"Well." Bryan pursed his lips as he thought about it. "She really digs the flowers you bring her. No one ever did that before, except once I brought her some little ones for her birthday. She got all mushy about it."

"No one ever brought her flowers," Jared murmured. He wasn't just an idiot. He was a champion idiot.

"Nuh-uh," Bryan continued, warming up. "No one ever took us out to ball games or for pizza, and she likes that, too."

This time he could ask, because it was for the boy. "No one ever took you to ball games or for pizza?"

"Nah. I mean, Mom and me went, sure, but not with a guy who like set it up and stuff." Bryan was thinking that over, how much he liked it, when inspiration struck. "Oh, yeah. And when you're going to take her out, like on a date, she sings in the shower. She went out on dates before and all, but she never sang when she was getting ready. So maybe you should take her on a date. Girls like that stuff."

Jared determined there were going to be lots of ball games, lots of pizza, lots of dates and lots of flowers in Savannah and Bryan's future. "Yeah, they do."

"Have you got any love words?"

"Excuse me?"

"Like in the movies," Bryan explained. "You know how the woman gets all moon-eyed when the guy says love words. Only the guy has to be kind of moon-eyed, too, to make it work. She might like that."

"She might."

Bryan sighed at the thought. "It's probably embarrassing."

"Not if you mean them. Here's the thing, Bryan." Jared scooted away just enough that he could face the boy fully. "I figure I ought to run this by you, since you've been the man of the house for so long. I'm in love with your mother."

As his stomach clutched and jittered, Bryan lowered his gaze. "I kind of figured you were stuck on her."

"No, I'm in love with her. Moon-eyed. I'm going to ask her to marry me."

Bryan's gaze whipped back up, and this time it held steady and searching. "For real?"

"For very real. How does that fly with you?"

He wasn't ready to commit. Though he liked the strong weight of the arm on his shoulders, his stomach was still jumping. "Would you, like, live with us?"

"Not like. I would live with you, and you'd live with me. But there's a catch."

That was what he'd been afraid of. He braced himself, kept his eyes level. "Yeah? What?"

"I'm going to ask you to take my name, Bryan. And to take me on, as your father. I don't just want your mother, you see. I want both of you, so you both have to want me."

There was an odd pressure on his chest, as if someone had just sat on him. "You want to be my father?"

"Yes, very much. I know you've gotten along just fine without one up till now, and maybe I need you more than you need me, but I think I'd be good at it."

Bryan's eyes goggled. "You need to be my father?"

"I do," Jared murmured, realized he'd rarely spoken truer words. "I really do."

"I'd be Bryan MacKade?"

"That's the deal."

While he hesitated, Jared's universe simply ground to a halt. If the boy rejected him, he knew, it would cut straight to his heart.

But Bryan didn't know for sure how things were done between men. He knew what to do when his mother offered him something wonderful, something he'd hardly dared to dream of but had wished for hard, really hard, at night. So, in the end, that was what he did.

Jared found his arms full of boy.

The breath Jared had been holding whistled out in almost painful relief. Have a cigar, he thought giddily, you've got yourself a son.

"This is so cool," Bryan said, his voice muffled against Jared's chest. "I thought maybe you didn't want somebody else's kid."

Gently, for he suddenly felt very gentle, Jared cupped the boy's chin and lifted it. "You won't be somebody else's. We'd make it legal, but that's just a paper. What really counts is what's between you and me."

"I'll be Bryan MacKade. You'll make her go for it, won't you? You'll talk her into it?"

"Talk is my business."

Furious at herself for snapping at Bryan, Savannah ruined two illustrations before admitting that work was hopeless. She'd been so pleased with herself when she drove away from the MacKade farm. Drunk with the power of causing fury to run hot and cold over Jared's face.

Now she was miserable. Miserably angry, miserably frustrated. Miserable. She wanted to kick something, but wasn't so far gone she'd take it out on the two kittens napping in the corner of the kitchen.

She wanted to break something, but after a frustrated search through the living room she discovered she didn't have anything valuable enough to be satisfying.

She wanted to scream. But there was no one to scream at.

Until Jared strode through the door.

"You don't have so much as a cuff link left here, MacKade. Everything's in your front yard."

"I noticed. That was quite a show, Savannah."

"I enjoyed it." She crossed her arms, angled her chin. "Sue me."

"I might yet. Why don't we sit down?"

"Why don't you go to hell?" she drawled. "And be sure the door kicks you on your way out."

"Sit down," he repeated, in a tone just firm enough, just reasonable enough, to light a very short fuse.

"Don't you tell me what to do in my own house!" she shouted at him. "Don't you tell me what to do, period. I'm sick to death of you making me feel like some slow-witted backwater bimbo. I don't have a fancy degree—hell, I don't have a high school diploma—but I'm not stupid. I muddled through with my life just fine before you came along. And I'll do just fine after you've gone."

"I know." He acknowledged that with a slight inclination of his head. "That's what's been worrying me. And I don't think you're stupid, Savannah. On the contrary. I don't think I've ever met a smarter woman."

"Don't play that tune with me. I know what you think of me, and I can live up to most of it."

"I think you can," he said quietly. "I think you can live up to everything I think of you. If you'd sit down, I'll tell you what that is."

"I'll say what I have to say," she tossed back. "You want to know about me, Jared. I'll tell you about me. A parting gift, for all the good times. You sit down," she demanded, and stabbed a finger at a chair.

