Dearest Reader,

How lovely of you to come to my one hundredth book! After all, you were there when it all began, and I certainly couldn’t have done any of this without you. It’s hard to believe that seventeen years have passed since I stepped out of the shower, seven months pregnant with my second child, to take a phone call from my agent that would change my entire life. She’d called to tell me I’d sold my first novel, Tried and True, to Silhouette Desire. The struggling writer had finally made it to the gates of the Promised Land. The rest, as they say, is history. A very long and fruitful history for which I never stop being grateful. Although I’ve had my favorites, I can truly say that I loved writing each and every story that found its way to the Silhouette imprint. I’ve tried to write the kind of stories that I’ve always enjoyed reading, stories with warmth and humor, and that leave me with a smile at the end. I sincerely hope they do the same for you and that they have found a place in your hearts the way they have in mine.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to start on the second hundred. Thanking you from the bottom of my heart for always being there, I wish you happiness and love.

Sincerely yours,

Dear Reader,

You asked for more ROYALLY WED titles and you’ve got them! For the next four months we’ve brought back the Stanbury family—first introduced in a short story by Carla Cassidy on our eHarlequin.com Web site. Be sure to check the archives to find Nicholas’s story! But don’t forget to pick up Stella Bagwell’s The Expectant Princess and discover the involving story of the disappearance of King Michael.

Other treats this month include Marie Ferrarella’s one hundredth title for Silhouette Books! This wonderful, charming and emotional writer shows her trademark warmth and humor in Rough Around the Edges. Luckily for all her devoted readers, Marie has at least another hundred plots bubbling in her imagination, and we’ll be seeing more from her in many of our Silhouette lines.

Then we’ve got Karen Rose Smith’s Tall, Dark & True about a strong, silent sheriff who can’t bear to keep quiet about his feelings any longer. And Donna Clayton’s heroine asks Who Will Father My Baby?—and gets a surprising answer. No Place Like Home by Robin Nicholas is a delightful read that reminds us of an all-time favorite movie—I’ll let you guess which one! And don’t forget first-time author Roxann Delaney’s debut title, Rachel’s Rescuer.

Happy reading!

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor

Marie Ferrarella

ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES

To Leslie Wainger and Pat Teal, with me at one and still with me at one hundred.
Thank you, with love and gratitude,
Marie

Books by Marie Ferrarella

Silhouette Romance

The Gift #588

Five-Alarm Affair #613

Heart to Heart #632

Mother for Hire #686

Borrowed Baby #730

Her Special Angel #744

The Undoing of Justin Starbuck #766

Man Trouble #815

The Taming of the Teen #839

Father Goose #869

Babies on His Mind #920

The Right Man #932

In Her Own Backyard #947

Her Man Friday #959

Aunt Connie’s Wedding #984

[†]Caution: Baby Ahead #1007

[†]Mother on the Wing #1026

[†]Baby Times Two #1037

Father in the Making #1078

The Women in Joe Sullivan’s Life #1096

[‡]Do You Take This Child? #1145

The Man Who Would Be Daddy #1175

Your Baby or Mine? #1216

[**]The Baby Came C.O.D. #1264

Suddenly…Marriage! #1312

[‡‡]One Plus One Makes Marriage #1328

[‡‡]Never Too Late for Love #1351

The Baby Beneath the Mistletoe #1408

Tall, Strong & Cool Under Fire #1447

Those Matchmaking Babies #1462

Rough Around the Edges #1505

Silhouette Special Edition

It Happened One Night #597

A Girl’s Best Friend #652

Blessing in Disguise #675

Someone To Talk To #703

World’s Greatest Dad #767

Family Matters #832

She Got Her Man #843

Baby in the Middle #892

Husband: Some Assembly Required #931

Brooding Angel #963

[‡]Baby’s First Christmas #997

Christmas Bride #1069

Wanted: Husband, Will Train #1132

Wife in the Mail #1217

Stand-in Mom #1294

Found: His Perfect Wife #1310

Father Most Wanted #1346

Silhouette Desire

[‡]Husband: Optional #988

Silhouette Intimate Moments

[*]Holding Out for a Hero #496

[*]Heroes Great and Small #501

[*]Christmas Every Day #538

Callaghan’s Way #601

Caitlin’s Guardian Angel #661

[‡]Happy New Year—Baby! #686

The Amnesiac Bride #787

Serena McKee’s Back in Town #808

A Husband Waiting To Happen #842

Angus’s Lost Lady #853

This Heart for Hire #919

[††]A Hero for All Seasons #932

[††]A Forever Kind of Hero #943

[††]Hero in the Nick of Time #956

[‡]The Once and Future Father #1017

[††]Hero for Hire #1042

[††]A Hero in Her Eyes #1059

Silhouette Yours Truly

[‡]The 7lb., 2oz. Valentine

Let’s Get Mommy Married

Traci on the Spot

Mommy and the Policeman Next Door

[**]Desperately Seeking Twin…

The Offer She Couldn’t Refuse

ΔFiona and the Sexy Stranger

ΔCowboys are for Loving

ΔWill and the Headstrong Female

ΔThe Law and Ginny Marlow

ΔA Match for Morgan

Silhouette Books

Silhouette Christmas Stories 1992

“The Night Santa Claus Returned”

Fortune’s Children

Forgotten Honeymoon

World’s Most Eligible Bachelors

[‡]Detective Dad

[‡]In the Family Way

[‡]The Baby of the Month Club: Baby Talk

The Fortunes of Texas

Expecting…In Texas

3,2,1…Married!

“The Single Daddy Club”

Maitland Maternity

Dad by Choice

Childfinders, Inc: An Uncommon Hero

Books by Marie Ferrarella writing as Marie Nicole

Silhouette Romance

Man Undercover #373

Please Stand By #394

Mine by Write #411

Getting Physical #440

Silhouette Desire

Tried and True #112

Buyer Beware #142

Through Laughter and Tears #161

Grand Theft: Heart #182

A Woman of Integrity #197

Country Blue #224

Last Year’s Hunk #274

Foxy Lady #315

Chocolate Dreams #346

No Laughing Matter #382

Praise for bestselling author

MARIE FERRARELLA

“Marie Ferrarella shines among the brightest stars….”

—Romantic Times Magazine

“Ms. Ferrarella has created another enchanting romance with style, passion, and unforgettable characters.”

—Rendezvous

“Ms. Ferrarella demonstrates a mastery of the storytelling art as she creates charming characters, witty dialogue and an emotional storyline that will tug at your heartstrings.”

—Romantic Times Magazine

“Ms. Ferrarella’s engaging style leaves readers wanting more.”

—Rendezvous

“As usual, Ms. Ferrarella finds just the right balance of love, laughter, charm and passion.”

—Romantic Times Magazine

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

The wide, gregarious smile that had become his trademark faded the moment Shawn Michael O’Rourke stepped outside the Irish-style pub he’d discovered his second weekend in Bedford, California.

There was nothing to smile about and no reason to pretend any longer. There was no one to see him. His friends were all inside.

Ordinarily, meeting and sharing a pint or two at the Shamrock with his friends would smooth over whatever was troubling O’Rourke at the time. He wasn’t a happy-go-lucky man, but he met life head-on, facing what it brought and moving on. But this was no ordinary situation and he was worried.

Worried clear down to the bone, as his grandmother used to say.

The light showers that were falling when he’d entered the pub had turned into a full-fledged storm while he’d been inside. He turned the collar of his jacket up, but it did little to keep the March rain off his neck. He hunched his shoulders in. But it was more than the rain that was making him feel beaten down.

There had to be something he could do.

He knew that if he didn’t come up with a solution—and soon—everything he’d worked for these past few years, everything he’d dreamed of over these past ten years, would mean nothing. He’d be done for. It didn’t seem fair that a random act of birth could have such an effect on a man’s life, a man’s future and that of his family’s.

O’Rourke hurried to the rear of the building, to the postage-stamp-size parking lot that was filled to capacity tonight. He dug into his pocket for his car keys.

Had he been born on the other side of the Atlantic, today would have been just another day in his life, a day in which he was working toward the culmination of his dream.

Instead, it was one day less he had. One day closer to when he had to leave. Leave the country, leave his hopes and his dreams. Sure, he could attempt to start over again back home in Ireland. After all, the dream had begun there, in his head. But it was right here, in a converted loft in Bedford’s Industrial Plaza, that all the visible components were housed.

To Shawn Michael O’Rourke, America really was the land of opportunity. He’d found everything he’d needed on this side of the ocean: the education he required and the financial backers, both men of experience and dreamers like himself. Dreamers who weren’t content only to dream, but to do.

All that wouldn’t mean anything anymore come thirteen days from today. That was his deadline. In thirteen days, he was to be gone from these shores. To return home just another failed dreamer.

Muttering words under his breath he knew his late, sainted mother would have taken a very dim view of, O’Rourke got into his van. The rain followed him in, covering the steering wheel and everything else in its path with a fine layer of mist before he shut the door. He hardly noticed. He jammed his key into the ignition and turned it. The motor hummed to life, along with the CD he’d left in his CD player, a compilation of songs from the seventies and eighties. He loved everything American.

Gloria Gayner began extolling the need to find some “hot stuff” as he drove out of the parking lot. He didn’t need any hot stuff, he thought. He needed a miracle, pure and simple.

O’Rourke frowned as he looked out the windshield. It wasn’t the state of his brain but the rain that was beating down that made it hard for him to see. Had he imbibed enough at the Shamrock to cloud his mind, he would have happily continued until he would have gotten good and drunk.

No, he wouldn’t have, he thought, turning down another street. Drinking to the point where his problem no longer seemed important was only a temporary fix, one with a huge price tag on in. Namely the morning after. Tying one on with his friends would only bring him a huge headache and interfere with his being able to think.

He needed to be clearheaded. There were responsibilities weighing on his shoulders, people depending on him, both here and in Ireland. People he was going to let down in thirteen days. Not that anyone would say anything. But he’d feel as if he was letting them down.

Damn, there had to be a way.

Without realizing it, he fingered the St. Jude medal he wore, a last gift from his mother, as he waited for the light to change. St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. That had been him, once, a lost cause, until something had brought him around, taking him away from a life of carousing to something far more steady. His mother swore it was her prayers to the saint whose medal he wore around his neck. He figured it was his finally coming to grips with his father’s death that had done it.

Maybe if he thought long enough and hard enough, he’d come up with a solution. One that would keep him from being sent back to his native Ireland with his tail between his legs now that his visa, and every single extension he could put on it, was finally up.

The streets he was driving through were close to being deserted, even though it was only a little after nine in the evening. On a night like tonight, people stayed in their homes.

And that’s where he should be, O’Rourke decided. Home. For as long as it still was home to him.

He noticed that the rain seemed to be coming down harder. Angel’s tears, his mother used to say. She also said the angels were shedding the tears because of him.

He could see her, even now, fixing him a look with those deep blue eyes of hers, her arms crossed before her as she watched him come staggering in in the wee hours of the morning. Following the same path his late father had before him.

“When are you ever going to amount to something, Shawn Michael? You’re my firstborn, boyo. What am I going to say to my Maker when the time comes to face him and let him know what I did with the life he sent me to guide?”

O’Rourke smiled now, his mother’s words echoing in his head as clearly as if she’d actually spoken them. “You died before I could show you, eh, Mum?” he murmured to the memory that existed in his mind. “Except, I guess I won’t be showing you at that, not if this fine government has its way,” he added with a sigh as he turned down the next block.

Kitt Dawson didn’t think the day could get much worse. But each time she had thought that today, fate, with its twisted sense of humor, had gone out of its way to prove her wrong.

Kitt gritted her teeth together, grabbing on to the steering wheel even though she wasn’t moving. Here it came, another one. Another killer contraction. She held her breath, praying for it to end.

The top of her head felt as if it was going to come off. And then the contraction ebbed away, leaving her shaken, sweaty and scared.

She loosened her fingers from around the steering wheel. The baby wasn’t due for another two weeks. The fact that it was coming didn’t really surprise her, not beyond the initial salvo of disbelief when her water broke fifteen minutes ago. Nothing was going the way it should have gone today, why should this be any different?

It was a day for the record books. She’d lost her job because the aerospace company she was working for had lost its contract. She’d come home, hoping for a word of comfort, only to discover that she’d lost the foundation of her life as well. Jeffrey, the man to whom she’d given her heart, not to mention half her apartment, had left. Cleaned out the apartment the way he never had while they were living together. He’d taken everything of worth, including the new car he was supposed to have taken in for an oil change today. Taken it and every single dime she had in the world. He’d cleaned out the joint bank account as neatly as he had the apartment.

It had been her bank account, really. She’d been the one to put the money in. The only time he touched it was to take money out. She’d made herself a million excuses, saying things would get better once Jeffrey was back on his feet again.

He’d found his feet all right, she thought now. Found them and used them to run off with her things and the leggy brunette down the hall.

She should have seen it coming, Kitt upbraided herself. Maybe she had at that, but had refused to acknowledge it because love was blind. And she had loved Jeffrey. Dearly.

And now she was paying for it. Also dearly.

Okay, so love was blind, but she was supposed to have brains.

She was also supposed to have an umbrella, she thought as she looked through the windshield of her dead car with mounting exasperation.

It was raining. Not drizzling the way the weatherman had laughingly promised, but raining. Building-an-ark-and-collecting-two-of-everything kind of raining. And her car, the second-hand lemon that had actually belonged to Jeffrey, had just died a few feet passed the intersection, refusing to come back to life.

Just like Jeffrey after he’d discovered that she was pregnant, she thought, struggling hard not to give in to bitterness.

Well, the car was not about to suddenly rise from the dead and the rain was not about to abate. She had no choice but to get out and walk.

“It just keeps getting better and better,” she muttered, snapping off her seat belt.

Opening the door, Kitt wiggled out from behind the steering wheel she was wedged against. Another contraction began to build. Kitt froze. The pain that ran through her felt almost lethal, stealing her breath away with a vengeance. She had to get to the hospital. Now. She was in no mood to give birth on the corner of MacArthur and Fairview.

The way her luck was running, the next thing that would happen would be a flash flood.

With growing despair, she looked up and down the street. Nothing.

Why didn’t they have cabs prowling the streets here? She’d heard they did that in the big cities, why was that a restricted practice? For that matter, where was a police car when you needed one? If she’d gone through that light, she bet one would have popped out of the ground with a pre-printed ticket on the dashboard.

Maybe that wasn’t fair, but she didn’t feel very fair right now. She felt angry and cheated and in pain.

The rain lashed at her from all directions, pushed around by the wind that went first one way, then another. Kitt struggled to keep her orientation. She started to feel dizzy.

Thoughts began to slip in and out of her head like pulses of lights on a faulty circuit.

Maybe she could find a phone and call 911. The police were bound to get here faster than any cab she’d call.

Now all she had to do was find a phone.

Now all she had to do was see in this godforsaken awful weather, she amended. It seemed as if actual sheets of rain were coming down, wiping out any visibility beyond two, maybe three feet. Squinting, Kitt could barely make out the traffic signal across the street.

A haloed green ball of light shone like a feeble beacon. Kitt stepped off the curb, praying she could get across the street before another contraction hit, incapacitating her. Biting her lower lip, her head down against the wind, she tried to cross the intersection as quickly as possible.

Her own bulk combined with the lashing rain slowed her down. The light turned yellow just as she’d made it hardly more than halfway across the street. Pushing herself, she strove to move faster. Her eyes were half closed, trying to keep the rain at bay.

The squeal of brakes from the oncoming vehicle had her screaming in response. The next second, there was water hitting her not just from above, but from the street as well, drenching her legs as her foot made contact with the sidewalk.

Everything started to swirl around in her head. Kitt reached out to steady herself, but there was nothing to grab onto. She vaguely thought she heard a man’s voice shouting at her.

Or maybe that was to her, she wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem important.

Her outstretched hands made contact with cement. Hard. Tearing at the fleshy part of her palms and making them sting.

She’d fallen.

The thought telegraphed itself through her brain at the same instant the pain registered. The next second, she felt someone cradling her.

“Are you all right?” There was a hint of a lilting accent in the deep voice. There was more than a hint of concern.

With effort, Kitt managed to bring the world back into focus. Some man she’d never seen was holding her against him.

“No, I’m not all right. I’m pregnant,” she snapped. Angry at the world at large and frightened, Kitt tried to sit up. She couldn’t. The man asking the stupid question was holding her.

My God, he’d almost hit a pregnant woman with his van, O’Rourke thought, trying to shake off the numbing fear the realization created. Rapidly pulling his wits about him, O’Rourke looked at her, searching for signs of bleeding.

“You came out of nowhere.”

“I came out of my car,” she contradicted him curtly. “And I was trying to cross the street. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to drive?” She yanked her arm away from him and tried vainly to gain her feet. She felt like a turtle flipped onto its back. A huge, pregnant turtle.

“I didn’t hit you, did I?” Swiftly, O’Rourke ran his hands up and down her limbs, checking for any damage. “I mean—”

Where the hell did he come off, trying to touch her? What was wrong with him? Again she tried to get to her feet, but between the rain, her labor pains and the exhaustion that was sinking in, it was beginning to feel like an impossible feat.

“Look, I’m in labor.” At least she could manage to push his hands away, which she did. “I would really, really prefer if you didn’t try to cop a feel or mug me right now.”

O’Rourke sat back on his heels, ignoring the rain falling into his eyes. “I’m just checking for broken bones—” His mouth fell open. “Labor?”

She bit her lower lip, trying very hard to focus on something other than the pain. Trying very hard not to get hysterical.

“Yes, labor,” she ground out.

What the hell was she doing wandering around in her condition? “You shouldn’t be out on a night like this.” O’Rourke looked around, trying to spot someone who might have been with her. But there was no one on the street and only one car had passed since he’d darted out of his van. “Especially not alone.”

“Not my choice,” she bit off. Turning, she tried to get to her knees. The pain had her gasping. And then suddenly, just like that, in the middle of her contraction, she was airborne. The pain left. The surprise didn’t. The stranger had picked her up.

Rising to his feet, O’Rourke couldn’t help marveling at the woman in his arms. She didn’t feel as if she weighed enough to be having a baby, not even sopping wet. But there certainly was no arguing with the huge mound that met his eye. The woman was definitely swollen with life. Stepping back with her, he took momentary shelter under the awning of a shop that sold bridal gowns.

O’Rourke glanced down the length of the block. He saw a car, its hazard lights on, in the opposite intersection. “Is that your car?”

Kitt nodded her head. “It’s dead. I need 911. An ambulance,” she added when he said nothing.

The pain came again, harder and faster than before. Bent on breaking her in half from the inside out. Without realizing it, Kitt dug her fingers into his arm, squeezing hard.

Even through his jacket, he could feel the intensity of her grasp. For a little woman, her strength was surprising.

“How far apart are they?” She looked at him with wide, dazed eyes. “The contractions,” he prompted. “How far apart are you having them?”

Her breath and voice returned as the pain receded. She all but went limp in the stranger’s arms. “I haven’t timed them.”

“Guess.”

She said nothing, but grasped his arm again, harder this time.

“Okay, I’ll guess for you,” O’Rourke said, a sinking feeling taking hold of the pit of his stomach. “Not far apart at all.”

Released from the contraction’s viselike grip, Kitt began to pant. That had been an exceedingly hard one. How much worse was this going to get? She was afraid to find out. Really afraid.

“Good guess,” she rasped, trying valiantly to maintain a brave front. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“Not yet.” It was something he’d been promising himself to get. Now there didn’t seem to be any reason. Not if they deported him.

She closed her eyes, searching for strength. It only made the spinning in her head intensify. Kitt opened her eyes again, looking directly at the man who was still holding her.

“Great, the only other person in Southern California without a cell phone and I had to run into him.” She looked toward what she’d thought was a public phone from across the street. But there was an Out of Order sign taped across it. “We need to get to a phone. I need an ambulance.”

He heard the hitch of rising hysteria in her voice. And then she was clutching at him again, her nails digging into his chest this time. Less than one minute had elapsed between contractions. She was going to give birth any second.

“You need more than that, ma’am.” O’Rourke looked around, but everything looked closed for the night. “You’re having the baby.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Now,” he emphasized. He saw panic beginning to etch its way into her features even though he’d only put into words what he knew she had to already be thinking. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you,” he promised.

There was no place else to go. He had to put her in the back of his van. At least she could lie down there. As long as he pushed back some of the computer equipment he’d packed on the van’s floor.

“Are you a doctor?” she asked warily.

Something else his mother had wished unsuccessfully. O’Rourke smiled as he shook his head.

“No, a brother.”

Her head was swimming again. Kitt desperately tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Rain was falling in her face again. They had moved out from under the shelter of the awning. Was that a good thing?

“You mean like some religious order?”

Leaning her against him, he did a quick balancing act and opened the rear doors of his van. “No, like a sibling who saw a fair number of his brothers and sisters come into the world.”

“This isn’t exactly a spectator sport,” she said.

As gently as possible, he lay her on the floor of his van, then hopped up in beside her. There was no blanket available. Stripping off his jacket, O’Rourke turned it inside out and bunched it up, creating a makeshift pillow for her head.

Lifting her head slightly, he slipped his jacket beneath her. “Don’t worry, I know what to do.” At least, he hoped he remembered. He gave the woman what he hoped was his most confident smile. “My mother used to give birth so fast, there was no time to get her to the doctor or have the midwife come to her.”

Kitt could feel another contraction taking root. She licked incredibly dry lips and wished she was six again. Six and sitting in her family room, watching cartoons. Or eighteen and taking her college boards. Any place but here, any time but now.

“So you helped?” she heard herself ask as she mentally tried to scramble away from the pain there was no escaping.

O’Rourke saw the look in her eyes and took her hand, holding it tight. She held it tighter. “I was the oldest of six.”

She felt as if she was in a doomed race. Kitt began to breathe hard. “You’re sure you’re…not some…weirdo who gets…off…on this kind of thing?”

She was pretty, he thought. Even in pain, with her blond hair pasted against her face, she was pretty. Leaning forward, he brushed the wet hair from her forehead, wishing there was some way to make her comfortable. “Not very trusting, are you?”

That was a laugh. “I have absolutely no reason to be-e-e-e.” Arching, she rose off the floor and screamed the last part against his ear.

O’Rourke took a deep breath, shaking his head as if that could help him get rid of the ringing. “So much for tuning pianos,” he quipped, drawing back. She was shaking. The only thing he had to offer her was his sweater. “I know it’s not comfortable, but it’s the best I can do right now.”

Her eyes widened as she saw him stripping off the sweater. He was some kind of weirdo. A weirdo with what looked like a washboard stomach.

Her purse, where was her purse? She had pepper spray in there if she could just get to it. “What are you doing?”

He tucked his sweater around her upper torso as best he could. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. “Trying to keep you warm.”

He sat back on his heels, taking her hand again. “What’s your name?”

“Kitt—with two t’s. Kitt Dawson.”

“Please to meet you, Kitt with two t’s.” Shifting his hand so that hers slipped into his, he shook it. “I’m Shawn Michael O’Rourke.”

It was coming. Another contraction. She tried to brace herself. “That’s some mouthful.”

He grasped her hand again, sensing another contraction was about to seize her. “My friends call me O’Rourke.”

Her eyes met his. It was blurry inside his van. “And are we going to be friends?”

He grinned. “Well, Kitt-with-two-t’s, we’re certainly going to be something after tonight.”

In response, Kitt screamed again.

Chapter Two

Kitt’s scream echoed in his head, making his ears ring.

“I guess this means it’s showtime, so to speak,” O’Rourke said, bracing himself.

He only hoped he was up to this.

True, he’d helped his mother when it came to be her time, but Sarah O’Rourke gave birth so easily it was almost as if she were a mother hen laying eggs. There was nary a whimper out of her, not even once. Just biting down on what she’d come to call her “birthing stick” and within a half an hour, O’Rourke found himself with a new little brother or sister. He always felt that his mother had simply had him in attendance, off to the side, on the off chance that something went wrong. He’d held her hand, mostly, and mopped her brow.

His father was never around for the momentous occasions. James O’Rourke was too busy trying to earn enough money to support all the hungry little mouths he and Sarah kept bringing into the world.

Standing there, holding his mother’s hand, O’Rourke had thought little of it then. It was just the circle of life continuing, nothing more. The impact of it was never as great as it was at this moment. This was some strange woman he was helping.

What if…?

O’Rourke refused to let his mind go there. He had no time for “what-ifs.” The woman was screaming again like a bloody banshee, arching so that she looked as if she was trying to execute some incredibly convoluted yoga position from the inside out.

O’Rourke tried to think, to remember. His mother had always seemed so calm about it.

“Gravity’ll help you, Kitt.” Suddenly inspired, he grasped Kitt by the shoulders and positioned her so that her shoulders were propped up against the wall of boxes in the van.

Wearing a thin cotton blouse that was soaked clear down to the skin, Kitt felt the rough cardboard digging into her back. For the first time, as the twisting corkscrew of pain abated for a moment, she noticed her surroundings. There were boxes everywhere. Big boxes. Was he some kind of bootlegger?

“What…what is all this?” She tried to crane her neck, her hands resting protectively around her swollen belly. “Are…you…a…smuggler?”

O’Rourke bit back a laugh. “Why? Do I look like a smuggler?”

She looked at him with eyes that were beginning to well up with pain again. “You…look…” She searched for a word. “Dangerous.”

He’d certainly never thought of himself in that light. “Dangerous?”

She hadn’t meant to insult him. He was trying to help her. “The…good…kind of…dangerous.”

Amusement curved his mouth even as she clutched at his hand again, squeezing his fingers hard. “There’s a good kind?”

“Yes…like you.” With his black hair and bright blue eyes, half naked, he made her think of some kind of tortured, poetic hero. “Dangerous…the kind who…lives…on the edge.” She blew out a long, cleansing breath, knowing another contraction was about to smash into her. She talked quickly, wanting to get it all out before she couldn’t. “Makes a woman’s heart flutter. That’s my problem. I’m attracted to the window dressing—only to find out that the sale’s been over…for months.”

The pain was making her delirious, O’Rourke decided. Maybe this wasn’t such a piece of cake as he’d hoped. Stories he’d heard from his mother about two-day-long labors came back to him.

He looked past the woman’s head toward the front of the van. Maybe there was time to drive her to some hospital after all.

Kitt grabbed his attention and his arm, digging in her nails and crying out.

And then again, maybe not, he amended.

“I’m breaking,” she screamed to him. “I’m…breaking…in half…. Someone’s…taking one leg…and pulling it…one way…and…the other’s…snapping…off.”

He’d heard his mother describe it that way. It was when his brother Donovan had made his appearance in the world. Donovan had come in at just under twelve pounds. His father’s chest had stayed puffed up for a week despite his mother’s choice words about the experience.

“Nobody’s pulling either leg, Kitt,” he told her as gently as he could while still keeping his voice raised so that she could hear him. “It’s your body telling you it’s almost time.”

“Almost time?” she echoed incredulously, able to focus on his face for a second. “My body’s…in…overtime! I’ve been…in…agony since before…I…left…the house.”

