It was five – thirty when Megan reached Pat’s little white house. The air over Nicholson Street was fragrant with the smoke from blazing fireplaces, and the windows of private residences glowed golden in the encroaching darkness. Usually she was the first to arrive at Pat’s, but today the lights were shining in every window, upstairs and down, and the cheerfully lit house reminded Megan of a giant jack – o’ – lantern.

Pat was setting the table. He looked up and grinned when she opened the door. “Hope you’re hungry. I’ve gone to all the trouble of opening a can and slicing a bagel.”

He wore jeans with a hole in the knee and a powder – blue – and – white rugby shirt, and Megan thought he looked much more tasty than the soup he was heating. She took off Timmy’s coat and put him in the high chair. “You’re home early.”

“Had some cancellations.” He filled Timmy’s three – section baby plate with green gook, red gook, and brown lumpy gunk.

Megan grimaced when Pat handed her the spoon. “Do I have to do this?”

“I did it last night.”

“Is that red gook smashed beets?”

“Yup.”

She reluctantly sat opposite Timmy. “This isn’t fair. I hate smashed beets. He had smashed beets for lunch yesterday, and it took two showers to get them out of my hair.”

Pat had a sexy rejoinder to make about showers, but he bit his tongue. He’d been very careful since Tuesday night. He’d declared his intentions, and now he was waiting. Not very patiently, he admitted, but he was determined to give Megan a few days to get to know him. Besides, falling in love was more than sex. It was conversation at the dinner table, confidences shared, support offered, and comfortable quiet times. His mind knew this to be true, but his body was pushing for sex.

Timmy plunged his fist into the red gook, and smashed beets flew everywhere.

Megan didn’t even blink. She’d been through all this before. Beets dripped from her nose and clung to her hair. Her khaki safari shirt looked as if it had measles. Pat turned back to the soup, but Megan could see his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. She smiled stiffly and offered Timmy a spoonful of beans. He ate three spoonfuls and sneezed. Now Megan had green interspersed with red.

Pat wiped the beets off her face. “It’s not so bad, honey. It looks… colorful. Needs a little orange, though. Maybe I should give you some squash.”

“I’m going to give you squash in a minute. I’m going to squash your nose.”

“You wouldn’t want to do that,” he said, trying to look serious. “It’s so cute.”

“Hmmm. You think your nose is cute?”

“I know it’s cute. My whole face is cute. You can’t imagine how awful it is to be thirty years old and still be cute.” He set a plate of carrot sticks and green – pepper slices on the table. “Old ladies stop me in the supermarket and pinch my cheek.”

“That is pretty terrible.”

He munched on a carrot. “I always wanted to be handsome, masculine, enigmatic- but I ended up cute.”

He was all those things, Megan thought. When you got to know him, he was handsome and incredibly masculine and even enigmatic. Cute was just a first impression that later gave way to more complicated qualities. She gave Timmy a bottle of milk and took his supper plate to the sink. She poured herself a glass of orange juice, turned toward the table, and stepped in a splotch of beets.

“Yow!” she shouted as she slid across the floor. She landed with a solid thud on her rear.

Pat studied her now juice – soaked shirt. “I was only kidding about the orange. You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

She pressed her lips together and glared at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked belatedly. “Did you get hurt?”

“I’m fine, but I’m disgusting. I never realized being a mother was so dangerous.”

He gently helped her to her feet, then put his arm around her shoulders and steered her to the stairs. “I have a great idea. How about if you take a nice, hot, relaxing shower, wash all the beans away, get dressed in one of my clean shirts, and I’ll mop up the floor?”

She dug her heels in at the foot of the stairs. “Wait a minute. Is this a trick to get me up to your bedroom in a naked condition?”

“That’s insulting. Boy, that really hurts. What kind of a person do you think I am?”

“Desperate? Perverted? Lecherous?”

“Besides that?”

Megan smiled at him. He wasn’t desperate, perverted, or lecherous. He’d been very nice. For three days now he’d been a perfect gentleman. A little too perfect, she admitted. She missed getting swept off her feet by his passionate kisses. She knew it was all for the best, yet still, it had become a tad frustrating. It was like waiting for an earthquake that never happened. You were relieved, but you were also strangely disappointed.

Ten minutes later, she stepped out of the small upstairs bathroom and admired Pat’s bedroom while she towel – dried her hair. These two rooms occupied the entire top floor of the cottage. The bedroom was directly under the eaves, so that the roof sloped on two sides, and two dormer windows looked out on the street. Window seats had been built into the alcoves, and their chintz teal cushions matched the puffy down quilt on the queen – size cherry wood four- poster. The upper half of the room was papered in a small, Williamsburg teal – and cream print. Below the chair rail the walls were painted creamy white. Two large pewter- and glass chimneyed candlesticks sat on the low cherry dresser.

It was the most romantic bedroom Megan had ever seen. It was a room for loving long into the night, she thought dreamily, until the candles were melted stubs and the lovers were sated and comfortably entwined under the feather quilt. She had such a strong feeling of belonging in the room that the thought of Pat lying under the quilt without her brought a painful lump to her throat.

Dumb, Megan, she told herself. Really dumb. You’re going to let that good, solid brick wall you’ve built around yourself crumble because the guy sleeps in a room with wallpaper and a pineapple bedstead.

Kitchen sounds drifted up to her. The refrigerator opened and closed, spoons clanked on glass bowls, and there was a soft splat followed by an expletive. “What happened?” she called down.

“I dropped a damn egg on the damn floor, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Humpty – Dumpty together again. I wish you’d get down here. I have something to ask you.”

