire at your cousin’s house. When she heard your name it rang a bell with her because she’d only recently read some things that my great-grandfather wrote in his journal—along with the letter you sent me. The letter I never got.” He shook his head as if he’d veered off track and was redirecting himself. “Anyway, your name and the fact that the news said you were from Northbridge caused GiGi—my grandmother—to do some digging. She called my brother Seth—”

“Who runs your ranch in Northbridge now—I know,” Kyla said.

“I didn’t know you’d gone back there.”

Kyla shrugged. She didn’t owe him any explanations. He didn’t deserve any.

“Do you know my brother?” Beau asked.

“Only by name. We’ve never been introduced and if he knows who I am—”

“He doesn’t. I told you, I never said anything to anyone, so there’s no way—”

Kyla wasn’t up to arguing this now, so she merely cut him off to say, “No, we don’t know each other. But Northbridge is Northbridge—everybody at least knows of everyone else.” And the belief she’d had for as long as she’d been living in Northbridge that his brother was just pretending not to know who she was held fast.

“That’s what Seth said—that he knew of you. But after GiGi called him he asked around, talked to someone who I guess is your roommate—”

“Darla.”

“She confirmed that you came to Denver to visit family, that you were in a fire, and she said that the only survivors were you and a baby who’s—”

“My cousin’s daughter—Immy. My godchild.”

“Who’s now yours to raise?”

“Rachel and her husband, Eddie, named me as Immy’s guardian in their will.” They’d told her that. She’d taken it only as another honorary position, not thinking for even a minute that the need to actually become Immy’s guardian would ever come about.

“And there’s a business.” He glanced around them. “These truck stops that you’ll need to run until the child grows up and takes over?”

“Three of them, I’ve been told,” Kyla said.

“Your roommate said you don’t know anybody else in Denver.”

“Eddie’s secretary has done a few things for me and she contacted his attorney who came to the hospital, but no, I don’t really know anyone...”

“And you’re hurt...” He looked her up and down again.

“Not as badly as I could have been,” she said.

“But still...how are you taking care of a baby with that?” He nodded at her wrist. “Your fingers are sausages—that can’t feel good.”

It actually hurt tremendously whenever she had to use any part of her wrist, hand or fingers to do anything with Immy. But she didn’t need or want his sympathy, so all she said was, “I manage.”

“Here?” he asked, with another glance around that took in the motel and the rest of the truck stop. “On your own?”

He was stating the obvious, so she didn’t respond to it.

“Seth said you aren’t married, your roommate told him you aren’t involved with anyone and don’t have any family to come up here to lend a hand—”

“My parents died seven years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. And I guess the school year just started in Northbridge, so your roommate has to be there and can’t come, either—”

“I teach kindergarten. Darla teaches fifth grade. They got a sub for me, but yes, classes started last Thursday and Darla can’t be gone, too.”

“So here I am,” he concluded. “And I want to help.”

He was not going to be her knight in shining armor, if that’s what he thought.

“I don’t know how you could,” she said flatly.

“For starters, this is no place for you and a baby to be staying, let alone recuperating. I have a house—a big house—that’s more comfortable, not to mention much quieter than this.” He nodded toward the sounds emanating from the bustling travel center. “You can have your own room with a private bathroom, and there’s another room that the baby can go into. I don’t know squat about taking care of a baby—”

“Join the club,” Kyla said under her breath.

“—but I’m more able-bodied than you are right now, so I can lend a hand with...what’s the baby’s name? I know you said it, but—”

“Immogene—but her mom and dad call...called...her Immy.” Kyla fought a fresh wave of grief at the thought that that was past tense.

“I can lend a hand with Immy,” Beau went on, “and you can rest and let me help you get back on your feet. Camden Superstores can provide both of you with everything you need to start over—”

“Darla is just waiting for me to give her an address and she’s sending my own things to replace what I lost,” Kyla informed.

“Still, I’m sure there are a few things you could use to tide you over, and I’ll get the baby outfitted with whatever it is babies need. Then, if you’re open to it, when you’re better, I can also maybe give you some help with the business side of things, overseeing these truck stops. My own family was left in a situation not too different than this—Camden Incorporated had to be run for a while by people other than Camdens after H.J. died and before the rest of us were old enough to take it on. If you need help with that—maybe you don’t...”

A weak, wry, overwhelmed laugh shot out of Kyla and from her muddled emotions came a blurted confession. “I know what to do with five-year-olds, not with babies. I don’t know anything about being a single parent. And when it comes to business...I was raised by people who rarely had two dimes to rub together, and if they did, they squandered them. I definitely don’t know the first thing about running any business. And now I have what I’m told is a huge one on my hands. I think Immy might already hate me, and if I’m as bad with finances as my parents were, I could ruin everything Rachel and Eddie left her before she’s old enough to read, much less take over for herself—”

“So you do need help.”