He didn’t doubt it. She looked like a strong woman, despite her small frame. Good breeding stock, his grandmother would have probably called her. He figured maybe he should put what she was going through in perspective for Kitt. “Women have been known to be in labor for thirty-six hours.”

That’s not what she wanted to hear at a time like this, when she felt like a ceremonial wishbone. “If I’m going to die,” she ground out between tightly clenched teeth, “you’re…going with me.”

He laughed as he wiped an unexpected bead of perspiration on his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Not at your best under pressure, are you, Kitt-with-two-t’s?”

“Yes,” she gasped as the pain began again. “I am…but there’s only…so much…pressure a person should…have to…take.” Her eyes flew open. This was the worst ever. She didn’t know if she could get past this latest wave. “Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God.”

He could tell by the way she was arching her back that this one had to be a doozy. He had to get her to focus her attention on something else.

“Now, you listen to me. Look at me.” When she didn’t, he took her chin in his hand and physically made her look in his direction. “Right here, focus your eyes and look at me.” O’Rourke pointed to his own eyes as he released her face. “We’re going to have this baby and we’re going to be done with it right quick, do you hear me? When I say ‘push’ I want you to bear down and push to the count of ten and then stop. Ready?” He said it with firm authority, belying his own queasy feelings.

She panted several times before she had enough energy to answer. “Ready.”

“Okay.” He braced himself. “Now push. Two-three-four…” He continued counting until he reached ten. “Okay, stop.”

As if all the air had been let out of her, Kitt collapsed, her head rolling to the side. She lay so still O’Rourke thought she’d fainted until he saw her tense again. Another contraction had taken hold, he thought. “Bear down, Kitt, bear down.”

“I am bearing down,” she spat out, her entire face scrunching up.

Agony was imprinted on her every feature. Her hands fisted, leaning down hard on her knuckles, Kitt hunched forward and pushed for all she was worth. Gasping, trying desperately to get in enough air to keep from passing out, she fell back before O’Rourke reached ten.

She’d stopped when he’d reached eight. This wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “Ten, Kitt, you stop at ten, not before.”

The man was a tyrant, a tall, good-looking, pig-headed tyrant. She didn’t even have enough strength to level a dirty look at him. “You stop at ten, I ran out of steam. As a matter of fact,” she said, her energy returning to some degree, “you have the baby. You’re better at this than I am.”

O’Rourke’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her. The uncanny instinct that had brought him to these shores and steered his career in the right direction told him what to do. “You didn’t tell me you were a slacker, Kitt-with-two-t’s.”

If she had the energy, she would have hit him. “You…didn’t…ask.”

“Kitt—”

The words of encouragement he was about to resort to never had the chance to be spoken. Kitt groaned and then whimpered. The desperate sound wrenched his heart. Another contraction was coming and it was obvious she had no strength for it.

She was going to pass out on him, he realized suddenly, his mind scrambling frantically for a course of action. She had to be up to this, there was no other way. O’Rourke took her hand, wrapping it in both of his.

“Come on, Kitt-with-two-t’s,” he coached earnestly, “you can do this. Mothers have been doing it since the beginning of time.”

“Fine…get one of…them…to do…it.”

He focused his eyes on hers, willing her to remain looking at him. “You know better than that, Kitt. It’s your baby, you have to do it.”

There were tears in her eyes as she dug her fists in on either side of her. “Okay, okay, okay…here comes…another one. E-e-e-e!” She shrieked for all she was worth, her body jolting from the force that slammed into her.

“Push,” he ordered. “Push like a life depended on it. Harder, harder—” He saw it then, the crown of the head. His heart began to beat as rapidly as he thought hers undoubtedly was. “He’s coming! He’s coming, Kitt. Your baby’s coming!”

“He?” she questioned breathlessly. “That…part’s coming out…first?”

Slightly giddy himself, perspiration falling into his eyes, O’Rourke laughed at the image that created. “No. The head, Kitt-with-two-t’s, the head’s coming out first. Now push! One…two…three…”

She could hardly hear him counting. Kitt bore down, her head swirling again as she fought for consciousness and against the pain that was shredding her into tiny pieces. “Then…how…do you…know it’s a…boy?”

“Just a pronoun, nothing more, Kitt.”

Wasn’t the baby out yet? It felt as if she’d been pushing since the beginning of time. “How big…is this…head?”

He should have been keeping her up to speed on progress. But he was so awed by the miracle of life, he’d forgotten.

“Shoulders, we have shoulders.” He looked up and saw that she was close to completely collapsing. “Come on, Kitt, we’re almost done, just a little more, push a little more—”

Her eyes squeezed shut, Kitt bore down and pushed as hard as was humanly possible for her.

And then she heard it. The lusty howl of a life entering the world.

Her baby. He was here.

Finally.

Exhausted beyond belief, she fell back against the stack of cardboard boxes like a used, limp cleaning rag. “Is he…is he all right?”

O’Rourke’s heart was pounding with exhilaration as he looked down at the tiny life-form howling in his hands. He’d held larger computer manuals.

They’d done it. They’d really done it. O’Rourke felt himself grinning like a fool and not caring.

“Your son’s a girl, Kitt-with-two-t’s. A beautiful, fairylike little girl with soft downy hair and eyes the color of sapphires kissed by the sun.”

“A girl?” The wonder of it sliced through the pain that still bracketed her body, allowing her a touch of freedom. “I have a daughter?”

“That you do.” Grinning, he looked up at Kitt. “She’s a mite messy, but anyone with eyes can see she’s a beauty like her mother.” Very carefully, O’Rourke handed the tiny being to her mother. “Say hello to your mama, love,” he coaxed.

Drenched in perspiration, relief and joy, Kitt accepted the precious bundle into her arms. The instant she held her daughter, she felt her heart swelling.

“So this is what all the fuss was about,” she murmured quietly, looking down into the face of her newborn child.

Was it possible to fall in love so fast? In the blink of an eye? She supposed it had to be, because she’d just fallen in love with her daughter.

You’re a fool, Jeffrey, to be walking away from this. You have no idea what you’re missing.

Now that the excitement was over, O’Rourke became aware of the temperature within the van. It was downright chilly outside and that was seeping its way into the vehicle.

Leaning over both of them, he moved the sweater he’d tried to cover Kitt with. It had fallen in a heap on the side during the birthing.

“Maybe you’d better wrap my sweater around your little girl,” he suggested. “It’s big enough to cover her completely and it’s a wee bit cool for her.”

With the sweater wrapped around the small body, Kitt curved her arm around the baby. She looked up at O’Rourke. “What about you?” For the second time, her eyes slid over his body. And for the first time she realized how really close he was. “We’ve only left you your pants.”

He glanced down at himself, as if he’d forgotten that he wasn’t wearing anything from the waist up. The grin grew broader. “Good thing you weren’t having twins.”

The next moment, someone was opening the rear of the van and shining a flashlight inside, nearly blinding O’Rourke.

“Everything all right in here?”

The question and the beam of blinding light were both coming from the heavyset policeman in his late forties who was peering into the van.

The man’s curious expression transformed to one of surprise as the sight of O’Rourke’s semiunclad body and Kitt’s compromising position registered. “Hey, just what the heck’s going on here?”

Thinking quickly, O’Rourke pulled Kitt’s skirt back down, covering her, then placed his body in between the man and Kitt, summoning his most genial expression. Years of practice from living on the shadier side of the straight and narrow made all this second nature to him.

O’Rourke rocked back on his heels. “You’re just in time, Officer. Do you have any matches on you?” He pulled out an Exacto knife from his pants pocket as he asked. The policeman raised one thick eyebrow in silent question, his other hand moving over to his gun and holster. “I’ve yet to cut the cord between mother and daughter and I need something to sterilize the blade.” He held the Exacto knife up for the man’s inspection.

The policeman’s face paled a little, the full impact of what he was looking at registering. “You mean she’s just…?”

O’Rourke nodded as solemnly as an altar boy. “Just this minute, yes. Had you been here a couple of minutes sooner, you could have lent a hand in bringing about life’s biggest miracle, Officer.” He put out his hand to the man, holding the Exacto knife in the other. “Do you have those matches, sir?”

The policeman shook his head. “The wife made me give up smoking. Called it an anniversary present. It was cheaper than buying her that gold bracelet she fancied—but twice as hard.”

O’Rourke nodded knowingly. “That it would be,” he said sympathetically. “Never mind, then,” he consoled the policeman. “I’ve got a cigarette lighter I can use. Provided it works,” he added almost under his breath. “Never had any use for it myself.”

Looking embarrassed now for his intrusion, the policeman withdrew from the van, the flashlight dangling by his side. “Um, I’ll go call for an ambulance,” he said, jabbing a thumb in the air behind him toward his squad car.

“You do that, Officer,” O’Rourke encouraged him from the front of the van.

“O’Rourke?” Kitt called to him weakly.

“In a minute, love.” Waiting a moment after pushing the lighter in, he pulled it out again and passed the glowing red circle over the shaft of the Exacto knife blade. He blew on it to cool it. “There, that should do it.”

He popped the cigarette lighter back into place, then snaked his way back to Kitt and the baby. Sitting on his heels again, he blew out a breath. He didn’t exactly relish this part, but it had to be done.

“This won’t hurt a bit,” he promised Kitt. Or so his mother had said. His eyes went from her to the baby she held against her breast. Nothing prettier than that, he thought. “Either of you.”

Kitt pressed her lips together apprehensively. It wasn’t herself she was thinking of, but the baby. The way O’Rourke phrased his assurance told her he’d read her thoughts. “How did you know?”

“You’ve got that new-mother, protective look about you. I’ve seen it often enough to be familiar with it.” Taking the umbilical cord, he made a quick cut, severing the connection. Then, with a bit of thread, he tied it around the tiny part left above the baby’s navel.

“Where did you get the thread?”

The grin flashed again. “I’m a handy man to have around. Never know what’s up my sleeve—so to speak,” he added with a wink.

Probably a lot of tricks, she thought. She knew his type. As handsome as the day was long and as honest as a leprechaun’s promises.

The policeman returned, popping his head in. “Ambulance is on its way,” he told them. This time he made his way into the interior to keep the rain from coming in. “Here, I think you could use this.” Stripping off his raincoat, he handed it to O’Rourke. “You don’t want a bed right next to your wife’s in the hospital, do you?” He followed the question up with a hearty chuckle that turned into a belly laugh.

O’Rourke put on the rain slicker. “She’s not my wife,” he corrected the policeman.

Although he’d been in love with someone once, he thought as he glanced at Kitt, who looked a great deal like her. Susan O’Hara. Susan got tired of waiting for him to propose and married the banker’s son as soon as she was out of high school, he recalled with a touch of nostalgia. Last he’d heard, they had four children and were expecting a fifth. He hoped she was happy.

“We’re not married,” Kitt chimed in.

The policeman, his attention almost completely captivated by the smallest person in the van, shook his head at the information. Looking from one to the other, he seemed genuinely disappointed.

“I know it’s not supposed to be necessary in this day and age, having a marriage license and all, but believe me, inside—” he thumped his barrel chest “—you’ll both feel a whole lot better if you give this little guy a stable home and a full-time mother and father he can have around him every night.”

“She,” O’Rourke corrected him before Kitt had a chance to do the same.

“She,” the policeman repeated with a nod of his head. “Even more important, then. Girls need good examples to help keep them on the straight and narrow.” He eyed O’Rourke. “You wouldn’t want her having babies of her own without a wedding ring and a loving husband somewhere in the picture, now, would you?”

No, he supposed he wouldn’t, O’Rourke thought. If the little doll in Kitt’s arms was his. “But you don’t understand,” he began.

The policeman laughed dismissively. “Hey, just because I’ve got a few years on you doesn’t mean I don’t know what it’s like to be young. I do. I remember it real well.” Shifting toward O’Rourke, he slung one arm around his shoulders in camaraderie. “But marriage is better, trust me. There’s something great about having one person to come home to. One person to turn to no matter what.” He smiled at Kitt. “Now, you might say that you can do all that without a silly piece of paper, but if it’s so silly, I say, what’s the harm in having it? Right? And believe me, in the end, it’ll come to mean a lot to you. It’s the thing that makes you try one more time when you think you’ve had it and it’s time to go your own way.” He sighed deeply, as if remembering. “I know what I’m talking about. Why, if it wasn’t for my marriage license—”

This had the earmarks of going on even longer than the storm outside, O’Rourke thought. “Officer—” he began, trying to explain.

“Gary,” the policeman interjected. “Officer Gary Brinkley.”

“Gary,” O’Rourke allowed. “You don’t understand. We’re two strangers.”

The smile on the round face turned knowing. “Everyone feels like that sometime or other. Hell…” He stopped abruptly, slanting a look at Kitt. “Excuse me, heck, my wife and I feel that way, too, sometimes. But it’s the long haul that counts.” He fixed O’Rourke with a look, then swept it toward Kitt. “Promise me you two’ll think about it.”

O’Rourke and Kitt exchanged glances and both smiled as if on cue.

“Okay,” O’Rourke allowed, knowing there was no other way to call a halt to the kindly lecture. “We promise we’ll think about it. Won’t we, love?”

She was aching and exhausted. Why being addressed by a generic term should have caused a small thrill to dance through her made absolutely no sense to Kitt. So she didn’t even try to figure it out.

Chapter Three

O’Rourke stood outside his van in the rain as the two ambulance attendants, a maternal-looking woman named Martha and a thin-faced man of about thirty, quickly placed Kitt and her baby onto a stretcher.

Because no one seemed to be doing anything to try to keep the rain away from them, O’Rourke took off the rain slicker and held it above Kitt and the baby. He succeeded in keeping their faces dry.

The smile she flashed him made up for the fact that he was now soaked clear down to the bone.

“Can’t seem to keep you dressed, can we?” the policeman commented. But as O’Rourke glanced back at him, he could see that Gary approved of the gallant gesture.

O’Rourke slipped the rain slicker onto his now-drenched arms. He might still be a wee bit rough around the edges, he thought, remembering something his mother had once said about him, but at least chivalry wasn’t entirely dead within his heart.

“You coming?” the female attendant asked as her partner stabilized the stretcher inside the rear of the ambulance.

O’Rourke shook his head. Chivalry notwithstanding, his part in all this was technically over now that there were more competent people on the scene. Time for the Good Samaritan to be finding his own way home. He began to back away.

“No, I—”

“Sure, he’s coming,” Gary told the woman, putting out one hand to stop her from closing the ambulance doors. “He’s the daddy.”

Time to set this man straight. “Actually—” But O’Rourke got no further.

Like a conspirator, unmindful of the rain, Gary lowered his head in close to O’Rourke. His voice was nothing if not sympathetic. He spoke like a man with years of domesticity behind him.

“Now, you don’t want to go planting seeds of doubt and discord with the little mother at a time like this, do you? She’s been through a great deal.” Gary arched a knowing, shaggy brow. “Whatever went down between you from your first time together to now’s all in the past. She needs you, boy.” The policeman all but pushed him toward the ambulance. “Go hold her hand and tell her she’s beautiful.”

With rain plastering his hair to his head and pouring down his face, O’Rourke stared at the other man incredulously. In his experience, policemen didn’t stand around, doling out advice like some kind of psychologist. “What?”

“Beautiful. Tell her she’s beautiful,” Gary repeated, raising his voice as the wind began to pick up. “A woman needs to hear stuff like that, especially when she looks as if she could scare the paint right off the walls.” He looked toward the interior of the ambulance. The female attendant was scowling at him, waiting to close the door he wasn’t releasing. “She’s just had your kid, and it looks like she’s done a great job, if you ask me. Give her the support she needs. Believe me, you’ll come out a winner in the end.”

Before O’Rourke had a chance to say anything to protest the blatant assumptions the policeman had made, Gary propelled him into the ambulance.

“Got one more for you, Martha,” Gary announced triumphantly.

Suddenly, O’Rourke found himself inside the ambulance. The doors behind him were being closed and Kitt was looking up at him in dazed confusion. He had no choice but to take a seat beside the strapped-in gurney.

“I’ll follow you in.” The policeman’s voice wedged itself into the ambulance just before the rear doors were shut. “It’s a slow night.”

Not for everybody, O’Rourke thought.

The next second he heard the siren wailing as the ambulance driver picked up speed. They were on their way to the hospital. This evening was definitely one he was going to tell the others about when he phoned home.

Or arrived home, he amended, thinking of the deportation notice on his desk at the apartment.

Was she imagining it, or was the stranger with the washboard stomach at her side again? Kitt blinked twice, trying to clear her vision. The man remained sitting where he was.

“What are you doing in here?”

O’Rourke laughed shortly, trying to stay out of the attendant’s way as Martha monitored Kitt’s vital signs. “I’m asking myself the same question.” He glanced toward the closed doors, wondering if the policeman was making good his claim and was following the ambulance. “The good constable seems to think you need moral support.”

His attention drawn back to the woman who was the reason for all the mayhem he’d found himself in in the last half hour, O’Rourke looked at her. There was no doubt that she was exhausted, but there was also no need for him to serve up empty platitudes about her appearance the way Gary had suggested. Despite what she had just been through, wet hair notwithstanding, Kitt Dawson looked radiant. Above and beyond the call of new motherhood. There was something in her face that transcended her ordeal.

O’Rourke had a sneaking suspicion that, fixed up, Kitt Dawson immediately became the center of attention in every room she entered.

Moral support, Kitt thought dully. She could certainly do with some of that right about now. Too exhausted to concentrate, she knew she was going to have to puzzle out what her next move was going to be—and sooner than later.

When she was discharged from the hospital, she could probably stay with Sylvia, her best friend, in her Newport Beach studio apartment. But two people—two and a half people, Kitt silently amended, looking at the sleeping bundle in her arms—living in such close quarters got awfully old fairly quickly.

But at least it would give her a little time to think. And hopefully come up with a viable plan. Right now, she had nothing.

Her Good Samaritan was talking to her, she realized. Concentrating as best she could, Kitt tried to absorb what he was saying to her and not think about how much she hurt. Physically and emotionally.

“Besides,” O’Rourke was saying, “you’ve still got my sweater and my jacket and I sort of thought I’d be taking them back by and by, once they have you settled in at the hospital.” He figured it was as good an excuse as any. Besides, the sweater had been Beth’s going-away gift to him. His youngest sister would be hurt if she thought he’d just given it away.

Kitt realized that the sweater was still wrapped around her baby. The jacket had somehow managed to come along with her when the attendants had transferred her from the van to the gurney. She felt beneath her head now.

“Your things,” she acknowledged with a note of embarrassment. “They’ll probably need a lot of work before you can wear them again.”

“Don’t be worrying about that.” As the attendant withdrew, O’Rourke unconsciously drew in closer to Kitt, placing his hand over hers in a silent bond that was as natural to him as breathing. “My mother taught me how to take care of my things well and make them last,” he told her with a smile. She’d had to, he added silently, doffing his cap to his mother. When there were six children, money only stretched so far. Fabric stretched farther. “So, what’re you going to call her?” He nodded toward her sleeping bundle.

Kitt tightened her arm around the bundle instinctively. She hadn’t thought of names, at least not girls names. Something inside of her had been convinced she was going to give birth to a boy. Just like something inside of her had been convinced that Jeffrey was going to make a miraculous turnaround and suddenly become responsible.

Good thing she didn’t make her living as a fortune teller, she thought sarcastically. She would have starved to death a long time ago.

Looking down at the bit of heaven in her arms, Kitt sighed now. “I don’t know yet.”

He’d had a sibling or two who’d had to wait for a moniker, O’Rourke thought. As if sensing she was the topic of conversation, the baby opened her eyes and looked directly at him.

O’Rourke felt his heart being claimed in an instant. “So you’re nameless, are you, little one?” he whispered to her softly.

As if in response, the baby made a noise and then closed her eyes again.

Very gently, taking care to only touch his hand lightly along the downy hairs, O’Rourke passed his hand over the small head. “I supposed this qualifies as our first conversation.”

Kitt found she couldn’t say anything in response. There was suddenly a large lump in her throat, blocking any words.

The next moment, the ambulance had stopped, its rear doors parallel with the doors leading into Harris Memorial’s emergency room. The doors flew open. Kitt and her baby were engulfed in a sea of activity as the attendants quickly took her out of the ambulance. An awning sheltered them from the rain.

As a nurse hurried out from the hospital to flank one side of the gurney, an emergency room physician took the other while Martha rattled off Kitt and the baby’s vital signs to them.

O’Rourke found himself swept up in the wave, hurrying along to keep up, although logically he knew he should just drop back and let the natural progression of things take over and sweep Kitt and the baby away from him. After all, he wasn’t needed any longer.

Feeling foolish, reminding himself that he was facing a huge dilemma of his own and that Kitt and her baby were in good hands now, he slowed down. But as he did so, a hand came down on his shoulder, generating an intense sensation of déjà vu.

O’Rourke didn’t have to turn around to know that when he did, he’d be looking down into Officer Gary Brinkley’s face.

“What are you doing here?” O’Rourke asked, only mildly surprised.

Gary jerked a thumb back toward the rear of the hospital parking lot where presumably his squad car was standing. “Thought maybe the new dad would need a ride back to his car. Besides—” the policeman nodded at his torso “—you’ve got my rain slicker.”

O’Rourke looked down at his chest. He’d almost forgotten he was walking around in the oversize black slicker. “Oh, right.” He began shrugging the slicker off his shoulders.

The hand was back on his shoulder, stopping him. “No, hang on to it until you get something else to wear,” Gary urged.

O’Rourke looked after the disappearing gurney. He’d accomplished nothing by coming along. Except maybe to push aside his own problem for a short while longer. But that hadn’t erased it. It was time to get going.

He turned to look at the policeman next to him. “I’ll take that ride now, Constable. If you’re sure that it won’t be taking you away from anything more pressing you have to do—”

The idea of there being something more urgent on tap made the policeman laugh again. He clamped a fatherly arm around O’Rourke’s shoulders.

“Hey, this is Bedford.” He nodded at the disappearing gurney. “That’s probably the most exciting thing that’s going to happen around here all night.” He paused, hesitating before venturing back outside. “Don’t you want to see your little woman before you go?”

To try to explain one last time to the policeman that Kitt Dawson wasn’t his little woman and that he had only happened by at an opportune time for her seemed completely futile to him. For simplicity’s sake, and because he wanted to get home sometime before midnight, O’Rourke resigned himself to going along with the charade.

“No, I thought I’d give her a chance to get cleaned up a little—and I’d like to do the same before coming back to see her and the baby,” he added for good measure, having absolutely no intention of doing the latter even if Kitt did have some of his clothing in her possession. It wasn’t as if that was his last jacket or sweater, and despite his words to the contrary, she was right. There probably was no way he could get them cleaned at this point. Beth would just have to understand.

The answer had the desired effect on the policeman. He seemed obviously pleased. Nodding his head, Gary steered O’Rourke around toward the rear doors. “Okay, then let’s get going.”

The trip back to his van was not one undertaken in silence.

O’Rourke hadn’t really thought that it would be. Officer Gary Brinkley strongly reminded him of Shamus O’Brien, a distant cousin of his mother’s in the old country. It wasn’t that the two men looked alike, but Shamus could talk the hands off a grandfather clock and not take any note of it as he just kept on going. Not because the man liked to hear the sound of his own voice, but because Shamus truly felt that everything he said was important, gleaned on the battlefields of life. He felt it his duty to share those lessons with those who hadn’t had a chance to experience them yet.

And after what sounded like an endless twenty years on the police force, first in Los Angeles County, then here in Bedford, it sounded as if the good constable had a great many lessons of life to impart as well. And O’Rourke found himself the lucky recipient tonight.

It occurred to O’Rourke that he might have been better off walking back to the van in the rain. It would have been a great deal wetter and longer, but on the up side, it would have been a great deal more peaceful.

The topic the police force veteran had settled on was marriage and family. Gary was definitely pushing for the pros. At length.

O’Rourke had a headful of cons to oppose him with, albeit—not wanting to prolong the diatribe any longer than absolutely necessary—he listed them silently. In no uncertain terms, marriage and the family that followed had been both his parents’ undoing. And while O’Rourke loved his siblings with a fierceness that would have made the hearts of the creators of greeting cards swell with joy, there was no doubt in his mind that it was the burden of these same siblings, and himself as well, that had first killed off his father, then his mother. Sarah O’Rourke had died of nothing short of a broken heart a little over two years after her husband’s demise. Leaving the business of family-raising squarely on O’Rourke’s shoulders.

“Nothing like it in the world,” Gary was saying for what seemed like the fourth or fifth time. “But hell,” the man said, turning in his seat, “I don’t have to convince you of that, do I?”

“And why’s that?” O’Rourke heard himself asking the question as curiosity got the better of him.

“Because I saw the look in your eyes when you looked down at that baby. You feel it already, don’t you?”

Mystified, O’Rourke asked, “Feel what?”

“That tug on your heart.” He thumped his chest with his fisted hand. “The one that anchors you in their harbor and makes you vow to do everything in your power to see to it that they get every chance in the world to have the things you didn’t. To be happy and healthy and all that other stuff.”

Turning another corner, Gary pulled up his squad car in front of the van. The rain had subsided, falling steadily and sedately now rather than in sheets and gusts.

“Here’s your van,” Gary pointed out needlessly. He twisted around in his seat. “So, you going to do it? Are you going to make an honest woman of her?”

Now, there was a term he hadn’t heard in a long time, O’Rourke thought. Not since before he left Ireland. Then it had come from Susan, telling him that Patrick was going to be making one of her. An honest woman. It was Patrick’s baby she was carrying, all the while he’d been thinking that she belonged to him. He’d felt his heart crack a little then, but told himself it hadn’t. He’d known that the kind of life he’d planned for himself didn’t include having someone like Susan in it. She needed attention he couldn’t spare.

He’d wished her luck and shut his heart. Just another sacrifice he’d made to get to where he wanted to be. A man who could take care of his own, meaning the family that already was, not the one that might be, if things were different.

Problem was, he hadn’t gotten there yet.

A whimsical smile played on his lips as he looked at the policeman next to him. “Are you a Catholic, Constable?”

The shaggy black-and-gray brows drew together in one formidable hairy line. “What? No. Why?”

“Pity.” O’Rourke unhooked his seat belt. “You’d have made an excellent priest. Father Donnelley back home couldn’t have held a candle to you.” Another man dedicated to long-winded sermons, he thought.

Gary hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by not knowing when he was being given the slip. “So, is that a yes or a no?”

O’Rourke grinned. “Not a candle,” he repeated, getting out. “Thank you for the ride and the advice. And the rain slicker.” Shedding the aforementioned garment, he left it on the passenger seat, then closed the door. He could almost hear the man inside the squad car sigh as he pulled away.

O’Rourke’s grin widened.

It faded when he realized he’d left his van keys in his jacket. The jacket that was now with a dewy-eyed, sharp-tongued woman in Harris Memorial, some fifteen or so miles away.

