He returned her smile. "Only rejections, Miss Molly. Only rejections."

The elevator dinged, and Molly entered, sharing the s.p.a.ce with three elderly women and a man who reeked of garlic. In reflex, she wrinkled her nose, then out of the corner of her eye saw Joseph grin at her response. He didn't miss a thing, she thought, and that made her nervous. If he was that observant, she didn't want him guessing about her own attraction toward him. And then she sighed. There was no need to second-guess a man who was capable of reproducing himself as perfectly as Joseph Rossi had. A fleeting thought came and went as she wondered what Joey's mother had looked like. Whatever the child had inherited from her had nothing to do with actual physical characteristics. And then she wondered why she cared. They had nothing to do with her...nothing at all.

Molly paced her bedroom floor, going from closet to mirror and back again. She stared at her reflection in dismay and then licked her finger before pinching a wayward curl from her forehead, trying unsuccessfully to squelch its rebellion and shove it back into order beneath the tortoisesh.e.l.l clasp in her hair. She turned first one way and then another, checking as she had twice in the last half-hour for signs of a drooping slip or an undone hem.

She made a face at her own reflection and turned away. There was no use searching for any more imperfections. She was as ready as she'd ever be. Now she had to make a choice: Either call Joseph Rossi and make her excuses or show up next door and see if the man was as honest as he seemed.

But in her heart, the choice was already made, because Molly desperately wanted to believe. She grabbed her purse and the carton of strawberry ice cream and started down the sidewalk. It took less than a minute to get to his front door. It took longer than that before she got up the nerve to knock.

Just when she started to make a fist, the door opened. It startled her so that she took a step backward and almost fell off the front step and into the shrubbery.

Joseph watched her coming up the walk, clutching a carton of ice cream in front of her blue dress like a torch, and then waited anxiously on the other side of the door for her knock. When it didn't come as soon as expected, his impatience got the better of him. He yanked the door open, half expecting to see her running away. When she suddenly began teetering on the edge of his step, he realized that he'd scared the h.e.l.l out of her instead.

With no time to think, he reached out, catching her just before she landed in his bushes, then pulled her back onto her feet, making no attempt to ignore the fact that her face had turned bright pink.

"Great entrance," he said, and bowed elaborately, as he stepped aside to let her make her own way into his home.

Molly's gaze was steadfast as she entered with her head held high. She refused to be embarra.s.sed about an already embarra.s.sing situation, and began brushing at unseen bits of nothing on the front of her skirt as she handed him the melting container of ice cream.

"Thank you," she said primly. "It was one of my better efforts."

Joseph laughed and Molly turned and stared, amazed by his ability to enjoy the simplest of things, even if it seemed to be constantly at her expense.

"Momma!"

Joey burst through the doorway on the run, a look of intense surprise and excitement spreading across his face, and then he stopped short, suddenly shy.

Joseph groaned, and muttered low so that only Molly could hear. "I swear this is not my idea. I've talked until I'm blue in the face, and he still seems bent on claiming you." He hesitated and then added with a teasing smile. "Although I honestly can't fault him in his choice."

Molly blushed, ignored the father, and knelt until she was eye level with the son.

"h.e.l.lo, Joey." She offered her hand, thinking he would shake it. But he simply smiled and walked into her arms for a hug instead, bringing tears to her eyes as he wrapped himself around her neck.

"Found Momma," he told his father, then wiggled to be turned loose. "I show you my toys," he announced, taking Molly by the hand in a proprietary manner and starting to lead her out of the room.

Joseph grinned. "Better watch him. He's precocious, you know. That's a toddler version of want to see my etchings?'"

It was Molly's turn to laugh, and she surprised herself when she did. She let Joey lead her away and missed the look of intense longing that swept across Joseph's face.

"Oh, h.e.l.l, Joey," Joseph said to himself. "What have you done to our lives?" He looked down at the melting ice cream and headed for the freezer.

The move he'd made from Mississippi to Oklahoma had been partly a career choice and partly an opportunity to get as far away from the remnants of his old life as possible. Now here he was, making the first moves toward starting a new relationship when he'd barely gotten over the war wounds from the old.

"Daddy!" The excited shout from the back of the house jolted Joseph from his reverie and sent him hurrying to answer the summons.

He walked into his son's room and then stopped short, oddly jealous of how easily Joey had accepted this woman into his life. But the sight of Joey and Molly astride the horse he'd confiscated from a carnival's merry-go-round and installed permanently in a corner of the room was too endearing to ignore. h.e.l.l! If Molly would put her arms as tightly around him as she had his son, he'd be smiling too.

"This is great!" Molly said. "Where on earth did you find it?"

Joseph shrugged and tried not to stare at how far her skirt had hitched up her thighs.

"Wanna ride, Daddy?" Joey kicked at the horse's sides as if urging him on to great strides.

"I'd love to ride with you...and Molly." His voice lingered a little too long on the thought for her comfort. "But I think I'd better go check the spaghetti instead."

They didn't even know when he left the room. The last thing he saw was Joey leaning back against Molly's b.r.e.a.s.t.s as he looked up in laughter, and Molly smiling down at the dark head cradled against her chest.

Joseph sighed. "I think I've just been rejected in favor of my own son." He didn't know whether to be glad that Molly was so comfortable around children or sorry that she was so uncomfortable around him. He had thought that when the earlier confusion about his marital state was cleared up, she'd be fine. Obviously he was wrong. He made up his mind that before the night was over, he'd find out why Molly Eden was distrustful of men. It was easier said than done.