“I don’t know what I need,” Kyla lamented, fighting the breakdown that she felt on the verge of. But whatever she needed, it couldn’t be Beau Camden.

And yet Beau Camden was the only one standing there, offering.

Damn it all, anyway...

Kyla blinked back tears that threatened again, though she couldn’t help slumping slightly against the SUV’s grille.

“We’ll just take it one step at a time,” Beau said in a consoling and less stilted voice. “And I’ll be there with you the whole way.”

It was what he should have said to her fourteen years ago.

And hearing it, Kyla felt the anger and hurt and confusion she’d felt then, surprised that after all this time and even under the current circumstances the feelings could be as strong as they were.

“Please,” he said into her negative thoughts, once more as if he could read them. “Let me do this for you now and we’ll sort through the past later.”

It went against everything in Kyla to accept help from anyone. Ever.

And if she were on her own there was no way she would accept anything from him.

But she had Immy.

And she really was alone in Denver.

Eddie’s secretary had been kind, but she was new to the job, barely nineteen, and she already had her hands full dealing with the chaos at the office.

One of the volunteers at the hospital was also a volunteer with the Red Cross and had come to see her. But once the volunteer found out there were resources available to her and Immy through the truck stops Immy now owned, that was the last of the volunteer or the Red Cross.

Eddie’s estate attorney had come to the hospital to talk to her and he’d let her know that even though Eddie and Rachel’s wills needed to go through probate, he could likely persuade a judge to release funds from the estate for the care and well-being of Immy, as well as for Kyla as Immy’s guardian. To tide them over until he accomplished that, he’d advanced her three hundred dollars from his own pocket.

He’d also contacted the truck stop and arranged for their motel room, and for the convenience store and the diner to run tabs for whatever food she ordered and whatever she could use out of the convenience store.

But from there he’d said only that he’d be in touch.

The diner food was salty, greasy and very heavy, but more problematically, the one choice of baby formula from the convenience store wasn’t the organic stuff Immy was used to. Kyla thought it was possible that the newborn didn’t like it and so was refusing to eat. That potentially had contributed to the problems this evening and could ultimately lead to Immy feeling sick or having digestive ailments.

Kyla’s driver’s license and credit cards were lost in the fire, so she couldn’t rent or drive a car to go outside the truck stop, and she had no idea if taxis were equipped with child car seats to allow her to attempt to get anywhere else.

Plus she didn’t even know where she was or where to go from here to try to find Immy the formula Rachel had used.

And besides all of that, Kyla was well aware that she was not only inexperienced and inept with Immy, she also wasn’t physically up to caring for the baby altogether on her own. She’d overestimated the strength of her sprained wrist the first time she’d had to lift Immy and nearly dropped her. And even though she was more careful now, using her wrist and hand was still painful and they were very weak.

So while Kyla was inclined to hold her chin high and refuse even an iota of help from Beau, for Immy’s sake she didn’t think she could look a gift horse in the mouth.

Even if that gift horse was the same person who had left her pregnant and alone with that problem once upon a time.

Still, it meant going to stay at his house. With him...

“Do you have a wife or someone I’d be imposing on?” she asked when that suddenly occurred to her. And made her feel yet another thing she didn’t want to feel—a twinge of jealousy.

“No wife. No girlfriend. It’s just me,” he assured her. “And it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

“Immy cries and needs to be fed in the middle of the night. And tonight she just cried for a long time for no reason I could figure out,” she warned.

“I’ve been through worse,” he said with a hint of the smile she’d never forgotten, a smile that had haunted her. “So what do you say?”

It was galling not to be able to tell him off the way she had in her head many, many times over the years.

But she had to think of Immy. To put her first. And she knew that Immy would be better off if there were two of them to care for her—even two people who didn’t know what they were doing seemed better than one, one who was struggling with injuries to boot. And Beau had the use of both hands and a car, so he could go out and find the formula Immy was accustomed to. Plus if they went to his home Immy wouldn’t be breathing air polluted with exhaust fumes.

So the bottom line was that Beau’s offer was one she just couldn’t refuse, Kyla decided. For Immy’s sake, if not for her own.

But even as she came to that decision she vowed that the minute—the exact second—she could pack up Immy and handle everything on her own, she’d leave Beau Camden in her dust. Not unlike the way he’d left her.

“Okay,” she conceded ungraciously. “But as soon as I get some things in order, we’ll be out of your hair.”