She put her jeans back on and helped herself to a blue plaid flannel shirt hanging in Pat’s closet. It all felt very intimate, wearing his shirt, using his shower. Downstairs their baby would sleep in his crib by the fireplace. And Pat was making domestic sounds in the kitchen, waiting to ask her something. Lord, what could it be? The Big Question? He’d already told her he wanted her. It was all a little sudden, but sometimes love was like that. Mr. and Mrs. Hunter. Megan Hunter. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was over the edge.

“Are you around the bend?” she asked her reflection. “Mrs. Hunter? Don’t you ever learn?” She stomped down the stairs. “Just because I’m wearing your shirt, don’t think I’m going to marry you.”

He stared at her, blank – faced.

“Wasn’t that what you were going to ask me?”

“No. I was going to ask you to crack the eggs for the gingerbread. I keep making a mess of it.”

She looked at the brown dough in the big bowl on the counter. “Sure, I get all the tough jobs.”

“So why don’t you want to marry me?”

“Nothing personal. I don’t want to marry anyone. I’m a free spirit. I’m the wind. I’m a saucy strumpet.”

He grinned. “Do you know what a strumpet is?”

“Not exactly.”

He whispered the definition in her ear.

“Hmmm,” she said. “Well, I’m not one of those.”

He draped his arm around her shoulders. “What about it, Windy? Will you crack my eggs?”

“I suppose it’s the least I could do, since you’ve mixed everything else together.”

An hour later, Megan took the last cookie sheet out of the oven and set it on a wire rack. “This isn’t going to work,” she told Pat. “You’ve already eaten half of the cookies. We’ll never get enough for Thanksgiving at this rate.”

“I can’t help it. They’re great. Besides, I’m not the only guilty party.”

She planted her fists on her hips. “I ate one cookie. One!”

“Yes, but you’re wearing half a dozen.”

She examined her shirt. It was caked with cookie dough and smudged with flour. “I’m not a neat cook.”

He tweaked her nose. “You’re an adorable cook.”

So they were back to nose tweaks, she thought, pouting. Fine. “I’m going home.”

He looked disappointed. “I’ll make cocoa and popcorn if you’ll stay awhile longer.”

“I can’t. Tomorrow is Saturday. I have to work tomorrow.” That much was true, but she could have stayed. She was just in a snit because he’d tweaked her on the nose. Men were so fickle. One minute they were slobbering all over you in a fit of passion, and the next thing they didn’t want to marry you. The hell with them.

“Where’s your car?” he asked. “I didn’t see it when I parked in the garage.”

“It’s at Merchants Square. I went to see Tilly’s apartment.”

“She’s not home.” He plunged his hands into his pockets. “I check on her every day.”

Megan glanced over at the little boy sleeping by the fireplace. “What happens if Tilly doesn’t come back?”

Pat leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. “I don’t know. I’d adopt him, honest to goodness I would, but it’s not that easy. I’m not sure of the law. I think he’ll be made a ward of the state, probably placed in a registered foster home until relatives can be located. Even if I tried to adopt him, it would take a year for the paper work to be done, and I probably wouldn’t get him, because I’m not married.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?”

Pat gritted his teeth when he saw the tears clinging to her lower lashes. He was close to tears himself, and he was mad. Tilly Coogan had disappointed him. She was a young unwed mother, but she’d seemed responsible and mature for her years. Timmy was a healthy, happy, well – loved baby. Ten days earlier Tilly and Timmy had left his office as a functioning family unit. And now she’d abandoned him. What had gone wrong? Maybe he should have been more observant. Maybe he could have prevented this.

He pulled Megan to him and hugged her, burying his face in her hair. “I don’t know, Meg. I’m giving her until Thanksgiving, and then I’ll hire a lawyer and a detective. In the meantime, we’ll take good care of Timmy.”

Megan blinked back the tears. “It’s his first Thanksgiving. We have to do this right.”

Pat smiled. “Yeah. He probably can’t wait to sneeze turkey on you.”

She slipped her arms into her pea coat. “I’ll leave on that happy note.”

Pat handed her the keys to his car. “How about if we swap cars for tonight? I don’t want you wandering the streets alone.”

He walked to the car with her and waited while it churned a few times and caught. “I’ll come pick it up tomorrow at six o’clock. Wear something pretty. I’m taking you out to dinner. I think we both need a decent meal.”

“What about Timmy?”

“I have a baby – sitter. My receptionist’s daughter.”

The following day, Saturday, Megan dressed in her colonial costume, skipped down the stairs of her house, locked her front door with a flourish, and whistled all the way to work. She cracked her knuckles throughout the day, glancing at the watch she had hidden in her pocket, sighing heavily when time seemed to drag. At five o’clock she bolted from her ticket taking post in front of the silversmith’s shop, and at five – thirty she flew into her house and practically jumped out of her big, black shoes. She dropped her long skirt and white apron at the top of the stairs and was stripped down to her long johns by the time she reached the bathroom.

She had a dinner date with Patrick Hunter, and she only had half an hour to make herself ravishing. She caught a glimpse of her red cheeks and flyaway hair in the vanity mirror. Maybe not ravishing, she thought. Ravishing would take days. In thirty minutes the most she could accomplish would be to look clean and presentable.

Half an hour later, Megan applied the final swipe of mascara to her lashes and stepped back to appraise herself. She wasn’t sure how she looked, but she felt ravishing. She’d used the blow dryer and brush on her hair until it was a shining cloud of soft waves around her face. She wore a smudge of eye liner, a little peach – toned blush over cheeks that were already flushed, and a pale coral lip gloss.