inside to pull out a photograph with a yellow sticky note covering its subject. In Olivia’s elegant hand was a short message: I thought you should know. Know what? he wondered as he peeled the note off.
The answer stopped him in his tracks.
The snapshot had been taken in a parking lot on the main street of Heartbreak. The day had been sunny, the sky barely blue, but he would know it was cold even if the woman hadn’t been wearing a coat, scarf and gloves, even if her breath hadn’t crystallized in the air the instant the photo was taken.
Just as he’d known her instantly, without the long, wild curls, the sexy, tight clothes or the husky, seductive voice.
Just as he’d known that night seven months ago that rowdy bars weren’t her usual hangouts, that no-good con artists weren’t her usual companions.
He steadied his hand to stare at the photo. She wore no makeup, and her thick brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was turned slightly away from the camera to avoid a direct shot. Instead of drawing attention to her face, the stance drew the viewer’s eye lower. To what Olivia wanted him to know. To a not-so-small detail the too-big and unstylish clothes she wore couldn’t disguise.
She was pregnant. About seven months so.
After a long, stunned moment, he returned the photograph to the envelope, then carefully folded it to fit in his pocket. As he walked past the convertible and the beautiful, sexy redhead, he knew there was only one thing for him to do.
He had to go home.
Chapter 1
As towns went, Heartbreak, Oklahoma, wasn’t much, Grace Prescott thought as she walked briskly along the sidewalk. The buildings in what they laughingly called the business district were old and shabby. The sidewalks were cracked, the streets needed repaving, and too many of the parking spaces downtown had been empty for far too long. The ranchers and farmers for whom the town existed had always been in a tough business, and it had become even more so in recent years. Economic prosperity wasn’t even a pipe dream for the stores in town. The reality for most of them, her own included, was mere survival.
But she couldn’t think of anyplace else she’d rather be, of any other neighbors she’d rather have. In the last few months, she’d found a satisfaction in Heartbreak that she’d thought she would never know. For the first time in her life, she fit in. She had friends. She belonged.
And all it had taken was getting pregnant by a stranger and, when her father found out, a punch to the jaw. One moment of pure pleasure leading to a moment of pain, and the end result was this—freedom. Happiness. A bright future, no matter how bleak it might sometimes look.
“Hi, Grace.” Trudie Hampton greeted her as she unlocked the insurance agency door. “It’s a bit chilly this morning for your usual walk, isn’t it?”
“I’m not cold,” Grace said, though it wasn’t true. This morning’s forecast had called for a wind chill of eighteen degrees, and she was pretty sure they’d reached it. In spite of all her cold-weather gear, her reflection in the plate-glass window showed that her cheeks were ruddy. Her nose was sniffly, and her breath puffed into the air like smoke from a signal fire.
“They’re saying we’ll have snow before evening.”
“Really? I didn’t hear that.”
“Not on the radio. The old hens at the café. Bill Taylor says the creaking in his bones means there’s a snowstorm headed our way.”
“I thought it meant rain.”
“Aw, it means whatever suits the old goat’s fancy. I imagine he took one look at that cold gray sky and decided the rest on his own.” Trudie peered inside to make out the clock high on the wall. “I’d best get this place opened up, and you need to get inside before you freeze that young’un’s little toes off—to say nothing of your own toes. Have a good one.”
“I will. You, too.” As Grace walked on, she considered the truth of her statement. Lately she’d had nothing but good days. Sure, she was living on a tight budget and working longer hours at the hardware store than the doctor wanted her to. And, yes, there were still people trying none too subtly to discover the identity of her baby’s father. She had no insurance to cover the prenatal care and delivery of the baby, and no family to turn to for help. Some days she was convinced that she couldn’t possibly be a good mother, others she mourned the fact that there was no father, and too much of the time she was just plain scared by it all.
But they were still good days. Living on a budget was a piece of cake when you’d never before had a dime to call your own. Long hours at work for her own benefit was a lot different from long hours for someone else’s benefit. She had no family—her mother had fled Jed Prescott thirteen years ago, leaving Grace and Heartbreak behind—but for the first time in her life she had friends.
Also for the first time she’d found peace. She was no longer suffocating under her father’s rigid control, no longer living in fear that her most innocent action might send him into a rage. She no longer felt like an inmate in the grimmest of prisons.
She was a person with opinions to express, with value beyond the long hours she could work for free, and she felt like it.
Prescott’s Hardware, her destination, was located in the middle of the next block. All the other buildings on the block were boarded up and empty, giving her store a rather lonesome air, she thought fancifully as she unlocked the glass double doors. Inside the place smelled of metal and chemicals, with the pleasant aroma of sawn lumber drifting in faintly from the back. A serious builder would have to go to the big lumberyards and home centers in Tulsa or Oklahoma City, but Prescott’s provided everything necessary for the small jobs.
She turned on the lights, flipped the Closed sign on the door to Open, then headed for the counter back in one corner. Conscious of her tight budget, she turned the heat on only high enough to take the edge off the chill, then turned on the radio that sat on the file cabinets. Music, in the store or anywhere else in her life, had been against her father’s policy, so now that he was gone, she defiantly kept the radio playing all day and into the night. She even sang along, though her voice was rusty and always a half note off-key.
By the time she’d shed her winter garments and gotten a pot of coffee perking, the first customer had arrived. Actually, though he made regular purchases, he was more visitor than customer. Reese Barnett was the sheriff and, in some private little place deep inside, her hero. He’d been in the store the day her father had realized that she was pregnant. It was Reese who’d pulled Jed away after he’d hit her, who’d taken her to see Doc Hanson, then helped her settle in at the little house Shay Stephens had left when she’d married Easy Rafferty. It was Reese, with help from Heartbreak’s only lawyer, who had more or less intimidated her father into giving everything to her—the house and the store, though precious-little money—when he’d left town a few weeks later. He’d taken to looking in on her regularly ever since.
“I didn’t see your car in the parking lot,” he commented as he leaned one hip against the counter.
“I walked.” She watched as the last of the coffee dripped into the carafe, then poured a cup and handed it to him, her fingers brushing his, sending a tiny shiver down her spine. She could never admit it to anyone but herself, but she had a bit of a crush on Reese. It wasn’t just that he was incredibly handsome, capable and strong, though he was all three and then some. No, those weren’t necessarily qualities to admire. When her father had been Reese’s age, he’d been handsome, capable and strong, too, but none of that had stopped him from constantly abusing and tormenting his family.
She liked Reese because he was kind. Sympathetic. He genuinely cared about others. He was noble and honorable and decent. He had character, and she admired men with character.
Even though this man viewed her as a very young sister who needed looking after. Right now he was frowning in disapproval at the answer she’d given him. “You shouldn’t be walking that far.”
“It’s