All he said to that was, “There’s a Camden Superstore down the street—I can go there now and get a car seat and whatever else we need and come back—”

The thought of disturbing Immy sent renewed panic through Kyla. “No, not tonight!” she said in a hurry. “You don’t know what it took to get Immy to sleep. Tomorrow—we can move tomorrow.”

“How about I stay here tonight, then?”

In her room? With her? What was this guy thinking?

Then he said, “The rooms on either side of yours look empty. I can check into one of those, probably hear the baby if she wakes up...”

There would be someone else to see to the baby if the crying started again and wouldn’t stop.

It was tempting.

But Kyla shook her head, her independent streak somehow demanding that she draw at least that line. “We’ll be all right for tonight,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “But Immy does have to have a car seat—Eddie’s secretary borrowed one to pick us up from the hospital.”

“I’ll have one by the time I get here—and I’ll get here any time you say tomorrow morning. But you’re sure you’ll be all right tonight?”

She wasn’t.

But she also wasn’t willing to let him see that. “I’ll be fine,” she said, hoping she was wrong about Immy not liking the formula she had for her—or at least that the baby would put up with it for now.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

“I ordered something from the diner. Most of it is still left, if I get hungry.”

He nodded and as she watched him do that she thought, Geez, he’s good-looking...

Then she realized what had gone through her mind and she pushed it out of her head.

“I suppose I should let you go in and get some rest,” Beau said then.

Kyla stood, trying not to flinch as she did, and faced him as he took a business card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “My cell phone number is on this. If you need anything—anything—just call.”

Again, words that were fourteen years too late.

Kyla accepted the card without comment.

“So I guess I’ll just see you tomorrow,” he said, as if he wasn’t sure that was the right course. “What time?”

“Nine maybe...” she suggested aloofly and with no real knowledge of how that would work for Immy. Then she moved to the motel room door again.

“I really—really—am sorry, Kyla,” Beau said quietly to her back.

Too little, too late, she thought. But all she said was, “Tomorrow,” before she went into her room, closing the door on him.

And wondering what incredible twist of fate had put her in the position she was in.

To be rescued by Beau Camden of all people.


Chapter Two (#ulink_ef594d8c-3caa-5ee7-9146-284981dd1e41)

Beau spent the remainder of Tuesday evening on the phone from home causing trouble for several Camden Superstore departments and employees. When he was done, he’d arranged to have his currently unfurnished guest room and a nursery fully outfitted by the time he transported his new charges to his house.

He’d decided it all needed to get underway at zero-five-hundred and to be finished by zero-eight-hundred tomorrow morning.

“Yes, that means the first truck is to be here at five a.m. and the whole job has to be done by eight a.m.,” he’d had to explain to more than one person who had acted as if he was out of his mind to believe what he wanted was possible.

But he hadn’t brought his men and himself through three deployments to the Middle East by leaving room for error and he wasn’t going to start now. This time, unlike the way it had been since he’d been discharged, the civilian world was going to have to adjust to him rather than the other way around.

Since going to the den with GiGi that afternoon and learning what he’d learned, he’d been on Marine autopilot. Show no emotion. Stoic composure at all costs. Do whatever it took to get the job done and make sure everyone under his command knew the same thing applied to them.

As one of the ten owners and board members of Camden Incorporated, everyone who worked for Camden Superstores was basically under his command. It was something he’d verified with Cade before taking action.

By then word had already circulated within the family about what was going on with him, so he hadn’t had to explain anything. Instead Cade had reminded him that everything the family owned and everyone they employed were at his disposal. Cade had told him to do whatever was required, and had given him the names and numbers of the people to contact.

“Anything you need, however many people you need to get it done,” he’d been told. “We’re all still spinning over this one involving you...I’m sorry, man...”

“Yeah, me, too,” Beau had said emotionlessly before going on to take charge.

He doubted his inflexibility had made him any friends among Camden Superstores employees tonight. Because tonight he’d pulled rank and his orders weren’t going to be easy to follow.

Not that he cared. This was top priority, even if decorators didn’t ordinarily arrive at their offices until nine or work so fast, even if items weren’t usually delivered and set up before ten. Tomorrow it all would be. At least here it would.

But as Tuesday ticked into Wednesday there was no more he could do. He was finally off duty. At home. Alone.

He’d poured himself a short Scotch when he’d returned from that truck stop tonight and come into the den to get busy. Most of the drink was still left in the glass on the desk he was sitting behind. He reached for it and finished it in one gulp.

The next thing he knew he’d thrown that glass against the wall, shattering it into a million pieces.

Then he took the first deep breath he’d taken since reading the entry in H.J.’s journal and exhaled until it felt as if his lungs had collapsed.

