She couldn't quite keep up as conversations veered from baseball to the late-summer harvest, from teething to town gossip, with a variety of unconnected subjects in between.

.

It dazzled her.

Her memories of family dinners were of quiet, structured affairs. One topic of conversation was introduced and discussed calmly and in depth for the course of the meal, and the meal would last precisely one hour. Like a class, Rebecca mused now. A well-organized, well-constructed and well-ordered class— at the end of which she would be firmly dismissed to attend to her other studies.

As the careless confusion swirled around her, she found herself miserably unhappy with the memory.

"Eat."

"What?" Distracted, she turned her head and found a forkful of pasta at her lips. Automatically she opened her mouth and accepted it.

"That was easy." Shane rolled another forkful, held it out. "Try again."

"I can feed myself, thanks." Struggling with embarrassment, she scooped up spaghetti.

"You weren't," he pointed out. "You were too busy looking around like you'd just landed on an alien planet." He reached for the wine bottle and topped off her glass before she could stop him. She never drank more than two glasses in an evening. "Is that what the MacKades look like, from a scientific viewpoint?"

"They look interesting," she said coolly. "From any viewpoint. How does it feel to be a member of such a dynamic family?"

"Never thought about it."

"Everyone thinks of family, where they come from, how they fit in, or don't."

"It's just the way it is." Shane helped himself to another generous serving from the communal pot.

"But, as the youngest, you'd—"

"Are you analyzing me, Doc? Don't we need a couch and a fifty-minute clock?"

"I'm just making conversation." Somehow, she realized, she'd gotten out of rhythm. And she'd been doing so well. She made an effort to settle herself, took a slow sip of wine. "Why don't you tell me about this hay you're going to mow?"

He angled his head. He knew when a woman was yanking his chain, and he knew how to tug back. "I'll have the mower out tomorrow. You can come on by and see for yourself. Maybe lend a hand. I can always use an extra pair of arms—even skinny ones."

"That sounds fascinating, but I'm going to be busy. My equipment came in." She twirled her fork and neatly nipped pasta from the tines. "But later on, when I set up at your place, I'm sure I can find the time now and then to help you out. In fact, I'm looking forward to observing you in your natural milieu."

"Is that right?" He shifted, turning to face her. The hand he rested on the back of her chair brushed her shoulder on the way. And her quick, involuntary jolt did a great deal to smooth out his ego, which was still raw from their earlier encounter.

Deliberately he leaned closer, just a little closer. "If that's what you want, Rebecca, why don't you come on home with me tonight? We'll—"

"Shane, stop flirting with Rebecca." Regan shook her head as she looked down the table. "You're embarrassing her."

"I wasn't flirting. We were having a conversation." His lips curved, his dimple winked. "Weren't we, Rebecca?"

"Of sorts."

"Shane can't keep his eyes, or his hands, off the ladies." Too logy and sluggish to do justice to the meal, Savannah pushed back her half-finished plate. "The smart ones don't take him seriously."

"Good thing Rebecca's one of the smart ones," Devin put in. "I tell you, it's a sad thing to watch the way some women come sniffing around him."

"Yeah, I get real depressed about it." Shane grinned wickedly. "I can hardly hold my head up. Just last week, Louisa Tully brought me out a peach pie. It was demoralizing."

Rafe snorted. "The trouble is, too many of them haven't figured out the way to your heart isn't through your stomach. It's through your— Ow!" He winced, laughing, when Regan kicked him hard under the table. "Mind. I was going to say mind."

"I'm sure you were," Regan said primly.

"Shane's always kissing somebody." Bryan shoveled in the last bite of his third helping, and used his napkin rather than the back of his hand to wipe his mouth only because he caught his mother's eye.

Enjoying herself now, Rebecca leaned forward to smile at the boy. "Is he really?"

"Oh, yeah. At the farm, at the ballpark, right in town, too. Some of them giggle." He rolled his eyes. "Con and I think it's disgusting."

Shane had always thought that fire was best met with fire, and he turned to his nephew. "I hear Jenny Metz is stuck on you."

Bryan flushed from his sauce-smeared chin to the roots of his hair. "She is not." But the humiliation of that, and the primal fear of girls, was enough to shut his mouth firmly.

Jared sent his stepson a sympathetic look and steered the conversation onto safer ground.