"All right. But this isn't why I'm here. I don't need to know—"

"You asked for it," she said, interrupting him smartly. "By God, you'll get it. My mother died young, but she left my father and me first. She didn't go far, just across the corral, so to speak. Another smooth-talking cowboy. My father never got over it, never forgave, never gave an inch. Certainly not to me. He never loved me the way I wanted him to. He couldn't. Even if he'd tried, he couldn't. I wasn't a nice polite little girl. I grew up hard, and I liked it. Getting the picture?"

"Savannah, please sit down. You don't have to do this."

Enraged, she stalked over to him. "Listen. I haven't even gotten started, so you just shut up and listen. We didn't have much money. But then, a lot of people don't, and they get by. So did we. He liked to take risks, and he broke a lot of bones. There's more than manure on the rodeo circuit, more than sweat. There's desperation, too. But we got by. Things got a little interesting when I grew breasts. Men like to stare at them, or sneak a feel. Most of the guys on the circuit had known me since I was a kid, so there wasn't much trouble. I knew when to smile and when to use my elbow. I was never innocent. The way I lived, you'd better grow up knowing."

He didn't interrupt now, but sat quietly, his eyes unreadable. And her hands were cold.

"I was sixteen when I took that tumble into the hay. I wasn't innocent, but I was a virgin. I knew, but I let myself forget, because... Because he was good-looking, exciting, charming, and, of course, he told me he'd take care of everything. No one had—"

"No one had ever taken care of you before," Jared murmured.

"That's right, and I was just young and stupid enough to believe him. But I knew what I was doing, knew the chance I was taking. So I got pregnant. He didn't want me or the baby. Neither did my father. I was just like my mother, cheap, easy. He told me to get out. He might have thought differently the next day. He had a quick temper. But I wasn't cheap, and I wasn't easy, and I wanted the baby. Nobody was going to take that baby away from me. Nobody was going to tell me to be ashamed. They tried. Social services, sheriffs, state cops. Whenever they could catch me, they tried. They wanted me in the system so they could tell me how to act, how to raise my child or, better for everyone, to give him away. But that wasn't better for me, and it wasn't better for Bryan."

"No. The system's flawed, Savannah. Overburdened. But it tries."

"I didn't need it." She lashed back at him. "I got work, and I worked hard. I waited tables, I served drinks, I cleaned up slop. It didn't matter what kind of work, as long as it paid. He never went hungry. My son never went hungry, and he always had a roof over his head. He always had me. He always knew I loved him and that he came first."

"The way you never did."

"The way I never did. Whatever it took, I was going to give him a decent life. If that meant taking off most of my clothes and dancing for a bunch of howling idiots, what difference did it make? I didn't have an education, I didn't have any skills. If I'd been able to go to art school—" She bit off the thought with a furious shake of her head.

"Is that what you wanted?" He kept his voice neutral, as he would have with a fragile or high-strung witness. "To go to art school."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does matter, Savannah."

"I wanted Bryan. Everything else was secondary. You wanted to know about men. There were a few. Scores less than you've imagined, I'm sure. I wasn't dead, just driven. I never took money from them, but I took food a couple of times, and there's not much difference. And, damn you, I'm not ashamed of it. The only reason I didn't steal was because if I'd been caught, they might have taken Bryan. But I would have stolen if I'd been sure I'd have gotten away with it. I didn't know I could peddle my paintings until one of the girls at the club asked me if I'd do one of her for her boyfriend and offered me a twenty. That's when I got the idea to take Bry to New Orleans."

She was pacing the room as she spoke, her words rushed and hurried in her effort to get them out and over. But now she stopped, slowed herself. "That's all there is. At least any other, finer details escape me at the moment." She turned to him again, her face calm now, and cold. "Cross-examine, Counselor?"

"You could have taken other routes."

"Sure."

"Safer ones," he added. "Easier ones, for you."

"Maybe. I didn't want safer ones. I didn't want easier."

"What did you want, Savannah? What do you want?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters." He rose, but didn't go to her. "It very much matters to me."

"I want a home. I want a place where people don't look at me like I'm dirt. Where the people who think they're decent don't whisper behind their hands."

"You have that here."

"And I'm keeping it."

He had to sacrifice his pride to ask, but he discovered it wasn't so very difficult. "Do you want me?"

Taken by surprise, she only stared for a moment. "That's not the issue."

"Then maybe I should put it another way." He reached into his pocket, drew out the small box he'd tucked in it before he left the farm. After lifting the lid, he held it out. "I came here to give this to you."

The ring was a simple, traditional diamond in an outdated and lovely gold setting. Mesmerized, Savannah gaped at it before slowly stepping back.

"It was my mother's," Jared said, in a voice that betrayed none of the raw nerves inside him. "It went to me, as I'm the oldest. I'm asking you to marry me, Savannah."

She couldn't breathe. Bryan would have recognized the weight that had dropped down on her chest. "Didn't you hear anything I've just told you?"

"Yes, everything, and I'm grateful you told me, even under the circumstances. This way I can tell you I love what you were, what you are and what you will be. You're the only woman I've ever loved, and it's so amazing to find you admire someone as much as you love them."

She stepped back again, as if he were holding a gun instead of a promise. "I don't understand you. I don't understand you at all. Is this some sort of vicious payback because I ruined your clothes?"

"Savannah." His voice was patient now. "Look at me."

She did, and the weight on her chest doubled and pushed tears into her eyes. "Oh, God. You mean it."