And something else-something she’d never known before, and so couldn’t begin to explain. It was as if something sleeping deep inside her had been awakened, like jillions of tiny seeds sprouting where everything had been barren before. As if all those tiny new shoots and buds were pushing, straining, reaching for warmth and light, because like all newborn things, they demanded nourishment. She felt a new restlessness now-not of dissatisfaction, but of longing; an itch not of compulsion, but of desire. Having a child had fulfilled her, as she’d known it would; fulfilled the caring, giving, loving and nurturing woman she’d always known herself to be. But at the same time it seemed to have awakened a strange new woman, one she’d never met before. One who needed nurturing. One who needed, one who yearned, one who deserved to be cared for…given to…touched…loved.

“It’s coming pretty well.” she said, drawing a shaken breath. “I feel really good-I think the nursing’s helping me get back in shape, if you don’t count my chest, which of course is still enormous. I’ve been walking-not today, though. It’s raining, and it’s cold.”

“It’s beautiful here,” said Charly with typical California smugness. “Just your basic January in L.A. After all the lousy weather in December, suddenly the sun’s shining and the hills are green. So, when are you coming home? I miss you, and I’m dyin’ to see Amy.”

Home? Mirabella gazed at the rain-drenched Mandevilla vine growing up the trellis beside her parents’ patio door and wondered how she was ever going to tell her best friend that Los Angeles didn’t seem like home to her anymore. It seemed as far away to her as the moon, and about as hospitable. Sometimes her life there seemed like a rapidly fading dream.

But if my home isn’t there anymore, she thought with a vague sense of bewilderment and sadness, then where is it?

“I’m not sure-” she began, just as a truck’s air brakes hissed explosively out in the street. Her heart jumped and the hand holding the phone jerked so violently it startled Amy, making her tiny body jerk, as well. What is this? Mirabella thought. Am I going to leap out of my skin every time I hear that sound for rest of my life? Suddenly furious, she swore under her breath.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing-just some truck making noise out in the street. One of my mom’s neighbors is probably having something delivered, repaired or hauled away. This is a retirement community-there’s a lot of that going around. Listen-I’ll be home soon, I promise. I’m planning on it. Pop’s doing a lot better. I think they’re going to schedule him for a bypass in a month or two, and Mom would probably have an easier time of it taking care of him if Amy and I are out of her hair.”

She paused to chuckle. “She made him go grocery shopping this morning, can you believe that? Said he needed to get out and get some exercise. They’ve been gone quite a while-Oh, now what? Damn. Someone’s at the door. Looks like I’m going to have to get that. Hold on a minute while I get out of this chair-”

Supporting the sleeping baby with one hand and juggling the cordless phone with the other, she pushed herself awkwardly upright.

“Uh, Bella, maybe I should let you go.”

“No, no, that’s okay, it’ll just take me a minute to get rid of whoever it is. It’s probably just somebody collecting for the Heart Association-there’s a lot of that around here, too. Hold on-” She had to use the hand with the phone in it to open the door.

“Yes? I’m sorry, but the Wasko-” The words flew away on an exhaled breath, like whispers in the wind. The cordless phone fell to the floor with a clatter as, in a purely instinctive reaction, her hand flew to cover her baby’s head. Her lips moved, soundlessly forming his name: “Jimmy Joe.”

No smile, no dimples, although one corner of his mouth twitched slightly upward, obviously trying. The light in his eyes was uncertain and brooding as he stood with one thumb hooked in the pocket of his Levi’s, one hip and shoulder canted higher than the other, raindrops sparkling on his skin and beginning to drip from the spiky-wet ends of his hair. Dangling from the other hand as if forgotten was a bouquet of pink roses wrapped in cellophane.

“Hey, there, Marybell,” he said with a rueful sniff. “Guess your mama must not a’ told you I was comin’.”

She looks like she’s seen a ghost, he thought, which was about the way he felt. Her hair was even brighter and her skin more translucent than he remembered, and she seemed tinier, too, somehow. She was wearing white cotton pants and a long-sleeved button-up-the-front shirt in some sort of gauzy material that draped gently over her voluptuous breasts and nested the sleeping baby’s cheek like thistledown. The soft, sea colors of the shirt made him realize something he hadn’t before-that in certain lights and moods, her eyes were more green than gray. Standing there in the rain and gloom of January, she seemed to him all sunlight and flower-scented freshness, like a spring breeze that had come without warning to snatch his breath away.

