Kitabı oku: «The Men of Mayes County», sayfa 3

Cal’s hands slid into his back pockets. Like most guys out here, his belt buckle was shiny and silver and only marginally smaller than Texas. And Dawn noticed the bottom didn’t lie exactly flat against his belly. She jerked her eyes to his face—dimples and lazy grins were a lot safer than angled belt buckles—in time to hear him say, “And when was the last time you saw Haven?”

Cheeks burned. “Two months ago.”

“I didn’t say the last time you were here. I said the last time you saw it. As in, paid attention to what it’s like now. Not what you remember.”

She shut her eyes. Let’s see…she looked like hell, felt worse, and was standing in a socially unacceptable nightie arguing semantics with a man who made her hot just by breathing. And not even on her. Yep, she was officially having a sucky day.

“It doesn’t matter,” she finally said. “Mama’s giving me my first prenatal checkup after I get cleaned up.”

Immediately Cal’s expression changed, as something that looked close to awe obliterated every bit of the smart-aleckiness…and walloped her emotions right out of the ball park. Again his eyes sauntered back to her body, only this time, she felt…worshipped. So much so, she didn’t even object when he took a step closer, then closer still, finally tugging the dish towel from her hands to lay one large, gentle hand on her still flat belly.

She swallowed. Twice. One from a plain old-fashioned rush of awareness, the second time from something achy and weird she couldn’t even define.

“Tell you what,” he said, bending slightly to look in her eyes, and she saw not the man who rattled her hormones clear into the next county, but the boy with the courage to cry in front of her when his mama was dying. “Let me stay for your appointment, then I’ll take you over to Ruby’s for lunch and we’ll see how it goes from there. How’s about it? A couple of hours, just for us.”

Senses returned. She removed his hand—managing not to sigh—and crossed her arms. Under her braless breasts. Wrong. So she lowered her arms, feeling them bounce back into place. Terrific.

“There is no ‘us,’ Cal. There’s never been an ‘us.’ And there’s never going to be an ‘us.’”

And quit standing there making this so damn hard, with those damn sweet eyes of yours and that damn, double-damn, stupid, infuriating, unflappable grin.

Quit making me long for things that can’t be.

“But there is a baby,” he said. “Our baby. So I’m sticking around.”

“God. I’d forgotten how stubborn you are.”

“One of my more endearing qualities.”

She sighed. “There’s really no point, Cal. It’s not as if you can see or hear anything yet.”

He crossed his arms, the smile gone. “I don’t suppose I can stop you from going back to New York if that’s what you’re determined to do. But let me tell you something—when you are here, there is no way you’re keeping me from being part of your life as far as it concerns our child. So you might as well get used to it, right now, and save yourself a lot of headaches down the road.”

Hoo-boy. Major-deer-in-headlights time. If only…

If only what?

She had no idea.

Dawn blinked until the fog cleared and Cal’s calm, set-to-simmer gaze swam into focus. She blew out yet another sigh, her hands flipping up on either side of her head.

“Fine. Stay. But I’m not going anywhere afterward.”

Then Cal grinned, Dawn’s nipples went tra-la-la and she took off down the hall for that shower, in as dignified a manner as she could manage in a nightgown a breath away from disintegration.

“You might want to bring a sweater or something,” he called after her. “It’s kinda chilly out today.”

Chapter 3

“Just remember,” Dawn said as Cal held open the door to Ruby’s two hour later. “I’m only letting you do this because I’m starving. Got that?”

Her shampoo scent distracted him for a second, but he caught himself fast enough to both say, “Yes, ma’am,” and swallow his smile. She narrowed her eyes slightly, then turned to head inside. Only she wheeled back around so fast her hand whapped him in the stomach.

“And not one word about…you know.”

She’d been right, that there really hadn’t been much point to his sticking around for the exam, especially since Ivy threw him out before they got to the fun stuff, anyway. Except that being there helped make the whole thing feel more real, somehow. Dawn would probably have kittens if she knew, but he’d already been up in the attic and found the cradle he and his brothers had used as babies, the one his daddy had made the instant he found out he was gonna be a daddy, after nearly fifteen years of marriage. And when Cal thought about his own baby lying in it, looking up at him with a big, goony grin, he got all choked up.

When he thought about Dawn having the baby in New York…well, it just made him sick, is what. But he also had enough sense to know when to back off.

