“Yeah…his name’s J.J.” He said it with diffidence. But something about his voice, the smile that flitted across his face like a blinding flash of sunlight he hadn’t been able to avoid, caused a sudden soft prickling in the area of Mirabella’s heart, rather like a bad case of static electricity.

He’s so proud of him, she thought. And hard on the heels of that realization came another, much more unexpected: I’ll bet he’s a terrific father. “Tell me about him,” she said mistily. “How old is he?”

Jimmy Joe kind of stretched and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck while he thought about it-which she was almost certain he didn’t need to do in order to tell her how old his own child was. What it did was add a touch of winsome modesty to his already considerable charm. “Ah, let’s see… He’d be eight.”

“Eight months? Oh, that’s a cute age.” An image flashed into her mind-a softly lit picture of Jimmy Joe cuddling a baby against his manly pecs. Which produced another of those peculiar stirrings deep in her own chest.

He grinned. “Not so cute. That’s eight years. They tend to get pretty ornery by that age.”

“You’re kidding.” Mirabella’s spoon, halted once more on its downward arc, clattered unnoticed to the table.

His head bobbed in an affirming nod. “Be nine next July.”

Lacking Jimmy Joe’s Southern reserve and good manners, she went ahead and said it: “You don’t look old enough.”

He didn’t exactly seem flattered by that, which, she thought, was in itself a measure of how young he was. Instead he shifted in an embarrassed sort of way and muttered, “Oh, I’m plenty old enough. Pushin’ thirty.”

Thirty. Mirabella couldn’t think what to say. After a moment she picked up her spoon and calmly murmured, “Well, you don’t look it.” She was thinking, Eight…almost nine years… My God. The prickly feeling in her chest slowly dissipated.

“So,” she said brightly, “where’s your little boy now?” Being from California, she had none of Jimmy Joe’s hesitation about asking questions when necessary, whether as a desperate attempt to make conversation, or because there was something she really wanted to know. Since the one she’d just asked fell more into the former category than the latter-just a variation on your basic “Where are you from?” gambit-the answer she got kind of took her by surprise.

“He’s with his grandma-that’s my mama-back in Georgia.”

Mama? Well, after that there wasn’t anything she could do but proceed to the next question, this one definitely in the “want to know” category. But as curious as she was, and even though tact had never been her strongest suit, she did try to make it as casual as she could.

“What about your wife?” she began confidently enough, before fumbling into stammering ineptitude. “Er…J.J.’s mother. She doesn’t live… I mean, she’s not…” She gestured hopefully with her empty spoon.

“His mama’s dead,” Jimmy Joe quietly answered, apparently taking pity on her.

Mirabella was thoroughly and sincerely aghast. For all her arrogance in business and thorny attitude toward men in general, she had a compassionate and sympathetic heart. It was, although she preferred to keep the fact a secret, a veritable marshmallow, especially where children were concerned. So it was that, forgetting her own discomforts and worries, she instantly and instinctively reached out to the motherless boy she’d never met through the only avenue available to her-his father.

Pushing her soup aside she lightly touched his hand-something she would never have dreamed of doing otherwise-and then, forgetting also the dangers inherent in such contact, let herself touch the deep sadness in his eyes, as well. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“It was a while ago. Five years.” His voice seemed so matter-of-fact, for a moment Mirabella wondered if she’d mistaken the look of profound regret-as if, she thought, he somehow felt himself responsible. But then he took a breath and went on, and she thought she understood why his feelings might be a little bit complicated. “I didn’t hear about it right away. Hadn’t seen Or heard from her in years-we’d been divorced since J.J. was just a baby. She was livin’ in New Orleans at the time.”

“How did she die?” Mirabella asked softly, thinking tragic thoughts about cancer and car accidents.

She was unprepared when he hitched a shoulder and angrily and impatiently growled the word, “Drugs.”

“Oh, God.” Suddenly chilled, she pulled her fingers from his and pressed them against her lips. She hadn’t exactly led a sheltered life, having spent a large part of it-the most recent part-in downtown L.A., where the drug culture’s human toll called to her daily from wretched alleyways and reached out to her from every street corner. “Spare some change, lady? For food…?” But nothing in her own experience had ever brought the reality as close to her as this.

In a low, horrified voice, she said, “You mean…an overdose?”

