Her heart stuttered. “About what?”
“You. Me. Us.”
“Okay.” Her face was buried in his chest. To look at him would have taken more courage than she had at the moment. Her hands rested decorously at his waist, but she badly wanted to stroke his firm buttocks. The tone of his voice could have meant anything, but considering the way his erection nudged her abdomen, she had to hope that this talk was going to be a good thing.
Chilled suddenly, and more than a little embarrassed about their nudity in broad daylight, she stepped back, folding her arms across her breasts. “I need to clean up and get dressed. Cora will want to eat soon. Patience isn’t her strong suit.”
Dylan stood with his feet braced, shoulders squared, as he covered her from head to toe with a hot gaze. His smile made her toes curl. “It’s probably for the best. Otherwise we might spend the whole day screwing our brains out.”
“Dylan!”
He held up his hands. “Sorry. I’m weak and you’re irresistible.”
“No, I’m not.” His praise made her heart sing, but she tried to keep her feet firmly planted on the ground.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “If you don’t mind being alone here with Cora, I really should run into town and see if the storm did any damage to the building. The insurance company had a tarp installed over the roof, but I don’t know if it held in the wind.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“I want to take you to dinner up at the hotel tonight. Table for two. Very private. So we can talk about your future. Our future.”
She shivered inwardly, hoping for a miracle. “I’d like that. But what about Cora?”
“I’m pretty sure Zoe would love to babysit for a couple of hours, but I’ll call her as I drive into town and check.”
Mia picked up her clothes and held them in front of her. Dylan appeared entirely comfortable in his nakedness and in no hurry to rush off. She was not quite so sanguine. So she changed the subject. “At some point today or tomorrow morning I need you to glance at the forms I filled out for your quarterly tax report. I haven’t submitted it yet because I wanted you to take a look and see if it’s okay.”
“I’m sure it’s fine, but if it will make you feel better...”
“Thanks.”
He took pity on her physical paralysis. “Go get dressed. I’ll make sure Cora’s okay until you get back.”
* * *
As Dylan watched her walk away, he enjoyed the rear view. Making love to Mia was a revelation. She had more passion hidden beneath her quiet, reserved personality that anyone he had ever met. Tonight he would tell her he loved her and feel her out about the possibility of staying in Silver Glen permanently.
He was not fooling himself. There was a better-than-even chance that his relationship might not make it to September. Autumn in the Carolina mountains was spectacular. By then the bar would be up and running, and he would have something to distract him from the pain if Mia decided she couldn’t stay.
And it would be pain. He already knew that. Hopefully, he was prepared for it.
He dressed rapidly and picked up Cora as she cried out. The baby looked up at him with eyes that were so much like her mother’s. For a moment, Dylan felt sympathy for the anonymous man who would never know this precious child.
Being a father was about more than planting a seed. It meant sharing sleepless nights, dealing with croup and strep throat, and reading up on ways to care for diaper rash. Daddy was a full-time job, but one with enormous benefits. Being with Cora had changed him...or at least opened his eyes. He would do anything for that kid.
During tonight’s dinner, he would lay out his plan. If Mia was on the same page, perhaps during the next few months they could decide if it was possible to mesh their lives.
When Mia reappeared, his heart donkey-kicked him in the chest. He spoke gruffly to cover the emotion that threatened to choke him. “I’m leaving now.” He handed over the warm bundle of baby fat and drooling smiles. “Unless you hear otherwise, we’ll plan on leaving at six.”
Mia bounced Cora on her shoulder. The kid was working up to a major screaming fit. “I’ll be ready.”
Her smile reached all the way down to his toes.
“Good. I’ll look forward to it.”
* * *
In his truck, away from the temptation that was Mia, he wondered if he had it in him to watch a woman walk away from him a second time. Tara’s defection had hurt his pride, but whenever it came time for Mia to leave, he’d be in danger of getting down on the floor to beg.
His damaged business served as a welcome distraction even now. Fortunately, the Silver Dollar was in good shape. Water had seeped in around one of the ground-floor doors, but since repairs hadn’t begun, it was no big deal.
He grabbed a cup of coffee from a shop near his business and took a moment to call Zoe, who was delighted to be tapped as a babysitter. When he finished his drink, he walked down one of the side streets, gazing in each window. Silver Glen boasted numerous unique shops.
He paused in front of an antique store. There in the window was a collection of silver charms. One caught his eye. A book. The tiny piece of silver seemed to encapsulate the very thing that had brought Mia into his life in the beginning. On a whim, he went inside and bought the charm and a bracelet to match.
On the way home, his excitement mounted. Dinner with a beautiful woman. The possibility of sharing her bed later tonight. It didn’t get much better than that.
When he entered the house, it was strangely quiet. He grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge and only then spotted the note on the kitchen table.
Dylan—
Cora and I are napping. Don’t let us sleep past four-thirty. I’ll need time to get ready.