“I’m not stupid, Dawn,” he said, nudging her from behind before they attracted any more attention than they already were. As it was, the noise level in the diner—which at lunchtime generally hovered somewhere between deafening and mind numbing—dropped considerably at their entrance. Cal was tempted to call everybody on it, only he knew that would only make it worse. Besides, Dawn had gone still as a statue, one arm pressing against her stomach.

Damn. He’d forgotten what she’d said about strong smells. And the grease-to-air-molecule ratio in here was running, at a conservative guess, a good fifty-to-one.

“You okay?” he said quietly, taking her elbow whether she liked it or not. The look she gave him pretty much indicated she didn’t.

“What?”

“The smell,” he whispered. “Is it getting to you?”

Except for a couple of clips, her hair was hanging loose down the back of her light blue sweater, which was the same color as the flowers in another of those long, floppy skirts that looked like something her mother would wear. Just like the ugly, clunky shoes. The ends of her hair teased the top of his hand, sending memories racing around inside his skull for a second until he silenced them by focusing on the present.

“Lord, yes,” she whispered back. “I want every single thing on the menu. Oh, there’s a booth! Grab it!”

As the noise level gradually worked its way back up, Charmaine Chambers, Ruby’s newest waitress and the same age as Cal and Dawn, leaned over to wipe down their table, her initial—and customary—smile for Cal vanishing the instant she caught sight of Dawn.

“Special today’s a boneless barbecue rib sandwich,” she announced in a monotone, her breasts shifting restlessly underneath a baggy uniform that was so bright pink it hurt Cal’s eyes to look at it. She straightened, then poured them both water from a dripping plastic pitcher she’d grabbed from the nearby station. “You need a menu?” she asked Dawn, her words all tight.

Dawn flicked a glance at Cal, then pressed one hand to her chest. “Hey, Char! It’s me, Dawn.”

The brunette’s slate-blue gaze bounced off Dawn. “I know.” Her mouth twitched, but calling it a smile was pushing it. “Thought you were in New York.”

“I’m…here visiting my mother. How’re those gorgeous boys of yours?”

“They’re fine. You know what you want yet?”

Dawn shoved a hank of hair behind her ear, obviously wrestling to keep her thoughts to herself. “The rib sandwich sounds great. That come with fries?”

“And slaw, yeah. Soup’s extra, though.”

“What kind?”

“Split pea.”

“Really?” she said, her whole face lighting up. “Lord, I can’t remember the last time I had split pea soup. Could I get a double bowl?”

Wordlessly, Charmaine scribbled the order down on her pad, then took Cal’s, yelling them out to Jordy, Ruby’s husband, before stomping off to tend to the next customer.

Dawn sighed. Cal leaned over. “Don’t let her get to you—”

“It’s okay. We weren’t exactly best buddies when we were kids, you know.”

“Maybe not, but the thing is…she’s been having a hard time of it lately. Brody walked out about a year ago, leaving her with the kids. Ruby gave her a job ’cause she felt bad for her, but I don’t think waitressin’s exactly her thing.”

Dawn’s dark brows dipped. “Brody left her?”

The split had surprised Cal, too, especially since Charmaine and Brody had been tight as ticks since the seventh grade. That they’d managed to wait until after high school to get married had been a miracle in itself, although Cal knew for a fact they hadn’t waited about anything else.

“Yeah. Kids took it real hard, too.”

“I bet they did. Oh, God, Cal,” she said on a sigh, “how awful for her.” Her eyes following the waitress’s moves, Cal supposed, she asked, “Is she at least getting child support?”

“I seriously doubt it—”

“Dawn Gardner!” Ruby Kennedy said next to them, hands the color of bittersweet chocolate parked on seriously wide hips. “What on earth you doin’ back here so soon, honey?”

“Giving you a hug, that’s what,” Dawn said with a laugh as she clambered out of the booth and did just that.

After they’d hugged themselves out and Dawn was settled back in the booth, Ruby asked, “You order the rib sandwich, baby?”

“Like I was gonna pass up Jordy’s ribs,” she said with a grin. “Or the fries or the slaw or the soup.”

Ruby mm-mm-mm’d and said, “Why is it the skinny one’s’re always the ones who can pack it away? Me, all I have to do is look at one of Jordy’s ribs and my butt starts expandin’. Oh, and Maddie brought over a peach cobbler this morning that’s so pretty it’ll make you cry. You want me to save you some?”

“Whoa, whoa—” Cal raised his hand. “I don’t hear you offering to save me any!”

