He rose up onto his elbow, and she gazed into his dark face, outlined against a sky crammed with stars. “Hope?”

“What?”

“I want to tell you something.” He placed her palm against his cheek, rough with stubble. “In my life, I’ve been with women I didn’t care about and women I cared a great deal about. But I’ve never been with a woman who makes me feel the way you do.” He lowered his head and whispered against her lips, “Sometimes when I look at you, it’s hard to breathe. When you touch me, I don’t care about breathing.” He kissed her slow and sweet, and with each press of his lips and touch of his tongue, her heart swelled and ached. It was wonderful and awful and brand-new. Then he pulled back to say, “I don’t know how this is all going to work out, but I want to be with you. You are important to me.”

It wasn’t exactly a declaration of undying love, but it stung the backs of her eyes. She slid her hands under his sweatshirt and combed her fingers through the short, silky hair that grew on his chest. She felt the sharp intake of his breath and the heavy beat of his heart. “I want to be with you, too,” she said and her heart swelled yet again.

Then, with her body, she showed him without words how she felt. And through the tangle of their clothes and the cramped confines of the sleeping bag, he touched her as if he felt it, too. He caressed her as if she were fragile and very important to him. Beneath the shooting stars, he made love to her as if they were the only people on the planet. Beneath Cassiopeia, she felt as if she, too, were circling the heavens on her head.

She forgot all about bugs and beetles and lay wrapped up in the arms of the man she loved. And while that was incredibly scary, it was also incredible. For the first time since she’d driven into town, leaving wasn’t quite so clear. She wondered what she would do if he asked her to stay. She’d fallen in love with the sheriff of a town without a Nordstrom, a movie theater, or even a 7-11. She wondered how she would live without him if he didn’t ask her.

In the morning, he made her a dreadful breakfast of oatmeal and dehydrated eggs, which was only slightly better than the dinner of dehydrated stew he’d made the night before. He laughed and kissed the snarled part in her hair and called her high maintenance.

They repacked their backpacks and made it down the mountain in half the time it had taken them to hike up. When they got back to Dylan’s house around noon, they peeled off their clothes and fell into bed without even bothering to shower the trail dust off their skin.

Exhausted, Hope didn’t remember falling asleep before her eyes opened again. A bit disoriented at first, she glanced at the bedside table and recognized Dylan’s clock. Beneath the sheet, his chest was pressed to her back and his hand rested between her bare breasts. Through her thin, silky underwear, she felt his hot groin shoved against her behind. She figured his grasp must have awakened her. She could still smell the scent of Dylan’s cook stove in her hair and on their clothes, which lay in a heap next to his bed.

Her eyes drifted shut, then popped open again. She had a feeling like someone was watching her and raised herself onto her elbow. She glanced down at the end of the bed. Adam Taber’s big green eyes stared back at her. His face looked blank, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing.

“Dylan,” Hope whispered. “Wake up.”

His only response was to cup her breast and pull her tighter against his chest.

She took her gaze from Adam and glanced over her shoulder. She nudged his big chest with her elbow. “Dylan, wake up.”

“Hmm?” His lids fluttered open. “Honey, I’m too tired,” he said, his voice rough from sleep. But he wasn’t too tired to slide his hand down her stomach to her hip and back up again. “On second thought, I’m never too tired.”

“Dylan!” She grasped his hand through the sheet. “Adam’s home.”

“What?” The hair on his chest tickled her back as he lifted himself up and glanced toward the end of the bed. A prolonged silence filled the room as father and son stared at each other. “Adam,” he began slowly, then cleared his throat. “How did you get here?”

“Mom brung me.” Adam pointed to his left, and both Hope and Dylan shifted their gazes to the tall blonde leaning against the doorjamb. She wore leather pants the color of buttermilk and a silk blouse of the same color. She looked vaguely familiar, but Hope didn’t believe they’d ever met.

“I guess we should have called,” she said as she straightened. “I’ll just wait in the living room for you two to get dressed.” She held out her hand to Adam. “Come on. Let’s go wait for your daddy out here.”

Adam stared at his father and Hope for several seconds, then walked out of the room.

“Jeez-us,” Dylan swore as he fell back onto his pillow. He plowed his fingers through the sides of his hair and stared up at the ceiling. “What in the hell is he doing home? It’s not Sunday, and what is Julie doing here? This is messed up. This is a goddamn nightmare.”