Mia
He tucked the note in his shirt pocket, grinning. Neither he nor Mia had gotten much sleep last night. To keep himself from climbing into bed with her, he decided that now was as good a time as any to look over the tax stuff she wanted him to see.
His office was neat as a pin...far tidier than he ever managed to keep it. Gertie was banned from this room. The housekeeper rearranged his stacks and made it impossible for him to find things.
The laptop he’d given Mia was on the desk where she left it...and it was turned on. She must have gotten up abruptly to tend to Cora. He used the touch pad to wake things up and saw immediately that Mia’s email was on the screen.
His first impulse was to click out of it. He wasn’t the kind of man who snooped in other people’s stuff. But even with only a brief glance, one word jumped off the screen. Interview. His gut tightened as he sat down to read the rest, unable to help himself.
The sender had merely replied to a message from Mia, so Dylan was able to scroll down and see what she had written. It sounded like she had sent more of these letters, all indicating her availability and asking about possible job openings.
Even as his stomach tightened, he told himself it made perfect sense. Mia hadn’t kept any secrets from him. Of course she had been looking for future employment. Still, the email felt like a betrayal. An illogical response on his part, but true.
The original email had an attachment. He clicked on the word résumé and hit Print. Pages began spitting out of his printer. Gathering them up, he sat down in a chair and started to read...slowly, as always.
Any dreams he had begun to weave about keeping Mia in Silver Glen disintegrated into something that resembled the ashes of a hot fire. Mia had earned not one, but two PhDs from prestigious universities. Her work history was impressive, but what he found the most daunting were her research and writing credits.
Over two pages of the résumé were devoted to lists of Mia’s articles published in academic journals, as well as papers she had presented at scie
ntific conferences all over the U.S. and around the world.
He had fooled himself into thinking of Mia as a simple, down-to-earth mother of a new baby. Helping Mia and Cora had made him feel like a man. He liked having them look to him for support.
But the truth was far less cozy. He’d been right in the first place. Mia didn’t belong in Silver Glen. And she would never belong to him. Even if she wanted him physically.
Calmly, he fed the pages into a shredder. Then he went to the living room and sat down to wait.
* * *
Mia had only napped forty-five minutes, but she awoke feeling refreshed and energetic. A peep in at Cora told her the baby still slept. If Mia was lucky, she might have time to pick out an outfit before her daughter demanded attention.
The impulse to dance around the room made her sheepish. Yes, she was going to have dinner with her lover. And yes, he wanted to talk to her...in private. But that could mean anything.
Her nap had left her mouth feeling cottony, so she headed to the kitchen for a glass of the iced tea Gertie kept on hand round the clock. When she was halfway across the living room, she stopped short, her hand to her chest. “Dylan. You startled me. I didn’t expect you back so soon. Is everything at the Silver Dollar okay?”
“Everything at the saloon is fine. No change.” He sat sprawled in an armchair, a beer in his right hand and his legs stretched out in front of him. He wasn’t smiling. And he didn’t look the least bit amorous.
Gradually, a feeling of alarm squashed Mia’s euphoria. “What happened, then? You look...” She trailed off, unable to decide what was wrong with the picture.
The fingers of his left hand drummed on the arm of the chair. That slight movement was the only visible sign that he was upset. “I changed my mind about dinner,” he said.
She sank into a seat opposite him, her heart at her feet. “I see.”
“I doubt you do.” Fatigue and bitterness nuanced his words.
“Then why don’t you explain?”
He reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a folded check. Tossing it on the coffee table beside a small white box, he grimaced. “I hired you in good faith. So I’ve written that for six months’ pay. It should be enough to help you and Cora make a new start in Raleigh. The other thing is a little gift that reminded me of you.”
When she bit down hard on her lower lip, she tasted the rusty tang of blood. “I don’t understand. I thought you wanted me here. I thought you wanted me.”
His gaze was bleak. “What I want doesn’t matter. You have a job offer. I saw the email. When I went to look at the tax forms.” He stopped. She saw the muscles in his throat work. “I need you to leave, Mia. You don’t belong here. Go home. Go back to the life you were meant for. Take what you need in the short-term and when you have an address, let me know and I’ll ship the rest.”
She rose to her feet, frantic. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t know what’s happened, but please don’t do this.”
For a moment, she thought her plea had gotten through to him. His left hand curled into a fist, and his right hand gripped the beer bottle white-knuckled.
Long seconds ticked by.
Then, with every ounce of expression wiped from his face, he stood up, his gaze landing anywhere but on her. “I’m sleeping up at the hotel tonight. I’d like you to be gone by noon tomorrow. If you need Gertie’s help in packing, her number’s in the kitchen. Goodbye, Mia.”
* * *
The six weeks that followed were some of the worst of Mia’s life, harder even than when she had welcomed a newborn into her home. The drive back to Raleigh was a blur she barely remembered. Fortunately, Cora had been a doll, napping peacefully for most of the trip.
After one night in a chain motel, Mia hit rock-bottom. She didn’t have the luxury of tearing Dylan’s check into tiny pieces. If it had been only her, she would have slept in her car before she would have accepted his money. But she had Cora to think of, Cora to protect. Sometimes a parent had to make hard choices.