One of O’Rourke’s many dubious talents, garnered during his wild-oats-sowing period before he’d settled down to the business of creating a stable life for his siblings, was gaining access to cars that weren’t his own. He’d done it mainly as a challenge, not to steal anything more substantial than a joyride or two. A brush with the law had rid him of that inclination, but he was glad he’d retained the talent, rusty though it was. It got him into his van, which he then hot-wired to get him home.

Home had presented yet another challenge, but he’d picked the lock and finally gotten inside. Happily, he kept a spare set of keys in the apartment so hot-wiring and breaking and entry were not to become a permanent part of his life. But that also meant that he had to go back to the hospital, he realized.

It was the last thought on his mind before he dropped into a restless sleep.

Though the threat of deportation weighed heavily on his soul, his dreams that night were governed by visions of a tiny baby. A tiny, downy-haired baby who laughed up at him, her big eyes fixed on his face. No matter how many times he woke up during the night, each time he fell back asleep, he dreamed of the child.

Deirdre would have been able to make sense of it, he reasoned, thinking of his sister when he finally gave up and stumbled out of bed the next morning. Deirdre always claimed to be able to interpret dreams. It took no great scholar to broach the surface of it, he thought, pouring coffee into his mug and gulping it down. Last night had remained foremost on his mind, despite his dilemma.

But now it was morning and it was time to try to come to terms with his dilemma: he faced utter disaster if he didn’t find a way to remain in the glorious United States with its promise of success and riches.

Clutching his mug, O’Rourke went back to his bathroom and walked into the shower. He remembered to leave the mug outside a second before he turned on the water. He was down to thirteen days. Thirteen days in which to come up with a sudden-death plan or put everything on hold. The latter wasn’t an option.

He knew what the market was like these days. If you stopped dancing, you lost your place on the floor. He wasn’t about to lose his place. He just needed someone to help him fill up his dance card.

Showered and shaved, O’Rourke went to the converted loft where he had set up the offices of Emerald Computers, a dream still in the making, and tried to put in a full day’s work into five hours.

Maybe while he worked, he hoped, something would come to him. The best ideas snuck up on you when you least expected it.

None did.

He figured he might as well make that trip to the hospital and collect his keys, if not his jacket. No sense in having an extra set floating around. Although just possibly, in thirteen days, the keys would belong to an empty apartment.

He wasn’t going to let himself think that way, O’Rourke insisted sternly. He wasn’t going to be his father, giving up and giving in. There had to be a way.

“I’m taking lunch, Simon,” he said to the dark-haired man who was his best friend, as well as his assistant.

Preoccupied, Simon glanced up from the schematic he was studying. The look on his face was pure surprise once O’Rourke’s words had sunk in. “You?”

O’Rourke grinned. He didn’t ordinarily take a break until it was way past time for calling it a day. Food came to him as an afterthought, thanks to one person or another in the office who shared their own lunch or thought to bring him something back from wherever it was they’d gone. It wasn’t something he normally gave much attention to himself. He thrived on energy, not food. Work was far more important to him.

“I’ve got a friend in the hospital” was all he said as he left. A friend, he added, who had his house and car keys.

She didn’t know what to do.

She’d had the foresight to preregister at the hospital just two days ago, so the paperwork and the rest of it were all taken care of. Her insurance, the employee relations woman at the aerospace firm had assured her upon her “outplacement” yesterday, was good to the end of the month. That meant that at least the hospital bill and the doctor’s fee were taken care of.

But what about after that?

Kitt chewed on her lower lip. She had no job, no money. There was Sylvia, who’d just left after visiting all morning. The woman had a giant heart and had opened her door to her instantly, after calling Jeffrey a variety of names, some of which Kitt was completely unfamiliar with. But Sylvia was a struggling freelance writer who was just making her own ends meet. There was no way she was going to impose on her best friend for more than a couple of days. She loathed doing even that, but her back was against the wall.

If only there was some way to make the wall come down, Kitt thought in desperation.

There was a light rap on her door. Probably the nurse to bring the baby in for her feeding, she thought. She began slipping the shoulder of her hospital gown down. “Come in.”

The next moment, she found herself looking at the man who had come to her aid last night.

O’Rourke.

He’d come in carrying a large bouquet of carnations in one hand. And a tiny bouquet of daisies in the other.

Chapter Four

Kitt suddenly realized that she was perilously close to becoming half nude in another second. Despite the experience they’d shared last night, a rosy hue began to climb up her cheeks. Quickly, she tugged her gown up over her shoulder again.

“Hi.” Her throat felt dry. Kitt stared at the man who filled the doorway, a half bemused, half embarrassed look on his face. “What…what are you doing here?”

She’d never expected to see him again, though now that she thought of it, she remembered she’d had a fuzzy dream about him last night. It returned to her in a haze, its edges unclear. She supposed that was the result of the dire circumstances under which they’d been thrown together. There seemed to be no other reason for her to dream about a complete stranger. She couldn’t even pinpoint what the dream was about, only that he’d been part of it.

Feeling oddly uncomfortable, O’Rourke launched into his explanation. “Well, the truth of it is, you have my keys. Both for the house and the van. They were in the pocket of the jacket.”

Her eyes widened and she looked toward the closet where the nurse had placed both the jacket and the ruined sweater. The latter was in a sealed plastic bag. “Oh, I’m sorry—how did you get home? Did your wife…?”

“No wife. I’ve a few talents my sainted mother wished I didn’t have. But I’ll be taking the keys now if you don’t mind, as well as the jacket itself and the sweater.” He paused as a thought hit him. “You do still have them, don’t you?”

“In the closet.” She pointed.

He realized she was looking at the flowers he’d brought. The ones he’d thought to pick up at the gift shop downstairs. The ones he’d forgotten he was holding the instant he’d seen that bare shoulder of hers and the hospital gown dipping down temptingly over the swell of her breast.

Fumbling mentally, O’Rourke paused before opening the closet. “Oh, these. To celebrate you being my first nonfamily delivery, I brought you flowers.” Crossing to her bed, he handed her the large bouquet.

How long had it been since she’d had flowers from anyone? The last time she recalled, it had been for her high school graduation and it was her father who’d given them to her.

“And those?” she nodded at the tiny one he still held. “Did your flowers give birth, too?”

Now that he thought of it, the notion that had prompted him to pick up the smaller bouquet seemed foolish. He shrugged, trying to seem casual.

“I got them for the little one. Flowers from her first admirer, so to speak.” He turned away in case Kitt wanted to laugh, pretending to look around. “Is there a vase someplace?”

Kitt felt her eyes begin to smart. She couldn’t remember when she’d been so touched.

“You can use the water pitcher,” she suggested quietly. Her throat felt as if it was closing up. “And the little bouquet can go into the glass.”

She had absolutely no idea why a tiny handful of flowers would affect her so. There were tears threatening to spring into her eyes. Maybe it was because the baby’s father hadn’t even wanted to stick around to see her born, much less bring her flowers.

Or maybe it was just postpartum depression, Kitt told herself. Why else would she suddenly feel so weepy over tiny white and purple daisies?

Deciding the jacket and sweater could wait, O’Rourke laid the large bouquet on its side on the counter, took the pitcher and filled it halfway with water. He did the same with the glass, then tucked the appropriate bouquets into each.

“I hope your husband won’t mind my bringing you flowers.” Lucky thing the man wasn’t here, O’Rourke realized. The situation could have become rather sticky. He knew he wouldn’t exactly appreciate someone bringing flowers to his wife if he had one.

The lump in Kitt’s throat grew a little larger and she called herself an idiot to waste any emotion on a man who wouldn’t waste the time of day on her. Sheer will made the lump dissolve.

She laughed shortly under her breath. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about on that score.”

There was something in her voice that caught his attention. O’Rourke turned around, the water pitcher in one hand, the glass in the other. Flowers bowing their heads from each.

“You’re not married.”

It wasn’t a question. As soon as he said it, he had got the distinct feeling that she wasn’t.

Kitt raised her chin in an unconscious, defiant gesture. It wasn’t by choice she found herself in this situation, she thought, squelching the pang she felt. She came from old-fashioned people with old-fashioned values. You married the person you loved and made babies with. Jeffrey hadn’t quite seen it her way. But she’d hung on, hoping. Which probably made her a fool in most people’s books, she imagined.

“No, I’m not.”

There was a gruffness in her voice, a defensiveness. He’d gone somewhere he wasn’t supposed to, he thought.

O’Rourke figured it wasn’t a good idea for a new mother to get upset so soon after delivery. Setting both bouquets of flowers down on the counter that ran against the wall where she could see them, he attempted to sound disinterested.

“No one’s judging you, love. It was just a question. Just didn’t want to be getting my head bashed in by some jealous husband, that’s all.”

There was a brief flash of kindness in his eyes as he looked at her.

What was the matter with her? Kitt upbraided herself. He was only being nice. She looked for a way to change the subject. “Irish, right? Your accent, I mean,” she added when he didn’t say anything.

“Yes, Irish. County Cork, specifically. Born and raised. But I thought my accent was sublimated after all this time. I’ve been here four years.”

“No, it’s not.” She thought his accent rather charming, and though it wasn’t exactly thick enough to cut with a knife, it was still very much there. “Why would you want to lose it?”

He lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Not lose it, just put it on hold for a while. Natives tend to have more faith in dealing with natives than foreigners. It only stands to reason.”

“Not if the foreigners have more to offer than the natives. What is it that you do?”

What did he call himself? Entrepreneur? Computer visionary? Dreamer? Not exactly sure where to begin, he settled for mystery. “It’s complicated.”

Kitt frowned. Even in this so-called enlightened day and age, she still ran into prejudice in her field. Was he like that, given to believing inherently in male superiority? “I didn’t push out my brains along with Shawna. Try me.”

Any thought of explanations were suddenly aborted. “Shawna?”

That’s right, he didn’t know, she realized. She’d made the decision during the morning feeding.

“My baby. Since I didn’t have a name picked out for her, I thought it only fitting that she be named after the man who helped bring her into the world. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Mind?” O’Rourke echoed. “No.” It hit him funny, creating a small, odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. A little like what he’d experienced when he’d first held the tiny being in his arms last night, except more so. Shawna. He liked it. “Huh. Never had anyone named after me before.”

“Then consider it a first.” They were getting away from the topic and she was suddenly consumed with curiosity. “You were about to tell me what you do.”

He sighed, looking out the window. He could see the harbor from where he stood. The ocean seemed calm. He’d be crossing an ocean soon himself if things didn’t turn around for him.

“Not much of anything if the government has its way.” He saw her looking at him oddly. “I’m about to be deported.”

Kitt’s mind jumped to the documentary she’d watched the other night on gangland criminals from the 1930s. Lucky Luciano had been deported. “You’re an undesirable?”

O’Rourke’s lips curved in a slightly lopsided smile. “That all depends on your definition of undesirable, I suppose.” Since he’d mentioned it, there was no point in keeping her in the dark about the actual reason. “My visa’s up in thirteen days.”

He didn’t seem very happy about that, she noted. Maybe he had nothing to go back to. She knew how that was. She wouldn’t have wanted to go back to her old home, either. Her parents were both gone and her only brother had moved away to Oregon a couple of years ago. Nothing left but memories. “Can you get an extension?”

He laughed softly. “Those are up, too.”

She had no idea why, but it made her sad to think of his leaving. “Then you have to go back?”

Pushing his hands into his pockets, he looked out the window again and stared at cottony clouds that seemed to be pasted in the sky. There had to be a solution, he was just missing it. “Looks that way.”

“And you don’t want to.”

No, he didn’t want to, he thought. O’Rourke looked at her, trying to keep his tone light. “I’m not nearly ready. The work I’m doing—” No point in getting into that. “Well, it’s complicated.”

They’d come full circle. “So you said.” She thought of her own circumstances. “Well, at least you have somewhere to go to. Count yourself lucky.”

Years of playing both mother and father to his siblings while trying to juggle his own life had made him keenly attuned to nuances, though he never admitted as much outright. “Why, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I do.” Hearing herself snap had Kitt relenting as she offered him a contrite smile. “At least, temporarily.” Because he’d told her some of his problem, she suddenly felt the need to open up herself. The strain of keeping it bottled up was suddenly too much. “You want to compare hard-luck stories? I’ll give you a hard-luck story. Try coming back home after being laid off, or ‘outplaced’ as they whimsically call it at the company where I work, excuse me, worked, to find out that the man you’ve given your heart, not to mention your paychecks, to has decided that the aerobic instructor down the hall was more suited to him than the slightly overweight, now-out-of-work aerospace engineer he’d been living with, so he’s run off with her.” She’d been an idiot to call Jeffrey with the news, expecting sympathy. But how was she to know he’d suddenly bolt? “Run off with her, most of my things and all of my joint bank account. The rent’s not even paid. It hasn’t been for the last three months and the landlady said I have to move out immediately.” She struggled to keep the bitterness, as well as the panic, out of her voice. “As of right now, I have no permanent address.”

Forgetting that she was a stranger, O’Rourke took the tone he used with his siblings whenever one of them messed up. “Are you daft, woman? How could you have a joint bank account with a man who wasn’t your husband?”

She took umbrage at his tone. “Where I come from, they call it being in love.”

O’Rourke snorted. “Where I come from, they call it being stupid.”

She didn’t need this abuse. She’d upbraided herself enough on her own. Served her right for opening up to a total stranger. What was she thinking?

That was the problem, she wasn’t thinking, only feeling. Big mistake. Not one she meant to repeat.

“Well, thank you for your flowers,” she said coldly, “but I think you’d better leave now.”

He’d insulted her. O’Rourke tried to look properly contrite. It was an expression he couldn’t ever quite manage.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come out. I have a habit of speaking my mind a little too bluntly.” He could almost hear his mother’s voice in his head. “My mother used to say it’s what made me so rough around the edges. I tend to plow right into the thick of things instead of looking for the door and opening it first. Sorry,” he repeated.

Kitt blinked back tears, annoyed with herself for suddenly unloading and then for getting upset about it. Talk about hormones running amok and being out of whack.

She waved away his apology. “Not your fault. I’m just a poor judge of character.”

O’Rourke looked around for a box of tissues, knowing there had to be one somewhere in the room. He spotted it on the counter beside the sink.

“You’re not the first one to have that problem, or the last.” He picked up the box and brought it over to Kitt. “Fell for the wrong person myself, I did. Problem was, I thought she’d wait for me while I got our future together. Turns out she went on to another man because she got tired of waiting for me.” O’Rourke stopped, surprised to hear himself tell her that. It wasn’t something he talked about, not even with his friends.

Reaching, Kitt took a tissue out of the box in his hand and wiped the dampness from around her eyes. He was matching her woe for woe. She looked up and studied him for a moment.

“Have you always had this competitive problem?” she asked. “This need to out-misery someone?”

O’Rourke frowned, thinking himself a dolt. Why had he just said all that? It had to be the deportation weighing heavily on his mind that was making him lose his grip this way. Otherwise, why would he just talk about things best left unsaid?

He tossed the box back on the counter. “I was just trying to make you feel better.”

“Sorry.” She wiped a last stray tear that had trickled out. “It worked.” Kitt balled the tissue up in her palm, then sighed. “Temporarily at least.” A knock on her door interrupted whatever she was going to add. “Come in.”

The door slowly opened and a cheery-looking nurse entered, pushing a small bassinet with a small occupant before her.

“Someone here to see you.” The nurse’s brown eyes lit up when she looked at the man standing beside her patient. “And her daddy, too.”

“Oh, I’m not—”

The nurse brought the bassinet to a halt at the foot of the bed. “Sterile, no, but that can be taken care of quickly enough,” she assured him, crossing to the far wall with its cupboards and closets. “Not sterile in the traditional sense, of course,” she chuckled. “That little darling there proved that handily enough.”

Chattering away happily, the nurse opened up the cupboard beneath the sink and took out what looked like a flat blue paper towel. Deftly, she shook it out and the “towel” transformed into a paper gown intended to cover the length of its wearer. She held it out to him.

“Here, you put this on and then you can hold your daughter.” After a beat, O’Rourke took it from her. She interpreted his look her own way. “Probably seems silly to you, seeing as how you held her without that to begin with. We all heard about the delivery,” she confided with a wink. “Very impressive. Lots of fathers fold at the first sign of blood. They go down like a stone. You’re a lucky lady,” she told Kitt, patting her arm a moment before she went to pick up the baby.

Holding the infant to her, the nurse looked at O’Rourke expectantly. He was still holding the blue paper gown in his hand.

“Well, what are you waiting for? An invitation? Put it on.” She waved him to it. “I can’t let you hold her until you have the gown on,” she reiterated. “And wash your hands. Rules.”

It was either put on the gown, or launch into an explanation that, the story making the rounds not-withstanding, he wasn’t the father. O’Rourke didn’t feel like getting into that. It hadn’t worked with the well-meaning policeman last night and he had a feeling it wasn’t going to convince the nurse now.

Besides, he wasn’t adverse to holding the baby again. The truth was, he rather liked it. There was something special about babies. They represented innocence untouched, potential untapped. That spoke to him, making him hopeful about the future.

No, there was nothing better than holding a newborn in his arms.

Unless it was helming his own company. His own solvent company.

O’Rourke put his arms through the blue gown and pulled the ends together behind him as best he could.

“All right,” he pronounced, holding out his arms. “I’m ready for her.”

The nurse transferred the baby into his arms. Watching him, a knowing look came into her eyes. “This isn’t your first, is it?”

He thought of the others. “No, not my first.”

He’d been barely eight the first time he’d held a newborn in his arms. Bridgette. The experience had felt almost mystical to him. Somehow, he placed himself beyond the blood and the obvious detractions, coming to a feeling like no other. The best way he could describe it was to say it was a bonding. A bonding that transcended the everyday and made him feel, for the first time in his young, poverty-stricken life, that there was something beyond the confines of his small town.

Beyond the island he’d been born to, even. It also made him feel that no matter where he went in the world, a part of him would always remain grounded within the babe he’d held in his arms.

That tiny babe was twenty-three now. Twenty-four next June.

Funny how all that came back to him suddenly as he held the child of a woman he didn’t know. Held a child he was no part of.

Stirring, Shawna looked up at him with her huge blue eyes, just like the first time. And just like the first time, he felt himself being taken captive by the diminutive being. A captive just as surely as if she’d snatched him into the palm of her hand and held him fast there.

Holding her to his chest, O’Rourke saw Shawna begin to root at his paper gown, locking her rosebud mouth around it. A dampness began to spread out from where contact had been made.

Very gently, he separated her mouth from the paper before she could tear it off. He had a feeling disposable hospital gowns were not on the list of required nutrients for newborns.

“Ah now, love, you won’t be finding anything there to satisfy your hunger, I’m afraid. That’s your mama’s department.” He glanced up toward Kitt.

As if on cue, the nurse took the infant from him and briskly presented Shawna to her mother.

“Always makes me misty, seeing a brand-new father with his baby.” She cleared her throat. “Didn’t know my own,” she confided. “This makes me feel that there’s hope for the world. You make a lovely couple and now you make an even lovelier family. Core of our culture, the family. Used to be nothing more solid. Time for that to happen again.”

So much for protesting that O’Rourke wasn’t the father, Kitt thought. She would have felt like the person who announced to a five-year-old that there was no Santa Claus. Still, she wasn’t about to nurse Shawna in front of O’Rourke.

She shook her head. “No, I—”

The nurse looked at her knowingly. “I understand.” She lowered her voice. “It’s perfectly normal to feel a little awkward about this. Here, let me show you a little trick.” Deftly, she positioned her body between the woman in the bed and the man she had assumed was her husband before going to work.

Not that she had to block out his view. Tempting as the woman might be, O’Rourke had averted his eyes to give Kitt the privacy she deserved. A man had to have certain standards.

“This way,” he heard the nurse telling Kitt triumphantly, “you can even feed your daughter in public and no one’ll be the wiser for it.”

“Unless they start to wonder why there’s a pair of tiny legs sticking out from under the blanket I have thrown over my shoulder,” Kitt quipped. It was an awkward bit of camouflage at best, she thought, looking down at the way the blanket was arranged over her.

The nurse said something in reply, but it was lost on O’Rourke. He’d stopped listening to the exchange as he replayed something the nurse had said earlier in his mind. He’d called them a family. A solid core.

Maybe this was it. The opportunity he was praying for. Why not?

Excitement began to pulse through his veins as the idea took on shape. Granted, it wasn’t a new idea. It was actually something that one of his friends at the pub had thrown his way last night before he’d left, half in jest, half because the other man was in his cups and going down for the third time.

At the time, the idea had been laughably ludicrous. He’d put it out of his mind two seconds after it was out of O’Brien’s mouth.

But now it was back again and taking on a life of its own.

Desperate men discovered they were capable of desperate things and he was no different. Bridgette had called him just before he’d left this morning to tell him that Brennan had been accepted by the university. Another dream in jeopardy. Going to the university meant books and tuition. The money had to come from somewhere.

Right, from big brother who was on the cusp of being a success in California.

All he needed was a little more time.

Turning the instant the nurse left the room, O’Rourke looked at Kitt and spoke before his courage flagged or his common sense took over.

“Kitt, would you like to marry me?”

Shawna squealed as her mother’s arm tightened around her.

Chapter Five

“Excuse me?” It took effort for Kitt to keep her jaw from dropping. She had to have misheard him. And yet, he was looking at her as if he expected an answer. “Did you just say…?”

O’Rourke nodded, moving closer to her bed. “Will you marry me? Yes, I did.”

She moved her arm more protectively around the baby nursing at her breast, taking care to keep the cotton blanket covering her in place. Kitt never took her eyes off his face. He was playing some kind of cruel joke.

Her mouth hardened. “Aren’t you a little early for April Fool’s Day?”

He’d never been much of a salesman. He’d always let the facts and ideas speak for themselves. But in this case, Kitt didn’t know the facts, so it was up to him to tell her. And convince her that this wasn’t all an insane scheme.

O’Rourke had no idea where someone with polish would begin. He did what he normally did, he just plunged in. “The only thing I’m trying to be early for is my deportation—by derailing it.” That just served to confuse her, he thought, seeing the look in her eyes. “Look, I realize that this probably must sound just a little crazy to you—”

“Just a little,” she allowed, trying to make sense out of what he was saying. She didn’t know whether to be insulted or just vaguely amused. Because he’d come to her aid when she’d really needed someone, Kitt decided to choose the latter.

“And maybe it is,” he agreed, hooking his thumbs in his back pockets as he looked at her, “but the way I see it, we’ve both got a problem—”

Very carefully, she shifted Shawna over to her other breast, then raised her eyes to look at O’Rourke. He had to see how ridiculous this all sounded.

“The way I see it, you’re the one with the bigger problem if you go around proposing to women you don’t know.”

He hadn’t phrased it right, he thought, annoyed with himself. O’Rourke tried again. “This isn’t a marriage proposal—”

Maybe there was something wrong with him after all and she was being a little too blasé, Kitt thought. “Funny, I thought the words ‘will you marry me’ were a dead giveaway that it was a marriage proposal.”

The woman was never going to get married to anyone if she kept interrupting people who were spilling out their guts to her like this. “No,” he contradicted her firmly, “it’s a business proposal. As in a business arrangement,” O’Rourke clarified. “You need a place to stay and some financial help to get you back on your feet. I need a wife to remain in this country—”

Okay, he wasn’t dangerous, just a little deranged. Kitt said the first thing that occurred to her. “Isn’t getting married to stay here rather a drastic step to take?”

He laughed shortly. Yes, it was drastic, but what choice did he have? “Believe me, if there were any other way to do this, I would be doing it.”

Well, she’d certainly set herself up for that one. He made her sound as if she was a last resort. Kitt looked down at the top of her daughter’s head, all that was visible as she nursed Shawna. “There’s that head-turning, Irish charm again.”

O’Rourke dug his hands deep into his pockets again and swore silently. He wasn’t any good at this.

“Sorry, that didn’t come out quite right, but I am a man in a desperate situation.” As if he was working with a blueprint, he laid it all out for her. “I’ve sunk every dime I have into making a go of this business I’ve started, and if I have to leave the country now, then I’ll lose everything.”

This man meant nothing to her, she argued with herself. There was no reason to feel guilt creeping in. And yet, she did. Guilt because he was asking her to help and she wasn’t jumping in to do it. O’Rourke’s fate was temporarily in her hands and she didn’t like that feeling.

“I’m sure that if you appeal to someone—”

His eyes held hers and he saw her for what she was. His last hope. “I’m appealing to you.”

Yes, you are.

The thought came to her out of the blue, snatching her breath away. Where had that come from and what was the matter with her? She’d just given birth and lost everything. Being attracted to a man, even in a minor way, should be the last thing on her mind.

Shutting out the thought, she concentrated on making sense out of what he was saying to her. “I mean appeal to someone in the government. Talk to someone at immigration. Someone has to listen.”

She didn’t look that naive, he thought. “No, they won’t,” he contradicted. “And even if they did listen, it’d be too late. These things, if they evolve at all, take time. Time’s the one thing I don’t have. I’ve got thirteen days to find a way to stay in this grand and glorious country of yours.” And he felt every one of those precious minutes as they ticked away, forever slipping out of his grasp. “Thirteen days in which to find a solution so that Brennan can attend the university and Bridgette can go on with her nursing school and Donovan can—”

Finished nursing, Kitt eased Shawna away from her breast, sliding the gown back into place before moving the cotton blanket. Very gently, she placed the infant against her shoulder and patted the tiny back, waiting for a telltale burp.

“Who are all these people?” He was rattling off names that meant nothing to her. “Friends of yours?”

“Relatives of mine,” he corrected her. “My brothers and sisters.”

O’Rourke’d sounded as if he was about to pick up steam when she’d interrupted him. “Just how many brothers and sisters are there?”

“Five, not counting me.” He watched Kitt pat concentric circles along the baby’s back. “I told you that last night.”

The baby emitted a small sound that was close enough to a burp to satisfy Kitt. She released the breath she’d been holding.

“I was a little busy at the time. I didn’t take in everything you said. Five, huh?” Because of what she’d just been through, Kitt’s sympathy immediately went out to O’Rourke’s mother.

“Yes, and I’m the oldest.” He raised his eyes to hers in silent query, indicating Shawna. When she nodded, he took the infant from her. But instead of returning her immediately to the bassinet, he held the now dozing baby in his arms for a moment, gazing down at the small, round face. His siblings had all been this size once, and he’d held almost all of them the way he was now holding Shawna. “The one they’re counting on.”

And in truth, he knew he wouldn’t have it any other way. He was the patriarch of the family and it was a position he had both made peace with and wanted.

O’Rourke looked up at Kitt, waiting for her response.

He had beautiful eyes, she realized. She felt a little like a deer, caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, except that there was no fear involved. There was, instead, a fascination that made it almost impossible for her to look away.

“So, if you don’t stay in this country…” She let her voice trail off.

“All their dreams get put on hold because mine are,” he concluded. He placed Shawna back into her bassinet. The infant went on sleeping. “If not destroyed forever.” He was being dramatic and he knew it, but he needed to get her on his side.

Kitt folded her hands in her lap before her, sighing. “Boy, you sure know how to work a guilt trip with the best of them, don’t you?” she quipped. “My grandmother had nothing on you.” And Nana had been a veteran, she recalled.