“That’s because, Mr. Me-Too,” Ruby said, “being’s Maddie’s your sister-in-law, I suppose you can taste her cobbler anytime you like—”

“Hey!” Charmaine yelled over by the display of gum and candy bars and stuff underneath the cash register. “You have to pay for that—come back here!” Cal looked over just in time to see a blond kid just this side of puberty tear out the door, nearly knocking over Homer Ferguson in the process.

Seconds later Cal was hot on the kid’s tail, his much longer legs catching up to the boy before he’d even reached the Hair We Are two doors down. He grabbed the skinny thing around the waist and plucked him right up off the ground, getting a barrage of elbows and fists and rubber-soled feet for his efforts.

“Lemme go! I didn’t do nuthin’!”

“You gonna run?” Cal said softly in the kid’s ear.

“What do you think?”

Cal let go, but not before getting a good handful of too-big T-shirt just in case the boy had any ideas about booking it. The kid took a swing at him, but he didn’t really put his heart in it. Besides, Cal ducked.

“I said, let me go!”

Still hanging on with one hand, Cal held out the other one, palm up. “Give me what you took.”

“I didn’t—”

“Now.”

The boy glared at him for several seconds, his breath coming in sharp bursts. He didn’t exactly look like he’d had a bath any too recently, but then, how many boys his age did? Finally the boy rammed his hand into his pocket and yanked out a slightly smashed candy bar.

“That it?” Cal asked.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“You don’t believe me, you can look for yourself.”

“Okay, you can ditch the attitude. Unless you like lookin’ ugly.” When the kid only scowled harder, it suddenly struck Cal where he knew him from. “You’re Jacob Burke’s boy, aren’t you?”

“I don’t have to tell you nothin’.”

Cal was sorely tempted to cuff the kid upside the head. Or feed him, one. “What’s your name?” he said gently.

More scowling.

“You can tell me now, or I can call your daddy—”

“Elijah.”

“That what they call you, or you got a nickname?” At the shake of the shaggy head, Cal grimaced at the Three Musketeers in his hand. “You mean to tell me you caused all this ruckus for one lousy candy bar? How dumb is that?”

“Yeah, well, it’s none of your business, is it?”

“You stole something from a friend of mine. That makes it my business—”

“Is he okay?”

Cal turned at the sound of Dawn’s voice, noticing a small crowd had gathered to watch the proceedings. For Haven, this qualified as excitement.

“Yeah, he’s fine.” He handed her the flattened candy bar.

“This, however, isn’t. Come on,” he said, tugging the boy in the direction of the diner.

“I ain’t goin’ back there.”

“Yes, you are. And when we get there, the first thing you’re gonna do is apologize for your momentary lapse of good sense. Then we’re gonna see what you can do for Ruby to make up for it.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of job, I’m thinking.”

“A job? No way! For one candy bar?”

“I’m a firm believer in nipping things in the bud, bud.” The small crowd dispersed when Cal dragged Elijah through the door, Dawn on their heels. “We’re back, Ruby,” he hollered from the doorway. “Where you want him?”

“Kitchen’s good,” she called from the back of the diner.

They all trooped back into Ruby’s gleaming kitchen, Elijah a trifle more subdued than he had been five minutes before. Especially when he caught sight of Jordy, Ruby’s bald, bad, six-foot-three, 280-pound husband. After a brief discussion, it was decided Elijah could mop the floor after the lunch rush.

“I don’t know how.”

“Well, I suppose you can learn, can’t you?” Ruby said, after which four people chorused, “You hungry?”

After Dawn and Elijah had packed enough away between them for a church potluck, Cal and Dawn took the boy and his bicycle, which he’d left in front of the hardware store, back out to the small farm he lived on with his widowed father. Who, as best they could figure out from Elijah’s grudging explanation, had been on disability for some time. He also told them he was home schooled, since his father needed him around to “help.” Help with what, was the question, since neither the small, drab house with its peeling paint and missing shutters, nor the bare dirt yard littered with junk and a couple of old pickups, indicated that any attention had been given to either for a very long time. Granted, Cal had seen worse, but the bleakness of the place turned his stomach. No kid should ever have to live like this.

“Mind if we come in for a minute?” Dawn asked, but the kid said no before the words were all the way out of her mouth.

“We won’t say anything about the candy bar,” Cal added.

“It ain’t that,” Elijah said, pushing open the back door of Cal’s extended cab truck. “It’s just…uh, Daddy’s usually asleep this time of day. An’ he don’t like bein’ disturbed.”

