His mom and dad had been in and out, starting the morning chores. He’d stopped shoveling long enough to ask his mom who was looking after the baby. She’d given him a searching look before answering, “She’s still asleep. I asked Devon to keep an ear out for her.”

He’d had nothing to say to that, and had just nodded and gone back to shoveling, using the physical activity and his own sweat to dampen down the fiery sizzle of anger in his belly.

After that, his parents, no doubt remembering his old habits, had pretty much ignored him. Still, he’d been glad when they’d finished the chores and gone back to the house, and the quiet he remembered, if not the peace, had settled once more around him.

When he again felt a cold blast of arctic air and heard the storm’s howl rise abruptly from a muted roar to a banshee’s scream, he thought it must be his mom or dad come back, probably to tell him the little one was awake. When he saw instead the bundled shape of someone that couldn’t possibly be either of his parents, his heart gave a leap, then settled down to a quick, angry thumping.

He watched in impassive silence while the figure, clumsy in snow-dusted parka and rubber chore boots several sizes too big for her, struggled to push the door closed against the buffeting wind. She gave a wordless cry of victory when she succeeded in dropping the latch into its cradle, then whipped around and leaned against the door, breathing hard.

She looks scared to death, Eric thought, amused. As though she’d just managed to escape a pack of ravenous wolves.

Oh, he wanted to feel contempt for her, this thin-blooded California girl, threatened by a little snowstorm. He tried. But…dammit, there was something fierce, even triumphant about the way she threw back the hood of her parka and shook out that fiery hair of hers, and try as he would, he couldn’t manage to convince himself it was contempt he really felt.

She came toward him, absently brushing snow from her coat and looking around her like someone who’d been magically transported to an alien world. Rather the opposite, he thought, of Dorothy finding herself in Oz.

“What do you want?” he asked before she’d gotten far; he couldn’t explain why he didn’t want her coming close to him. “She awake?”

“What? Oh-no, Emily’s still sleeping, or was when I left. Anyway, your mom…” Apparently fascinated by the barn, she’d finally got around to looking at him, only to do a double take and interrupt herself with a blunt, “Aren’t you cold?”

Eric glanced down at his naked chest. “Only when I stand around,” he said meaningfully, and twirling the scoop, rammed it, with more energy than was necessary, under layers of dirty, wet, trampled-down straw. He heaved the shovelful toward the pile he’d been building in the center aisle without checking to see if his visitor was out of the way or not, and got an infantile satisfaction when he heard her exclamation of dismay.

Didn’t slow her down a bit. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her skirt the manure pile, brushing straw off of her parka sleeve now, instead of snow, and come to lean her elbows on the gate of the stall next to the one he was working in.

He went on shoveling, thinking if he ignored her she’d take the hint and go away. No such luck. Apparently lawyers didn’t understand subtlety. Looked like, if he wanted to get rid of the woman, he was going to have to use more direct measures.

He stopped shoveling, and scoop held at the ready, said, “What do you want?” just as she opened her mouth to say something. A lifelong habit of good manners-for which he could thank his mom and dad’s stubbornness-made him halt and give her a sardonic go-ahead shrug.

“I was going to say I didn’t know you were a photographer.”

It wasn’t what he’d expected. He lowered the shovel blade to the floor and leaned on the handle. “My mom been blabbing?”

“No. I went to check on the baby and saw the photos in your room. I asked about them, and she told me they were yours. And that you’re a professional photographer.”

He gave a soft grunt and corrected it. “Photojournalist.”

She said, “Ah,” and went on looking at him in a searching, appraising kind of way he found intensely annoying.

“Don’t look so surprised,” he said after a moment, smiling without amusement. “What did you think? Yeah, I have a profession, even earn a living at it, pay taxes and everything. You just assumed I was some homeless street person?”

“Why shouldn’t I think that?” she shot back, riled and defensive. “How else would you have met my sister, much less-”

“Got her pregnant?”

Devon closed her eyes and held up a hand to stop him in case he meant to say more, which he sure as hell didn’t. As far as Eric was concerned, any conversation with this woman was a waste of time.

“Look,” she said, taking in a long draught of air through her nose-the smell of which seemed to surprise her a bit, since her eyes got watery and she blinked and gave her head a little shake to clear it before she went on. “I just thought, since we apparently got off on the wrong foot this morning-” She broke off. Eric was shaking his head.

