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  Their eyes locked.

  It was as simple as that. And as shattering. In that brief moment of contact, Jake’s grin faded. The fingers he’d wrapped around her wrist tightened.

  Those damned chemical signals coursing through Rachel’s system started flashing red alert again. Rising up on tiptoe, she met him halfway.

  The kiss was cool at first but heated up fast. Jake fitted his mouth over hers. His hands framed her face. Fingers callused by rope and wire brushed her cheeks.

  Everything that was female in Rachel responded to the feel of his corded biceps, his hard mouth, the faint scent of leather and clean, sharp wind that clung to his shirt. And some faint corner of her mind shouted that this was more than just a mindless, hormonal response. That it was Jake who’d found her hair trigger.

  And only Jake, dammit!

  MERLINE LOVELACE

  Twice in a Lifetime

  Books by Merline Lovelace

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Somewhere in Time #593

  *Night of the Jaguar #637

  *The Cowboy and the Cossack #657

  *Undercover Man #669

  *Perfect Double #692

  †The 14th…and Forever #764

  Return to Sender #866

  **If a Man Answers #878

  The Mercenary and the New Mom #908

  **A Man of His Word #938

  **The Harder They Fall #999

  Special Report #1045

  “Final Approach…to Forever”

  The Spy Who Loved Him #1052

  **Twice in a Lifetime #1071

  Silhouette Desire

  Dreams and Schemes #872

  †Halloween Honeymoon #1030

  †Wrong Bride, Right Groom #1037

  Undercover Groom #1220

  Harlequin Historicals

  §Alena #220

  §Sweet Song of Love #230

  §Siren’s Call #236

  His Lady’s Ransom #275

  Lady of the Upper Kingdom #320

  Countess in Buckskin #396

  The Tiger’s Bride #423

  Harlequin Books

  Renegades

  “The Rogue Knight”

  Bride by Arrangement

  “Mismatched Hearts”

  Silhouette Books

  Fortune’s Children

  Beauty and the Bodyguard

  †Holiday Honeymoons: Two Tickets to Paradise

  “His First Father’s Day”

  MERLINE LOVELACE

  spent twenty-three exciting years in uniform as an air force officer, serving tours at the Pentagon and at bases all over the world before she began a new career as an author. When she’s not tied to her keyboard, she and her husband enjoy traveling, golf and long, lively dinners with friends and family.

  This is for Marie Henderson Lovelace, my friend, shopping companion and sister-in-law extraordinaire, who’s helped me plot at least a dozen books during our many travels with our own handsome hunks!

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 1

  “Jake?”

  Jake Henderson caught his name above the clamor of the Coconino County Fair. Held each Labor Day weekend at the park just outside Flagstaff, Arizona, the fair was in full swing.

  The last rays of the September sun slanted down on the crowded midway, exhibition halls and livestock arenas. Shrieks chorused from the Ferris wheel and scrambler, while the loudspeaker boomed the relative merits of Benjamin Miller’s entry in the shorthorned bull category. With half an ear tuned to the announcer, Jake glanced over his shoulder.

  A pair of lively hazel eyes smiled up at him. More green than brown, they were wide-spaced and intelligent. Hair a deep shade of mink swept back from a slight widow’s peak to swing in a silky fall that tipped up at the ends. As Jake stared into a face sculpted by slanting brows, high cheekbones, and a determined chin, the woman’s mouth curved.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?” Her smile widening, she stuck out her hand. “It’s Rachel. Rachel Quinn. Alice Quinn’s niece.”

  “Good Lord!”

  Jake took the hand she offered. Her grip was strong. No-nonsense. And warm. A shock of heat traveled up his arm as he wrapped his fingers around hers.

  He pitched his voice above the loudspeaker. “The last time I saw you, you were mostly all arms and legs.”

  She still was, he noted, skimming an eye down a mile-long stretch of tight jeans. The body that went with her killer legs had filled out nicely, though.

  Jake hadn’t paid any particular notice to a woman’s figure in years, but a man would have to be blind or stone-cold dead to miss Rachel Quinn’s lush rounded hips and the high breasts that pushed at the front of her cream-colored sweater.

  Jake wasn’t blind. And only his heart had died. Releasing her hand, he shoved his straw Resistol hat to the back of his head.

  “It must be, what? Eight, nine years since you spent the summer here in Flagstaff with your aunt?”

  “Twelve,” she corrected. “I had just finished my junior year in high school.”

  The hazy memory of that long-ago summer surfaced. Jake waited for the round of applause for Benjamin Miller’s bull to die before sharing it.

  “Best I recall, you left Flagstaff right after you dumped my youngest brother on his butt in a pile of manure and stalked off, swearing you weren’t ever going to speak to him again.”

  “Best I recall, Sam deserved dumping on his butt. And I stuck to my guns. I didn’t return his phone calls after that particular incident.”

  A dimple appeared in one of her cheeks.

  “Okay, he only contacted me once after he scraped off the horse poop, and the message he left on my aunt’s answering machine did not invite further conversation.”