With that, he bolted out of the truck and across the yard, stopping for a second to pet a large mongrel dog tied up to the lone tree in front of the house before bounding onto the porch and on through the screen door.

Dawn kept her eyes on the house as they drove back down the dirt road leading to the highway. “I hate seeing kids left to their own devices like that.”

“Oh, I imagine he’s all right,” Cal said, briefly meeting her gaze when she finally brought it around. She blew out a sigh, then faced front, her brow knit, as the truck meandered over the gently rolling, lush green hills that Cal couldn’t imagine giving up for skyscrapers and concrete and rush hour traffic.

“Still,” she said, holding her hair with one hand so it wouldn’t blow to kingdom come. “Somebody should check up on him. From the county, I mean.”

“There’s no real cause, far as I can tell. I didn’t get the feeling he’d been abused. And he has to take tests or something if he’s being home schooled. If he doesn’t pass, they’d catch it.”

“But he’s so thin! A stiff breeze would blow the poor kid away!”

A smile inched across Cal’s face. “You’re obviously forgettin’ how skinny I was as a kid then. Just because he’s all bones doesn’t mean he’s not eating.”

“He stole, Cal.”

“A candy bar. Because he’s twelve and it was there and he saw what looked like a golden opportunity.” He glanced over.

“Didn’t you ever take something just to see if you could?”

“No! Never!”

“You were never even tempted?”

“Well…maybe. But I didn’t act on it.” She sucked in a breath. “Did you?”

“Yeah, once.”

“Oh, God.”

“Oh, unknot your panties. I was nine, for cryin’ out loud. It was maybe a few months after my mother died. I snitched a pack of gum from the supermarket checkout, pretty much like what Elijah did.”

“What happened?”

“Well, at first I felt like hot stuff because I pulled it off without Ethel catching me. But somehow the gum didn’t taste near as good as I figured it would. And I couldn’t sleep that night. So I finally confessed to Daddy.”

“Ouch. I can imagine how well that went over.”

“All he did was look at me. Like I’d let him down. Well, and march me back to the store to ’fess up to the manager, which was humiliating as hell. I was never even tempted to filch anything after that.”

“Never?” He heard the smile in her voice.

“Almost never, anyway.”

She laughed, but it didn’t last long. “Still,” she said, “it worries me. About Elijah.” He could feel her gaze on the side of his face. “I’d call Family Services myself, but I wouldn’t be around to follow up….”

He didn’t know which irked him more, her leaving or her pushing him to do something he didn’t think needed doing.

“Dawn, I hear what you’re saying, I really do. But I’m not gonna embarrass that kid, or his father, by calling the authorities on ’em when I don’t see any reason to. Looks to me like they’ve got enough to deal with without people sticking their noses in where they don’t belong.”

She pushed herself back against the truck door, as if needing to distance herself from him. “Problems aren’t always obvious, you know—”

“And living in the city for so long has made you see spooks lurking in every shadow. This isn’t New York—”

“Neglect is neglect, Cal. No matter where it happens.”

“You know what? If you’re so hot about this, why don’t you stick around and take care of it yourself?”

“Because I can’t, which you know. And how dare you try to blackmail me!”

Cal let out a nice, ripe cussword, to which Dawn spit back, “My sentiments exactly.”

Nobody said anything for another mile or two. Then she said, “I suppose I can at least make the initial call before I go back.”

Cal sighed. “You really feel that strongly about this?”

She turned to him, and he could hear her voice shake. “If you’d heard what I have, seen the effects of people looking the other way, you would, too. Working with these women and children hasn’t made me delusional, it’s made me think twice about taking things at face value. And I couldn’t live with myself if something happened that could’ve been prevented by a single phone call.”

He glanced over to see her mouth all set like it used to get when she was a kid. Aw, hell. “Tell you what. If I promise to personally check up on the boy, and his father, would that be enough to keep you from making that call?”

“Are you serious?”

“Are you out to see just how far you can try my patience before I lose what’s left of my mind? I wouldn’t’ve said it if I didn’t mean it…hey!”

She’d flown across the seat to hug him, nearly sending the truck off the road. “Thank you,” she murmured into his neck, her breath far too soft and far too warm for anybody’s good right now.

“Honey? Not that I’m not enjoying this, but I think that’s Didi Meyerhauser’s Bronco closing in on us, so you might want to—”

She was instantly on the other side of the seat like nothing had happened.

Not that anything had happened.

Exactly.

The preacher’s wife passed, waving. Cal and Dawn waved back, Cal suddenly remembering that Dawn used to be friends with Didi’s daughter.