“Oh, I don’t think so, lady,” he said softly. “I think that’s pretty much the only foot I ever want to be on with you.”

She looked at him in silence, then said just as softly, “Aren’t you forgetting something? Emily is my niece. If you are her father, we’re now family, you and I-distasteful as that may be for both of us. Like it or not, Eric, we have that little baby in common. And I’m sure we both want the same thing, which is what’s best for Emily.”

Eric made a rejecting sound and turned away. Looking at her had again become impossible; his eyes felt seared by her image.

As before, she didn’t take the hint and back off but instead pressed her advantage, coming right into the opening of his stall, invading his space. He wanted to shut her out, command her to leave, but again, an ingrained courtesy forced him to stand and listen to her voice, that poised, confident voice, so different from Susan’s, and insidiously gentle, now.

“Look, Eric, I think I understand how you feel. You must have loved Susan. As I did. I think…my sister was very lucky to have found someone like you, after such a difficult and unhappy adolescence. At least, maybe she finally found some happiness, at the end. I know losing her was hard. My God, it was hard for me, don’t you realize that? Hard for my parents-for all of us. And I know you must love your daughter very much. But Eric-” she put out a hand and touched his arm, and he felt a shiver go through him, sharp and cold as a knife. “Even you must admit that your job… Your mother says you have to travel most of the time. Don’t you think a stable home, with two loving parents, would be a far better environment for a child than what you, a single-”

He made a violent movement, shaking her hand off of his arm as if it were some particularly loathsome variety of bug, and glared at her with burning eyes. “You think you understand me? Lady, let me tell you something. You don’t understand anything. You got that? Nothing.” Breathing hard, he turned away from her again.

Lady, don’t make me do it, he silently prayed. Just go. Get the hell out of here. Don’t make me say it.

It was rejection as emphatic as anything Devon had ever experienced, a door slammed rudely in her face. But it wasn’t her way to flee in ignominious defeat. She stood in frozen silence, staring at the naked back he’d turned to her, at muscles bunched and rigid as stone.

Her eyes felt as if they’d been scorched; she kept blinking, trying to soothe their burning. His sudden withdrawal had shocked her; she’d thought-she’d been certain-she was saying the right things. Getting through to him. She’d sensed his pain and grief-surely she’d been right about that much.

Part of her shock was anger at herself, because once again she’d let Eric Lanagan take her by surprise. Once again she’d misjudged him. I can’t read him, she thought, fighting an unfamiliar sense of failure. He’s right-I don’t understand him.

“Look-” he flung out an arm and she stiffened, composing herself to face him. But he kept his back to her as he went on, in a voice that had gone low and guttural, “I might as well tell you-you’re going to find out anyway, soon enough. I’m not the baby’s-Emily’s-father.”

Again, it wasn’t what she’d expected-the admission, not the fact. Inwardly in turmoil, outwardly calm, she nodded, though he couldn’t see it, but didn’t say a word. After a moment he rounded on her, fierce and defiant.

“I was working on a piece-a photo essay-for the L.A. Times. About teenaged runaways. That’s where I met her- Susan. I didn’t know her last name-didn’t know any of their names. It took me months, living with them on the streets of L.A., but I finally won their trust-some of ’em, anyway. Susan was one. She seemed…special to me, right from the first. There was something about her, you know?” He stopped and looked away, and Devon felt an ache, the beginnings of a lump in her throat.

A tiny movement from Eric tugged at her attention; she let her eyes follow the ripple of his throat when he swallowed. But then, without permission, somehow her eyes just continued on down, slaloming over the planes of a chest still shiny with sweat. Irrelevantly, she thought, He lied. He is cold. She could see his nipples had gone boldly erect, hard and sharp as buttons.

There was something in the silence. She jerked her gaze upward and found his eyes on her. And the darkness in them seemed more anguished, now, than angry.

In mounting suspense she waited, and after a moment he went on, in a voice so raw and sharp she thought it must hurt his throat to talk. “We got to be friends. Friends-” he interrupted himself with a sharp angry gesture “-not lovers-we were never that. She trusted me. Told me her story. She told me-” he clenched his teeth hard; she could see the muscles work in his jaws “-she’d been abused-sexually. By her father. Your father. For years. Until she finally got strong enough, desperate enough, and decided to take her chances on the streets.” He stopped, breathing hard, waiting for her reaction.