Luke held up his hands and backed off. “Not another word,” he vowed.

The teasing went on for another ten minutes, though, as the three oldest grandchildren raced around the yard. Jenny seemed thoroughly bemused by all the commotion. It made Janet wonder whether she’d been so wrong to insist to Barry that she wanted no more children. Left unspoken had been the fact that she didn’t want them with him. Within months of Jenny’s birth, she had already sensed that their marriage wasn’t going to last the distance. It had taken her more than twelve years to finally cut the ties.

When Melissa shoved a baby into her arms, so she could chase after her daughter who was vanishing around the side of the house, Janet felt a stirring of maternal instinct that was so overwhelming it brought tears to her eyes. She quickly handed the baby over to Jessie, who was standing nearby.

“I have to get to work,” she announced to no one in particular.

Harlan was at her side in a heartbeat. “We’ll talk later,” he said as he walked with her to her car. “I’ll come up with some way to apologize for all this.”

“It’s not like you threw me into a den of starving wolves,” she reminded him. “It wasn’t that bad. They’re nice people, all of them. And they clearly love you and worry about you.”

He grinned at that. “Do I look like a man who needs people fussing over him?”

She couldn’t help smiling at that. “I doubt they see you the same way I do,” she said.

“Oh, really,” he said, sounding absolutely fascinated all of a sudden. “And how do you see me?”

“Never mind. Your ego’s big enough as it is,” she said, and closed the car door in his face.

“We’ll finish this discussion tonight,” he shouted as she drove away.

The challenge in his voice and the gleam in his eyes stayed with her the rest of the day. At least a dozen times, as she talked with the few potential clients who called, an image of Harlan’s face popped into her head. His strength and compassion, along with that taunting, unmistakable desire, kept her from regretting the day she’d moved to Texas.

Too many of the calls were from people only interested in hiring her if she’d work free, or from people with ugly accusations to make about her being an uppity Indian. She found the atmosphere of bias and distrust both discouraging and infuriating.