She paused, knowing that what she was considering was crazy. But marriages had been undertaken for less. Some people married at the end of a short, whirlwind romance punctuated by wild, passionate joinings. She knew one couple who had married after knowing each other for only a month. They’d lived to repent the rash move for the rest of their lives.

How much worse than that was this? Not much, in her book. Maybe it was even better. At least it seemed nobler.

Kitt slanted her glance toward O’Rourke. “If I say yes—if,” she emphasized, putting her hand up to forestall any words from him until she was ready to relinquish the floor. “How long will this ‘marriage’ be for and what do I get out of it in exchange?” She knew she was being cold, but that was the only way she could get herself to deal with any of this. Cold and detached. “And before we go any further, exactly what sort of ‘expectations’ are you going to have of me?”

He knew what she was asking. If she had to worry about him getting any amorous inclinations toward her. “You’ll be my wife in name only.” He wanted to be completely up front with her. “The only time you’ll have to pretend any sort of affection toward me is when the INS agent questions us.”

She’d completely forgotten about that part. “We’re going to be interrogated?” In general she did well under pressure, but not when it came to doing something that could place her on the wrong side of the law.

“In a manner of speaking,” O’Rourke answered offhandedly. “The INS frowns on bogus marriages entered into for the sole purpose of keeping an alien in the country.”

Which described their proposed union to a tee. “Frowns I can handle. What else do they do?”

He didn’t want to spend the afternoon being the INS’s press secretary. Or sabotaging his only chance. “That’s not important. If we convince them that this is an actual love match, there shouldn’t be a problem.” He glanced at the sleeping baby. Funny how some things just came together when you needed them. He’d wished for a miracle last night and now it seemed that he might have just gotten one. As long as the miracle agreed. “And your just having given birth helps to make things believable.”

How convenient for her to give birth at such an opportune time, she thought sarcastically. “You intend to say you’re the father?”

O’Rourke shrugged. It wasn’t that far-fetched. “Everyone else is already saying it—”

Who was he trying to convince, her or himself? “One wanna-be advise-columnist policeman and a nurse who made a natural mistake do not technically qualify as ‘everybody.”’

He realized he was rationalizing. Worse, he was clutching at straws. That wasn’t like him.

O’Rourke made himself back away and give her breathing space, at least emotionally.

“You’re right,” he told her, taking her hands in his. “They don’t matter. The only one who matters in this is you.” He made his best pitch. “If you do me this favor, there’ll be a substantial amount of money at the end of the allotted time for you. Until then, I’ll give you a roof over your head and provide for you and the baby.”

Her independent streak bristled, but she left her hands where they were. “I’m perfectly capable of earning a living for myself and Shawna.”

As he spoke, he slowly ran his thumbs along the inside of her hands, underscoring his point. And managing to unsettle himself in the bargain. “No one’s disputing that, but you said you were out of a job and until you find one, by your own admission, you’re out of funds.”

She hated this, hated being in this position. Raising her head, she could feel everything within her rebelling. “So what you’re saying is that I’m basically selling myself to you—”

“Leasing,” O’Rourke corrected her, struggling not to just throw his hands up and say the hell with it.

He wasn’t accustomed to begging, not even when the recipient of his pleas was a woman who would have easily gladdened the heart of any normal man with normal inclinations. Something he couldn’t allow himself to experience until he brought his dream to successful fruition.

“I prefer the term ‘leasing,”’ he reiterated. “And it would be getting me out of one huge jam, not to mention saving—”

“—Bridgette, Brennan, Donovan and who knows who else, yes, I know,” she said.

Kitt sighed, drawing her hands away, damning Jeffrey for putting her in a position to even consider this. She shut her eyes. She had to be crazy. She was actually considering it.

But what choice did she have? With no money, no job and nowhere to go, she wasn’t exactly chock-full of options here herself. Their friendship aside, staying with Sylvia would feel too much like charity to her.

Here at least she would be “paying” for what she was getting. Kitt opened her eyes to find him watching her. Something fluttered in her stomach.

That was probably a sign to turn him down. She ignored it. “And you won’t be expecting any connubial rights?”

“I have no connubial rights,” he told her flatly. “What I have are obligations.” He read what looked like doubt in her eyes. “Besides, someone once said I didn’t have the time to kiss a woman, much less do anything else with her.”

“I hope it wasn’t a girlfriend who said it.”

One corner of his mouth lifted slightly in amusement. And remembrance. “It was.”

She was on the verge of saying yes. “Maybe I will be safe at that.”

He took her hand to silently seal the agreement. “You’ll be safe, Kitt-with-two-t’s, I promise you that.” He wanted her to feel safe. “I can give you a list of references to check out so that you can assure yourself you’re not throwing your lot in with some madman newly escaped from the insane asylum.”

His choice of disclaimers amused her. She felt herself beginning to relax. Maybe this was a good thing she was doing. “Comforting.”

By nature he wasn’t all that talkative. But he felt immensely relieved right now, as if a huge boulder had been removed from his chest. That sort of thing tended to make a mute man verbose.

“I mean it to be.” He looked into her eyes earnestly. “I need help, Kitt-with-two-t’s, and I’ll be everlastingly grateful if I receive it. I mean to make my fortune here, as well as the fortunes of those depending on me. I can’t let a little thing like deportation get in the way.” He took a deep breath. “So, what do you say? Will you marry me?”

The irony of it struck her full force. “You know, I’ve waited all my life to hear those words.” She laughed softly. That would teach her to be a dreamer. “I never expected it to sound like a business merger.”

He felt his sympathies aroused. A woman like Kitt deserved better, she deserved to be proposed to by a man who meant to give her a real home and a family, not just shelter.

“I can make it sound more romantic if you like, Kitt, but you’ll know it’ll be a lie.”

She had to stop being such a dreamer. The real world was a demanding place. Hadn’t she learned that yet?

“Yes, I know.” She told herself to look at the bright side and make the best of things. “And I appreciate your being so honest with me, especially after what I’ve just gone through with Jeffrey.” Kitt made up her mind. She was going to go along with this, she thought. But she needed more information. “If I say yes, how long does this ‘arrangement’ have to go on?”

“A little more than a year.” The rules demanded a year. He figured a little longer than that would be playing it safe. “After that, you’re free to divorce me any time you want.”

“A little more than a year,” she repeated.

It sounded like a long time to some, but she had no plans for the next year or so on the romantic front. No plans for the rest of her life, really, other than raising Shawna and being the best mother possible. She’d learned her lesson when it came to men. It could be summed up in two words: stay clear.

A little more than a year. That provided a great deal of leeway. Marrying O’Rourke would free her up not to jump at the first job she found. It would allow her the luxury of looking for something that had a good future with it. And the luxury to enjoy her baby for a few weeks without feeling guilty about it—or feeling guilty because she’d had to rush back to work in order to put food on the table and diapers on Shawna’s little bottom.

In reality, this was a godsend, she reasoned. They would each get what they wanted. She’d get her breathing space and he would get the time he said he needed to finish whatever it was he needed to finish. She was going to have to ask him to go into greater detail about that. But not right now.

“All right, Shawn Michael O’Rourke, I accept.” She put out her hand to seal the bargain. “I’ll be your wife. In name only.”

His fingers closed around hers. “Absolutely,” he said, raising his other hand in a solemn promise. “I’ll only touch you if someone’s looking.”

Her eyes narrowed as she drew her hand away. “Define touch.”

Rather than waste a lot of words, he showed her instead.

“Like this.” Briefly, he took her hand again. “Or this.” O’Rourke cupped her elbow as if escorting her from a car. “Or maybe, if the INS man is boring suspicious holes into us, like this.” He slid his fingers along her cheek in a gesture he remembered seeing shared between his parents on those rare occasions when they had a moment to themselves and the responsibilities weren’t crushing them beneath their weight.

Something small and intense moved through her, unfurling fledgling wings that still managed to flap strongly. She dismissed the feeling as something associated with the after-effects of giving birth. What else could it be?

“All right,” she agreed quietly, praying she wasn’t going to live to regret this. “Do what you have to do. I’ll marry you.”

As a surge of pure, unadulterated joy and triumph spiked through him, O’Rourke fought the very real urge to kiss her.

But he didn’t, knowing it would be misinterpreted and ruin everything.

Simon Gallagher abandoned the programming equation that had his eyes almost crossing and rose from his desk like a man who had suddenly found he’d been transported to a foreign land when he wasn’t looking. He stared at O’Rourke, a man he’d known almost from the first moment the latter had arrived in the country.

“You want me to be what?”

“My best man,” O’Rourke repeated. He would have preferred having this exchange after hours, over two bottles of dark beer at the Shamrock, but time was of the essence and he couldn’t afford to waste any. Throwing a wedding together took time. “You’re the best I can find on such short notice,” he told the smaller man dryly, “so you’ll have to do.”

Simon shook his head, mystified. “O’Rourke, O’Rourke, O’Rourke, you’re going too fast for me. You left here two hours ago to have lunch and then you come back—just after I’ve made up my mind to drag Newport Bay looking for your body because you’ve never been more than fifteen minutes away from your desk since we found this loft—to tell me that you’re planning to get married.” Getting up from his desk, he came around to his best friend’s side, more than a little concerned. “What happened to you while you were gone? Did some alien creatures abduct you like in that show Mavis is always watching?”

O’Rourke was well aware of Simon’s sister’s viewing preferences. The choice of words seemed almost ironic to him.

“No, but I’m trying to avoid being ‘abducted’ as an alien and sent on my way.” He had, and always would have, strong ties to Ireland. He wanted to go home, but to visit and of his own free will, not because he was being forced to go.

Simon crossed his arms before his chest, studying his friend and business associate. “So I take it this isn’t a love match?”

“The only thing I love is my work and my family, not necessarily in that order. And I tolerate you on occasion,” he added.

Simon ignored the barb. “And this woman you’re marrying, she understands that?”

They were alone in this section of the loft. Nonetheless, O’Rourke lowered his voice even more. “It’s a business arrangement,” he allowed. “But that’s just something between you, me and her, understood? As far as everyone else is concerned, I’m marrying the mother of my child and living up to my responsibilities.”

O’Rourke glanced back toward the other end of the loft, where the rest of his crew was working. He intended to have them all attend the wedding, every last mother’s son and daughter of them. To bear witness to the marriage.

Though he’d been trying to find a solution to O’Rourke’s problem himself, Simon played devil’s advocate. “Thirteen days before you’re scheduled deportation. Seems a mite convenient, don’t you think?”

“Nine,” O’Rourke corrected him. He couldn’t arrange to get the church before then, and if he was going to pull this off, he had to include as many trappings in this wedding as possible. “And life’s a lot stranger than fiction.”

Maybe this might work at that. Who knew? “That it is, boyo, that it is,” Simon agreed, affecting a strong brogue. “Okay, you can count on me to stand up for you.” He clapped O’Rourke on the back. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Horror echoed in Sylvia Mason’s voice.

“Yes. I’m getting married,” Kitt told her simply.

Sylvia had come by just before visiting hours were over for the night to see how she was doing and if she could cheer Kitt up. The last thing in the world she expected was to be invited to Kitt’s wedding.

“I’ve never known giving birth could make a person go insane.” Sylvia shook her head incredulously. “Who is he, Kitt? Do you know anything about him? How do you know he won’t slit your throat while you’re sleeping?”

That was not what she needed to hear. She had enough doubts plaguing her. “You have got to get yourself assigned to another news desk, Sylvia.”

Sylvia frowned. “You’re not answering my question, Kitt.”

No, and she wasn’t going to. She wasn’t about to start entertaining absurd thoughts. Her mind was made up. It had to be. For Shawna’s sake. “I wanted you for my maid of honor, not my interrogator.”

“You’re in luck, I’m having a two-for-one sale.” She grabbed both of Kitt’s hands, forcing her best friend to look at her. “Look, my friend, I’m not going to be your maid of honor, I’m not even letting you out of this hospital room tomorrow until you tell me who this guy is and why you’re marrying him.”

She knew Sylvia meant well. She was just concerned about her. “I already told you. He’s the man who delivered my baby. The man I named Shawna after.”

“So?” Sylvia didn’t see that as an explanation for the drastic step Kitt was proposing to take. “Send him a gift basket with a thank-you card attached. Don’t marry him, for God’s sakes.”

Kitt hesitated, debating with herself. She could trust Sylvia. “Sylvia, you have to promise me that what I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room.”

“You’re beginning to sound like a cheap thriller. Okay, okay.” Sylvia raised her hand in solemn promise. “Not leaving the room, not a word. Now, tell me. What’s the big mystery?”

Kitt took a deep breath. “He’s about to be deported—”

“Oh, great. And he’s marrying you to stay in this country.”

In the face of Sylvia’s annoyance, Kitt suddenly felt protective of O’Rourke, although for the life of her she wouldn’t have been able to explain why. The man didn’t really mean anything to her.

“And I’m marrying him so that I can take a little time getting back on my feet.”

Sylvia cut her short. “You can do that in my apartment.”

Kitt smiled at the other woman. “You don’t have enough room in your apartment for two fleas to go square dancing, Sylvia. Believe me, this is for the best.” Her resolve wavering, she needed support, not arguments. “Don’t give me a hard time, Sylvia. Just say you’ll be my maid of honor.” She raised her eyes in silent supplication. “I really need you in my corner about this.”

“Okay.” Sylvia sighed loudly, relenting. “But I plan to make periodic checks on you to make sure he hasn’t stuffed you into a planter or something.”

Relieved, Kitt laid back against her pillows. “I can trust him, Sylvia.”

Sylvia frowned. “As I remember, you said the same thing about Jeffrey.”

“I was in love with Jeffrey, Sylvia. I’m not in love with O’Rourke.”

Sylvia sighed, shaking her head. “Perfect way to start a marriage, no love, no expectations.”

“No disappointment,” Kitt interjected.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Kitt.”

So did she, Kitt thought. So did she.

Chapter Six

“It’s not much.” Opening the door to his apartment, O’Rourke pocketed his key and stepped back to allow Kitt and the baby room to come in.

He glanced at his watch as he closed the door behind her. He’d taken precious time off to pick her up at the hospital and bring her and the baby directly here. There was a conference call he had to be back for within the hour.

Instinctively, Kitt held the infant in her arms closer to her. She felt as if she’d stepped right into the heart of pure chaos. There were books and papers everywhere, intermixed with empty pizza boxes, journals and clothes that had fallen miles short of making it into the laundry hamper.

Kitt’s eyes widened as she took it all in. How could anyone live like this? There were things on every surface as far as the eye could see.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “Looks like a lot to me.”

“You’re talking about the mess,” he guessed, chagrined. He’d meant to clean it all up last night, but he’d stayed too late at the loft. The trouble was, he had good intentions, but good intentions took time and he never had any of that. Work ate it all up.

She turned to stare at him. He didn’t look like a slovenly man. “You didn’t tell me you lived in a frat house.”

He wasn’t sure exactly what she was alluding to, but he figured it had something to do with the state of his living quarters. He supposed that any cryptic comment was probably well deserved. He’d never gotten the knack of keeping house.

O’Rourke paused to set down the suitcase he was carrying, the one that he’d discovered Kitt had hastily thrown together just before attempting to drive herself to the hospital. He’d gone back to retrieve it for her yesterday, taking a mechanic friend of his along to see what could be done about her car. A new alternator had resurrected it and brought it back to the land of the living. He’d had it driven over to his apartment complex, where it now resided in guest parking.

Shrugging, he looked around, trying to see it through her eyes. It did look pretty awful. “This is the first time I’ve had this much room to myself and I guess I got a little carried away.”

In Kitt’s estimation, he looked slightly embarrassed. There was hope for him, she decided. Her brother had attracted chaos like this and had thought nothing of it. She’d always felt sorry for whoever wound up marrying Perry.

O’Rourke picked up a pair of underwear and tucked it out of sight beneath a shirt that straddled the arm of the sofa. “I was going to clean up, but there was this bug at the office.”

Probably some here, too, she thought, looking around cautiously. “Bug? As in something needing to be exterminated?”

It took him a second to catch the misunderstanding. “No, as in glitch.” He tried again. “As in an impediment.” He never had gotten around to telling her what he was working on. Maybe it was time. He picked up her suitcase again. “You might as well know something about the man you’re marrying….”

His voice seem to fade slightly as the phrase jumped out at her.

The man you’re marrying.

It almost sounded surreal to her. She was marrying someone because she had to. It was like something out of the nineteenth century. With effort, Kitt pulled herself back, trying to focus on what O’Rourke was saying to her. Something about computer systems and innovations. Speed. RAM. All the buzz words that were so important to the Silicon Valley generation. Somehow they had all become of secondary importance to her in the last few days.

She looked down at the sleeping baby in her arms. Now there was nothing more important in her life than Shawna.

Raising her eyes to O’Rourke again, Kitt tried to look as if she was interested in what he was saying.

She didn’t fool him for a second. “Your eyes are glazing over.” He laughed. “Sorry, I tend to get carried away when I’m talking about Emmie.”

“Emmie?”

His mind was always jumping ahead to things. At times it was hard keeping track of what he had and what he hadn’t already said. And what he’d only thought he’d said out loud.

“That’s what we’ve nicknamed the prototype computer. Short for Emerald. The company’s name is Emerald Computers.”

Well, that made sense, seeing where he was from, she thought. “Good thing to know.” She looked around uncertainly at the wall-to-wall mess. “Um, where are we going to be staying?”

“We?”

Lowering her eyes, Kitt indicated the baby in her arms. “Shawna and I.” She was almost afraid to venture out of the living room into the hall. “There is something beyond this, isn’t there?”

Caught up in his explanation about his work, he’d almost forgotten why she was here. There were times when his mind felt as disorganized as his apartment was. “Oh, right, sure. This way.”

Careful to circumvent the three-foot-high stack of technical books that were doing a shaky imitation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the center of the room, O’Rourke led the way to the rear of the apartment. He brought them to a room that looked as if it was little bigger than an expanded broom closet. A very crowded expanded broom closet, now that he looked at it through her eyes.

“There’s no bed in it now,” he apologized. “But I can get one. Right now I’ve made it into my den.”

She wouldn’t have known what to call it herself, other than a disaster. Trying not to jostle Shawna, she peered cautiously into the room. “How can you tell?”

He laughed under his breath. He had that coming, too. “Housekeeping was never my long suit.”

She looked at him. “I don’t think I would have had trouble guessing that one.”

O’Rourke made a hasty reassessment, then mentally retraced his steps and pointed to the room opposite the den. “Maybe for the time being, you’d better stay in the bedroom.”

She looked at him suspiciously, still not a hundred percent convinced that she had made the right move, agreeing to come here, much less to marry him. Sylvia’s studio apartment was looking better and better to her all the time. Sylvia knew where to find the trash can. “Where will you be sleeping?”

“On the sofa.” He nodded in the general direction. “In the living room.”

She tried to remember actually seeing one. “There was a sofa out there?”

“It’s not as bad as all that,” he protested, then paused. “All right, I suppose it is as bad as all that, but I haven’t had the time to fix things up, what with working and planning the wedding and all.”

Kitt turned around to look at him. “You’re ‘planning’ the wedding? I thought we’d just go to some justice of the peace….” She’d envisioned something that involved the three of them and two witnesses, Sylvia and whoever he decided to bring with him. This sounded as if it had the potential for a great deal more.

As O’Rourke moved into the room, he began to clear things away. It was a task steeped in futility. As one heap became smaller, another grew larger. “It’ll look better if it’s done in a church, with friends looking on.” He tossed several shirts into a corner, out of the way for the time being. “Speaking of which, have you got any friends you’ll be wanting to invite?”

She and Jeffrey had moved here a little more than a year ago from San Francisco. She hadn’t had time to make many friends other than Sylvia. Jeffrey and her career had taken up a great deal of her time.

Fat lot of good that had done her, she thought.

Kitt fought back the wave of self-pity that threatened to overcome her. If she could just keep ahead of it every time it reared its head, eventually she would outlast it, she promised herself. The trick was to keep tap dancing as fast as she could.

And to remember never to trust another man as long as she lived.

“Just a few,” she told him. Shawna stirred, but to Kitt’s relief, the infant went on sleeping. Kitt began to rock slightly as she looked around the room again. “We’re going to need a crib.”

He set her suitcase down in front of the pile of shirts. “You haven’t got one in your apartment?”

She shook her head. “Never got around to buying one.” The reason for it was silly, she supposed. “My mother handed down this superstition—buy things for the baby and maybe the baby—”

“Won’t come,” he finished, nodding his head as he substituted a euphemism for the final word. There was no need to explain superstitions to him. He’d grown up with them. “My mother had the same superstition. Of course, she didn’t have a chance to get rid of the baby things for years after I was born. Didn’t stop the little ones from coming.”

Moving around her, O’Rourke opened the bottom drawer of his bureau and shook out the contents onto the floor. Socks, all singular, spread out on the carpet as he went out into the hall and began to rummage through the linen closet.

Now what? She followed him out into the hall. “Um, don’t you think there’re enough things on the floor already?”

“I’ll find a place for them,” he promised, walking back into the bedroom. He ignored the pile of socks and crouched down over the drawer he’d just removed. Carefully, he spread out first two towels and then a folded sheet in it. “Right now, we need a place for the baby to sleep.”

She stared at the wooden rectangle. “The drawer?” she asked incredulously.

He glanced at Kitt over his shoulder. Obviously the woman had never had to make do. He was an expert at it.

O’Rourke rose to his feet. “According to my da, that was where I spent the first month and a half of my life until he and Ma got enough money together to buy a secondhand crib.”

It sounded like something out of a fairy tale. “You slept in the drawer?”

“Like a baby,” he quipped, taking hers from her. “All right, love,” he whispered softly to the infant, “this is your new bed, at least for tonight.” Gently, he laid Shawna down in her newly arranged bed. She looked like an angel, he thought. Rising, he stood back to admire his handiwork. Shawna continued sleeping. “She likes it.”

“I suppose it’s all right for now,” Kitt allowed guardedly. She looked toward the king-size bed that dominated the room. Like the rest of the apartment, it was littered with books, papers and discarded clothing. “You’re absolutely sure there’s a bed under there somewhere.”

He winked at her, sending a sudden, unannounced shiver shimmying down her spine. “I have it on the best authority.” And now, he thought, looking at his watch again, it was time to get going if he was going to make that conference. He began backing out. “I’ve had your car brought around. It’s parked in guest parking. There’s a box of diapers there,” he pointed vaguely to an opposite corner of the room. “And here’s an extra set of keys to the apartment.” He’d almost forgotten to give them to her. “Take-out numbers are posted above the phone in the kitchen. Order anything you want. You’ll find money in the drawer next to the knives. I have to go.”

He was leaving her? And who kept money in a kitchen drawer with the utensils? “Go? Go where?” she asked as she followed him out of the room.

“Back to work.”

Hurrying to the front door, he stopped just as he opened it. He realized that it probably seemed as if he was abandoning her, but he had little choice. The call was going to be coming in soon and he had to be there to take it. Doubling back, he squeezed her arm awkwardly.

“Get some rest,” he instructed gruffly. “And make yourself at home.”

And then he was gone.

“Sure,” she said, addressing her words to the closed door. “If home was a pigsty.”

Turning slowly around to face the turmoil that surrounded her, she sighed deeply. Alice in Disasterland. At least he’d had the presence of mind to bring her car here.

Still, despite the car and the diapers, she was far from comforted. “Oh, God, Kitt, what have you gone and gotten yourself into?”

The first thing that occurred to O’Rourke after he’d let himself in late that night was that somehow, his key had fit into the wrong lock.

He was in the wrong apartment. He had to be.

What other explanation was there? There was no pile of shirts stacked by the door, waiting for an opportune moment to be carried off to the laundry room at the other end of the complex. No overturned laundry basket he meant to pick up in the corner. The coffee table was out and in plain sight rather than lost beneath an ocean of newspapers and technical journals.

Like a man in a trance, O’Rourke took a few steps forward, pocketing his key again.

The sofa was visible as well, without a single textbook sinking into any of its cushions. And as for the carpet, it was completely unmarred by anything except furniture.

It was as if a tornado had gone through the room and rather than leave debris in its path, had neatly sucked out everything that didn’t ordinarily belong in a living room.

Had to be the wrong apartment.

He looked around again. No, this was his apartment all right. He recognized the furniture.

Awed, O’Rourke made his way into the darkened room slowly, then stopped to slant a glance toward the kitchen. He’d left it looking like a near-survivor in a three-day, all-male chili cook-off competition. Every dish, pot and utensil he owned had been out, either in the sink or on the counter and table, remnants of meals past evident somewhere on their surface.

They were all gone, every last one of them. Washed, dried and put away from the looks of it when he explored the interior of kitchen cabinets he’d long since left empty. They were full now. Full and organized.

No pungent order of decaying plant and/or animal life met his nose when he opened the refrigerator. It was also gleaming in its emptiness. If she’d ordered out, there was no telltale evidence of it, no drooping, half-sealed container wilting on one of the shelves the way there had been when he’d left this morning.

O’Rourke shook his head in complete amazement.

As he made his way to the bathroom, nothing got in his way on the floor, blocking progress. Whatever he’d left on the floor had been picked up and disposed of in some manner or other. Even the shower looked clean.

Peeking into the room he had offered her to begin with, O’Rourke saw that it once again looked like a den. Books were back on the shelves, even the ones from the living room. Papers were neatly stacked on the desk and the small daybed against the wall was not only visible, it was accessible.

He’d forgotten all about that, losing it in the clutter of books, papers and magazines. He had somewhere to sleep now, other than the sofa.

He felt like a visitor to a foreign land. Because he was bone-tired, he lay down on the daybed, promising himself that he was only going to close his eyes for a minute.

The crying woke him.

It crept into his dreams, pushing them apart until they disappeared without a trace. High-pitched crying, the kind that belonged to a newborn just testing its lungs and power.

“Deirdre?” he murmured. No, Deirdre wasn’t a baby anymore, he thought thickly. Deirdre was eighteen now. “Beth?” he mumbled, sitting up.

The moment he did, the cobwebs evaporated from his brain and he remembered. His sisters and brothers were a continent and an ocean away. The crying was coming from his bedroom.

Shawna.

He was on his feet, stumbling for the doorway before he was completely awake. That he wasn’t stubbing his toes on various objects in his path registered vaguely as he found his way to his bedroom.

He almost entered before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to. It wasn’t his room now, it belonged to Kitt and they had an agreement.

Feeling slightly frustrated at being kept out of his own bedroom, O’Rourke leaned against the door so his voice would carry without making it seem as if he was shouting at her.

“Kitt, it’s O’Rourke. Is everything all right in there?”

The next thing he knew, the door was opening and he found himself face-to-face with Kitt, her hair mussed and wild about her shoulders, her eyes ever so slightly puffy from lack of sleep. The robe she had on was partially undone at the waist and a light blue nightgown was peeking out, teasing his attention.