  The lone dimple drew Jake’s fascinated gaze. The fleeting thought crossed his mind that Sam might have blown it big time when he let this one get away if a certain package of female dynamite named Molly Duncan hadn’t been waiting for him in his future. Molly had shot the youngest of the five Henderson brothers down in flames during a fierce battle over an oleander hedge and had kept him in a permanent state of surrender ever since.

  Which is what Jake tried to tell Rachel…in slightly expurgated terms…when she inquired about the gangly rancher’s son she’d dated that long-ago summer.

  “Sam’s married and….”

  The loudspeaker boomed again, drowning out his words.

  “What?”

  “Sam’s married. He and Molly are….”

  The announcer waxed poetic about the next entry in the shorthorned competition. Jake gave up trying to out-shout him.

  “Let’s get away from the noise.”

  With the courtesy Jessie Henderson had alternately preached and pounded into her five sons, he took Rachel’s elbow and steered her toward the open-air pavilion that formed the heart of the fairgrounds. Strings of colored lights wove an overhead canopy, winking yellow and red and green in the coming twilight. Picnic tables ringed the concrete floor, which had been cleared for the dancing that would come when the band finished setting up.

  Dozens of concession stands surrounded the pavilion and spilled their mouth-watering lures into the dusk. The aroma of spicy barbecue, sizzling fajitas, buttery popcorn and sugar-sweet cotton candy drew throngs of hungry fair-goers to the various
booths.

  Claiming an empty table, Jake waited till Rachel had taken a seat on the bench to offer her something to settle the dust of the fairgrounds. “Would you like a beer or a soft drink?”

  She eyed the long lines winding around the booths. “I wouldn’t mind a beer later, when the lines go down.”

  Tipping her head back, she caught the red blaze firing the jagged peaks that ringed the city and surrounding countryside. The sun had dropped behind the San Franciscos, setting them aflame.

  “Look at that! I’d forgotten how beautiful the sunsets are out here.”

  Except for a stint in the marines, Jake had spent his entire life in the shadow of the rugged peaks. He didn’t spare them a glance. The young woman with her face tilted to the sky provided a more interesting view.

  “What brought you back to Flagstaff?”

  “Aunt Alice just had a hip replacement. I had piled up some use-or-lose vacation time, so I drove out to stay with her for a month or so while she recuperates.”

  Although the population of Flagstaff now hovered around forty-five thousand, the northern Arizona city still retained enough of a small-town atmosphere for Jake to feel a sharp bite of concern. Alice Quinn had run the café on Aspen Avenue for three decades and just retired a few years ago. Jake hadn’t heard she’d been hospitalized.

  “I didn’t know Alice was ailing. I don’t get into town often these days. I’ll have to call on her.”

  “She’d be thrilled. She told me she doesn’t see much of the Henderson boys since they’re all grown up. Or read about them in the local paper,” Rachel added with mischievous glint in her hazel eyes.

  The laughter that rumbled through Jake’s chest surprised him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this easy or relaxed around anyone other than his brothers and their families.

  “Well,” he drawled, “I admit we managed to get into our share of brawls and scrapes in our rambunctious youth.”

  More than their share, according to their long-suffering mother, their often exasperated father and the county sheriff who’d hauled each of the Henderson boys home in his squad car at various times in their exuberant youth.

  Big John Henderson was dead now and Jessie Henderson had moved off the Bar-H into a condo in Sedona, some fifty miles south, but Jake still maintained an active relationship with Buck Silverthorne, Coconino County’s deputy sheriff. You couldn’t run a twenty-thousand-acre spread and lease another thirty thousand from the government without regular contact with the law. Drunken hands, missing equipment and the occasional vandalized line shack were all part of the ranching business.

  Hooking her elbows back on the table, Rachel tipped her head and studied him through thick, sable lashes. “Do you and your brothers all still live at the Bar-H?”

  “No, just me. Evan—he’s nearest to me in age—is an assistant U.S. district attorney. He and his wife, Lissa, live in San Diego.”

  “I remember him. Vaguely.” Her forehead crinkled. “Wasn’t he a motorcycle nut?”

  “He still is, although his career and Lissa’s keep them off the roads more than either one of them likes. She’s a recording artist,” Jake explained. “Gospel songs, primarily.”

  He tossed off a few of his sister-in-law’s latest hits, but Rachel confessed she wasn’t familiar with gospel music. Jake hadn’t listened to it much, either, before Evan brought Melissa Marie James back to the Bar-H to face the hordes of reporters waiting to devour her. Now…

  Now, he filled some of his empty nights with the soaring hymns his sister-in-law composed and recorded.

  “What about your other brothers?” Rachel asked. “Reece, isn’t it? And Marsh?”

  “Reece is an engineer with the Bureau of Reclamation. He does repair work on dams mostly. His projects take him all over the world. His wife, Sydney, is a documentary filmmaker, so she bundles up their two-year-old son and travels with him. Marsh was a field agent with the DEA until Lauren recently informed him he’s going to be a father. He’s just traded his gun for a desk.”

  “And Sam? You said he was married.”