He shook his head, the brief boil of anger dissipating as quickly as it had risen. “Couldn’t say. More’n likely it was a combination of things-malnutrition…pneumonia. Maybe she just plain, ol’ gave up.” He shifted again in that restless way he had, as if talking about himself made him itch. “She’d had trouble with it since she was just a kid. I guess I was a fool, but I thought I could help her. I just didn’t know…”

Mirabella watched him take a deep breath, the way people do when they need to make room for pain inside. “For a while I thought I had. Then, after J.J. was born… Well, I guess I wasn’t strong enough. Or she wasn’t. I had to give up tryin’, or take chances with J.J.’s life I wasn’t willin’ to take. So…” He shrugged and looked away, making it clear that he’d said all he cared to say on the subject.

And Mirabella, having been in that position herself often enough to respect it, didn’t pursue it.

“So,” she said wonderingly after a moment, “you’ve raised your son on your own since he was just a baby.”

The truth was, she felt humbled and chastened, and was looking at Jimmy Joe in a whole new light. He’d seemed so young, an impression that she now thought might have had more to do with his smite-that sweet, sleepy grin that reminded her of a tousled child just waking from a nap-than with smooth cheeks and buns that still looked good in jeans. And of course he was young-not even thirty!

But the impression she’d formed of carefree youth and unsullied innocence had vanished the moment she’d allowed herself to look into his eyes and recognized a certain quiet sadness in them. This was no callow, untested boy, she suddenly realized. Jimmy Joe Starr was a full-grown man-one who’d loved and married and struggled and lost; one who’d already known tragedy and failure as well as joy; one who’d unhesitatingly taken on the worries and responsibilities of fatherhood. In short, a man who’d experienced a whole lot more of life in his almost-a-decade-fewer years, than Mirabella had, by far.

A vague, indefinable sadness crept in around her heart-something like the feeling she sometimes got listening to the blues all alone late at night, or certain songs by John Lennon. If only, she thought. If only…

“Well, I wouldn’t say alone.” Jimmy Joe squirmed uncomfortably, trying to be honest about it. He wasn’t sure what had just happened, but for all he’d been so disapproving of her, now that she’d handed him his chance to speak his mind on the subject of single parents raising babies, he didn’t feel he had the right. The idea had come to him that maybe he ought to get to know her a little better first, find out how she felt about things, what made her tick.

It surprised him some, too, to realize how much he wanted to do that.

“My mama, you know…she helps out a lot. And my sister Jess is there, too. Lately she and her little girl have been livin’ with Mama while her husband’s gone overseas-he’s in the military. Sammi June-let’s see, I guess she’d be ten-she’s company for J.J.” He grinned. “Although if you were to ask him, I don’t think he’d exactly agree with that right at the moment. He’s feelin’ just a mite outnumbered. Too many women.”

Mirabella leaned her chin on her hand and smiled. “Yeah? Think how my dad felt-he had three daughters.”

“No kiddin’?” Jimmy Joe blinked; one Mirabella was dazzling, but the idea of two more like her was enough to boggle the mind. He couldn’t help it-he had to ask. “They all look like you?”

She made a face, and a sound that could only be described as a snort. “We don’t even look like the same species. If you stand us up in order, we look like the letter H-I’m the little short piece in the middle.” She sighed, then smiled in the way people do when they want you to think they aren’t hurting inside. “My sisters are both tall, slim, blond and gorgeous. I’m the ugly duckling.”

Well, he didn’t even begin to know what to say to that. Figuring she had to be kidding, or was maybe fishing for compliments, which was a feminine ploy he did not admire, he just mumbled, “Come on…”

He felt a lot better when she laughed. “Oh, I don’t mean now. I mean, well, I didn’t exactly turn into a swan, but at least I think I’m…you know, an okay duck. But you should have seen me when I was a kid.” Which was just what he’d been thinking, too, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Canoty-red hair,” she elaborated, tweaking a rich mahogany strand across her eyes and again making a face at it. “Straight as a stick. Face as round as a Moon Pie and speckled as a turkey egg. And great big glasses. Now I wear contacts,” she explained, flashing her luminous eyes at him and batting her thick dark lashes like the heroine of an old movie. “Oh-plus, I was fat. Well…plump. And short. Built like a fireplug. So naturally I was terrible at sports.” She smiled the hurtin’ smile again. This time Jimmy Joe felt it in his own gut. “All the necessary traits for a guaranteed miserable childhood.”