Hope sat up and held the sheet to her chest. “What do you want me to do?”

“Did you see Adam’s face?” He sighed and covered his own face with his hands. “Hell if I know. Maybe he’ll think you came over and got so tired you just had to take a nap or something. Maybe you fell and hurt yourself and had to lie down.”

“Yeah, and you were just helping me out with a breast exam.”

He looked at her from between his fingers.

“Adam saw your hand moving around beneath the sheet. He’s not stupid. I don’t think he’ll fall for some lame story. Just tell him the truth.”

He lowered his hands. “Please don’t tell me how to talk to my son. I really hate it when people who don’t have children tell me what to do. I’ll decide what’s best for him, and I don’t think explaining my sex life with you is best for him right now.”

“Fine.” She threw off the sheet and rose from the bed. “Tell him whatever you want.” She shut the bedroom door, then picked up her clothes.

“Hope.”

She turned her back on him, stepped into her shorts, and buttoned them around her waist.

“Hope.” He came up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have said that about you not having children. I’m sorry.”

She grabbed her bra and turned to look up at him. He was sorry about the wrong thing. “I respect your moral position and raising your son by example. I really do.” She hooked her bra behind her back and adjusted the straps. “It must be very difficult, but I will not be your nasty secret.” She thought about the times he’d come to her house and parked his truck at Shelly’s. “I will not be something you lie or won’t talk about. I don’t want to live like that.”

“Okay.”

She reached for her shirt and he grabbed it from her hands. “We’ll work through this,” he said. “Somehow. But I’m warning you, Adam isn’t going to like what he saw today. He won’t make it easy for me or for you.” He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “That woman out there is his mama, and he has dreams of the three of us moving in together and living like a happy family. He’s been working on it-”

“Oh, my God,” Hope interrupted and grabbed his wrist. “Juliette Bancroft!”

“I wondered how long it would take you to recognize her.”

“Crap!” She patted her dusty hair. “I look like complete crap.”

Dylan handed her her shirt. “On your worst day, you’re prettier than Julie.”

Which was an outrageous lie but suddenly wasn’t her biggest worry. Now she remembered why the woman in the doorway had looked so familiar, and it wasn’t because of her television show, either. Hope had to get out of the house fast before Juliette remembered they’d met in Blaine’s office a few weeks before he’d served her with divorce papers. During the divorce, Hope had done a few things to get back at her ex-husband. One of them had involved a certain starlet and her secret breast implants.

While Dylan pulled on a pair of clean Levi’s and a T-shirt, Hope stuck her feet in her dirty socks and tied the laces of Shelly’s hiking boots. “I think it would be best if I just hurried up and left so the three of you can talk.”

“Probably, but I’ll take you home.”

“I can walk. It’s only about three miles and I jog more than that every day.”

“I’ll take you.”

“I want to walk. It’ll give me time to think. Really.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

She walked slightly behind Dylan as they moved down the hall to the living room. Adam sat in a recliner, rocking so hard the springs squeaked and the back of the chair hit the wall, bam, squeak, bam. He leveled his angry eyes on Hope, and seeing all that pain directed at her bothered her more than she would have thought possible. It slid right next to her heart and lay there like a cold lump, and she wondered if they would ever be friends again. She switched her gaze to Juliette, who stood with her back to the room as if she didn’t hear a thing, looking at framed pictures of Adam and Dylan that were sitting on the television.

“Adam, stop that,” Dylan told his son. The chair crashed into the wall harder.

Juliette turned and looked at Dylan. “I always wondered what your house would look like. It reminds me of the house we used to live in when Adam was a baby.”

“You never liked that house,” he said and pointed a finger at his son. “Stop now.”

“That’s not really true.” Juliette’s gaze moved to Hope, and under normal circumstances, she would have been mortified by her appearance, especially compared to the perfect and beautiful Juliette Bancroft. Today, she just hoped the dirt in her hair and the spots on her shirt concealed her identity. “Adam didn’t mention that you had a girlfriend.”

“I’ll just be going now.” With a quick exit out the back door in mind, Hope sort of slid sideways across the room. “I’m sure you all have tons to talk about.”