He caught himself thinking he’d never seen anything lovelier in his life before he hastily banished the thought. If he started letting himself go that route, this arrangement between the two of them was never going to work. In return for her help, he’d offered Kitt shelter, not lechery, and he might have his faults, but lying wasn’t one of them. He was an honorable man and he stuck to his word. A bargain was a bargain. Even if it might not be an easy one.

She’d heard him come in earlier and wondered if he’d knock on her door before going to bed. She never slept well in a new place, and even if she had been so inclined, a certain six-pound, three-ouce princess wasn’t about to let her get more than a few minutes of sleep at a time. It felt as if she’d been up all night and she probably looked it, Kitt thought, though she was sure it didn’t matter to the man standing in the doorway.

“She’s just wet,” Kitt told him. She turned around and led the way back to the bed, the baby in her arms. “I never realized babies leaked so much.”

He grinned, dragging one hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes.

“That they do, love,” he assured her. “You no sooner fill up one end than the other end starts making room for more.”

Kitt put Shawna down on the bed and began changing her. O’Rourke looked around the room. It was the same in here as it had been throughout the rest of the house. He hardly recognized it. Everything was so neat, it looked as if it was waiting for a photographer to come and immortalize it on film.

He looked in Kitt’s direction, about to comment on the transformation, but his words dried up in his mouth. She was bending over the baby, completely oblivious to the fact that he had a very clear, very tantalizing view of her breasts. It took him a moment before he finally found his tongue.

“What did you do to the place?”

She spared him a glance before putting the finishing touches on Shawna’s tiny diaper. She thought it odd that he was staring at the opposite wall.

“I made it livable. I had some time on my hands,” she told him, quickly disposing of the soggy diaper by throwing it into a wastebasket he realized had once been in the bathroom.

O’Rourke cleared his throat, feeling suddenly awkward. “I thought you were supposed to rest while the baby was sleeping.”

It hadn’t quite worked out that way. Unable to stand the mess, she’d started to pick up just a few things. One thing had led to another until she’d finally cleaned up the entire apartment. Even with all that work behind her, she still hadn’t been able to sleep.

She shrugged. “I got restless. I’m not much good at sitting around.”

“Neither am I, but I never felt the urge to clean anything.” Redirecting his attention to the work she’d accomplished rather than to the woman herself, he found himself relaxing again. “You’re a miracle worker, woman. It didn’t look this good the day I moved in.”

“I can well believe that.” She looked up to find him staring at her, waiting for an explanation to go along with her comment. “I found things growing in the refrigerator that looked as if it had been brought by the dinosaurs before the Ice Age. Don’t you ever clean out the refrigerator?”

“I thought you did that when you ate everything that was in it,” he said wryly.

His voice drifted away as he turned toward the bureau. When he’d left, it was cluttered with clothes and a copy of the program for the hardware he was trying to complete. Those had disappeared, replaced with a collection of small framed photographs positioned equidistant from one another.

Kitt saw what had taken away his attention and caught her lower lip between her teeth. Had she overstepped her bounds in her zeal to make the place less likely to attract the attention of the health department?

“I found those under the bed when I was vacuuming. I thought you might like them better if they were on the bureau.”

He’d wondered where the photographs had gotten to. Picking up the one of his youngest sister, Beth, O’Rourke paused for a second before replacing it and looking back at Kitt.

“Thanks, I’ve been meaning to do that,” he mumbled. Expressing gratitude always put him on shaky grounds.

She nodded. “I figured as much. Interesting storage place,” she couldn’t resist adding. “Oh, by the way, if you’re looking for your clothes in the morning, you’ll find them either in the bureau or in the closet. I found your filing system of leaving them all over the apartment too complicated to remember once I washed them.”

His mouth fell open. That wasn’t in the bargain, either. “You washed them?”

She nodded, picking up the baby and resting her against her shoulder. “It was either that, or bury them by the roadside.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “You’ve got a sharp tongue on you, Kitt-with-two-t’s. My mother would have liked you.”

The words hung in the air long after he had retreated back to the den to claim the last few hours of sleep before he had to go back to the office.

Kit wasn’t quite sure what to make of them. Or of him.

Or the very odd feeling that was moving around inside her, trying to find a resting place for itself.

Chapter Seven

Kitt pushed the tiny bouquet of baby carnations strapped to Shawna’s wrist back, away from her face. In protest, Shawna squirmed against her chest, mewling a protest.

Probably because her heart was hammering so loud, it was frightening the baby, Kitt thought. One arm around her daughter, she was holding her own bouquet of carnations with the other. Both had been a gift from O’Rourke. He’d taken care of everything, right down to purchasing the wedding outfit for her and, incredibly enough, a similar one for Shawna. He’d claimed not to know what he was doing, but for a man supposedly without a clue, he was doing brilliantly well.

Kitt’s heart pounded harder as, listening to the priest, she heard him coming to the home stretch. The all-important words that, business arrangement or not, would bind her to this tall, dark, handsome stranger at her side.

She hadn’t thought she’d be nervous. After all, this was just supposed to be a business arrangement, nothing more. Something circumstances had forced her into for the sake of her own self-respect.

Yes, she was an aerospace reliability engineer, and yes, she would be working again and soon, but the fact of it was that she was still a female aerospace reliability engineer and a new mother to boot. Because of government rules and regulations, employers pretended that all things were equal, but in reality, on an unspoken level, they weren’t. People were still people, and in the eyes of those who counted, because of her age, sex and circumstances, she could very well be a liability at the present time. That made getting a job in her field not impossible, but not as easy as falling off a log, either.

And she needed to fall off that log, quickly, because she only had the money that had been in her purse—Jeffrey hadn’t left her any. Not a single, worn-out thin dime.

So here she was, standing at the altar of a perfectly lovely church in Bedford, with a cherubic-looking man in clerical robes reading words aloud she had dearly hoped to hear in earnest, rather than because it was all part of a complex charade.

As they came to the part where they exchanged their vows and their rings, Kitt glanced at the man standing beside her. Despite her butterflies, or maybe because of them, she couldn’t help thinking that O’Rourke cleaned up nicely. He was wearing a black tuxedo and looked, for all the world, just like a beautiful bridegroom.

Her bridegroom.

Kitt almost laughed then, just as O’Rourke was saying that he took her for his lawful wedded wife. Too bad this was all make-believe. Too bad the words weren’t real.

“And do you, Katherine Ann Dawson, take this man…”

Don’t go there, don’t even think it, she warned herself. She couldn’t think of this as anything but what it was, an unorthodox sort of employment. She was going to have absolutely no feelings for this man, other than for a sense of loyalty. And gratitude, she added, because he had given her a way to save face.

“…Shawn Michael O’Rourke as your…”

Not altruistically, she conceded, because she was, after all, helping him, but still the arrangement was mutually beneficial to them both. If he was very easy on the eye, that had absolutely no bearing on the situation whatsoever.

“…lawfully wedded husband?”

She realized the priest, as well as everyone else, was waiting for her to give an answer.

“I do.” The words almost stuck in her throat.

A wife. Who would have ever thought it? O’Rourke almost shook his head in the wrong place, as the priest continued to say the words that would eventually tie them to each other in the sight of God and the INS.

A wife, he marveled again. He never thought he’d be at this place in his life at this time. Granted, he’d been in love with Susan and maybe they would have gone to the altar eventually, but he’d never really been a man who was out for a wife and family. He was far too busy for a wife, as Susan had pointed out, and God knew he had already had family enough to spare.

“Repeat after me,” the priest instructed O’Rourke. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

He took a deep breath, taking the ring that Simon held out to him. “With this ring…”

Funny how life pulls strings to make things happen. He raised his eyes from the ring he was slipping onto Kitt’s finger to her face. For a moment, everything seemed to freeze. Were those tears in the woman’s eyes? Women cried at the strangest times. You’d think she was actually getting married.

“…I thee wed…”

This wasn’t real, he reminded himself. Legal, but not real. The woman beside him was his business partner, his associate, nothing more. He was going to have to think of her in the same light he thought of Simon.

Simon would never look this good in the outfit she was wearing. He’d picked it out because it seemed practical. That wasn’t exactly the way he would have described it once he saw it on her. The pearl-white, street-length, two-piece suit adhered nicely to her body, tempting his eye with just a hint of cleavage. She’d woven some of the baby’s breath from her bouquet into her hair. It made her look a little like a wood nymph.

A wood nymph with a baby in her arms. His little namesake was getting a front-row seat to her mother’s marriage to the man who was going to give her a legal last name. It had already been entered on the birth certificate, after a long debate on Kitt’s part.

Shawna O’Rourke. It had a nice ring to it, he thought.

So did Kitt O’Rourke.

Don’t go there, he warned himself. It was nothing more than a merger for the sheer purpose of keeping him in this country for the next year. One more year would be more than enough time to get Emerald Computers on its feet and turning a healthy profit. After that, all their fortunes would be made, he was certain of it. The concept was too good to fail. And so was he.

He slanted a glance at Kitt. He hadn’t imagined it. There were still tears in her eyes.

All their fortunes, he underscored, because he aimed to take care of her, too, for giving him this opportunity. He had always made it a point never to forget a good turn.

His heart suddenly racing, O’Rourke slid the ring all the way down her finger. It seemed to gleam at him in its new place.

“Psst, look this way,” Jeremy Lathom hissed at them, waving his hand to get their attention and have them look in his direction.

Jeremy, his video specialist, was manning a camcorder. For good measure, O’Rourke thought to have the wedding videotaped in case there were any questions later on. He wanted everything on the up-and-up, so that there was no room for future snags or loopholes. He had no intentions of being tripped up. A risk-taker in his early years, he’d learned that “better safe than sorry” had a firm place in his life.

Folding his hands beatifically before him, the priest looked out at the people sitting in the pews. “If there is any among you who would object to this union between Shawn Michael and Katherine, speak now or forever hold your piece.”

Kitt slanted a glance to her left, praying Sylvia wouldn’t suddenly be struck with an overwhelming qualm of conscience and feel compelled to raise an objection. The seconds ticked by. Sylvia remained silent. Kitt released the breath she was holding.

“Then by the power vested in me by the state of California and in the sight of Almighty God, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” The jovial-looking priest waited a bit for nature to take its course. When neither nature nor the couple before him did, he stepped forward again and urged, “You may kiss the bride,” in something louder than a stage whisper.

Kiss. Kitt felt herself stiffening. She’d forgotten about that part. For the sake of the video, she knew she couldn’t protest or demur.

Okay, here goes.

Dutifully, she handed Shawna to Sylvia and then turned to the man who was now for all intents and purposes her husband. She raised her mouth to his, not really knowing what to expect, hoping she wouldn’t suddenly burst into tears because she was suddenly feeling strangely emotional and somehow very cheated.

O’Rourke placed a hand on either of her shoulders and lowered his mouth to hers, determined to make this look like an authentic love match for anyone watching the videotape.

What happened was that he forgot about the fine line between real and make-believe, and as he endeavored to make the kiss seem real, it became real. So real that he discovered it captured him squarely in its grip and held him fast.

A sweetness was released within his veins, a sweetness coupled with a rush that sent his head spinning and had him questioning his own hold on reality, which admittedly at this moment was none too firm.

He lingered over her lips, trying to get his bearings. As if they belonged to someone else, he felt his hands tightening ever so slightly on her shoulders, even as his own body tightened like the string of an archery bow.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. The refrain echoed in her head like an endlessly looped tape, destined to go on forever.

What had she gotten herself into? What was happening to her? Where had her knees gotten to? The second O’Rourke had started kissing her, her knees had suddenly numbered themselves among the missing and everything inside of her had gone utterly hay-wire. Was this part of the postpartum experience, too? Was that the reason why the floor was suddenly the ceiling and the ceiling the floor?

Though she fought to pull everything back into focus, it seemed to have inverted on her, throwing her into complete disorientation. Had his hands not been on her shoulders, holding her up, Kitt was certain that she probably would have discovered herself sitting unceremoniously on the church floor.

Still and all, it was delicious for all its disorienting powers. She felt herself leaning into the kiss, holding on to it just a beat longer.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard someone clearing their throat.

“You may now stop kissing the bride,” the priest chuckled, then pretended to fan himself with the white, gilt-edged Bible he was holding. “I’m not sure if as a man of the cloth I’m supposed to be allowed to witness such displays of affection firsthand.” Tucking the Bible under one arm, he moved forward and took each of them by the hand. He beamed at them as he held their hands for a second. “I have a very good feeling about this.” And then he released their hands. “Go, be happy.”

Kitt wasn’t sure when she had felt so confused and so guilty all at one time, in her life.

The scent of cologne subtly seeped into her senses. There was something about the way he was holding her as they danced that telegraphed itself through her entire consciousness, making every fiber of her body aware of O’Rourke.

Aware of them together.

It wasn’t as if he was holding her too close. He was being a complete gentleman about it.

And yet…

And yet there was this nervousness dancing along with her, claiming her as its partner. It was their first dance together as husband and wife. That was the way the leader of the small band had announced it. Another tradition she’d hoped to meet under different circumstances.

Desperate for conversation, for distraction, she grabbed on to the first thing she could think of. “This is a very nice restaurant.”

Lame, Kitt, lame.

O’Rourke nodded, trying very hard not to notice the way the woman in his arms felt, leaning into his body. As if she belonged there. Which was an absolutely absurd thought, one he’d attribute to too much beer or wine—except that, beyond the few sips he’d had in acknowledgment of Simon’s toast to them, he hadn’t had any.

“It belongs to Simon’s third cousin on his mother’s side. Simon reserved the room. It’s his wedding present to us.” He hadn’t been able to talk Simon out of it, despite the fact that they both knew it wasn’t a real marriage. Simon’s argument had been that if he was deported, then they would all be out of work, including him. Simon had maintained it was a small-enough investment to make against the future.

Relative or not, Kitt figured it couldn’t have been cheap to have this room reserved for the reception. “Very generous of him. Did Simon find the band, too?” She nodded toward the trio playing on the far side of the room.

O’Rourke nodded, glancing at the musicians. “Another cousin, I think.”

Kitt laughed. She felt a little giddy despite the fact that the only thing she’d had to drink, because she was nursing, was ginger ale when Simon had made his toast. “Lucky thing Simon has such a big family.”

She’d always wanted a big family. Now she was down to just a brother with wanderlust. The last she’d heard, he was in Oregon, but that was five months ago.

And she had the baby, of course. “If it’d been up to my connections, the reception would have been kept at McDonald’s with some old man playing songs on the kazoo.”

The mention of the children’s instrument made O’Rourke smile. “Better than on a comb.”

“On a comb?”

“Sure.” He looked at her and realized she didn’t know what he was talking about. He sincerely doubted that the makeshift musical “instrument” was something restricted to his part of the world. “Haven’t you ever done that, hummed something on a comb with a bit of tissue paper draped over it? It sounds a bit like a kazoo, actually.”

Kitt shook her head, amused. Since O’Rourke had mentioned it with such feeling, she assumed he’d played the thing himself. Try as she might, she couldn’t visualize that.

“I’m afraid my musical experience is limited to playing the radio.”

For a second, in his mind’s eye he was back home again, surrounded by siblings he’d always claimed were annoying, siblings he loved dearly.

“I used to play songs for my sisters and brothers on the comb to keep them entertained.”

He thought of the years they all did without, and how that had finally broken his father. In his own way, he’d tried his best to help. His best hadn’t been nearly good enough.

But it had to be now, he resolved.

He found himself looking down into Kitt’s eyes and struggling to keep track of what he was saying. “There wasn’t much money for things like entertainment when we were very young.”

A comb and tissue paper. The man knew how to make do. A hint of admiration nudged itself forward. “You sound like a very resourceful person.”

He’d never done well with compliments. They made him self-conscious. Looking away, he shrugged. “You do what you have to.”

Which included marrying her. The next moment she wondered where the thought, draped as it was in sadness, had come from. Why should there be sadness? Had to be hormones, she decided. When were they finally going to level off and leave her a sane person?

Sylvia came up behind them, laying a hand on Kitt’s shoulder. “Hate to break this up,” she interjected, nodding at O’Rourke, “but it looks as if someone’s hungry.”

His lips curved slightly. “Help yourself to anything on the buffet, Sylvia.”

“I mean the baby.”

O’Rourke flashed a grin so quickly, it was gone almost before it registered. “I know that.” Releasing Kitt, he stepped back.

“You know,” Sylvia mused, looking after O’Rourke as he walked across the floor to a cluster of people. “With a little bit of work, he might not be half bad.”

Kitt took her daughter from her friend. “No one’s going to be working on him, Sylvia, so stop thinking what you’re thinking right now.”

Sylvia was the soul of innocence. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

Though she had never come right out and said so to her, Sylvia had never cared for Jeffrey. Kitt could see that O’Rourke was beginning to fare far better in her friend’s eyes.

“Because I know you.” Kitt turned her attention to more important things. She chucked Shawna under the chin and the infant ceased fussing for a moment. Kitt hoped there was a chair in the ladies’ room. “C’mon, sweetie, time to fill you up again.”

“It was a lovely reception.” Kitt’s voice sounded a little hollow to her ears as they walked into O’Rourke’s apartment.

Their apartment now, she corrected.

The door closed behind her with a finality that echoed in her head.

It was different somehow, different coming here tonight than it had been all the other times these last few days, despite the fact that O’Rourke brought over all the things Jeffrey hadn’t taken from her apartment so she could feel more at home here. Different from even the first time when she had walked into the living pigsty and shock had greeted her, intensifying with every second that passed and every new place she looked.

She couldn’t put her finger on why, but it definitely felt different to her.

Just nerves, she told herself. After all, she was the man’s wife in the legal sense.

What if he…?

Without meaning to, she drew her breath in and held it.

O’Rourke saw the look Kitt slanted toward him. Felt the tension that vibrated around her like some large, vaporous cloud. It mystified him and then he realized what was going through her head.

She was afraid.

Of him?

The thought made him angry and he felt insulted that Kitt would actually believe he would try something with her.

What kind of a man did she think he was?

Granted, that kiss in the church had all but scorched the socks right off his feet, but that was no reason for her to think that he—

Had she felt something then, too? Was it something that not only he had experienced, but she had as well? Was that it? Was she afraid now that he would press his advantage?

The shock of the idea that she might have felt something made him let the anger go.

He took a breath himself before answering. “I’ve been to better,” he acknowledged. “Jimmy Allen had a wedding reception the Sunday before I left Ireland that went on for three days.”

“Three days?” she echoed. She thought of the bride and groom. “Weren’t they tired? Didn’t they want to…?”

Kitt stopped abruptly, realizing that she had let her tongue get ahead of her brain again. She didn’t want to be giving him any ideas.

If he hadn’t known where she was going with this to begin with, the vivid blush on her cheeks would have told him. “They slipped off to their honeymoon around midnight of the first day. The rest of us just carried on in their honor.” The reception had been in Jimmy’s father’s house. A widower, the man had more than welcomed the company. “Wasn’t a sober man left standing in County Cork by the time it was over.”

Both of her parents had been teetotalers, and if her brother drank, she didn’t know about it. The concept of getting pleasantly loaded was completely foreign to her. “Is that what you consider a good time?”

He could tell by the innocent query in her voice that she was completely unacquainted with spirits. He didn’t really drink anymore, but he didn’t want any lectures, either. Would she be the kind to lecture? he wondered, looking at her.

He found himself getting trapped in her eyes. “It has its place. But it doesn’t compare to being with the right woman.” With effort, he drew his attention away. “Or so they tell me.”

He’d aroused her curiosity and she forgot about being tired. “There’s never been a right woman for you?”

He didn’t feel like talking about Susan. That was something that happened long ago and far away. “I never went looking.”

Neither had she. She thought of Jeffrey. They’d literally bumped into each other running for shelter from a sudden shower and winding up in the same spot. “Sometimes you don’t have to look. Sometimes you just get found.”

He wondered about the man who had walked out on her. It wasn’t his place to ask.

“Never been found, either. Listen, I know it’s late and you’re tired.” Shawna was beginning to stir in her arms. She’d slept through a great deal of the reception—storing up energy, no doubt. “If you’d like, I can take the little one for the night, let you get some sleep.”

He’d made the suggestion gruffly, but she appreciated the gesture nonetheless. “Aren’t you going in to work tomorrow?”

He shrugged carelessly, slipping off the tuxedo jacket and undoing the tie. “Yes, but that doesn’t matter. Getting up for the baby doesn’t bother me.” He saw her hesitating. Was it that she didn’t trust him, or didn’t want to impose? “It’s not like I haven’t done it before.”

She slid out of her shoes and instantly became four inches shorter. “I’m not sure what to make of you, Shawn Michael.”

Only his mother had called him that. His siblings had used just the first name. “The name’s O’Rourke, if you don’t mind,” he corrected her. “And there’s no reason to try to make anything of me at all.” He spread his arms out for her. “What you see is what you get. I’m a simple sort of man.”

Simple, huh? She wasn’t all that convinced. She began walking toward her bedroom. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll just keep her for the night.”

He shrugged, turning away. “Suit yourself.”

No, she thought, she didn’t know what to make of him at all. Maybe he was right, maybe she shouldn’t even try. In any event, she was too tired to analyze anything tonight.

With a shrug, Kitt took her daughter to their room and closed the door.

Chapter Eight

On his way out to the office, O’Rourke paused to hand Kitt a sheet of paper he’d agonized over in the wee hours of the night when sleep had decided to remain elusive, finding no place for itself in a head filled with other thoughts. Thoughts that were increasingly making space for a diminutive blond-haired woman.

It had been five days since their wedding, five days that had found them settling into a routine of sorts. He hadn’t really known what to expect, maybe that nothing would actually change since they weren’t really married in each other’s eyes.

But there had been changes. Subtle changes. There was a different feeling when he came home at night, no matter how late. A feeling of sharing. It wasn’t his home any longer, there were two other people in it now, albeit that one of them was a tiny people, but that still didn’t change the fact that he was no longer alone.

But it wasn’t really an awkward sharing of space, even though he was by and large a private man when it came to his personal life. And, after all, for most of his life, he’d shared space with more than a couple of other bodies. There’d been his brothers and sisters. The six of them had shared one house, bursting to the seams. Granted, as the oldest, he’d had his own bedroom once his mother had passed on.

That hadn’t changed, either, he thought with a smile creeping over his lips. He still had his own room.

But this time he felt restless about it.

Perfectly natural itch, he supposed, for a man being in the same apartment with an attractive woman. It was just that he’d always been too busy to notice attractiveness, or varying degrees thereof.

He wasn’t too busy lately.

Especially since the attractive woman knew how to cook. That had been something else he hadn’t expected. Kitt had had meals waiting for him. He wasn’t accustomed to that any longer, not since he’d left Ireland.

Shifting Shawna to her other side, Kitt took the sheet of paper O’Rourke held out to her, curiosity nudging itself forward.

He’d hardly touched his breakfast, she noted, looking over his shoulder toward the kitchen table and the single plate that sat there. She had meant to join him, but Shawna had decided to recycle her breakfast earlier than usual and she’d had to go and change a very pungent diaper before it ruined breakfast for O’Rourke.

It appeared she didn’t have to bother.

Kitt glanced at the lengthy, handwritten sheet. “What’s this?”

He rather thought that was self-evident, seeing as how he’d carefully written down the general subject and its specific match right beside it.

“Can’t you tell?” Turning the sheet around in her hand so that it faced him, O’Rourke indicated the first line, which read, “Favorite color: blue.” “It’s a list of my likes and dislikes.”

Her brows drew together. “And I’m getting this because…?”

She was going to make him late. Bad enough he’d gotten little sleep last night, letting his mind wander to places it shouldn’t and then suffering the consequences of that wandering by finding himself miserably fully awake. “Because it’s what you should know about me if the INS agent should happen to ask,” he told her, his voice short.

Someone had obviously gotten up on the wrong side of the daybed, she thought. She looked up from the sheet. “Why don’t you just tell me?”

He didn’t see the point. Words could be forgotten. Hadn’t Susan forgotten the words he’d once said to her, in the shadow of the Forever Tree, where people had come since forever to pledge their hearts? Wait for me, Susan. I’m going to make us a wonderful life. “This way’s more efficient.”

She glanced at the list. It appeared rather comprehensive. And cold.

“More impersonal, if you ask me.” If that was the way he wanted it… With a sigh, she folded it with one hand, then slipped it into the front pocket of her jeans. “Does this mean you want me to write a list, too?”

About to leave, he stopped in his tracks. “Why?”

The man had tunnel vision, Kitt thought, amused. And yet, there was almost something appealing about the way he thought of himself as the problem….

Don’t go there, she warned herself. Tender feelings weren’t called for here. Hadn’t tender feelings caused her to overlook so many warning signs about Jeffrey? This is just a business arrangement, think like a businesswoman.

“Well, won’t this agent be asking you things about me as well? Marriage is a two-way street, you know,” she added for good measure.

Damn, but she was right. He hated overlooking things. “I forgot about that.”

“What?” Kitt cocked her head, looking at him. “That marriage is a two-way street, or that you’re supposed to know something about me?”

Amusement was curving her lips. It took him a second before he could draw his eyes away and get his mind back on the subject.

“The latter.” He thought of his parents’ life together. The untroubled moments were precious few and far between. “Marriage isn’t a two-way street, it’s a superhighway, with things coming at you from all sides when you least expect them.”

There was bitterness in his voice. Just how much did she know about this man she had agreed to lie for? “Are you sure you weren’t married before?”

“No, just a witness.” He crossed to the door. By now he should have been in his car, halfway to work. “Okay, make up a list.”

A witness. She thought that an odd thing to say, but she could tell that questioning him wasn’t going to shed any further light on the subject, at least not now.

Holding Shawna, she followed him to the door. “I’d rather tell you.”

It was two days before they had to meet with the INS agent. “I’m not sure when I can find the time to talk,” he told Kitt honestly, pausing to lightly run his hand over the baby’s head. She cooed in response. “If you give me a list, I can memorize it in my spare moments.”

Kitt’s eyes held his for a split second. “You sound like you’re cramming for an exam.”

“I am.”

The next moment, O’Rourke was gone, leaving her to sigh, shake her head and have the rest of her breakfast alone.

She waited up for him. Instead of seven, the hour he usually seemed to come home, O’Rourke didn’t come in until half past ten. She’d begun to worry about him, then laughed herself out of it. If she didn’t know better, she would have said she was beginning to behave like a real wife. She was only concerned the way one friend was concerned about another, she insisted, using Shawna as a sounding board.

“No reason to think anything else, right, love?”

It had hit her a second later that she’d used the same term of endearment for her daughter that O’Rourke did. She didn’t know if that was a bad sign or a good one.

The moment he walked in through the door that night, she was at his side. She presented her own list of likes and dislikes to him. His had been committed to memory easily enough. She’d done it during the space of one of Shawna’s many mininaps.

“They’re going to want to know something more, you know. The INS people,” she added when he looked at her blankly.

He’d thought that she’d be in bed by now. Hoped it really. Something had been riding him all day and he wasn’t sure what it was. He’d thought that it was the upcoming INS meeting, but in the center of his being, where he’d always been honest with himself, he knew that it wasn’t. He just didn’t want to speculate as to what it was.

