“I don’t think you’ll know anything for sure until you see them together. Wouldn’t it be just as easy to come right out and ask her if she just happened to be in love with our favorite handyman about five years ago when she was here for the summer getting pregnant?”

Jess scowled. “It’s just not that simple. She nearly had a nervous breakdown. I was worried about her survival. Now I’m worried about her future and the future of those little cuties. But don’t you think John would be good for them even if it’s not him?”

“He’d be good for anyone.” Peg sighed. “Oh, to be forty years younger.”

“Look at him. He’s just sitting there. He’s in shock. I’d say that’s a good sign,” Kate said. “Doesn’t that seem like a good sign?”

“He’s in shock? That could be a bad sign,” said Abby.

“Oh, to put a man in shock.” Peg sighed. “Just once more.”

“I just don’t know if this is going to work,” Jess mused, watching the truck just sit there.

“Logically, I don’t think anyone can be tricked into getting married,” Kate said.

“Of course they can’t,” Jess said. “I wouldn’t even attempt that. I thought I’d just trick them into being together again. If they still care for each other, they’ll do the getting married part themselves.”

“They didn’t before.”

“Well…things were different then.”

“Not as different as things are now,” Kate said.

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

John couldn’t move. He would drive away in a minute, but not until his breathing began to smooth out and his heart quit leaping around.

Five years ago—just about the first of June, when everything was gloriously green, when Durango, Colorado, was as fresh and alive as a new baby—he had met her. Leigh, twenty-seven, long limbed, intelligent, monied, home to see her mother for a long visit. She had filed for divorce after a year-long separation from her husband. It was uncontested, mutually desired and would be no-muss, no-fuss, simple and quick. A mere formality, said Leigh, since she and her estranged husband had always been more student and teacher than husband and wife.