Once Mia took Dylan’s check to the bank, the train was set in motion. With what was left in her checking and savings accounts, and with the generous termination settlement Dylan had given her, there was enough to put down deposits on a nice apartment.
For the moment, Cora slept on the carpet beside her mother. Mia purchased a sleeping bag for herself. Eventually she would get some things out of storage, but for now she was hiding out. Since she had already talked to her friends and told them she was staying in Silver Glen for a while, how could she explain her unexpected return?
From her phone, she emailed the department head who had offered an interview and told him a family situation had put her plans on hold. After that, all she did was play with her daughter and weep. The crying jags ended after the first week. It wasn’t good for the baby to see her mother so unhappy. Mia decided that by living only in the present, she could pretend that everything was normal.
She lost weight. Only the prospect of her milk drying up induced her to eat at all. Nursing Cora was a lifeline. It kept her sane. Made her feel whole. She had to take in enough calories to keep feeding her daughter.
Sometimes, if it wasn’t too hot, they went for a walk in the park. She had brought Cora’s stroller with her from Dylan’s house. Amongst other families pushing infants along the paths, she could almost pretend that she was going to be okay.
But at night, when Cora slept, dreams of Dylan kept Mia awake. Ironically, now that she would not have minded Cora’s company in the middle of the night, the baby slept from eight in the evening until eight the next morning.
At the end of the second week, Dylan texted her and asked where to send her things. In a panic, she went to the phone store and had her number changed. Even that minimal contact with the man in Silver Glen, the man she loved who had broken her heart, threatened her fragile composure.
Her entire world had imploded, and she didn’t know what to do. On the basis of one stupid email, Dylan had decided that Mia needed to go back to her career. But that wasn’t his decision to make. Yes, she loved her work, and yes, it was important. But did that trump love? Why couldn’t Dylan fight for her? Why couldn’t he let her make her own decisions?
In truth, though, she couldn’t see a clear answer. Short of Dylan moving to Raleigh—and that seemed wrong on many levels—she didn’t see a solution. If Dylan’s feelings for her had been stronger, she might have decided to put her career on hold. But even that seemed like a poor choice.
By the time August rolled toward a steamy end, heading for the Labor Day weekend and the official end of summer, Mia had managed to reach deep inside herself and draw on reserves of strength she hadn’t known existed. For her child’s sake, she had to pick up the pieces of her life.
Cora was growing rapidly and needed new clothes. One blistering afternoon after naptime, Mia loaded the baby into the car and found a mall, one in a part of town she had never frequented. She still couldn’t bear the thought of running into anyone she knew.
By the time she wrestled the stroller out of the trunk, lifted Cora out of her car seat, and trudged across the hot pavement into the mall, she felt dizzy and sick. Instead of heading to a department store, she made her way to the food court. All she could think about was buying a large, icy-cold soda.
As she rummaged in her purse for her billfold, she staggered, putting out her hand and grabbing for support. The young man behind the counter stared. “You okay, ma’am?”
Mia licked her lips, trying to breathe. Yellow spots danced in front of her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “No problem.” And then her world went black....
Seventeen
Dylan was frantic. When Mia didn’t respond to his text, he hired a private-detective agency to find her...to make sure she and the baby were okay. But everywhere they looked they hit a dead end.
It was as if Mia had disappeared from the face of the earth.
She cashed his check. That knowledge gave him a tiny bit of comfort. At least he didn’t have to worry that Mia and Cora were destitute. But when he tried to have her phone calls traced, he knew she had deliberately changed her number.
In the intervening weeks, as he missed Mia and Cora with a raw pain that kept him awake at night, he realized he had given up without a fight. And that was not like him. He had been wrong to make them leave. He began to think of solutions, and if none of those panned out, he was ready to pack up and move to Raleigh.
Desperation drove him to extreme measures. Though it was immoral if not downright illegal, he found a tech guru who was willing to hack into the computer Mia had used in Dylan’s office. The man tapped into her email account, but there was only one outgoing email. A note informing the sender that she would not be interviewing for a job, the job Dylan had seen earlier.
If Mia wasn’t trying to find a job, then what in the hell was she doing? He even checked hospitals throughout the Raleigh/Durham area in case either Mia or Cora was ill or injured.
The computer geek had showed him how to access the email himself. Every morning and every evening, Dylan sat with the laptop, praying for something, anything. But apparently, Mia was not using her email at all.
His break came in an unexpected way. One morning, an email from her bank popped up with the heading “address change.” Without compunction, he opened it, jotted down the information and ran to his bedroom to pack a bag. Six hours later, he parked in front of a nondescript block of apartments.
With his heart pounding and his chest tight, he searched for the numbers that identified the units. There it was.
When Mia opened the door, her face went pale with shock. “What are you doing here?” Animosity crackled in every syllable.
“I came to apologize,” he said. “May I come in?”
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