But an ounce of prevention…

The ounce hadn’t been taken. She’d remained up, lying in wait for him. He tossed his jacket toward the coatrack. It missed. “Such as?”

Seeing that he was about to go into the living room, she caught his sleeve and tugged in the direction of the kitchen. His dinner was being kept warm in the oven. Holding him by one sleeve, she stooped to pick up the jacket. She saw a flash of guilt cross his face and took it as a hopeful sign.

“Such as how we met, how long we were together before we got married.” Picking up two pot holders, Kitt opened the oven and took out the plate, putting it on the table at the place she’d left set for him. “Anything unusual in our relationship,” she continued, looking at him. “You know, things that make people people.”

A whimsical look had entered her eyes and he found himself being captivated by it. “I guess this is called getting our stories straight.”

Pouring herself a cup of coffee, she took a seat opposite him at the table. “Something like that.”

Pot roast, he realized. She’d made pot roast. With tiny potatoes and carrots around it. His favorite. She’d read the list, all right.

He had trouble keeping the smile from finding his lips. “All right, how did we meet?”

She laced both hands around her mug. “We were both running for the same awning during a sudden cloudburst and we bumped into each other.” Her eyes met his. “You caught me and we’ve been together ever since.”

The pot roast was excellent. He waited until the meat all but melted on his tongue before commenting. “Very nice. Did you just think of that?”

“No.” She looked down into the mug, telling herself it was foolish to dwell on the past except for what it could teach her about the future: Not to trust her heart. “It’s how Jeffrey and I met.” Her mouth curved in a self-deprecating smile. “All except the last part.”

She was hurting. It didn’t take an expert to see that. O’Rourke’s hand tightened around his fork. He had no idea where the protective feeling came from. Probably something left over from the way he felt about his sisters, he reasoned. The excuse didn’t quite ring true, but he ignored that.

“Ask me, the lout doesn’t deserve you.”

The reaction, coming from nowhere, had her smiling. “And why’s that?”

His scowl was almost frightening. It was something she knew men probably didn’t want to find themselves on the receiving end of. “Anyone who can run out on a pregnant woman like that, taking her things and all, should be filleted in the middle of town square.”

From some distant place, a warmth began to creep forward, curling itself around her heart. “We don’t have a town square in Bedford, but I like the rest of it.” She finished her coffee, then set her mug down. “You always been a white knight?”

He laughed shortly. “My mother used to call me a blackguard.”

But it had been said with affection, Kitt decided. If she’d learned nothing else about the man in the last few days, it was that he was very family-oriented. One of the few conversations they’d had had been about his brothers and sisters. Anyone would have heard the love in his voice when he spoke of them.

“I don’t think she meant it,” Kitt said softly.

“Neither do I.” He cleared his throat, then waved her on gruffly. “All right, let’s get on with this, shall we? What else do you want to add?”

He didn’t seem to mind her taking over. Given his gruff nature, that surprised her. Pleased, she launched into the rest of it, giving him the scenario she’d created in her head.

“All right, we’ve been together two years and you’ve been somewhat marriage-shy, but you took one look at Shawna after she was born and decided the time had come to make an honest woman of her mother.”

She’d said it exactly the way the policeman had that night Shawna was born. He laughed and there was admiration in his voice when he said, “You’re very good.”

“Thank you.” The compliment pleased her more than she’d expected it to. “It’s the creative side of me that doesn’t get used very much.”

“And why’s that?”

This was going to require more coffee. She rose to refill her cup, then realized that she didn’t want to inadvertently keep Shawna awake after the next feeding. Reluctantly, she crossed to the refrigerator and poured a glass of orange juice instead, consoling herself that at least it was healthy for the baby if not entirely pleasurable for her.

“Reliability aerospace engineers don’t get to be creative in the general sense of the word,” she told him, sitting down again. She noted that he was making short work of the dinner she’d prepared. That pleased her, too. “We’re supposed to come through with worst-case scenarios and calculate the probability that they’ll happen.”

He studied her for a moment. “Doesn’t sound like something you’d be doing.”

She’d had her sights set on another branch of engineering, but she’d taken the work as it came up. A woman without funds, with student debts to pay off, couldn’t afford to be overly choosy.

“I didn’t start out that way, just something that seemed to develop.”

“Why don’t you do something different if you don’t like what you’re doing now?” He thought of the huge risk he’d taken. His had been leaving a mining town and the place that had been waiting for him once he’d finished high school. But he had other plans, plans that had required tightening his belt even more and asking for sacrifices of the others. Plans that had included college and a dream. “Especially since you’re out of work.” It seemed the perfect time to him for her to be choosy.

She shrugged. Easier said than done. The words on her résumé locked her into a specific area. And marriage charade or not, she didn’t want to be dependent on O’Rourke for her livelihood. She wanted to find something as soon as she could leave Shawna with a sitter. “Once you’re in a niche—”

“You break out,” he told her firmly. She looked at him in surprise. “You try something different until you find something that works for you.”

Picking up his plate, she took it to the sink and rinsed it off. “You know, I wouldn’t have said that optimism was something I’d expect from you, either.”

“It’s not optimism. It’s practical.”

Wiping her hands as she turned from the sink, she looked at him. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

Very carefully, Kitt took the paper with his likes and dislikes on it from her pocket and wrote across the top: “Must have final word.”

Leaning over her shoulder, he read what she’d written. “Do not,” he said.

She merely smiled, her point taken.

He blew out a breath, then laughed. “This might work after all, love.”

Calls me “love” instead of using my name, she added to the list mentally.

The warmth that curled around her heart rose up another half a degree.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service office was located in a very modern-looking federal building in the heart of Orange County.

Nothing about the eight-story edifice looked intimidating, but Kitt still felt a nervous flutter in the pit of her stomach as she got out of the van two days later. O’Rourke was already out on his side, unstrapping Shawna’s car seat restraints.

He frowned as he did so. He didn’t really condone using the infant as a prop, even though he knew her very presence would instantly strengthen his case for him. There just seemed something wrong about involving someone so small in the middle of a lie. She wasn’t his daughter, as he would claim before the man doing the interview, and he wasn’t in love with her mother, although if he had the time, things could…

No, they couldn’t, he told himself firmly, taking Shawna into his arms. He closed the rear passenger door. There was no use thinking that. He hadn’t the time, or the expertise when it came down to it. He was best suited for building computers, not relationships. Hadn’t he already had enough proof of that?

“Wait.” Hurrying up the steps of the federal building beside him, Kitt was suddenly struck with a thought.

He looked at her. Had she suddenly lost her courage? Was she going to back out on him now? He’d gotten a few days’ extension, the last ever, Henry Rutherford, the agent, had told him, because O’Rourke had said his new baby was colicky, which prevented Kitt from coming in. This was the last possible day he had to plead his case. One more day and he’d be in violation of the law.

Trying not to sound irritated, O’Rourke asked, “What’s the matter?”

She was beside him in a step. “What am I supposed to call you?” He raised an eyebrow as if he didn’t follow her. “I’ve been calling you O’Rourke, but that’s not exactly what a wife would call her husband.”

The memory brought a smile to his lips. “Well, actually, that was what my mother called my father, but if you think it makes things more authentic-sounding to call me Shawn Michael, I suppose it’s all right for the interview.”

Which meant that he didn’t want her calling him that once they got home, she thought. Why that bothered her so much, she couldn’t really put her finger on. But it did. It was as if he was reinforcing a wedge that had to exist between them.

Well, why shouldn’t there be a wedge? They were strangers, weren’t they? Strictly speaking.

“Shawn Michael it is,” she agreed. “Now, if I can just keep all the other details about you straight in my mind…”

O’Rourke slipped his arm around her, guiding her up the stairs. He wasn’t sure if she was pulling his leg or not. He forced himself to remain calm. As if his entire future, not to mention the future of his brothers and sisters and all the people who’d come to depend on him and his dream, wasn’t riding on this.

“There’s not that much to remember,” he assured her calmly. “We’ll be done before you know it.”

He’d lied to her.

This wasn’t a quick session, over in a blink of an eye. It was a lengthy, prolonged one that felt as if it was to go on indefinitely. In addition, she hadn’t expected to be separated from O’Rourke the moment the interview officially began. But the agent, a tall, thin man who looked as if he would snap at the first sign of a good wind, had explained it was policy to interview them separately and then together.

It had been O’Rourke’s turn first. She’d had time to grow progressively more nervous.

When it came to be her turn, Kitt tried to read the man’s face as he asked her question after question, attempting to gauge whether or not he was satisfied with her answers. He had a face that was neither friendly nor off-putting. It was just there, entirely emotionless. Even when he looked at Shawna and asked her questions about the baby.

Everything she said was being noted and written down. To use against her? she wondered.

And then the man laid down his pen. It looked as if the session was about to come to an end.

“You seem uncomfortable, Mrs. O’Rourke,” the agent observed, closing his folder. “Is there any particular reason for that?”

Kitt began to protest, then thought better of it. She was always best when she fell back on the truth, so she decided to bluff it out rather than to deny the observation.

Slipping a pacifier into Shawna’s questing mouth, she looked at the agent. “Well actually, there is—” she read his name from the plate before him “—Mr. Rutherford. This feels a little like that police drama on television where they separate supposed suspects and interrogate them in different rooms to see if their stories match.”

There was no hint of either recognition or humor in the dark brown eyes that bore into her. “Is that what you feel like, a suspect?”

Kitt raised her chin. “No, I don’t. I do feel like a maligned person, though. Just because I chose to fall in love with a good man whose only failing was that he wasn’t fortunate enough to be born in this country, I have to be subjected to a battery of questions I wouldn’t have had to answer if I’d married, say, a recent parolee who’d been sent to prison for armed robbery of a gas station.” She realized that only part of her indignation was an act. It occurred to her that she really did feel irritated on O’Rourke’s behalf. “I just don’t think it’s fair, that’s all.”

“Life isn’t fair, Mrs. O’Rourke. The only shot we have at making it remotely fair is by adhering to rules. This meeting is about one of those rules.” The eyes behind the rimless glasses narrowed. “You do know we frown on people who enter into marriage for the sole purpose of allowing one or the other so-called spouse to remain in this country.”

“Yes,” she said tersely and with the proper amount of indignation, “I do know that.”

The INS agent didn’t appear to accept her answer at face value. “And that there are substantial penalties attached to staging such a marriage—”

The butterflies in her stomach tightened, but her expression remained unchanged. “My daughter needed her father.”

“So you say.” With a slight nod of his head, Rutherford rose from behind the desk. Then, without saying anything further to her, he stepped out of the room.

Nerves knitted themselves together into a huge, tangled ball. Holding Shawna closer to her, Kitt prayed the agent wasn’t going to get one of the U.S. marshals she saw in the building when she and O’Rourke had taken the escalator up to the second-floor INS office.

But when Rutherford returned, he was accompanied by O’Rourke rather than an officer of the law. She breathed a silent sigh of relief. O’Rourke slanted a quick look at her. There was compassion in his eyes as he placed his hand over hers and took the chair beside her.

Rutherford sat down behind his desk and looked at them, his small brown eyes regarding them in prolonged silence.

“Your answers to all the questions were identical,” he finally said. “Some might say too identical.” He paused, allowing his words to sink in. And then he permitted himself the smallest hint of a smile to grace his lips. “Off the top of my head, I can only say that I wish my wife knew as much about me as you know about your husband, Mrs. O’Rourke. I see no reason to continue ‘interrogating’ the two of you.”

Kitt cheered silently, relieved to have the ordeal finally over with. O’Rourke raised a brow, then looked at her. Kitt realized that Rutherford had picked up on the word she’d used. Was this going to jeopardize the interview?

“I didn’t mean—” she began,

But the agent raised his hand. “No, you’re quite right,” he told her primly. “This is an interrogation of sorts. No thumbscrews, but if we can make you squirm, then maybe you’ll give up the lie if there’s one to give up.” He paused again, his eyes scanning them slowly. Kitt decided that she was never going to feel at ease in the man’s presence. “But even though you have convinced me that this marriage was undertaken to give this little girl a proper home, there will be a few spot checks in the next year to make certain that everything is aboveboard.”

O’Rourke nodded. He’d expected nothing less.

“And if we discover somewhere down the line in the next year that this is a bogus marriage—”

O’Rourke picked up Kitt’s hand, noting that it felt icy, and laced his fingers through it. He brought it to his lips, kissing her knuckles while keeping his eyes on the agent. He never noticed the slight change in Kitt’s expression. “It’s not.”

“For your sakes, I hope that’s true, because quite frankly, you do look rather good together. I’ve been in this department a long time and I have rarely met a couple who looks as if they belong together as much as you two do. I suppose the baby helped create that image.” He smiled benevolently at Shawna. And then he leaned back in his chair and eyed the two of them one last time. “All right, I’ve decided to grant your petition to remain in this country, Mr. O’Rourke. Normally, if you’d come to this country with the sole intent of marrying Mrs. O’Rourke, there’d be a three-year waiting period before you could become a citizen. However, since you’ve already been in this country close to four years, that will be waived. There’s naturally some paperwork to put through, but for all intents and purposes, you may consider yourself a citizen of the United States.

“However,” he added ominously, “should you decide sometime within the next year that you are not suited for each other and petition for a divorce, you will be deported, Mr. O’Rourke. And quickly. Do I make myself clear?”

“Absolutely.” O’Rourke had no doubt that the man meant exactly what he said.

Rutherford waved them on their way, reaching for the next folder in his stack. “All right, then go and take this pretty little girl home.”

On his feet already, O’Rourke slipped his arm around Kitt’s waist. “I intend to.”

Rutherford raised his eyes to the couple. “I was referring to the baby.” But there was a hint of a smile again on the agent’s lips as he said it.

They left the room quickly.

Chapter Nine

Barely able to contain his exuberance, O’Rourke still managed to wait until he and Kitt had left not only the INS office but the federal building as well and were at his van in the parking lot before he threw his arms around Kitt. Embracing her, baby and all, he picked them both up and spun them around in a jubilant circle.

“You did it,” he cried. “You did it.” God, but he was relieved. A couple of times back there, as Rutherford had sat frowning at him, he’d been certain that the jig was up.

Setting her down again, incredibly high on triumph, O’Rourke took Kitt’s face in his hands and, with the baby still between them, kissed her soundly on the mouth.

Kissed her soundly while blotting out all the other surrounding sounds of the world around her, including her own baby’s gurgling.

Including the hammering of her own heart and the racing of her pulse. Blotting it out not as a result of any small, airborne experience, but because he was kissing her.

Her head was spinning around something fierce and her bearings were down to nonexistent.

Careful, you’ve been down this trail before, she tried to upbraid herself.

But she hadn’t. Not like this. Not with this degree of disorientation and confusion. And certainly not with a man who had no real need of her in any manner except on paper.

Jeffrey had wooed her and wanted things from her. Her understanding when his acting jobs dried up, one after another. Her loyalty when he wasn’t up to taking any job but what he deemed was his true calling, something that seemed to have few to no openings as time went on. And her money when things became progressively tighter for him. Full of promise at the outset, Jeffrey had only taken things from her.

All this man wanted from her was a lie. There was no reason to give him anything else. Certainly not any of her feelings.

But Kitt wasn’t all that sure if she had a say in the matter, even though she wanted to. Something within her melted every time he kissed her. “Melted” was a very difficult position from which to take any sort of concrete stand.

O’Rourke realized belatedly that he’d let himself get carried away, but what was the harm of it? He was supposed to be her husband, and husbands and wives kissed in parking lots sometimes. He didn’t think she could hold it against him.

As long as he didn’t hold on to it himself.

Releasing her, smiling down at the baby who looked up at him, a bubble forming on her lips, O’Rourke asked, “What do you say we celebrate, love? I can come home early tonight.”

She wished he’d stop calling her that. Love. She could get used to hearing the word. And familiarity bred belief, something that was dangerous to a woman in as vulnerable a position as she was right now. Vulnerable because she had been hurt by a man she had believed loved her. Vulnerable because she was beginning to have feelings for a man she knew she shouldn’t.

“A night on the town?” she suggested half teasingly.

A look of concern entered his eyes as he looked at Shawna. “What about the baby?”

Now, there was something Jeffrey would have never allowed to give him a second’s pause. Children weren’t obstacles to reckon with for him, they were obstacles to be ignored. “Sylvia can watch her. Sylvia’s been dying to watch her.”

Why not? What was the harm in it? The woman had certainly earned a reprieve from cooking him dinner, though he’d never once asked her to.

Still, the bottom line was that she did it and it was time she had a break.

“A night out it is, then.” He unlocked the passenger side for her, holding the rear door open while she placed Shawna in her infant seat. “Provided we’re home by midnight.”

Straightening, Kitt looked at him. He didn’t seem like a man who’d be in by midnight. More like mid-morning of the following day. “Conference call, Cinderella?”

He rounded the hood, then got in on his own side. “I was thinking more like a baby feeding.”

Kitt buckled her seat belt. “They have things called breast pumps now, they—”

Wincing, O’Rourke left the car key dangling in the ignition as he pretended to cover his ears with his hands. “Spare me.”

Kitt closed her mouth, turning to face front in her seat as he started the car. The idea that he could actually be squeamish tickled her.

“A date with your husband, what a novel idea.” Sylvia thrust a dress toward her.

Sylvia had arrived half an hour earlier than Kitt had asked her to, haunting her every step and taking it upon herself to first veto the dress she’d selected, then pick out one she felt was more appropriate for the evening ahead.

She held the dress up against Kitt, then turned her toward the wardrobe mirror. “If more couples did that, think of the marriages that could be saved.”

Kitt sighed. She didn’t need this. It was hard enough trying not to let her thoughts get the better of her and lead her astray. “None of your sarcasm, Syl.”

Sylvia dramatically placed a hand to her indignant breast.

“Who’s being sarcastic?” And then she smiled, taking the dress from Kitt and placing it on the bed so that it wouldn’t get wrinkled. “I think it’s great. A woman should get out with her husband once in a while.”

Maybe she shouldn’t be going. Maybe it would give off the wrong vibrations or start a precedent. She didn’t want him thinking that she thought…what Sylvia seemed to be thinking.

“Syl, he’s not my husband. I mean, he is but he’s—” Exasperated, she threw up her hands. “Why are you making this difficult?”

“I’m not making anything difficult,” Sylvia said innocently. “I’m just trying to make the best of it.” Pausing, she ceased her search along the closet floor for Kitt’s shoes and rose to her feet. “You know, the man has a head on his shoulders—and as for those shoulders, not to mention that butt—”

Kitt’s mouth dropped open. “You’ve been checking out his butt?”

Sylvia’s grin was positively wicked by any standards. Her eyes glinted as she looked at Kitt. “Butt, nothing, I’ve been checking out all of him and I don’t know what’s wrong with the women where he comes from, but where I come from, you throw a net over a guy like that and stake your claim before he gets away.”

She knew where Sylvia was heading with this. They’d already had this discussion, or a theme and variation of it, before. “This is an arrangement, Syl—”

Sylvia went back to her search for the black high heels. “The nice thing about the English language is that so many of its words can have such a broad meaning. ‘Arrange’ something tonight.” Triumphant, she rose again, shoes in hand. She held them up for Kitt’s perusal before setting them on the floor before the bed. “Make yourself irresistible to the guy. He’s got a future, why can’t it be your future, too?” She stopped fussing and looked at Kitt squarely. “A hundred years ago, a lot of marriages were arranged. What the people doing the arranging hoped was that love would bloom afterward. You told me that you’ve always liked historicals,” she reminded Kitt.

Sylvia would bring that up. Served her right for sharing too much. “To read, not to live.” She caught Sylvia’s arm as the other woman made a beeline for her makeup case. Enough was enough. “Look, Syl, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I have a horrible track record when it comes to men and I’d rather just sit this dance out.”

Sylvia appeared unconvinced and undeterred. “One mistake doesn’t make a record.”

But Kitt knew better. She’d lived it. Was living it. “One really bad mistake makes you gun-shy.”

Sylvia caught her by the shoulders, forcing Kitt to look at her. “I don’t want you to shoot him, I want you to get to know him. You deserve to be happy. So does Shawna.”

Very gently, Kitt drew Sylvia’s hands away from her. “Just watch her for me and I’ll be happy.”

Sylvia shook her head. “You are a very stubborn woman.”

Kitt merely smiled at her, relieved at the reprieve. “So they tell me.”

He didn’t remember until an hour after the fact that he was supposed to have gone home by five if not before. He’d been jammed up on a conference call that had gone over, and then Alfred, the part-time computer wizard he’d hired straight out of the eleventh grade had come to inform him of a major glitch that had just cropped up. Thoughts of dinner and Kitt had temporarily been moved to the rear of his brain.

But they were back now, back with a vengeance. And with guilt.

Picking up the receiver and jabbing out the numbers of his home phone on the keyboard, O’Rourke listened to the telephone on the other end ring three times before Kitt finally answered it.

“Hello?”

She sounded sad, he thought, and wondered if there was anything wrong with the baby. Not bothering with a greeting, he launched into his excuse immediately. “Look, love, this is O’Rourke. I’m sorry, we’ve come up with another bug and I just didn’t notice the time.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard her stifling a sigh.

“That’s all right, I already sent Sylvia home.” She didn’t add that it was over Sylvia’s very vocal protest. There seemed no point in saying that. “The baby’s fussing, anyway. Colic, most likely.” She was trying very hard to remain on top of things in this brand-new world of motherhood she found herself in. “I would have been poor company, anyway. I wouldn’t have been able to keep my mind on dinner. I’ll see you later.”

They were disconnected. O’Rourke looked at the receiver before hanging up, thinking. She was disappointed, he decided, replacing the receiver. And, in an odd way, so was he. He had to admit, when he’d thought of it, the idea of dinner with her was not without its appeal.

Maybe it was just as well that he had gotten caught up in things and forgotten about dinner. There was no sense, he told himself, in opening up doors to rooms he wasn’t allowed to enter.

An hour later, with a bouquet of carnations like the ones in her wedding bouquet in one hand, a bottle of champagne to toast their success in the other, O’Rourke arrived home.

Feeling a little sheepish without the slightest idea why, he closed the door behind him and called Kitt’s name, taking care not to be too loud just in case the baby was asleep.

Kitt came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron that had seen better times. He made a mental note to replace it for her.

And not to envision her wearing only that.

Kitt looked at the flowers. Remembering them, he thrust the bouquet toward her.

“What’s that for?”

O’Rourke cleared his throat, deliberately focusing his attention on the bottle of champagne he still held. “To celebrate…” His eyes met hers. He’d been raised to face up to things he’d done. “And to say I’m sorry.”

Funny how an apology could soften her. Jeffrey used to apologize all the time, she reminded herself, desperately trying to harden a heart she feared had already been breached.

She took the flowers from him. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. We can reschedule.”

As if it was a business meeting, he thought. Good, that was how they were supposed to view it. If they kept it unmuddled, then there would be no problems, no hurt feelings. No misunderstandings at the end.

Leading the way to the kitchen and the glasses, he slanted a glance at Kitt over his shoulder. There was something about the way she looked at him… No, this wasn’t absolutely cut and dried, or was it?

“You’re just saying that to make me feel guilty.”

A soft, teasing grin appeared on her lips that he found utterly irresistible. He’d guessed right. “How am I doing?”

Taking out a corkscrew, O’Rourke paused and laughed. “Damn. How does someone with the face of an angel get to be so devious?”

She tried not to allow the compliment to get to her. That way lay danger. She couldn’t start believing him, believing in things. It would lead to her downfall again.

“Self-preservation. And practice.” Turning toward the oven as he occupied himself with the corkscrew, she took two pot holders in her hand. “I’ve got to get your dinner out of the oven before it decides to turn stone cold on you.”

“You made dinner?” The cork popped, punctuating his query. He set the cork and corkscrew on the counter. “I thought we were supposed to go out.”

“We were, but when you didn’t show up, I decided to get creative with what we had in the refrigerator.” She placed the casserole on the counter, next to the glasses he was filling. “My mother taught me how to make do with almost anything.”

“Stone soup,” he commented, remembering a story his mother had once read to him.

She was acquainted with the story, vaguely recalling a children’s show-hostess reading it to her pint-size audience.

“No, that’s being clever and conning people out of things in order to make a good soup. I just work with what’s there.” She didn’t know exactly what prompted her to look at him that instant, but she did.

Was he being put on notice? Was he what she was planning on working with next? Or was he just reading things into her words?

Probably the latter.

He finished pouring the champagne into the glasses. “I could use some dinner,” he agreed.

“Good, because I waited to eat with you.”

Kitt carried over the casserole dish and placed it in the middle of the dining room table. For the first time, he noticed that there were candles in the candlestick holders. And they were lit. Atmosphere? Or was she just being frugal?

“You waited?” Picking up the two glasses, he followed her into the room on her second pass. “With dinner canceled, I might not have been home for hours.”

She shrugged away the observation. Nothing she hadn’t thought of herself. “I took a chance. I figured I’d give you until ten before I started without you.” Sitting down, she shook out the napkin before putting it on her lap. “It’s nice to have company for a meal.”

Yes, he thought, taking the chair opposite her, it was.

It was going smoothly.

Maybe, if he were the superstitious type like his mother before him, he might have said things were going too smoothly. For perhaps the first time in his life, both his work and his home life were on an even keel. The alarm due to the discovered glitch was over, things at the office were progressing at an ever-increasing pace, and it looked as if Emerald Computers might actually become a success sooner than he’d expected. The bugs in his program for the new line of computer were dropping…well, like flies, and things were looking good. Awfully good.

And at home, well, he knew that was an artificial situation in reality, but it certainly did feel real. At times he literally forgot it wasn’t supposed to be. No matter what time of the night he came home, the smell of food was waiting to greet him when he walked in.

He didn’t have to scrounge around, looking for something to throw together in order to create something that passed for a meal. He didn’t have to scrounge at all, not for food, or clothes or even the notes to his program that he brought home to work on on occasion. Somehow, things were always being straightened for him. Available when he needed them. Always within reach.

He wasn’t accustomed to that.

A man could get accustomed to that.

But if he did, what then? he questioned himself silently as he drove along the thoroughfare, heading home. When the agreement was over, when Kitt could finally safely leave him and get on with her life and he with his, what then? Getting accustomed to life the way it was now would make the future that much harder for him to bear, that much harder to function in.

He wasn’t a marrying man, certainly, but there was no disputing that he was a family man, and as much as he claimed to enjoy unobstructed freedom, the truth of it was that he did miss having a family around him. Having Kitt and her daughter around for the last month had filled a void he hadn’t been aware of having.

Being made aware made it harder.

So? When the day came that Kitt finally left, he told himself, he’d get one of his brothers or sisters to come to Bedford to live.

Hell, he amended, taking a turn to get into his apartment complex, he’d bring them all to America. Wasn’t that the ultimate plan once he got his company up and running? To have his entire family come out here to live? Working alongside of him, maybe, but most assuredly living in this country, enjoying all the fine benefits that went hand in hand with being a citizen of the United States.

He liked the sound of that.