“You seen Faith yet?” he said.

“Faith? No. Not sure there’d be any point. It’s been years since we’ve talked or written or anything.”

“Then I guess you didn’t know she and Darryl are having another baby?”

“Mama might’ve said something about it. Their third?”

“Fifth.” He grinned. “Now there’s one shotgun wedding that took.”

No response.

They drove past the turnoff that led back to the farm. For a second, he’d thought about asking if she wanted to come back, to see the cradle. But only for a second.

“So…Ryan and Maddie are doing okay, I take it?” Dawn asked.

Now, Cal knew it had not been her intention to hike up the temperature inside the truck several degrees. Except the last time Dawn would’ve seen them all was on July Fourth. The day he and Dawn made the baby. Which naturally provoked some real vivid memories of just how they’d made the baby, although to the casual listener—as in Dawn—his thoughts, like his words, were totally focused on Maddie’s youngest taking her first steps a few weeks ago, how his new sister-in-law had worked wonders to bring his reclusive workaholic brother out of his shell.

“And Hank and Jenna?” she said. “Mama told me they were getting married?”

He glanced over at her, his brain jumping its tracks as his gaze landed on her mouth. Which, when it wasn’t yapping a mile a minute and making him crazy, was soft and warm and—

He looked back, mentally flogging himself. This sex-as-mental-comfort-food business was fine to a certain extent, but at some point, a man’s gotta grow up and eat his vegetables.

“Right after Thanksgiving, yep.”

“I liked Jenna a lot,” she said, crossing her arms. “Her books are good, too. And I don’t usually read mysteries.”

“Her next one’s coming out in hardcover,” he said, thinking about that mouth. About how he’d kissed a fair number of women in his time, but Dawn…well, she was what you’d call a natural talent. “You know,” he said, because thinking about her mouth was making him feel reckless, “even though Jenna’s lived all her life in D.C., she doesn’t seem to have any reservations about moving out here.”

No response. Again.

One more little hill before they reached Haven proper. “I bet if you had a chance to know Jenna better, you’d really like her.”

Dawn laughed. Not what he was expecting. And she was hard enough to figure when she did something he was expecting.

“What?” he asked.

She said, “Nothing,” which would’ve ticked him off if she hadn’t immediately followed up with, “You’re going to make an amazing father,” which simply threw him.

To Nebraska.

“What makes you say that?”

“Deductive reasoning is kind of my stock in trade,” she said with a smile. “Watching how you handled Elijah, the way you related to him…” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her breasts lifting with the force of her sigh. First time in his life he’d ever thought of his peripheral vision as a liability. “At least I won’t have to worry about leaving our child alone with you. Me, on the other hand…”

The insecurity flickered in her voice for barely a second, just long enough to bring back another memory, this one of a eight-year-old girl, her chin defiantly tilted up underneath a quivering mouth, who’d refused to come right out and say how much it hurt when that man Ivy was supposed to marry suddenly moved away. Charley…Beeman, that was his name.

“What do I need a daddy for, anyway? And besides, Mama says a man just gets in the way of what a woman wants to do….”

Cal frowned, bringing himself back to the present. “Well, sweetheart, if things go the way I hope, you won’t have to worry about leaving him or her alone with me at all.”

Several beats passed. Then: “Stop the truck.”

“You gonna be sick?”

“Possibly. But not because of the baby.”

He pulled onto the shoulder; she jumped out and took off down the road. Cal stuck his head out the window. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Walking the rest of the way!”

Grumbling to himself, Cal got out and went after her.

“You know—” the words came in little puffs as he trotted along behind her “—the one thing I used to admire about you was that you never pulled this female crap.”

“Yeah, well,” she puffed back, “I’ve never felt this much like a female before.”

Along about this time, Cal happened to notice her behind had filled out some with the pregnancy, too. Not a lot, and not so’s anybody but him would notice, probably, but there it was, jiggling away in front of him as she strode, and while one part of him was pretty ticked at her behavior—he liked kids, but not ones his own age—she looked so damned silly and cute and sexy, hoofing it away like this, that, well, something crazy just bubbled up inside him and made him want to kiss her.

So he did.

After he caught her, that is.

She was too shocked to protest. At least, that’s what he was working with. Oh, there was a little mmphh on her part when their lips met, but he chalked that up to the surprise element.