Yes, the military had trained him well not to show emotions during the course of a mission.

But nothing could keep him from having them.

Especially not these.

And now that he was off duty, they rose to the surface.

To Beau the wrongs that were done in the name of building Camden Incorporated were disgraceful. It was still a struggle to resolve the fact that those actions had been taken by men he’d loved and respected. Men he’d known were strong-willed and determined—like any good marine—but men he’d believed were honest and decent, too.

But the knowledge of what they’d done to other people was bad enough. He didn’t know how to process that his own life had been screwed with by one of H.J.’s conspiracies.

Or what to do with the emotions that knowledge had let loose in him.

He’d thought there was nothing worse than learning that the men in his own family had, in reality, no honor to them. And he’d fully supported the family’s plan to make amends.

In fact, wanting to do that had contributed to his decision to come out of the service now.

He’d told GiGi that she could give all of the projects to him from here on, that he was volunteering for that duty. That he was willing to make it his own personal undertaking to atone on behalf of the family.

His grandmother’s response had been odd. She’d gone too quiet and very pale. She hadn’t seemed to be able to make eye contact with him. But he’d taken her excuse that he needed time to get his land legs back at face value.

Now he knew what had really been going through her mind. She’d already read the part of the journals that revealed what had been done to him and was just waiting for him to settle in before she broke the news to him. She’d already known what was unimaginable to Beau—that he was one of the people H.J. had wronged.

Along with Kyla.

And potentially their baby.

Because if Kyla had lost that baby out of stress, or by doing something dangerous or foolhardy in hopes of ending what she didn’t want to deal with on her own, that made that loss H.J.’s fault, too, as far as Beau was concerned.

No, he definitely didn’t know what to do with how it all made him feel...

He’d brought Kyla’s letter with him into the den and it was in front of him. He read it for about the tenth time since his grandmother had given it to him today.

Kyla had written it only weeks after he’d left the ranch that summer.

When he was home again, starting his senior year of high school. Being patted on the back and congratulated on his official candidacy for admission to the naval academy at Annapolis.

Not everyone had known because he’d received the news in June, after school was out. The news had been the reason he’d opted to spend the summer in Northbridge. Once he knew for sure Annapolis was where he was headed, he’d wanted to start toughening up for the military by doing ranch work.

He’d accomplished that—gaining some muscle mass and stamina.

But he’d also met Kyla Gibson...

Today was the first time he’d seen the letter. The first time he had any knowledge whatsoever that Kyla had changed her mind about the end of that summer being the end of any contact they had with each other.

In the letter—the letter addressed to him—she told him that she was pregnant. That she’d just found out. She said she didn’t know what to do. She said she hadn’t told her parents yet. She said she hoped that Beau would have some idea of where to go from there. That he’d get hold of her, maybe come back to Northbridge for a weekend so they could figure something out.

Holding that letter in his hands, staring at the words written on the page, Beau could see the hope she’d had that he would offer some solution, some help, some support, anything that would tell her that she wasn’t in it alone.

And again emotions rose that he could hardly stand.

H.J. had written in his journal that he’d intercepted the letter. He’d visited the ranch a few times that summer. He’d seen Beau with the daughter of one of that summer’s hired hands. He’d seen how unhappy Beau was when he’d come home and had put two and two together, figuring that Beau was in the throes of his first love.

But that summer was over and—according to H.J.—the romance needed to be, too, so that Beau wouldn’t endanger his future.

H.J. wrote that when he’d seen the Northbridge postmark and the return address with Kyla’s name on it, he’d decided it couldn’t contain anything that would do Beau any good. Better a clean cut with the girl—that was what H.J. had written at the time.

He hadn’t even opened the letter. He’d just tucked it away.

He’d only learned about the pregnancy when Kyla’s father had shown up on the doorstep two weeks later.

Which was when H.J. took the second step in keeping Beau from knowing about Kyla’s situation.

“It’s a good thing you’re not here now, old man,” he threatened from between clenched teeth.

Yes, going to Annapolis had been what Beau wanted from the day his great-grandfather had explained to him that that was the best course into the Marines. And, yes, a teenage pregnancy, a child, would have canceled his candidacy and the full acceptance that was contingent only on his graduation.

And yes, that would have crushed a part of him.

But even then, even before becoming a marine, Beau had had a marine’s mentality. Honor, courage and commitment—those were the words he’d stenciled over his bed when he’d read that they were the core values that defined a marine. He’d been eleven. And from that moment on they were his values.

Sure, it would have taken courage and stamina to endure losing his opportunity to go to Annapolis. Courage to face all of his family with news that he’d gotten a girl pregnant.

