first thing Norah Ingalls noticed when she woke up Sunday morning was the gold wedding band on her left hand.
Norah was not married. Had never been married. She was as single as single got. With seven-month-old triplets.
The second thing was the foggy headache pressing at her temples.
The third thing was the very good-looking stranger lying next to her.
A memory poked at her before panic could even bother setting in. Norah lay very still, her heart just beginning to pound, and looked over at him. He had short, thick, dark hair and a hint of five-o’clock shadow along his jawline. A scar above his left eyebrow. He was on his back, her blue-and-white quilt half covering him down by his belly button. An innie. He had an impressive six-pack. Very little chest hair. His biceps and triceps were something to behold. The man clearly worked out. Or was a rancher.
Norah bolted upright. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. He wasn’t a rancher. He was a secret service agent! She remembered now. Yes. They’d met at the Wedlock Creek Founder’s Day carnival last night and—
And had said no real names, no real stories, no real anything. A fantasy for the night. That had been her idea. She’d insisted, actually.
The man in her bed was not a secret service agent. She had no idea who or what he was.
She swallowed against the lump in her parched throat.
She squeezed her eyes shut. What happened? Think, Norah!
There’d been lots of orange punch. And giggling, when Norah was not a giggler. The man had said something about how the punch must be spiked.
Norah bit her lower lip hard and looked for the man’s left hand. It was under the quilt. Her grandmother’s hand-me-down quilt.
She sucked in a breath and peeled back the quilt enough to reveal his hand. The same gold band glinted on his ring finger.
As flashes of memories from the night before started shoving into her aching head, Norah eased back down, lay very still and hoped the man wouldn’t wake before she remembered how she’d ended up married to a total stranger. The fireworks display had started behind the Wedlock Creek chapel and everything between her and the man had exploded, too. Norah closed her eyes and let it all come flooding back.
* * *
A silent tester burst of the fireworks display, red and white just visible through the treetops, started when she and Fabio were on their tenth cup of punch at the carnival. The big silver punch bowl had been on an unmanned table near the food booths. Next to the stack of plastic cups was a lockbox with a slot and a sign atop it: Two Dollars A Cup/Honor System. Fabio had put a hundred-dollar bill in the box and taken the bowl and their cups under a maple tree, where they’d been sitting for the past half hour, enjoying their punch and talking utter nonsense.
Not an hour earlier Norah’s mother and aunt Cheyenne had insisted she go enjoy the carnival and that they’d babysit the triplets. She’d had a corn dog, won a little stuffed dolphin in a balloon-dart game, which she’d promptly lost somewhere, and then had met the very handsome newcomer to town at the punch table.
“Punch?” he’d said, handing her a cup and putting a five-dollar bill in the box. He’d then ladled himself a cup.
She drank it down. Delicious. She put five dollars in herself and ladled them both two more cups.
“Never seen you before,” she said, daring a glance up and down his six-foot-plus frame. Muscular and lanky at the same time. Navy Henley and worn jeans and cowboy boots. Silky, dark hair and dark eyes. She could look, but she’d never touch. No sirree.
He extended his hand. “I’m—”
She held up her own, palm facing him. “Nope. No real names. No real stories.” She was on her own tonight, rarely had a moment to herself, and if she was going to talk to a man, a handsome, sexy, no-ring-on-his-finger man—something she’d avoided since becoming a mother—a little fantasy was in order. Norah didn’t date and had zero interest in romance. Her mother, aunt and sister always shook their heads at that and tried to remind her that her faith in love, and maybe herself, had been shaken, that was all, and she’d come around. That was all? Ha. She was done with men with a capital D.
He smiled, his dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners. Early thirties, she thought. And handsome as sin. “In that case, I’m...Fabio. A...secret service agent. That’s right. Fabio the secret service agent. Protecting the fresh air here in Wedlock Creek.”
She giggled for way too long at that one. Jeez, was there something in the punch? Had to be. When was the last time she’d giggled? “Kind of casually dressed for a Fed,” she pointed out, admiring his scuffed brown boots.
“Gotta blend,” he said, waving his arm at the throngs of people out enjoying the carnival.
“Ah, that makes sense. Well, I’m Angelina, international flight attendant.” Where had that come from? Angelina had a sexy ring to it, she thought. She picked up a limp fry from the plate he’d gotten from the burger booth across the field. She dabbed it in the ketchup on the side and dangled it in her mouth.
“You manage to make that sexy,” he said with a grin.
Norah Ingalls, single mother of drooling, teething triplets, sexy? LOL. Ha. That was a scream. She giggled again and he tipped up her face and looked into her eyes.
Kiss me, you fool, she thought. You Fabio. You secret service agent. But his gaze was soft on her, not full of lascivious intent. Darn.
That was when he suggested they sit, gestured at the maple tree, then put the hundred in the lockbox and took the bowl over to their spot. She carried their cups.
“Have more punch,” she said, ladling him a cup. And another. And another. He told her stories from his childhood, mostly about an old falling-down ranch on a hundred acres, but she wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t. She told him about her dad, who’d been her biggest champion. She told him the secret recipe for her mother’s chicken pot pie, which was so renowned in Wedlock Creek and surrounding towns that the Gazette had done an article on her family’s pie diner. She told him everything but the most vital truth about herself.
Tonight, Norah was a woman out having fun at the annual carnival, allowing herself for just pumpkin-hours to bask in the attention of a good-looking, sexy man who was sweet and smart and funny as hell. At midnight—well, 11:00 p.m. when the carnival closed—she’d turn back into herself. A woman who didn’t talk to hot, single men.
“What do you think the punch is spiked with?” she asked as he fed her a cold french fry and poured her another cup.
He ran two fingers gently down the side of her cheek. “I don’t know, but it sure is nice to forget myself, just for a night when I’m not on duty.”
Duty? Oh, right, she thought. He was a secret service agent. She giggled, then sobered for a second, a poke of real life jabbing at her from somewhere.
Now the first booms of the fireworks were coming fast and there were cheers and claps in the distance, but they couldn’t see the show from their spot.
“Let’s go see!” she said, taking his hand to pull him up.
But Fabio’s expression had changed. He seemed lost in thought, far away.
“Fabio?” she asked, trying to think through the haze. “You okay?”
He downed another cup of punch. “Those were fireworks,” he said, color coming back into his face. “Not gunfire.”
She laughed. “Gunfire? In Wedlock Creek? There’s no hunting within town limits because of the tourism and there hasn’t been a murder in over seventy years. Plus, if you crane your neck, you can see a bit of the fireworks past the trees.”
He craned that beautiful neck, his shoulder leaning against hers. “Okay. Let’s go see.”
They