slenderness and become the man whose promise she had seen a very long time ago. His chest was deep and powerful. His arms rippled with well-formed muscle. His legs were long and straight, the hardness of them evident even through the soft fabric of old jeans.
That dark swatch of brown hair still threatened to fall over one eye, and his eyes remained a place of mystery, as brown as melted chocolate, hinting at a depth that had not materialized when he was a boy. Jessica refused to give in to the subtle seduction of contemplating whether it had materialized later in his life.
His mouth, then, had always had a faint curve upward, as if he were ready to laugh. Now she noticed how the line of it was hard, the upward quirk missing. There were other lines in his face: squint lines around his eyes, the start of a furrow in his forehead.
And yet, if anything, he was even more handsome than he had been in youth. Something in those lines suggested great strength and character. But, of course, she had mistakenly thought she had seen those qualities before.
Jessica glanced around her kitchen and repressed a sigh. The cottage was old, and her attempts to spruce it up by painting the cabinets a delicate shade of periwinkle blue and stripping the wide oak boards of the floor and refinishing them did not hide the fact that the cupboards had gaps and the floors sagged.
Plus, this area doubled as her office and the work area for her mail-order seed and herb business. Drying plants hung upside down from the ceiling. Heaps of mint and sage crowded her countertops and kitchen table. Her mismatched chairs, one painted yellow, one bright red, had been pulled back from the scarred wooden table so she could move around it easily. The desk in the corner—an antique rolltop and the only really decent piece of furniture in the room—was almost lost under stacks of orders and paperwork.
If a person was trying to impress, this room would probably not forward their cause. But Jessica could not remember the last time she had felt the need to be anything but herself.
She had left that painful teenage world—full of angst, self-doubt and pain—so far behind her that it was easy to imagine it had never existed.
Until a six-foot-something reminder appeared in her driveway. She was pretty sure that was even the same truck.
“Why did you bring O’Henry here?” she asked the girl, keeping every hint of her resentment for Brian’s unexpected and unwelcome reappearance in her life from her voice.
The child reminded her of a bird with a broken wing, hurt and fear broadcasting past the mask she had painted on her face.
“My uncle said he had seen you do a miracle once.” Her voice was more that of a child who still believed in the impossible than a young woman who had lost so much.
A miracle? How could Brian bring this poor sweet, damaged child here with such an expectation?
Despite her irritation with him, Jessica kept her tone light. “If I had those kind of powers, I would have turned your uncle into a toad.”
The girl regarded her steadily, and then asked, deadpan, “You mean you didn’t?”
Despite the gravity of the situation, or maybe because of it, a little giggle escaped Jessica. And then Michelle. And then they were both laughing.
“Hey, I don’t find that funny.”
Which, of course, only made them laugh harder.
Brian tried to look insulted, but Jessica could tell he was relieved to hear his niece laugh. She didn’t like the small ripple of tenderness this made her feel for him.
How nice it would be if he just remained the black-hearted popular boy who had promised to call the school’s worst social misfit and then reneged.
But he seemed so much more human now, than he had been then, far less godlike. His eyes, in the light of her kitchen, had a deep sorrow in them. And it was evident, from the sideways glance at his niece and the puppy, where those furrows on his forehead were coming from.
He had lost his brother and his sister-in-law and had become an instant parent to a teenager. Life extracted revenge, but somehow she found no comfort in the fact that he had suffered.
Jessica cleared a space at her table and made a nest for the puppy in an old towel. Michelle crowded close to her. “The vet told me he didn’t want to live,” she whispered, and Jessica glanced at her to see her shoulders hunching. Her voice cracked as she continued, “How could he not want to live when I love him so?”
If only love had the power to make things as a person wished, Jessica thought, and despite herself sent a sideways look at Brian.
Years ago, as a lonely high school senior who had fit in nowhere, she had fallen in love with popular, gorgeous Brian Kemp. But all the force of that love could not persuade him to do the thing he had promised. One small phone call.
A chance. She had been sure that, if given a chance to show him who she really was, he would love her. Instead, he had loved Lucinda Potter, or so it had seemed from the hungry kisses Jessica had witnessed them exchanging behind the Coke machine in the main foyer.
Instead, she reminded herself briskly, he had given her the best of opportunities. She had learned very young that she would have to love herself. No prince riding in on a white charger could make her life wonderful, she would have to do it. And she had done just that.
And now, she had to share some of that wonder with this troubled young girl and never mind the man who had brought her.
“The vet was wrong,” Jessica said firmly. “Every creature wants to live. Even a bug.”
“That’s what I thought,” Michelle said, her voice stronger.
Jessica closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. It was a more difficult task than normal. Her kitchen seemed far too tiny with Brian’s bulk in it. Over the powerful scents of mint and sage, she could feel his restlessness and detect his presence.
Powerful. Masculine.
She opened her eyes to see him prowling restlessly, looking at her plants and jars with a scowl on his face.
“Brian, why don’t you wait outside for a minute?”
Rather than looking insulted, he looked relieved. She felt his energy leave the room with him.
She composed herself after he left by taking a deep steadying breath. She held her hands above the small, dangerously-close-to-death dog. Slowly, her mind emptied of all thought and filled with pure and brilliant light, a spectrum of colors, dancing. Her fingertips began to tingle. All else faded, except the energy moving between her and the puppy.
Finally, she opened her eyes and gazed down at the little dog. She touched him with great and reverent affection.
“Is he going to live?” Michelle asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, unwilling to give the girl false hope. “But there are a few things I’d like to try. I’ll give him some of this.” She chose a small jar from a case of them and squeezed a few drops into his mouth.
“Is that like medicine?” Michelle asked.
“Something like that. We’ll pick some fresh herbs from the garden and make him his own concoction.”
Brian was outside, sitting on her favorite bench. Someday, there would be a small pond there. The rocks and mortar waited there for her to find the time and the energy to undertake such a big project.
Meanwhile, Jessica could only hope the memory of his sitting there—his handsome face lifted to the sun, his hair touched by the wind, his posture so relaxed—was not going to spoil that spot for her.
He didn’t appear to notice them, and so she took Michelle to her herb garden and began to pick, explaining each plant carefully to the surprisingly eager young student.
“Well?” he said, coming up behind them, quiet and graceful for such a large man.
“It’s too soon to say,”