But he would have done it. And he would have honored his responsibility to that girl and to that baby. He would have made the commitment to them that needed to have been made. He would have taken the responsibility that was his.

If he had known, he would never—ever—have abandoned Kyla.

And not only because of those Marine Corps values.

The truth that he alone knew was that he probably would have viewed it all as an excuse to do what he was fighting not to do every day at that same time—get on a bus back to her and Northbridge.

He was seventeen. Flooded with hormones. And a beautiful, smart, funny girl had, suddenly that summer, become what he wanted as much as he wanted to be a marine.

He’d been so in love with Kyla that he hadn’t been able to see straight and he’d physically ached to get back to her.

It had taken the will of a marine to get him to choose, each day, not to turn his back on everything he’d ever been about and just get himself to wherever she was.

If he’d been handed that letter then, if he’d opened it and read it, nothing would have kept him away from her.

It would have been his sign from the universe that he was meant to change his course. Because that was what he’d been wondering at the time—if meeting Kyla had been a fork in the road that fate had created because maybe he was meant to choose her instead...

Hell, even as a marine, every time he’d been in a situation that he might not have come out of alive, he’d wondered if maybe he was supposed to have chosen Kyla and a life with her over a life in the service.

But his great-grandfather hadn’t had any doubt about what choice was to be made.

So Beau had become a marine.

And Kyla had lost the baby.

And gained every reason to think he was the scum of the earth.

That twisted him up inside.

Over the years he’d never forgotten her. She—and that summer with her—were some of his best memories.

Whenever he’d thought of her, he’d wondered what had happened to her, where she was, what she was doing. A couple of times he’d told himself that if he came out alive he was going to look her up. He’d fantasized that when he did she wouldn’t be married or have kids and maybe they’d click all over again.

So much for that.

Although something had clicked for him...

When he’d wondered about her he’d also wondered if she would still look the same, and she did. Better, actually, even bruised and clearly weary and unwell and dressed in sweats that were too big for the body that had rounded only in the right places.

The spark and the glimmer were still in those honey-colored eyes that weren’t like any others he’d ever seen—the dark amber of the beer he liked.

Except for that bad bruise on her temple, her skin was flawless now, with not a single imperfection to distract from lips that were just full enough to make them outrageously kissable. From high, apple-round cheeks that had always had a natural blush to them and made her look as though the sun hadn’t been able to resist kissing her, either. A natural blush that anger had tried to bring back tonight, so he was confident it had only been lost temporarily.

She hadn’t smiled at him earlier, but even so he’d been able to see the hint of the dimples that would appear when she did. Tonight they had only been small indentations that reminded him of what they could become. Of the way they made every smile beam. And how much he’d liked bringing them out.

Her hair was still the same color—reddish-brown, silky and shiny. But she wore it differently than she had when they were teenagers. Now it was shorter and it framed her face—and since it was a face so worth framing, he liked it. He also liked the section that had fallen over that bruise—it added a little spice to that girl-next-door look of hers.

She was just a beautiful woman, blossomed from the beautiful girl she’d been.

And his very first instinct when she’d stepped out of that motel room door had been to wrap his arms around her and hold her so tight she couldn’t get away again.

So, yeah, something had clicked for him.

And why, of all the things that he needed to be fitting into place, that was the one that had, he didn’t understand.

For two months now he’d been struggling to get something to feel right. He was like a fish out of water in civilian life. Everything seemed so unorganized. So inefficient. So undisciplined. People were lax. Too much was at ease too much of the time.

He sure as hell didn’t feel as if he was on the same wavelength as his family. They were trying hard. He was trying hard. Maybe they were all trying too hard. But either way, he felt like an outsider. A stranger. He didn’t know what they were talking about most of the time and he didn’t feel as if he had anything to contribute himself.

He hadn’t found a position he wanted in the business. Everything was running perfectly well without him, and board meetings pretty much went the same way family social events did—he didn’t know what the issues were and he certainly didn’t feel as if he should interrupt what was already running smoothly by putting his two cents’ worth in.

He was just failing at reacclimating all the way around.

And then tonight...

Seeing Kyla again was the first time since he’d taken off the uniform and put on civvies that something had clicked.

It was probably just some kind of throwback to the past. After all, they didn’t really know each other—not the people they’d grown up to be.

And Kyla had had years to hate him after only a few months when things had been good between them. She’d had fourteen years to live with her reality—that he’d left her pregnant and alone to deal with it rather than stepping up, taking his share of the blame and responsibility, and doing the right thing by her. Fourteen years with every reason to hate his guts and for that to have taken deep, deep root. To be ingrained in her.