  Jake paused, not entirely sure how close Rachel Quinn and his brother had gotten that summer. If Sam had followed his usual pattern before Molly cut him off at the knees, he’d probably given Rachel good cause to shove him butt-first into the manure pile. Jake didn’t want to stir up old hurts by rubbing Sam’s happiness in her face, but a quick glance at her clear, untrammeled eyes convinced him she wasn’t nursing a secret longing for his youngest brother.

  “Sam’s very happily married,” Jake confirmed. “He and his wife and daughters live in Albuquerque, where he commands a flight test agency.”

  “Daughters?” Her winged brows soared. “How many does he have?”

  “Three. A four-year-old whirlwind and twins who are just old enough to keep him and Molly hopping.”

  “No kidding?” She gave a hoot of delight. “Talk about poetic justice! Sam Henderson, the father of three girls. I’d love to see him in harness like that. Or better yet, be a fly on the wall when he tries to advise them on how to handle their dates!”

  Still gleeful, she tipped him a smile. “What about you, Jake? How many children do you and…? Sorry, I can’t remember your wife’s name.”

  As if a curtain had suddenly dropped, the raucous noise of the crowd faded. Twinkling colored lights dimmed to a blur. The pain Jake had lived with for three endless years lanced straight into his heart.

  “Ellen,” he murmured, forcing his wife’s name.

  “That’s right. Ellen.”

  He saw Rachel’s lips move. Heard her voice through the ache that reached into his chest, grabbed his heart, and squeezed. Hard.

  “How many children do you and Ellen have?”

  He could do this. He had to do this. He’d drowned his grief in a bottle for too many months. Fought his family’s every effort to pull him out of the grave he’d wanted to share with Ellen. Rationally, he knew life had to go on. Intellectually, he recognized the therapeutic value of talking through his loss.

  Emotionally…

  Emotionally, the memory of the cold, snowy day he’d buried his childhood sweetheart and the wife he’d thought to grow old with still wrapped him in barbed wire.

  “We didn’t have any children,” he answered quietly. “We had hopes we’d be able to start a family when Ellen was killed.”

  Shock blanked Rachel’s features. As if he’d flicked a switch, the liveliness in her face died. Almost as quickly, pity rushed in.

  “Oh, no! I didn’t know.”

  Jake felt the walls clanking into place, the door slamming shut. He’d seen that look so often, endured the embarrassment and stumbling condolences that invariably followed.

  Death, he’d learned, wasn’t a matter for polite conversation. It made most folks uncomfortable. Even worse was the quick change of subject that invariably followed. It was as if Ellen had never existed. As if the fact that she’d died had somehow made even her name anathema among the living. That hurt almost as much as the aching sense of loss that stayed just under his ribs.

  To his surprise, Rachel didn’t fumble for words or turn the subject. Her eyes filling with compassion, she reached for his hand.

  “I’m so sorry, Jake.”

  The soft murmur reached him on the first strains of a two-step. The band had finished setting up and tuning their instruments. A bass guitar strummed a lead. Moments later, a smoky-voiced vocalist crooned into the mike. With the weepy country ballad providing a counterpoint to the music that pumped from the midway, Rachel searched his eyes.

  “Can you tell me what happened, or does it hurt too much to talk about it?”

  He hesitated, measuring how much of the brutal truth she could take. All of it, he decided. His impression of the grown-up Rachel Quinn more than matched that of the skinny, scrappy teenager who’d tangled with Sam.

  “Ellen was killed in a drive-by shooting down in Phoenix three years ago. The intended victim passed through th
e intersection a half second before she did. He survived the murderous crossfire. She didn’t.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Rachel said again. “I don’t remember her very well, but I do recall how happy you two seemed. You… You must miss her terribly.”

  As much as a man would miss breathing.

  “Yeah,” he said evenly, “I do.”

  She gave a small nod, and Jake tucked away his memories. He’d pull them out later…or they’d pull him.

  “What about you? Have you shoved any more men into manure piles since Sam?”

  The smile crept back into her eyes. “A few. You don’t find a whole lot of keepers in my line of work.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a safety analyst with the National Transportation and Safety Board.”

  An analyst with the NTSB. That was probably the last profession Jake would have guessed. With her tall, trim build and healthy tan, Rachel looked like she spent considerably more time outdoors than inside an office, hunched over a computer keyboard or stacks of reports.

  “How did you get into that line of work?” he asked, intrigued.

  “My undergraduate degree’s in materials science.”

  Jake hadn’t grown to manhood in a state that still derived a large percentage of its income from mining without knowing that materials science included everything from metallurgy to manufacturing. When he said as much, Rachel nodded.

  “I did a lot of work with metal fatigue and X-ray diffraction before I specialized in composites. Since they’re used so much today to manufacture automobiles and aircraft, it tied right in with my job. I do lab work mostly, at the NTSB lab in Washington, D.C.”

  “D.C.’s a big city,” Jake commented, going back to their earlier discussion. “I would have thought you’d find a bucketful of keepers in pin-striped suits and power ties.”

  “Well, there’s one with definite potential.”

  “I don’t imagine he liked the idea of you taking off for Arizona for a month.”