“Mom knew you were coming?” Her voice was an airless whisper of disbelief.

His heart was pounding so hard he couldn’t think straight, but he managed a little half-smile of apology. “Yeah, I called yesterday from Dallas. Tried to again, a little while ago when I got into town, but your line was busy.”

He stepped up onto the doorstep, and she sucked in air in a startled gulp. Cautiously, with a light touch on her arm and a raised eyebrow to ask permission, he leaned past her to pick up the telephone she’d dropped. Without taking his eyes from her face, as if she were some rare wild creature that might vanish in a blink if he did, he mumbled into the phone, “‘Scuse me, but can she call you back? ’Preciate it,” then laid it carefully, along with the roses he’d brought, on the little table that was there in the entryway behind her.

Even with the rain coming down, he could hear the small, sticky sound she made when she swallowed. As dry as his own mouth was, he wasn’t surprised that her voice would still only come in a whisper. “Jimmy Joe…what are you doing here?”

Ah, you know, I was just passin’ through-That was what he started to say, until somewhere in the back of his mind he heard his mama’s voice saying, “Son, I never raised you to be a coward.” So he took the deepest breath he could and in an adolescent’s cracked and terrified voice, told her the truth.

“I came to see you. And because…there’s something I’ve been wantin’ to do.”

In a world gone suddenly silent, Mirabella watched his hand float across the space between them and come to rest on Amy’s head, a touch as sweet and reverent as a benediction. She didn’t breathe; her heartbeat rocked her as the hand rose and she felt that same touch on her own cheek. The warmth of it flowed like oil into her neck, and when his other hand came to cradle her head she gave a sigh of gratitude, for it had grown too heavy for her own muscles to bear. The warmth poured downward into her shoulders and chest, into her belly and farther yet-deep, deep down. Her breasts tingled and her legs grew weak, and all the hungry new shoots inside her lifted and swelled with joy.

“Oxytocin…” she murmured.

“Pardon?” His breath misted her lips.

“It’s just…chemistry.”

“You got that right,” he growled, and brought his mouth the last sweet distance.

Their lips met like lovers who have traveled a lifetime and ten thousand miles to find each other-with yearning and gladness and thanksgiving and joy; with breathless awe and trembling disbelief.

“I can’t,” gasped Mirabella.

“Why not?” His mouth hovered a suspenseful whisper above hers.

“I can’t do this-I can’t,” she breathed, moving her head back and forth just slightly, as if fighting a hypnotist’s powers. “It won’t work. I’m much too old for you. It’s not-”

“Hush.” With one word and a gentle shake of her head he silenced her. Then he pulled back, but only far enough so she could see his eyes. And there was no gentleness in them now; they were brooding and dark, with a fire in their depths she’d seen once before. When he spoke, the tone of his voice was familiar to her, too-the same firm, unyielding voice she’d clung to through a long, dark night, and that had calmed her fears and brought her safely through the birth of her child.

“I’m gonna ask you one question, and I want you to answer me truthfully, and then we’re gonna be done with this, you understand? I want you tell me-in all that time we spent together in my truck, did it even once enter your mind to think about how old or how young either one of us was?”

“But that was-”

His mouth stopped her there. Then once again he drew back to gaze down at her, the fire in his eyes banked to a tender glow. “Marybell, I do enjoy arguing with you, and I expect we’re gonna be doin’ a lot of it, about a lot of things. But this ain’t one of ’em. We’re done with this now, y’hear?”

She was conscious only of mild astonishment as she heard herself answer meekly, “Yes, sir.”

Overriding every other thought and feeling was the most intense hunger she’d ever known. She watched his mouth descend to hers as though it were the only drop of water, the last crumb of bread, the only blade of grass in a barren and thirsty world, feeling as though she would die if she couldn’t taste it again-just once more. She actually felt a sharp pain when he suddenly halted, still a tantalizing, tormenting hairsbreadth away.

“Oh-” she cried, a sound somewhere between a laugh and a whimper. On her chest Amy was stirring and making impatient snuffling noises.

“Looks like she’s wakin’ up,” said Jimmy Joe, one hand dropping, lightly as a falling leaf, to the baby’s bobbing head. He looked at Mirabella and his eyebrows rose. “May I?”