Which made things a whole lot different than they had been that summer.

But nothing changed the mission, and he told himself to keep his goal in sight, to maintain his focus.

The mission was to make amends by helping her, and that’s what he was going to do.

And if, in the process, it provided him with a temporary distraction from all his failures to assimilate, and he got the chance to let her know that he wasn’t some lowlife who had turned his back on her or on his baby and his responsibilities to them both, the mission would be a complete success.

But as for the clicking?

That was nothing.

That was an emotional component and he knew what to do with it—ignore it. Keep it in check. Proceed as if it didn’t exist.

Which was exactly what he would do.

* * *

Kyla jolted awake at the soft knock on the motel room door at the stroke of 9:00 a.m. She was sleeping sitting up in a chair.

Not that she’d intended to fall asleep. The chair was near the room’s window and she’d been watching for Beau.

She’d been up with Immy four times during the night. Four times when Immy had again been unhappy, crying and refusing to take much formula.

And even when the baby had finally gone back to sleep and Kyla had been able to return to bed herself, she’d had trouble dozing off again. Thinking about Beau, about the past, and trying to figure out any way she could refuse his services had kept her up even more than Immy had.

Unfortunately she’d arrived at the same conclusion each and every time—for Immy’s sake she had to accept Beau Camden’s help. Temporarily.

And now that was upon her.

Stiffly, she pushed herself out of the chair and went to open the motel room door.

She’d been hoping that he might have looked better in the darkness last night than he would in the stark light of day. Instead the reverse was true and summer sunshine just emphasized how incredibly handsome he’d grown up to be. And one glance at him instantly thwarted her best intentions not to notice it.

Freshly showered, his strikingly angular face cleanly shaven, dressed in jeans and a simple white crew-neck T-shirt that hugged each and every one of his finely honed muscles, it wasn’t humanly possible not to notice that he was one very, very hot man.

“Hi,” he greeted her, sounding tentative.

“Hi,” she responded with resignation and no warmth whatsoever.

“Bad night?” he guessed after giving her the once-over.

Just what every girl wanted to think—that it showed. Especially when she was facing a drop-dead-gorgeous guy.

“Pretty bad,” she confirmed without going into detail. Poor Immy was going to get the full blame because Kyla wasn’t about to let him know he’d contributed to her sleeplessness.

He peered over her head at the crib inside the room. “Is she asleep now?”

“For a little while. It won’t last—she isn’t eating. I think she needs the formula she’s used to instead of what I have.”

“We’ll stop and get some on the way,” Beau was quick to assure her, as if her wish was his command. “I’ve got a state-of-the-art car seat ready and waiting, belted in by people who knew how to do it the right way, in the backseat. Think we can move her into it without waking her up?”

Kyla shrugged. “Rachel and Eddie could pull it off sometimes. I know I can’t—I’m really clumsy when it comes to lifting her with this wrist.”

“I’ll give it a try. Let me load up your stuff first. Why don’t you sit down again and—”

“There’s just this,” she said, pointing to the white plastic trash bag beside the door. “That’s everything.”

“Okay.” He reached in and grabbed it, taking it to the rear of the SUV and depositing it there. Then he opened the door behind the driver’s seat—apparently that’s where the car seat was—and leaving the door open, he returned to her.

“The guy who set up the car seat talked me through where the belts and straps go. If I just get her into it I think I have that part straight. How hurt is she?”

“The doctors and nurses said she isn’t injured at all. I’ve been worried about it, but I haven’t seen any sign that it hurts her to pick her up or hold her or change her diaper or anything. I...” This was going to sound crazy. “I actually rolled her in bubble wrap to get out of the fire and I guess it helped. The hospital was mostly worried about her lungs—from the smoke. But as of yesterday her lungs got a clean bill of health, too. And the way she’s been exercising them, I’d have to say that they’re fine.”

“Bubble wrap?” he repeated, almost cracking a smile.

Stuck on the crazy part. That figured.

“I had it to wrap a pitcher I was going to take home to Darla, so it was right there and...I just rolled Immy in it—everything but her face—in case I dropped her or something, then I wrapped another blanket around the bubble wrap and out we went...”

“Fast thinking,” he said as if that was something he approved of.

“That happens when the place is on fire and the roof is caving in,” she said, deflecting his approval.

He nodded. “So it won’t hurt her to pick her up?”

“It doesn’t seem to, no.”

“And...like I said, I don’t have any experience with babies... Do I just scoop her up?” he asked, demonstrating by holding out both of his hands, palms up, and thrusting them forward.