Taking another corner, O’Rourke laughed at himself. He was beginning to sound just like an infomercial.

That was because for the last two days, when they weren’t working on the actual computer design, he and Simon were meeting with and listening to the ideas of a pitchman who was going to help them get an infomercial on the air in order to make the public aware of their product. When the time came. He was putting the horse before the cart.

But damn, the horse was eager to run.

It was all coming together, he thought, a grin forming on his lips. The ideas, the backers, the dream, all of it was coming together.

Part of him was afraid that it would all turn to dust on him at the last minute. There was only so much luck to go around and he had a fear that perhaps, just perhaps, it would be used up before it became his turn to dip into the magic well.

Or surely before anything came of it.

As God was his witness, he swore silently, he didn’t intend to be a failure. Failure was for other men, not him. He wouldn’t stand for it. He’d paid his dues and worked as hard as any man—harder—just so his dream could become a reality. For him and for everyone.

It occurred to O’Rourke as he let himself into the house quietly that night, that Kitt had become part of that inner circle. She’d become part of “everyone.”

He couldn’t help wondering if she’d want to be, once she knew.

The sound he’d heard just as he walked up to the first-floor garden apartment, the sound he’d taken to be a cat somewhere in the distance, protesting some grave injustice against it, turned out to be coming from within his apartment.

They didn’t have a cat.

It was the baby.

The thought hit him just as he turned the key and opened the door. The baby was crying like that, like something was very wrong with her.

O’Rourke felt his heart speed up just a little. “Kitt? Kitt, it’s me, O’Rourke. I’m home.” He pocketed his key, looking around the room. “Where are you?”

She came into the living room then, her eyes huge, haunted and frightened. She was carrying the baby, rocking the infant as she walked.

“It’s Shawna,” she told him needlessly, every word etched with concern. “She’s been crying all afternoon, all night,” she amended. She felt so helpless, so powerless to do anything. Kitt hated the feeling. “I don’t know what to do to make her stop.” Trying very hard to keep the edginess from her voice, she told him, “I’ve been walking the floor with her for hours.”

She looked it, he realized. Appearing far more worn and tired than even when he’d first seen her. He held out his arms to her.

“Here, give the baby to me. You sit down and get some rest,” he ordered, taking Shawna from her. There was not even a glimmer of recognition in the baby’s eyes, the way there had begun to be in the last week. He felt his heart sink a little.

“She won’t eat,” Kitt told him. “And she hasn’t slept all day except for a couple of minutes at a time. Every time I start to put her down, she wakes up and starts to cry all over again, even harder.”

There was nothing to be alarmed about, he told himself. Babies did this all the time. Still, all he could remember was Mrs. Flannery and Tara. Tara had died at two months from causes no one could ascertain. Mrs. Flannery was never the same again.

“Why don’t you call the doctor?” he suggested, beginning to pace.

“I did.” That had come out too loudly. Getting hold of herself, Kitt continued. “I put in a call to her pediatrician an hour ago. I got his answering service. They said they’d relay the message, but he hasn’t called me back.”

O’Rourke looked down at the little girl in his arms. She felt warm to him, warmer than he was willing to accept. “All right, if Mohammed won’t call the mountain, the mountain is going to call Mohammed.” He began to head for the door. “You drive to the hospital, I’ll be in the back seat with the baby.”

It took a second for his words to sink in. She’d half expected him to laugh off her concern. She was incredibly relieved that he hadn’t, that he seemed as concerned as she was. But that also made her frightened. It meant that he thought there was something wrong, too.

“You?”

He nodded. There was no room for discussion here. He didn’t like the baby’s color. “I know infant CPR.”

It didn’t seem like something he should be familiar with. “How…?”

“It wasn’t an entirely backward town I lived in,” he said. “The local nurse specialized in CPR. It was something she thought I should know.” He hoped and prayed that it didn’t come down to that, that he wouldn’t need to use CPR on the infant. He didn’t know if he could stand it if he had to.

Chapter Ten

“Damn.”

The bitten-off curse rang in her ears. Her heart already hammering harder than she thought possible, Kitt darted her eyes darted toward the rearview mirror, praying everything was all right.

It wasn’t.

O’Rourke was unstrapping Shawna’s restraints and taking the small body out of the infant seat. Her daughter was limp.

“What are you doing?” Kitt demanded.

“Just drive,” O’Rourke ordered, not sparing the necessary second to glance in her direction. There wasn’t time.

Schooling himself to go slow and to remember the steps, he began giving the baby CPR the instant he had her lying on her back. It took him a beat to recall the differences in technique for infants. Fingers pressed against tiny chests instead of hands and puffs of air gently administered instead of mouth-to-mouth contact. He counted mentally before starting the cycle again, more quickly this time.

Watching Shawna intently since the moment he had gotten into the car with her, he’d seen the infant’s color drain away and then her tiny chest cease its movement altogether. The baby had stopped breathing.

There was no time to speculate why. All he knew was that he had to get her breathing again.

“Oh, my God,” Kitt said, craning her neck and turning around. “She’s stopped breathing, hasn’t she?”

Frightened, agitated and feeling more helpless than she had ever felt in her life, Kitt barely missed plowing into the green-and-white moving van making a turn in front of her. Working the brakes, she managed to turned the wheel just in time to narrowly avoid the collision.

She could feel her heart slamming into her rib cage, not because of the near miss, but because of the drama being played out in the back seat.

“Is she…is she…?”

Trying to push out the word, Kitt couldn’t make herself say it. It was too horrible to even contemplate. Saying it would make it real.

The silence from the back seat was only because O’Rourke couldn’t spare the breath to answer her, not because her worst fears were being realized, Kitt insisted fiercely.

Blinking back tears, numbing her mind, she drove exactly the way she felt—like someone trying to out-race death.

The hospital seemed as if it was located an eternity away instead of the few miles it actually was. By the time Kitt had made it to the emergency room parking lot, she was shaking so badly, she wasn’t sure if her legs could support her.

There wasn’t time to think about herself.

Slamming on the brakes, she fled the car before the engine had ceased its final revolution.

“I need help here!” she shouted as she burst into the room, bumping against electronic doors that were still yawning open. “My baby’s stopped breathing! She’s in the parking lot!”

The next moment, she was moving out of the way of the ER team that hurried past her: a physician dressed in periwinkle-blue scrubs, followed by a nurse.

The latter was a blur to her. As she followed them, Kitt saw that O’Rourke was already at the doors, Shawna in his arms.

“I got her to breathe again.” Infinite relief throbbed in the declaration.

The physician took Shawna from him. Words were buzzing around Kitt’s head, words aimed at her as well as O’Rourke. She saw him looking at her oddly. She was having trouble assimilating the questions. Nothing seemed to penetrate or make sense.

“Ma’am?”

“Kitt?”

The world was swiftly receding from her, blanketing itself in darkness until all that remained was a tiny spotlight, no larger than the head of a pin. And then that almost disappeared, too.

But then it held on. Just as the strong arms that closed around her held on. Catching her. Sheltering her.

The spotlight disappeared.

A voice seemed to reach out to her, coming from a great distance that seemed almost insurmountable at first. Bit then it began growing closer and closer.

The voice took on texture.

She began to understand.

“Kitt, the baby’s going to be all right. Kitt, can you hear me? She’s dehydrated, but she’s going to be all right. Kitt, damn it, wake up, do you hear me? Wake up this minute.”

She heard concern beneath the rough words. Or did she only think she did? Things were still swimming together, but there was light now, light and feeling and sound.

Someone was rubbing her hands.

O’Rourke.

The realization came to her a moment before she actually opened her eyes and focused. She was lying on a stretcher. No, a gurney, it was a gurney, and O’Rourke was standing over her. He was scowling, but she saw a glimmer of concern and then relief in his eyes as she looked up at him.

He was holding her hand in his.

Suddenly everything came flooding back to her. “Shawna,” she cried, trying to sit up. A large, strong hand pushed her back, making her lie down. “Is she…?”

“Just fine,” the ER physician informed her, pushing back the white curtain that surrounded the hospital bed as he came in. “Your daughter’s going to be fine. I just stopped in to see how you are feeling.”

“Very foolish,” she admitted, this time successfully managing to sit up.

She was still a little woozy, but she struggled against giving in to the feeling. It was only after a beat that she realized that O’Rourke, instead of trying to keep her down, had placed his hand at her back and was propping her up.

Kitt flushed, embarrassed at the scene she must have caused. “I’ve never fainted before.”

The doctor nodded, taking a second pulse reading. “So your husband said. If he hadn’t caught you, you’d be checking in for the night right now along with your daughter.”

Husband. It felt so odd to hear that word in connection with herself. Odd and yet very comforting at the same time. She supposed it was just because she’d been raised to buy into the whole “happily ever after” scenario. That had been a disservice her parents had done her, making her believe that there was a marriage in store in everyone’s future.

And then the rest of what the doctor had said penetrated.

“You’re admitting Shawna?”

“Only overnight,” the older man was quick to reassure her. “To make sure her fluid levels are back to normal and remain that way. She was a little dehydrated. There was a mild strain of flu going around a few weeks ago. Looks like your little girl caught the tail end of it.”

Kitt dug her fisted hands into the mattress on either side of her. She wanted everything crystal clear and spelled out. “But she’s all right?”

“Almost perfect,” the doctor guaranteed. “If you’d like, I can have a nurse take you up to the pediatric ward once you’re ready and you can see for yourself just how almost perfect she is.”

“Thank you.” Kitt swung her legs over the side of the immobilized gurney, sitting up.

The physician made a notation on the chart and signed it. “There, you’re free to go. You know, you two came in with Shawna just in time.” Kitt looked at him quizzically. “Lucky thing your husband knows CPR.” The older man looked at O’Rourke. “You saved her life.”

A chill went over Kitt’s heart.

Telling the doctor they knew the way to the pediatrics ward and that there was no need to have a nurse leave the floor to accompany them, Kitt and O’Rourke left the emergency room area. Walking beside him to the elevators in the rear of the building, Kitt was silent as the physician’s words sank in.

She could have lost her daughter. Just like that. From something as common as the flu.

Gratitude filled her until there was no room for anything else. She took O’Rourke’s hand in hers as the elevator doors opened.

“That’s twice now,” she told him softly.

He pressed the button for the appropriate floor. The doors began to close. They were alone in the elevator. “Twice?”

She pressed her lips together. “That you saved Shawna.”

It took him a second to understand what she was referring to. “The first really doesn’t count. I was just there to help her be born.”

He was being unduly modest. She’d noticed that about him. He didn’t like taking credit, even when it was due him.

“Either way, that makes her yours officially.”

Gratitude made him uncomfortable. He never knew what to say, so he shrugged it off. “She’s already mine,” he reminded her. “We put my name on the birth certificate, remember?”

That had been done to strengthen his claim that he was Shawna’s father. Since the baby’s real father had wanted nothing to do with Shawna, Kitt hadn’t raised any objections when the subject had come up. They’d returned to the hospital the day after the wedding to place his name in the space she’d left empty on the form. In her heart, Kitt had a feeling that, rough around the edges or not, O’Rourke seemed far better suited to the role of father than Jeffrey ever would have been.

“Yes, I know, but this makes it real. You breathed life back into her.” Tears sprang up to her eyes as they reached their floor. “If you hadn’t been there…”

They stepped out of the elevator and he paused to look at her. Tears always undid him, even tears that were only threatening to be shed.

“But I was,” he told her firmly, taking hold of her arms. He wanted to hold her but was afraid. Afraid that if he did, he wouldn’t let go. “Don’t go there, Kitt-with two-t’s,” he told her softly. “Don’t plague your mind with ‘what-ifs.’ It’s a waste of time and it settles and solves nothing.” He looked at her, his expression solemn. “Always keep your face forward. It’s the only way any of us can ever make it in this world.”

She knew what he was doing. She’d learned a little about this stranger the rain had swept into her life. He was trying to keep her at bay because her gratitude made him uncomfortable. Too bad.

“That still doesn’t stop me from being grateful.” Rising up on her toes, she brushed her lips against his cheek.

The same warm wave of sweetness washed over him, just as it had when he’d first kissed her at the altar. O’Rourke felt his gut tightening while other parts of him demanded attention and tribute.

He ignored the demands. It wasn’t going to go that way, he told himself. A deal was a deal. He’d given his word and his word was his bond. He wasn’t about to start behaving like a real husband, no matter how much a part of him wanted to.

“No harm in being grateful,” he told her crisply. He fooled neither of them.

Three hours later, O’Rourke closed the door behind Kitt as they walked into the apartment. Kitt’s arms were empty. Per the physician’s suggestion, backed up by Shawna’s own pediatrician, Dr. Rafe Saldana, Shawna remained overnight at Harris Memorial for observation. With O’Rourke holding her hand, Kitt had agreed that it was the safest way to go. Knowing that didn’t make the ache she felt now any the easier to bear.

O’Rourke pocketed his keys as he turned on the light. It seemed dreary in here now. And quiet. He hadn’t realized how quiet the house would feel without the baby in it.

Planted in the middle of the living room, he slipped his hands into his pockets and looked around, as if seeing the place for the first time.

“Listen,” he said to her after a beat.

“To what?” There was nothing to hear, she thought, cocking her head to see if she’d missed something. It had gotten to the point where she could sense a second before Shawna got ready to let out with a wail.

But there was nothing to listen for now. Her baby wasn’t here.

“To the silence.” He turned around to look at Kitt. “Who would have thought something so tiny could leave behind such a huge void?” And she had, he thought. He felt Shawna’s missing presence acutely.

Would it be the same with her mother? Down the line, when they were both out of his life, would it feel this way to come home and know that that was all there was? Just him and the walls?

It gave him sincere pause, O’Rourke thought. He was not happy about the direction his thoughts were taking.

The comment, especially coming from him, surprised Kitt. Surprised her because it was so sensitive. Surprised her because it had been exactly what she was thinking.

She smiled at him. “Don’t look now, O’Rourke, but someone’s going to start accusing you of being sensitive.”

One corner of his mouth rose in bemusement. Sensitive was the last thing he’d ever be accused of. “There’s an entire town back in Ireland that might take exception to that.”

She stepped out of her shoes, wondering if the dinner she’d forgotten about, warming in the oven, was ruined yet. Would it be worth the effort to try to save it?

“Then they’re all wrong.” She rethought his protest. “And I don’t think they would, anyway. I think that your family knows exactly the kind of man you are.”

Her naiveté made his mouth curve in earnest. “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, love. Nobody really knows the kind of man I am, deep down. The real me.” He saw her begin to protest and he knew what she was going to say. That he could read her thoughts was a fact he just accepted without exploration. “Those things I put down on paper for you to memorize, that’s just the surface me.”

She knew that. It was their living together these last weeks that had given her an inkling of what was inside. “And the inner you?”

He had a sudden thirst that took him away from her and to the kitchen. “Will stay that way.”

She followed him. “You’re afraid of being soft, aren’t you?”

Opening the refrigerator, he helped himself to a bottle of beer. It occurred to him that since this bogus marriage had taken place, he hadn’t taken himself down to the Shamrock but once. He was going to have to do something about that, he decided.

“Aren’t you?” he echoed.

Kitt flipped the dials on the oven to the off position, then took the bottle from him and took a healthy swig before handing it back. Ordinarily, she didn’t care for beer, but tonight she had a craving. She didn’t think a single sip would hurt anything. It’d be out of her system by the time she had Shawna back.

She’d have her daughter back thanks to him, she thought.

Her eyes pinned his as she slipped the bottle into his hand. “I asked you first.”

He shrugged, taking another long pull. Trying not to think about the fact that her lips had been on the bottle a moment earlier. “Soft people get walked on in this world and nobody’s ever going to walk on me.”

She stared at him. “Funny, you just said what I promised myself just before we ‘ran into’ each other.”

He wished she wouldn’t look at him like that. With eyes so blue that they almost hurt him. Inside, where it counted. He tried to sound disinterested. “That proves we’re two smart people.”

Because he’d turned away, she moved until she was in his line of sight again. “Does it?”

Her voice undulated through him. O’Rourke cupped her cheek, telling himself that contact was a fatal tactical error.

He still didn’t pull back.

“Sometimes too smart for our own good,” he murmured. Drawing back his hand, O’Rourke slid his fingers along her cheek.

Soft, so soft.

The next thing he knew, he was kissing her. Kissing Kitt with all the pent-up passion that he’d been storing up all these years without even being aware of it. It became too much to bear. Only half conscious of what he was doing, he took her into his arms, molding her to his body. Hungering for her. For the taste of her mouth, for the sweet temptation of her breath along his face. For the heat of her body as it touched his.

He could feel things sizzling within him, urgently begging for release.

Damn but he wished…

Wished for things he knew couldn’t happen.

The wisest thing he could do right at this moment was to break away. To step back and introduce space between them. Space and reason.

But he wasn’t one who could be accused of always doing the wisest thing, he recalled. There were teachers in his past who could easily testify to that.

His arms tightened around Kitt as his kiss deepened. For a moment longer, he gave himself permission to be nothing more than a simple man, enjoying the kiss of a woman he found everything but resistible.

Her moan excited him further.

The moan had surprised her, escaping the way it had. But she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t help herself. There was this rush of sensations taking over her body like pillaging Vikings, leaving nothing untouched. Nothing unscathed.

Standing up on her toes, Kitt pressed herself further into the madness that all this represented. Into the madness and against him. She could have sworn that she was never going to want what she was wanting at this moment. That she was never going to find herself falling for another man, not after what she’d gone through with Jeffrey.

But this wasn’t Jeffrey.

This was some man she couldn’t figure out. A man who came through for her like a white knight when she needed one, and then regressed into less-than-knightly behavior when the need was gone. A man who had formed a business deal with her and then made her want to form a relationship instead.

Best way to make him back away, she thought, her brain slipping further into a haze. Ask for a relationship. No man wants a relationship, no matter what he says. Besides, your batting average is way below acceptable, Kitt, she reminded herself. There was no getting away from the fact that when it came to men, she was a rotten judge of character.

None of it mattered.

The man had a mouth like sin and she couldn’t resist wanting it. She felt his hands begin to slid down her sides, felt her body begin to hum like a tuning fork that had suddenly been struck.

She wanted him. Wanted to make love with him. Wanted to be wanted by him. Her heart racing, she began to tighten her arms around his neck.

And then there was air.

Air and space and a sudden feeling of loss she couldn’t begin to put into words. Stunned, she realized that he’d withdrawn his mouth from hers and had dropped his hands from her body as if she’d suddenly blistered his skin.

Damn, why was this so hard? he berated himself. He wasn’t some animal that needed appeasing. He was a man with willpower. And a memory. This was wrong, what he’d almost allowed to happen. Wrong.

It didn’t stop him from wanting it.

Shoving his hands into his pockets before he was tempted to touch her again, O’Rourke took another step back. “It’s late, Kitt-with-two-t’s. Maybe we should go to bed.”

She stood looking at him, her eyes uncertain as to his meaning.

“Separately,” he added.

She pulled air into her lungs. Slowly. Then nodded. “All right.” Her voice was devoid of any emotion. “That’s a good idea.”

But she really didn’t think so as she turned to go into her room.

Neither did he.

Chapter Eleven

Passing the small cubbyhole that had generally been accepted as O’Rourke’s space, Simon retraced his steps and looked in. It was a little before seven in the morning. Simon had thought he’d get a jump-start on the day, but obviously O’Rourke had beaten him to it. From the looks of the wilting breakfast muffin on the desk, he’d been here for some time.

As he had been for the last few weeks, Simon noted. For a while there, he’d hoped that O’Rourke had finally met a force of nature greater than his own stubbornness. That it appeared now that he hadn’t was disappointing to Simon.

Sensing someone was there, O’Rourke looked up, a scowl firmly imprinted on his handsome face. Unable to walk away from a computer problem, he’d been wrestling with the newest bug in the hardware program for the last two hours and it was giving him one hell of a headache.

“What?”

O’Rourke had fairly spat out the word. Simon nonetheless took it as an invitation and walked into the alcove. “Is it my imagination, O’Rourke, or have you been haunting the office even more than usual in the last few weeks?”

O’Rourke lifted one shoulder in a half shrug, dismissing the question. Right now, his disposition was somewhere south of surly. It took effort to be civil, even though none of this was Simon’s fault.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own, he supposed. There hadn’t been another way open to him, except for the marriage, but he hadn’t expected the consequences to be so serious. He hadn’t expected to feel anything for the woman who was helping him with this charade, at least, nothing beyond gratitude and perhaps a small amount of friendship.

He hadn’t expected to feel his whole body heating at the sight of her in the morning—her hair in her eyes, the faded Packers football jersey she slept in teasing the tops of her thighs. Teasing him as well. And he hadn’t expected to have his thoughts turning to her at the strangest times during the day, for no other apparent reason than she had just popped into his head.

It was no way to conduct a business arrangement.

He hadn’t anything more to offer Kitt than he had to Susan, and Susan hadn’t seen fit to want it. Of course, there was the promise of money now, but Kitt wasn’t the type to be swayed by money. A woman like that needed attention and he couldn’t give it to her.

Not that she’d probably want it from a man who’d used her to stay in this country so that he could make his dreams come true.

It was a moot point.

His scowl deepened as he tried to concentrate on his work and failed. Again. What the hell had crawled into his brain lately? Why couldn’t he seem to think straight anymore?

He had the answer to that, too. And he didn’t like it. “No, it’s not your imagination. I’ve been here more than usual.”

Leaning a hip against O’Rourke’s desk so that the man was forced to look at him, Simon said, “Mind if I ask why?”

O’Rourke hardly spared him a look. “I’ve got work to do,” he said tersely.

That part was obvious and he wasn’t asking about that. They now had, thanks to the financial backing they’d just secured at the beginning of the month, enough manpower to work that out without O’Rourke dedicating his every waking moment to being here. O’Rourke had been the father to the idea, now it was time to do some serious delegation.

“Why?” Simon repeated. The look O’Rourke gave him was dark. “I know you well enough to know that something’s bothering you. What is it?”

“Nothing,” O’Rourke snapped, then instantly regretted it. Simon deserved better. Hell, so did he.

Pushing back from his desk, O’Rourke rose, towering over Simon as he ran his hand along the back of his neck. God, but he felt at a loss, hemmed in by his own damn integrity.

For the most part, he believed in keeping his own counsel. But it wasn’t working this time.

He faced Simon squarely. “I think I’m in love.”

O’Rourke expected to hear Simon hooting with laughter. That he didn’t surprised him. So did the look of concern on his friend’s face.

“In love?” Simon blew out a long breath. “That’s bad. Does Kitt know?”

O’Rourke laughed shortly. Therein lay the whole irony. “It is Kitt.”

Puzzled, confused, Simon ventured cautiously. “Well, that’s good, then.” He peered at O’Rourke’s face. “Isn’t it?”

O’Rourke’s frown only became more so. “No, not really.”

Lost, Simon shook his head. “In love with the woman you’re married to—is that a bad thing where you come from?”

O’Rourke sighed deeply. He shouldn’t have said anything. “It is if you’re supposed to have a strictly business relationship.”

“So it got a little friendlier. Sometimes that happens with ‘business relationships.’ What’s so wrong with that?”

O’Rourke pinned him with a black look, warning him not to venture any further into his thoughts than he already had. “It didn’t get that friendly, so get your mind out of the gutter—”

“Bedroom,” Simon interjected.

“Especially there. And I’ll have you know there’s everything wrong with it.” One look at Simon told him his friend clearly wasn’t following this. “Don’t you see, if I do anything, she’ll think I tricked her. I can’t even make a move without being guilty—”

“O’Rourke—”

But O’Rourke wasn’t listening. His head was too full of thoughts, of objections as well as desires that refused to allow themselves to go quietly.

“Besides, what kind of a husband would I make, anyway?” He was pacing around the small area like an oversize, trapped panther. “Always working. She’ll leave me.”

“Whoa, don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself here? You haven’t even given her a chance to ‘stay’ in the right sense of the word and you’ve already got her leaving you.” Reaching a little, Simon laid a hand on O’Rourke’s shoulder. “Maybe she’d like seeing her husband only on a limited basis.” O’Rourke looked at him quizzically. “We call that quality time here.”

O’Rourke remained unconvinced. “Where I come from, they call it being self-absorbed and that’s what it’ll seem to her that I am.”

“You could change, then,” Simon commented.

There was no use making promises that he would not keep. O’Rourke knew the kind of man he was. It was all or nothing. And this was more than just his dream. He wasn’t the only one involved anymore.

“I’m not going to change—”

Simon had a feeling it wasn’t all written in stone the way his friend seemed to believe. “For the right woman—”

Stifling an angry huff, O’Rourke stood over him. “Why are you doing this?”

Smaller by five inches and twenty pounds, Simon held his ground. Their friendship, formed in the last year in college, went deep, and he didn’t want to see O’Rourke throw something meaningful away. “Because from the little I’ve seen of her, I think Kitt’s a great girl and she’s taken some of that surly edge off you.”

Steely eyes narrowed until his brows touched. “What surly edge?”

Simon held his hands up. “Sorry, I meant your Irish charm.” The grin faded as his expression became sober. “So, what are you going to do?”

That remained the big question. The one O’Rourke didn’t have an answer to. Wanting Kitt wasn’t enough. “I don’t know. Work it out, I guess.”

Simon clapped him on the back. “Just as long as the work you’re doing isn’t all here.”

Simon had bullied him into coming home at a decent hour by calling him a coward, the one word guaranteed to turn him into a stubborn sixteen-year-old, bent on disproving his accuser.

Putting his key into his pocket now, O’Rourke smiled to himself. Kitt was in the living room, concentrating so hard on something she had on the coffee table, she didn’t seem to hear him come in.

He wondered what had absorbed her attention so fully. “What’s that?”

Startled, she looked up and then smiled her greeting. “Hi. I didn’t hear you come in.” Because he was looking at the paper she’d been filling out, she turned it around so that he could see it. “It’s a job application. I went down for an interview today.”

A job interview. It was starting. Pretty soon, with the hours he kept, even if he got home sooner, they wouldn’t be in the same place at the same time.

Well, what the hell had he expected, for her to turn into some barefoot and pregnant woman waiting on him hand and foot? He wouldn’t have wanted that, anyway.

Except maybe the pregnant part.

He stopped himself in time.

He tried to look disinterested as he shrugged out of his windbreaker. “Oh?”

She nodded, but the excitement she’d felt earlier this afternoon, during the actual interview, was growing fainter. She hadn’t a clue as to why. Work used to mean so much to her. It defined what she was, where she was coming from. She liked being her own person.

Now it didn’t mean quite as much. Was she still in the final throes of postpartum depression?

“Hellenic Industries.” Rising, she took the jacket he’d just draped over the back of the sofa and walked with it to the coatrack by the door. “They’ve just landed a new contract for work on the space station.” She hung the jacket up. “I think they liked me.”

“What’s not to like?” The damn wolves probably took one look at her and began tossing coins as to who would devour her first.

The thought surprised him. What the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t think like that and he didn’t know anyone else who thought like that. He forced a reassuring smile to his lips, though he was feeling nothing of the kind.