From her vantage point, Rebecca saw Shane lean over, murmur something to the hunched-shouldered Bryan that made the boy grin.

The sound of fretful crying sounded through one of the baby monitors almost as soon as the meal was over. After a heated debate, Rebecca started on the dishes. Babies needed to be tended to, as she'd pointed out. Children put to bed. She was better suited to washing dishes than to fulfilling either of those responsibilities. And—and that clinched it-was she a friend or a guest?

While she worked, she could hear voices from the living room and more sounds through the other monitor that stood in the kitchen. Some soft, some deep. Soothing, she mused. A kind of routine that dug roots, honed traditions. She could hear Rafe talking to Nate as he readied him for bed, Regan murmuring to the baby as she nursed him.

Someone—she thought it was Devin's voice—was calmly directing children to pick up the scattered toys. Jared poked his head in once, apologizing for skipping out on kitchen duty, explaining that Savannah was exhausted.

She waved him away.

She was sure that if anyone else had to face a mess like this, the piles of pots, pans, dishes, glasses would be daunting at best, tedious at worst. But for her it was a novel chore, and therefore entertaining.

Shane strolled in, thumbs hooked in his pockets. "Looks like I'd better roll up my sleeves."

"You don't need to pitch in." Rebecca was working the problem of fitting everything into the racks of the dishwasher into a geometric equation. "I've got it."

"Everybody else is tied up with kids or pregnant wives. I'm all you've got." So he did roll up his sleeves. "Are you going to put the dishes in there, or study it all night?"

"I'm working on a system." Fairly satisfied with it, Rebecca began to load. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to wash the pans."

She paused, her eyes narrowing a bit as she recalculated. "That would be simpler." She caught a whiff of lemon from the soap he squirted into the hot running water. But when she bent over, her bottom bumped his thigh and had her straightening again.

"Close quarters around the sink," he said with an easy grin.

To offset it, she merely walked to the other side of the dishwasher and worked from there. "So, is flirting with women a vocation or an avocation?"

"It's a pleasure."

"Mmm... Isn't it awkward, in a small town, to juggle women?"

"I guess it would be, if you thought of them as rubber balls instead of people."

She nodded as she meticulously arranged dishes. It would be, she mused, interesting and educational to delve into the mind of a ladies' man. "I'll rephrase that. Isn't it awkward to begin or end a relationship in a small town where people appear to know a great deal about other people's business?"

"Not if you do it right. Is this another study, Rebecca?"

She straightened again, battling a flush because it had been just that. "I'm sorry. Really. That's a terrible habit of mine—picking things apart. Just say, 'Butt out, Rebecca.'" . "Butt out, Rebecca."

Because there had been no sting in the order, she laughed and got back to work. "What if I just say I think you have a wonderful and interesting family, and I enjoyed meeting all of them?"

"That would be fine. I'm fond of them myself."

"It shows." She looked up, lips curved. "And it almost makes me think there's more to you than a woman-chasing farm boy. I enjoyed watching all of you together, the interaction, the shorthand conversations, the little signals."

He set a pan into the drainer. "Is that what you were doing when I caught you at dinner? Making observations on the MacKades in their natural milieu?"

Her smile faded a little. "No, actually, I was thinking of something else entirely." Suddenly restless, she picked up a damp cloth and walked away to wipe off the stove. "I do need to talk to you about making arrangements to work at the farm. I realize you have a routine, and a private life. I don't intend to get in your way."

But you will, he thought. He'd suspected it before, but that quick glimpse of sadness in her eyes moments ago had confirmed it. He was a sucker for a woman with secrets and sad stories.

"I told Regan you could come and work there, so I'm stuck with it."

She shrugged her shoulder. "It's important enough to me that I can't worry overmuch about it making you uncomfortable." When she glanced back at him, her eyes were cool again, faintly mocking. "You'll be out in the field most of the time, won't you? Baling hay, or whatever?"

"Or whatever." Damned if she wasn't pulling his strings, he thought. Both of her. For he was certain there were two women in there, and he had a growing fascination with each one.

Though he hadn't quite finished the pans, he picked up a towel, dried his hands. Maybe it was that slim white neck, he mused. It was just begging to be touched, tasted. Or it could be those odd golden eyes that hinted at all sorts of elusive emotions, even when they shone with confidence. Or maybe it was just his own ego, still ruffled from her mocking response to him that morning.