“She’s not hurt, but she’s kind of delicate just because she’s only eight weeks old,” Kyla warned, alarmed by the force in his demonstration. “You have to be careful with her—one hand under her head, neck and shoulders to support them, the other under her rear end.”

“Got it.”

Kyla felt less confident than he sounded, but she made way for him to come into the room and followed him to the crib, mentally willing the infant to stay asleep. And Beau not to drop her.

She kept an eagle eye on him, but unlike his bravado at the door, he was infinitely cautious when he actually reached for Immy. In fact, he went at a snail’s pace, easing his big hands under her and raising her from the mattress as if she were a bomb that might go off at the slightest jarring.

Which actually wasn’t far from the truth, in Kyla’s experience.

But this time Immy didn’t so much as whimper even as Beau straightened up and pulled her close to—though not completely against—his flat belly.

It was awkward and not pretty, but from the sight of his bulging biceps and forearms it was a weight he could bear without bracing her against him, so Kyla didn’t say anything.

He gave Kyla an almost imperceptible shrug and nod that said he guessed he’d pulled it off, and took the baby out to the car, with Kyla again following close behind.

Immy went on sleeping like an angel as he laid her very gently in the car seat that had a soft, fleecy head support at the ready. Then he strapped the infant in and closed the door firmly but without slamming it.

“Okay,” he said, as if the first of many steps had been accomplished. “Now you.”

“I can take care of myself,” she assured him curtly, returning to the motel room to close the door.

Still, Beau was waiting, standing sentry-straight with the passenger door open for her when she turned back to the SUV.

“It’s a pretty high step up—you should let me help you,” he said, holding out his hand to her.

There was no way Kyla was accepting it.

“I’m fine,” she said, gritting her teeth to hide the pain it caused her to get into that seat on her own and hating that she was less than graceful doing it. But she still made it and managed the seat belt with her left hand only.

Beau’s expression was completely blank when she caught sight of his face, so she had no idea what he thought of her stubbornness or her lack of agility—or if he’d even registered any of it. But once she was belted in he closed her door the same way he had Immy’s.

Who remained asleep through Beau getting into the car, too, and starting the engine.

Kyla had already called the front desk to let them know she was leaving, so there was no need for anything but to get on the road.

As Beau merged onto the highway, Kyla took note of too much about him. More even than how great-looking he was. The SUV was big and yet she couldn’t see him in anything smaller. Not only had he bulked up considerably, but he exuded so much power and presence that it just seemed to take a large space to accommodate it. He was like a brick wall of man—a force to be reckoned with. Quite a change from when they were teenagers.

He also smelled fabulous—a clean, citrusy scent that gave him an added appeal to go with how mind-blowingly handsome he was now. Altogether it made for a heady mix that was getting to her. A little.

Until she reminded herself that fourteen years ago he’d lied about what had happened between them and denied it all.

Until she reminded herself that he’d portrayed her as some kind of slut.

And abandoned her.

That steeled her against his current appeal.

“How did all this happen?” Beau asked then, nodding at her braced wrist.

Small talk. Okay.

Kyla explained how and why she’d come to Denver, the housing situation on her cousin’s property, and how she’d come to have Immy with her that night.

Then she said, “The fire department thinks it was an electrical fire that started on the second floor, where Rachel and Eddie’s bedroom was. I was asleep in the guesthouse. There was no smoke alarm—I’m not sure what woke me up, but whatever did, it was already too late for me to do anything but get us out. I could see the main house through one window and it was... Mostly I could just see huge, bright flames. And the guesthouse was on fire, too—there were flames right outside the bedroom door, and I guess the roof out there fell in, because there was a huge crash. I just kept thinking that no one would know we were back there in the guesthouse, to come and help, and I had to get us out.”

The terror of that memory flooded Kyla.

“I slammed the bedroom door to keep the flames out—I was just hoping that if the fire had to burn through the door it would give me a few more minutes. Luckily Immy was in a portable crib in my room—if she’d been anywhere else I wouldn’t have been able to get to her. But the only way out was the window in the bathroom that faced the back. We were above the garage and...” Kyla swallowed hard and shrugged. “I didn’t really know what to do. I thought about throwing Immy out first, but I was afraid to do that. Like I said before, the bubble wrap was right there, so I rolled her in it, wrapped a blanket around that, and—”

“Jumped out the window?”

“It was really more like we fell out the window—I kind of got us up to sit in it. It was a straight drop from there. I tried to hold Immy to one side and twist so I’d fall on my back and maybe be the cushion for her. But I ended up falling on my other side—Immy was on my left and I fell on the right—and I guess maybe I tried to brace us or catch us or something with my hand out.” She shook her head. “I don’t know for sure—that part is a blur—but the next thing I knew I was on the ground and Immy was crying and I was hurt and it was so hot, and I knew I needed to get us to where someone would be able to see us to help because we were way in the back.”