His comment made her pause and she looked at him. Was that a compliment, or a crack? God, but he was so hard to read. Not that she was any good at that sort of thing, she reminded herself, thinking of how wrong she’d been about Jeffrey.

But O’Rourke only added to her confusion. He’d all but disappeared these last few weeks. Right after he’d kissed her the night they’d taken Shawna to the hospital. Kissed her senseless and made her think that they were going to…going to make…

It didn’t matter what she had thought. He had thought something different. Any idiot could see that he was backing away from her. Pronto.

She’d thought that he was different. The day after, when they’d brought Shawna home from the hospital, he’d been so attentive to the baby that she’d thought, hoped really, that she’d actually found a decent man she could slowly build a life with.

But then he backed away so quickly it made her head spin. And her heart.

Served her right for letting herself dream a little. This would teach her. The only one she could depend on was herself. It was time she pulled herself back up on her feet. Two months was long enough to drift. She needed to get back to work. To be her own person.

And not to rely on any man, no matter what.

“Well, they might not have liked my credentials,” she pointed out matter-of-factly.

He wasn’t thinking of her credentials. He was thinking of what it would be like to come home and not find her here. And that would be where this would lead. He had no doubts that she would stick to the bargain, stay the year. But the second it was up, she’d be gone.

And he, he realized, didn’t want her to be. “Have you ever thought about being something other than an aerospace engineer?”

“Such as?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a business of your own,” he said.

“Making my own space station?” she asked, tongue in cheek.

“No, I mean—” He didn’t know what he meant. He was rambling, O’Rourke thought in disgust. “Never mind, it was just a passing thought.”

She didn’t like not being in the loop. He had something to say and, good or bad, she wanted to hear it. “Well, let it pass this way and maybe I can answer you better.”

He shrugged, not wanting to pursue the matter. It had been a stupid one at that, he thought. “What about Shawna?”

She stiffened her shoulders unconsciously. “What about her?”

He’d have thought that would have been the first question she’d think of. “Who’ll watch her if you go back to work?”

“Sylvia works at home most of the time.” She’d already broached the matter to Sylvia when she’d returned from the interview. Sylvia had stayed with Shawna for the afternoon and was more than willing to turn that into an on-going event. “She can watch her.”

He knew all about the hours that Sylvia kept. They were highly irregular. “Most of the time,” he echoed. “What about when she’s out? Are you going to have someone else raise your baby?”

“Why are you interrogating me this way?” she demanded. “What’s it to you if Sylvia watches the baby or I have a sitter for her?”

“Because…because…” The right words weren’t coming. The doorbell rang at that moment, preventing the wrong ones from emerging. Frustrated, he shot her a look as he crossed to the door. “This isn’t over yet.”

“What isn’t over yet?” she asked, confused and annoyed at the tone he had taken with her.

He didn’t trust himself to answer her civilly. If someone had asked him, he wouldn’t have been able to explain what was going on inside him now—or why there was this overwhelming urge, as he yanked open the door, to just keep walking until he’d put her and these feelings all behind him.

The man standing in the doorway quickly sent thoughts of prolonged walks or a drive to the Shamrock out of his head.

“Mr. Rutherford.”

Framed by the doorway, the INS agent appeared even smaller than he had in his office. He gave the impression of peering over O’Rourke’s shoulder without moving a muscle. “Is this a bad time?”

O’Rourke struggled for composure. Was there something wrong with his application for citizenship? Had the paperwork been turned down after all? “No, why?”

Rutherford kept his expression bland and unreadable, save for a small, obligatory smile. “I thought I heard raised voices coming from here just as I rang the bell.”

“I was shouting to make myself heard over the doorbell and the radio,” O’Rourke told him. Realizing that he was blocking the way, O’Rourke stepped back to admit the agent into the apartment. His eyes found Kitt’s. “Look who’s here, love.”

Instantly alert, Kitt smiled brightly at the INS agent, completely burying any residual annoyance she’d just felt. It was showtime and O’Rourke needed her—the big, dumb jerk.

Coming forward, she put out her hand. “Hello, Mr. Rutherford.”

“Hello. Mrs. O’Rourke.” He shook her hand, looking around. “What radio?” he asked O’Rourke. “I don’t hear a radio.”

Kitt jumped in quickly. “That’s because I shut it off when I realized the doorbell was ringing. We like to play the radio. It helps soothe Shawna in the evening.”

She saw the look of gratitude in O’Rourke’s eyes and it pleased her.

“How is your daughter?” Rutherford asked. Like the investigator he sometimes was, the man drifted around the room, observing, making mental notes.

The best way to handle this was straightforwardly, Kitt decided. “Come see for yourself.” Beckoning him to follow her, Kitt led Rutherford to the bedroom so he could see the baby.

“You keep her in your room?” Rutherford asked Kitt.

The baby stirred but continued sleeping. Kitt nodded toward the doorway, taking O’Rourke’s hand as she moved out of the room again.

Rutherford made note of that, too.

“For now,” she told the agent quietly, answering his question. “She’s been sick and O’—Shawn Michael,” she corrected herself quickly, “wanted to be able to hear her if she started to cry.” She smiled, remembering how kind O’Rourke had been that evening they’d rushed to the hospital. Whatever else the man was, she had to give him his due. He was good to her daughter. And just because he was distancing himself from her didn’t mean he wasn’t a good man.

She was quick on her feet, O’Rourke thought, tipping his hat to her. Aware that she was still holding his hand, he threaded his fingers through it and smiled at her when she looked at him.

They were in the living room now. Rutherford felt it was all right to cease talking in whispers. “Sounds like you’re turning out to be a good father.”

“He’s a natural,” Kitt told the man as O’Rourke self-consciously shrugged away the observation.

Surprised at the feeling behind her words, O’Rourke raised his eyes to Kitt’s. Her smile widened.

The silent communication was not lost on the INS agent. Looking around the room, he saw the application form Kitt had been filling out when O’Rourke had walked in. He raised a quizzical brow and nodded at the form. “What’s this?”

“A job application.” Picking it up, she handed it to the man, making sure that he noticed what she had filled in as to her marital status. “I was thinking of going back to work.”

His attention was drawn to O’Rourke rather than to her. “Oh?”

Trying to cull the man’s good graces, she still felt herself resenting the implication that the decision of whether or not she return to work rested with her so-called husband. They’d come a long way since the Dark Ages.

“I’m the independent kind, Mr. Rutherford,” she told him. “I like pulling my own weight. Just because I’m married doesn’t mean I expect my husband to provide for me. I like the idea of being able to bring something to the table, so to speak, as well.”

Rutherford studied her for a long moment. His expression gave nothing away. The silence was driving Kitt crazy. Her hand tightened in O’Rourke’s.

“So, everything’s going well?” Rutherford finally asked. “In general,” he added.

“Very well,” Kitt told him with feeling, deciding that maybe she’d better play up the role of the supportive wife. After all, this was about O’Rourke, not her. “Shawn Michael’s got that backing he needed after all.”

“Really?” For the first time, there was genuine interest and a smattering of pleasure on the other man’s lean face.

O’Rourke was relieved to be able to discuss something he knew about. “Someone my father once knew back in Ireland has connections here and—” He realized he was about to become long-winded. “To make a long story short, we have the funding to finish the work on the computers. The Emerald computers should be on the market before Thanksgiving.”

“And these are different from hundreds of other brands how?” Rutherford asked, curious.

O’Rourke felt himself getting revved up. “Mine use a different kind of processor. One that’s extremely affordable for smaller businesses. They’re four times as fast as the standard computer on the market today and—” O’Rourke stopped. “You really want to hear this? I can get pretty carried away.”

“That he does,” Kitt put in, gently caressing O’Rourke’s cheek. “Work consumes a lot of his time. But he’s always there for the baby and me when we need him,” she added quickly.

There was such feeling in her voice that again, Rutherford stopped to study her for a long moment. “I see. And is this marriage everything you’d hoped it would be, Mrs. O’Rourke?”

If she laid it on too thickly, she knew he would be suspicious. So she brushed a kiss against O’Rourke’s cheek and wove her arms through his.

“We’re still in the period of adjustment, Mr. Rutherford, but yes, I think we’re on our way to making a strong marriage.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Rutherford said.

“It’s what I answered.” Kitt tossed her hair over her shoulder. “And I think my answer is actually better than your question.”

Rutherford raised a brow, then looked at O’Rourke. “I see you have your hands full, Mr. O’Rourke.”

O’Rourke laughed and there was pleasure in his voice. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Maybe I do.” They both looked at him quizzically. “I’ll be honest with you. When I gave my seal of approval to the matter of your wedding, I had some reservations. I’ve seen too many bogus marriages not to. But I also saw something in the two of you that made me think that maybe, just maybe, this one was on the level.” He allowed himself a half smile. “I don’t mind telling you that I’m relieved I wasn’t wrong.”

Kitt exchanged looks with O’Rourke, relieved that for now, they’d cleared another hurdle. “Would you like to stay for dinner, Mr. Rutherford?”

The question took the agent by surprise and he didn’t answer at first. “You know, in all my years of doing this, not a single couple has ever asked me to break bread with them. They’re always in a hurry to hand me my hat and see me on my way.”

“That’s because they’re afraid of you,” she told him honestly. “You’re the man who could put an end to their hopes.”

“And you don’t feel that way?” he asked her, his eyes shifting to take in O’Rourke as well.

“No, I don’t feel that way. And neither does Shawn Michael.” She looked at him, waiting for O’Rourke to agree. “We’re all responsible for ourselves in this world, Mr. Rutherford. We’re the ones who can make our own dreams come true—or not.”

He liked her spirit and her philosophy. Slanting a look at O’Rourke, Rutherford had a feeling he wasn’t alone. “You have yourself a wonderful woman, here, Mr. O’Rourke.”

O’Rourke slipped his arm around Kitt’s waist. “Yes, I’m just beginning to fully appreciate that.”

There was something in O’Rourke’s voice that gave Kitt pause and she looked at him.

You’re just reading things into his voice, she told herself.

Looking toward the kitchen, Rutherford hesitated for a moment, then made his decision. “Much as I’d like to stay and as convinced as I am that the wonderful aroma I detect coming from your kitchen far surpasses anything that Mrs. Rutherford might have waiting for me on my arrival home, the way I’ve made my marriage work is always to be home when I said I would be.”

O’Rourke opened the door for him. Rutherford raised his eyes to O’Rourke’s as he crossed the threshold. “You might want to keep that in mind.”

“Absolutely,” O’Rourke agreed. “Nice to see you again.”

And nice to see you leave, he added silently as he closed the door behind the man.

O’Rourke didn’t know whose sigh of relief was louder, his or Kitt’s.

Chapter Twelve

O’Rourke turned to Kitt after a moment, a myriad of feelings moving through him, jockeying for space and recognition.

He owed her, he thought, he owed her a great deal. But it wasn’t gratitude that was rising to the top right now. It was something else. And he wasn’t any surer of what he wanted to do about it now than he had been all the other times he’d felt it making its presence known.

“You think well on your feet.”

Relieved that the INS agent had decided not to take her up on her impromptu dinner invitation and had left, Kitt looked at the man she’d put herself on the line for and wondered if she was making a big mistake again.

Somehow, she didn’t think so. Her mouth curved in amusement at his comment. “I think well in any position. What are you referring to, specifically?”

He followed her back to the living room. “Coming up with a reason for the crib in the room.”

She lifted her shoulder, shrugging off the accomplishment as next to nothing. The peasant blouse she had on slid down, exposing her shoulder.

“Piece of cake.”

Her words dried in her mouth as he pushed the material back into place before she had a chance to. She could feel his fingers moving up her shoulder slowly. Fanning fires that were supposed to remain dormant.

His eyes held hers. Did she feel it? Did she feel that spark between them?

Spark, hell, it was a forest fire waiting to go out of control. “And that bit about me being a good father was a nice touch.”

His eyes were holding hers. She was finding it difficult to breathe. A sensible woman would have stepped back by now. But a sensible woman probably wouldn’t have gotten herself into this situation—any of it—in the first place.

“I meant it.”

O’Rourke fought the very real urge to bring the peasant blouse back down until it was around her waist. He wanted to hold her. To touch her. “I never thought of myself as the father type.”

“You should,” she told him softly, wishing he would kiss her. “You’ve all the qualifications for it.”

He didn’t want to crowd her. Just because he was having trouble wrestling with urges he hadn’t dealt with since he was a teenager, didn’t mean she had to put up with them.

O’Rourke stepped back. “Why? Because I know CPR for infants? I already told you—”

Space, why was there always space between them? Didn’t he find her attractive? She tried to concentrate on what they were talking about and not on what was ricocheting all through her.

“You’re a caretaker,” she contradicted. “Why does that bother you so much?”

Before he knew what he was doing, he was telling her. Telling her things he didn’t talk about with anyone because it was his business, his and his family’s. But he was telling her, anyway. “Because my father was a caretaker and it killed him. Working double shifts in the mine to provide for kids he shouldn’t have had. At least, not all of them.”

“Oh? And which ones should he have cut out?”

O’Rourke looked at her, taken aback by the passion in her voice, confused by her question. “What?”

“Your brothers and sisters, which one would you have left out of the mix? If you could pick which ones should never have been born, who would you choose?”

“I can’t choose—” O’Rourke snapped, annoyed.

“Then you like them all.”

“Of course I like them all, but—”

Did she have to hit him over the head with it, or was he being deliberately obtuse just to bait her? “Maybe so did your father.”

He sighed. She had a point, he supposed, but he wasn’t about to say so. Whether or not James O’Rourke loved all his children—and he did—didn’t matter. The end result was still the same. “He died too young.”

Kitt’s eyes locked with his. “Everyone dies too young.”

She’d made another valid point, he thought, not knowing whether to be impressed or irritated. He settled for a little of both. “You know, woman, you do have an antagonistic way about you.”

She grinned, the mood lightening. “So I’ve been told. I wasn’t trying to make friends, I was trying to show you that you’re wrong.”

He bristled at that and felt the need to retreat from the thought he’d been entertaining himself. “Well, if anyone’s wrong, it’s Rutherford.”

She started to sit down again, to finish filling out the rest of the application, but he’d sparked her curiosity. “About?”

“Saying that he had a feeling when he saw us that we might be the couple who would ‘make it.”’

So he thought that was wrong, did he? Kitt felt something tightening inside her. And something hurting. Damn it, what was wrong with her? Why did she insist on doing this to herself? Why did she insist on letting the strings around her heart loosen to the point that she was in jeopardy of being hurt? Wasn’t once enough? Hadn’t she learned anything?

“So you thought he was wrong?” she asked stiffly.

“Of course I did.” O’Rourke tried to read her reaction and failed miserably. “Didn’t you?”

“Sure.” She glanced up. “The baby’s crying.” And for once, Kitt blessed her for it. She needed an excuse to get away from O’Rourke before she did something stupid like cry. God, but she’d thought she was made of sterner stuff than this. “I’d better go to her.”

He frowned, cocking his head slightly as he listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Deaf as well as blind,” she muttered before she could stop herself. “Not much of a prize, are you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He found himself talking to her retreating back.

“Nothing,” she shot back over her shoulder, annoyed with her lack of control, “absolutely nothing.”

Left standing alone in the living room, O’Rourke shook his head. What the hell had just happened here? Had they been in the same conversation? And where had all this tension come from?

But she’d certainly put him in his place, he thought, agreeing as to how wrong Rutherford had been in his whimsical estimation that they looked like a couple who actually belonged together.

The thought was really absurd.

And yet wasn’t that what he’d just been thinking himself? Still, one of them thinking that wasn’t enough. It took two…

Kitt found herself blinking back tears as she changed the baby.

This was stupid, she upbraided herself. Reaching for the baby powder, she dusted the newly dried bottom. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She hadn’t been this emotional while she was pregnant. Why was she having such a hard time harnessing her emotions now, after the baby was born?

Powder container met bureau with more force than it should have, sending up a white cloud. It had been two months now, shouldn’t things have gotten back to normal by now?

Normal, right, she laughed at herself. Here she was, living in some strange man’s apartment, pretending to be his wife….

No, she wasn’t pretending, Kitt corrected herself silently. She was his wife. The words were legal, the document was legal. What she was pretending about were the feelings…

No, she admitted to herself quietly, she wasn’t pretending about those, either. They were there, all right.

But she was going to have to ignore them. She folded one diaper tab into place, then the other. Shawna kicked bowed legs that were becoming chubby in glee. Kitt smiled in response, her heart heavy. Certainly O’Rourke didn’t feel anything for her. Except maybe gratitude, and even that was hard to tell, once he got a burr under his saddle and growled his way through the day.

With a sigh, she picked Shawna up from the bed. “There, nice and dry. Try staying that way for more than five minutes.” She nuzzled the soft little neck.

Since the baby was wide awake, she decided to take her out into the living room. She could use the company. And the interference. O’Rourke always seemed to be nicer when he was around Shawna.

Strapping Shawna into the infant seat, Kitt walked out of the bedroom and into the living room. A noise from the kitchen caught her attention.

The first thing she noticed was that the table was set. She didn’t remember doing that.

Because she hadn’t, she realized. He had. She looked at O’Rourke with a silent question in her eyes. Why was he doing this?

“You set the table.”

“You were busy.”

The timer had gone off on the stove while she was in the bedroom. It gave him something to do. With two pot holders buffering the pan, he took the roast beef she’d been making out of the oven and placed it on the counter. With less than deft movements, O’Rourke transferred the roast onto a large platter, then brought that to the table.

“And I thought turnaround was fair play.”

He looked out of place doing that, she thought, amusement curving her mouth. “Do men set the table in your part of the world?”

“They do if they’re hungry and everyone else is busy,” he told her gruffly, feeling suddenly like a bull in a china shop. “I’m not completely Neanderthal.”

She set down the infant seat on the floor near the table so that the baby could see them both. “I never said you were.”

Taking two glasses down from the cupboard, he spared her a look. “Not in so many words.”

Kitt took the glasses from him and placed them on the table. “Not in any words.”

Forgetting to use the pot holders, he took out the two baked potatoes she’d put in alongside the pan and instantly regretted it. It took effort to put them down on the counter rather than drop them.

“Here, let me see that,” she ordered. She looked at his hands, then took out a small tube of aloe ointment she’d stored in the drawer. “It’s not bad,” she commented, rubbing in the ointment. “But you could have done a lot of damage to your hands. Pay attention to what you’re doing.”

The slow movement of her fingers along his skin, rubbing in the ointment, dissolved his embarrassment. “Then what is it you do think of me?” he asked, going back to their previous conversation. She looked at him quizzically, and he added, “Just so I know.”

She chose her words deliberately. Carefully. “I think you’re a good man who’s decent and kind and so damn afraid to take a chance on life he’s wrapped himself up completely in his work and he’ll bite the head off anyone who’ll approach him with the truth.” It wasn’t what he’d expected to hear, she thought smugly. “Just so you know,” she finished, paraphrasing him.

He drew his hands away from her, annoyed at his own stupidity. “I’m wrapped up in my work, as you put it, in order to make a go of this company so that there’ll be money to send my brothers and sisters through school and give them the life they deserve.”

She took out a can of soda for herself and a bottle of beer for him. “Maybe they want to make their own lives. Maybe they don’t want things handed to them any more than you do.”

He could argue that no one had handed him anything, that he’d had to work for everything he had, but it didn’t have to be that way for the others.

“I don’t want to see them struggle the way I did,” he insisted, taking the bottle she’d opened from her. “Waiting tables and sweeping out pubs after hours just to have enough for books…”

There was no denying that it had been a hard way to go, Kitt thought, but it had contributed to making him the man he was now. “Didn’t seem to hurt you any. Other than to close you off.”

“It wasn’t the waiting and the sweeping that did that,” he snorted.

She watched as he sliced the roast beef into even servings. The man had an eye and a hand for precision. “Then what did?”

“Watching my father die by inches.” It was painful to talk about, even now, after all these years. “Watching my mother waste away because he was gone. Getting Susan’s Dear John letter.”

She might not have witnessed her parents struggling to put food on the table, but she knew about being hurt by someone she cared about. “Looks like we both have people in our past who liked to leave notes in their wake.”

He’d been so wrapped up in his own world, he hadn’t realized that she had a universe of her own as well. That she’d been hurt in her world. Oh, he knew all right, the way he knew that the sun rose and set and that there were plants that you didn’t touch unless you wanted to spend the next week scratching. But the knowledge hadn’t penetrated where he lived. Deep in the soul of him.

It did now.

O’Rourke studied her face, thinking of the woman who sat opposite him in a completely different light: as a person with feelings, with hopes and dreams of her own. A person who had fought her way to be where she was. A person, like him, who wouldn’t knuckle under.

“Yeah, well, it served to teach us something, didn’t it?” he said. “It served to teach us not to put our faith in something that could blow up in our faces without any warning.”

His voice had gone up and he was scowling so hard, he looked like a thundercloud. “Why are you so angry?” She hadn’t said anything to set him off.

“I’m not angry,” he snapped.

The hell he wasn’t, she thought. “Then why are you shouting?”

“I’m not shouting, I’m just talking.” Realizing that his voice was raised, he lowered it. “Loudly.”

“Oh.” Kitt raised a napkin to her lips, afraid that she was going to laugh at him. There was almost something endearing about the way he was struggling to control his temper—even though she hadn’t a clue as to why it had erupted in the first place.

The scowl on his face deepened. “And you needn’t be trying to hide that smirk.”

Kitt put the napkin back down on the table. “You want me to smirk?”

He felt his temper fraying and he still couldn’t fathom what had set him off like this. All those emotions butting up against one another inside of him were to blame. How the hell did a man cap that off?

O’Rourke drew himself up. He knew one way. “I want you to do whatever you want to do. I think there’s been a great deal of pussyfooting around and maybe we should stop pretending and start being honest with each other.”

Putting down her fork, she stared at him. “Well, now you’ve really lost me—”

“Maybe that’s just the trouble.”

“Come again?”

“That job application,” he said, nodding toward the living room. The form was still on the coffee table where she’d left it earlier, half filled out. “Is that the first step?”

Kitt placed her glass down again. “The first step to what?”

It cost him to be this exposed. It would have cost him more if he wasn’t. “To your leaving.”

Now his anger was starting to make sense to her. It instigated her own. “Is that it? Are you afraid I’ll go and then you’ll be deported? We had an agreement. I don’t renege on agreements,” she said heatedly. “And besides, from the sound of it, you’re well on your way to becoming an enterprising capitalist who—”

This was all new to him, explaining his feelings. He was a lot better at troubleshooting motherboards and confounding processors.

“Damn it, I’m not talking about being deported, or putting up a front for some INS agent who pops up like toast whenever he feels like it. I know you won’t back down on your agreement.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

He threw up his hands. How much plainer could he make it? “Tomorrow.”

She cocked her head, but his meaning remained obscure. “Tomorrow?”

He blew out an annoyed breath. “And the day after that, and the day after that.”

She was beginning to lose her own patience. “If you don’t start being any clearer—”

He was navigating through turbulent waters without a compass, but he gave it his best. “You want clear? All right, I’ll be clear. Katherine Dawson, will you marry me?”

“Did you sleep through the first ceremony? I already did.”

He shook his head. She didn’t understand. “I mean really marry me.”

She was trying to follow him, she really was. “That was a fake priest?”

Unable to sit any longer, he got up from the table and crossed to her. “He was a real priest and stop confusing the issue. I mean marry me with your heart—”

She was on her feet instantly, refusing to be intimidated or browbeaten this way. “You leave my heart out of this.”

He’d come too far to back down now. Taking her hands in his, he refused to let her move away.

“I can’t. Any more than I can leave mine out.” He looked into her eyes. “You confuse me and you infuriate me and you make me pine—I figure we’ve got the makings of a fine match right there. Now all I need is for you to say yes.”

“All?”

He heard the dangerous edge in her voice and knew he probably hadn’t said it right. “Maybe I shouldn’t have put it that way.”

“Maybe.” Her eyes narrowed. “If this is about having an itch, I suggest you go somewhere else to scratch it.”

He shook his head, but he still didn’t follow her. “An itch?”

He was playing dumb and she didn’t like it. “Sex, O’Rourke, sex.”

He turned her so that her back was to the baby. “Don’t go using that kind language in front of the little one.”

She’d had enough. Kitt pulled her hands away from his. “I wasn’t the one who brought it up.”

“Yes,” he told her firmly, “you were. Because it’s not about that word, or an itch, or whatever it is you want to call it. I can get someone to satisfy those kind of things any day of the week. It’s the rest of it that I’m talking about.”

“The rest of it,” she repeated, afraid to put her own meaning to his words. Afraid of being wrong again.

“Damn it, woman, I want an independent soul. I want someone I can respect who can respect me and what I need.” He took her hands again, pleading his case with his eyes. “I need a woman I can depend on to be her own person. And if that woman should be packaged up in a body the angels fought over to make their own, with a face that makes a man’s heart skip a beat, well, so much the better.”

She wanted to be perfectly clear on all this. “And this is me you’re talking about,” she said slowly.

He smiled. Maybe there was hope yet. “This is you I’m talking about.”

He left her mystified. “When, exactly, did this awareness suddenly take place?”

That was easy enough to answer. “The first time I looked at you.”

Now she knew he was putting her on. “The first time you looked at me, I looked like a half-drowned, overstuffed sausage about to burst apart.”

He grinned, drawing her into his arms. “Aye, you did at that. But it got better.”

She felt her heart begin to beat hard. “So you’re saying what, that you want to be my husband in every sense of the word?”

“If you’ll let me.” Feeling on slightly safer ground, he opened his heart to her. “I didn’t set out wanting a wife, Kitt-with-two-t’s. I set out wanting an excuse to stay in this country. But I found myself wanting you. All the time. I don’t expect you to love me—”

“Why?” she interrupted.

It took him a second to collect himself. “Because that would be too much to ask—” His business was finally going well, his siblings would be in this country soon. He didn’t expect to be lucky in every aspect of his life.

“Ask,” she told him.

Was she serious? “Do you?”

Kitt batted her lashes at him, feigning innocent ignorance. “Do I what?”

“Do you love me, damn it, woman?”

She almost laughed out loud. “Yes, I love you, damn it, man.”

It was his turn to ask. “Why?”

The grin settled into a smile on her lips. She cupped his cheek with her hand. “Because you need me and I need that. Because you’re there when I need you. And because you won my heart the minute I saw you walking into my hospital room with two bouquets in your hand. I knew then that you had a heart of a poet.”

A poet. Now, there was something no one had accused him of being. “Then you knew more than me.”

“Women generally do know more than a man, Shawn Michael,” she told him, a smile playing on her lips.

“We’ll have that discussion later,” he promised. “Right now, all I want you to know is that I love you, Kitt-with-two-t’s. And I plan on loving you until my dying day.”

“Only that long?” she asked.

His eyes smiled at her. “Something else to discuss. Later.”

Kitt’s smile burned away in the heat of his kiss. It took them a long time to get back to the discussion.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-6859-7

ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES

Copyright © 2001 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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