Oh, yeah, she was a natural talent, all right. And she tasted like barbecue sauce and fresh peach cobbler, which Cal decided right then and there pretty much summed up his definition of heaven. Except he could have done without the mmphhs, which were definitely increasing in their intensity.

The fists beating on his shoulders weren’t doing much for the mood, either.

He let her go, grinning down at her.

She was not grinning back.

“And you did that why?” she said.

No way was he telling her about the bigger-butt revelation.

“Because I felt like it. And I had fun. Well, I would have had fun if you’d cooperated more—”

She burst into tears and sank onto the ground.

Cal squatted beside her. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”

That got the head-shaking, air-batting routine, then a series of sobbed syllables not even remotely related to the English language. Figuring she probably wasn’t going anywhere in the next few seconds, Cal went back to the truck and retrieved two or three tissues from the smashed box in the glove department, then returned to where she was still sitting and handed them to her. When she was drier and—he presumed—more coherent, he said, “You wanna run that one by me again?”

A few rattly sighs, a few more eye wipes, and at last she said, “You are such an idiot.”

At that he figured he might as well join her in the dirt and weeds.

“You mean that in general?” he said as his backside touched down. “Or you got something specific in mind?”

“At the risk of this going straight to your head, if not elsewhere—” she looked pointedly at the elsewhere in question “—my being hot for you isn’t the issue here.”

“It’s…not.”

She smacked him in the arm, honked into one of the tissues, then gave one of those oh-God-deliver-me-from-the-clueless sighs. “You didn’t exactly have to talk me into your bed a couple months ago. If you recall.”

He squelched the laugh just in time. “Yeah, I seem to remember a certain…eagerness on your part. But I figured that was…”

“What? You figured that was what?”

“That you were still hurtin’ after that guy dumped you, is all,” he said gently, refusing to look at her. “And maybe you were looking for someone to boost your self-confidence back up a notch or two.”

Silence. Then: “I was a little…bruised, it’s true. But more because I was duped than dumped. Andrew and I broke up because our visions of marriage—or rather, his vision of what he expected of a wife—didn’t mesh. What pissed me off was that he didn’t bother to tell me this until after we were engaged. And I felt, I don’t know…betrayed as much as anything, I guess.”

“About what?”

She yanked a poor defenseless weed out of the ground, then shifted to sit cross-legged, making lines in the dust with the weed as they talked. “We were really compatible on so many levels. Similar tastes, similar viewpoints, similar personalities.” Her shoulders hitched. “He was…comfortable. After some of the so-called men I’d gone out with, it was a pleasure being with someone I never had to second-guess. Or so I thought.” Her mouth hitched up into a rueful smile. “When he proposed, my first thought was, No more stupid dates! No more worrying about making an impression!”

Cal frowned. “Oh, yeah, that sounds like a real good reason to marry somebody.”

“Trust me, after what I’d been through, it was a damn good reason. Anyway, I figured our lives wouldn’t change all that much after we got married, that we’d just be a typical professional New York couple. But it turned out…”

The weed snapped in two; she tossed it away and squinted into the sun. “He didn’t love me, I know he didn’t, but he still wanted more from me than I could possibly give. Looking back, I think he didn’t want kids because the competition would’ve made him crazy, because Andrew wanted to be my world. For me to love him in a way I knew I never could. In a way I know I’ll never be able to love anybody.”

Cal waited out the stab of pain before he asked, “Why?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded surprised, like she hadn’t expected him to challenge her. “Just the way I’m wired, I guess.”

“I see.” His insides churning, he focused on a clump of late-season wildflowers shivering in the breeze. “So…you’d rather be alone?”

She seemed to think about this for a second. “I’ve been on my own for a long time and I’ve learned to enjoy my own company. But I’m not a recluse. I wouldn’t have agreed to marry Andrew otherwise. I have nothing against male companionship. Or sex,” she said with a tilted smile. “I can even love, in my own way. Just not the way the rest of the population loves. Or wants to be loved.”

Cal wondered if she heard the sadness in her voice. Oh, she undoubtedly thought she was being…well, whatever people who came to conclusions like that were. Upfront? Resigned? Something. Frankly, Cal thought she was several sandwiches short of a picnic.

The thing was, though, it didn’t matter what he thought, did it? Because it was what she believed that mattered. It was like what Ryan said about attitude affecting a person’s health—people who expected to get sick generally did far more often than people who didn’t think about it too hard. So Cal could sit here and tell Dawn she was full of it until the cows came home, but as long as she was convinced she couldn’t love like a normal person, he’d be wasting his breath.