She shrugged again. “I got over to the neighbor’s place next door and out to their front yard. Somebody saw us coming then and...there was help, but I couldn’t find Rachel or Eddie, and I kept asking where they were. I think I just kind of collapsed.”

Beau took his eyes off the road for only a second. “You did a lot before that—you’d make a good soldier.”

Kyla shook her head. “No, thanks.”

“How long was it before you knew that your cousin and her husband hadn’t made it out of the fire?”

“I’m not sure of that, either. My concept of time from there is off. I know I started to think it was bad when no one would tell me anything about them. I kept asking—the EMTs in the ambulance, the hospital staff—but all anyone would say was that it was Immy and me who they needed to think about. Immy was in the hospital nursery and they kept me informed about her, but it was sometime the next day I think when they finally told me Rachel and Eddie hadn’t made it.”

Kyla had to blink away tears at that thought, and as she did she focused on the scenery to get herself out of the nightmare in her head.

They’d driven into the heart of Denver and now they seemed to be in an area called Cherry Creek, where the houses were old and enormous.

Beau pulled into the driveway of a beautiful, stately two-story white Colonial saltbox with wings that stretched out from both sides of the first floor. It was trimmed in black with wood shingles, there were two chimneys on the roof, and lantern sconces on either side of a red front door.

“This is your house?” Kyla said, amazed by the difference between it and anywhere she’d ever lived.

“It has been for three weeks.”

“For only three weeks—are you still living out of boxes?”

“No, ma’am,” he answered as if that could only be true of a slacker. “There are some empty rooms—two less as of this morning when one got turned into a nursery and another into a guest room—but you’ll find it shipshape.”

“And you live in this huge place alone?”

“Yes. When I’m left alone,” he said, nodding in the direction of a sedan parked at the curb as he pulled farther up the drive. There was a woman sitting behind the wheel.

“That would be my sister January,” he explained. “Jani, we call her. Uninvited, but with good intentions, I’m sure. I’ve only been back for two months—”

“Back?”

“Out of the Marines, back to civilian life. And things are...we’re all trying to figure out where I fit in with the family again. The females in particular seem to hover and try to take care of me as if I need that.”

He sighed as if to maintain patience that was strained. “Anyway, I’m betting Jani is only the first platoon to be sent in today and the rest will just ‘happen to stop by.’ I’m sorry. I didn’t ask for their help, but brace for it, because it’s likely to be coming at us today.”

Kyla tried to grasp this newest twist as he followed the curve of the drive around the west wing to the attached garage that was hidden behind it. As he pulled in, something seemed to suddenly occur to him.

“I forgot to stop for formula!”

Without Immy crying, Kyla had forgotten about it, too.

“Okay, how about this,” he said as the garage door began to close behind them. “Since the baby is still sleeping and she’s safe in here, we’ll leave her where she is while I get you in and settled, with the car door and the door into the house open so I can hear her if she wakes up. And we can send Jani for formula.”

“Sure. Okay,” Kyla agreed vaguely as a whole new stress took over.

Because now his family was entering the picture.

People who believed that once upon a time she had falsely accused Beau of fathering her baby. How would they react to seeing her suddenly in Beau’s life again—and with a baby in tow?


Chapter Three (#ulink_5e4a0d30-2b01-54b2-b967-0be8af9a0ae2)

Oh, Darla, thank you, thank you, thank you! Kyla thought as she washed her hair with her own shampoo late Thursday afternoon.

Within an hour of arriving at Beau Camden’s house the day before, she’d called her Northbridge roommate with his address. Darla had an entire box of Kyla’s own clothes, toiletries and necessities waiting and had mailed it overnight. She’d even included some new things—like a hair dryer and curling iron—to replace what Kyla had brought with her to Denver and lost in the fire.

The box had been delivered an hour ago and just having her own belongings again was more of a boon than Kyla would ever have guessed. Despite the bumps and bruises and still-bad wrist, it made her feel worlds better.

Although the way she’d spent the time since getting here had helped a lot, too.

Beau had been completely correct when he’d said that his sister Jani’s visit was only the beginning. She’d been joined within half an hour by the family’s grandmother—who Kyla had been instructed to call GiGi—and GiGi’s private physician.

The doctor had consulted with the hospital staff that had treated Kyla and Immy, so he was familiar with their conditions. He hadn’t liked the toll taken on either of them by the motel stay or the lack of sleep and food, and had ordered Kyla to another twenty-four hours of bed rest.




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