Getting through the meal was an eye-opener for Molly. Watching how calmly Joseph dealt with his son's drips and spills and requests for more told her what mere words could never have done. The man had the patience of a saint-and, from her point of view, an iron const.i.tution.

Joey had reached a stage in his development in which he needed to see, from time to time, exactly what he was chewing. Obviously, from his point of view, there was only one way to do so, and that was to spit it out and check it for questionable contents.

The first time he'd done so, Joseph had looked nervously at Molly, waiting for her to shriek or gag. She'd done neither, although the level of her eyebrows had gone from normal to hairline height in the s.p.a.ce of one second.

Molly had seen the dismay on Joseph's face and the intense concentration on Joey's. Wisely, she'd ducked her head and begun a dissection of her own food rather than burst into laughter.

"It's easier to see what's in there if you don't put it in your mouth first," Molly said calmly, picking through her pasta with delicate movement. "I personally like the little green things in the sauce, don't you? Cora says they make my eyes blue."

"Cowa?"

"Cora," Molly corrected him. "She's my friend. Maybe you can meet her sometime."

Joey nodded and then began taking careful note of Molly's bright blue eyes as well as the food that she'd wisely separated on her plate. It was the last time he chewed first and spit later. And it was the first thing Joseph thanked her for after Joey went to bed.

"You have an amazing way with kids," he said. "All easy...and natural. You don't make things too complicated or fussy."

Molly smiled at his compliment, ignoring an old pain at the thought of never having any of her own, and settled a little deeper into the easy chair in which she was sitting.

Joseph returned the smile and tried not to stare at the way her mouth turned up at the corners when she talked or the way she often put a hand to her breast when telling something dramatic or funny. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he listened to her tell about the h.e.l.l of making floral deliveries on Mother's Day, and made fists of his hands to keep from putting them on her. It was too soon, and maybe the attraction between them was wrong. But for Joseph, the wanting was already there.

"Maybe one day you'll be making Mother's Day deliveries to yourself and you'll appreciate it a little more," Joseph teased.

The smile slid off her face. She felt it falling and did everything she knew to keep it from happening, right down to a swift, sharp, intake of breath to hold it in place. It didn't work.

"What?" Joseph said. "What did I say?"

Molly shrugged and looked down at the floor and then back up at a spot just over Joseph's shoulder. There was never a good time to say this, but maybe now-before it could possibly matter, before they did something stupid by getting involved-now was the time to get it said.

"It's nothing."

The wound was old and healed, but the pain had never really gone away. She hated herself when she was unable to stop the tremble in her voice. She blinked, hoping that the tears stinging her eyelids would not show. "You had no way of knowing."

Joseph's stomach tilted. The pain on her face was obvious, and the way her voice was shaking made him sick. He'd have given anything to take back whatever it was he'd said.

"Knowing what, Molly?"

She shrugged, fiddling with the hair clasp on her head to keep from burying her face in her hands.

"I can't have any more children," she said.

It was the word more that made him shudder. That meant once upon a time there had been a child. He wasn't certain he wanted to hear what happened. Visions of his own h.e.l.l kept knocking at the walls behind which he'd left it.

He sat upright, unaware that his eyes had narrowed and his mouth thinned. Unaware that he seemed to brace himself for something ugly, something he didn't want to face. Not from her.

Molly looked up and tried to smile. But the look on his face sent the thought into hiding. Oh, dear.

"Do you want to continue?"

She nodded. "I was twenty years old. A third-year college student, and madly in love with one of the junior professors on campus. We dated for nearly six months before I...before we..." She swallowed harshly, then shrugged as she fidgeted with the hem of her skirt. "I loved him," she finally said.

Joseph nodded. He could understand love.

Molly took a deep breath, because the rest of the telling came slow, and it came in agonizing clumps of words. "I got pregnant. It was an accident."

Joseph's nostrils flared, and for a moment, he could feel himself physically taking her by the shoulders and tossing her from his house. He knew-he could feel-what was coming. And to hear it again, from her lips, was going to make him sick.

"And just what did you do with that accident?" The bitterness in Joseph's words was harsh and ugly.

Molly jerked. The anger in his voice had nothing to do with her story. That much she knew. She took a breath and continued.

"I went to school...and I waited anxiously for her to be born."

The breath slid out of him like air escaping from a punctured balloon. The fire in his eyes dampened, and the lines around his mouth softened.

"What happened, Molly?" he asked.

Her chin began to shake. She took a fistful of skirt in each hand and looked down at the floor as the rest of her story fell out into the silence between them.

"He wasn't happy...but he didn't demand I...he didn't say I had to...Oh G.o.d! There's no easy way to say this. We had a wreck. I was five months pregnant and I lost the baby. I can't have any more children and that's that."

Tears slid down her face in silent streams. There was too much pain from the telling to even allow a sob to escape. There was too much shame from the rest of the story to face looking at Joseph when she said it.

"That's tragic, honey," he said softly. "But it's not your fault. Didn't he understand that?"

"What you don't understand," Molly cried, "is that the first visitors I had when I woke up in the hospital were him and his wife. He was married...and I hadn't known! I swear to G.o.d."

Joseph came off the sofa in one motion. He stepped across the coffee table and pulled Molly out of the chair and into his arms before she had time to catch her breath.

The tenderness and the strength with which he held her was the last straw. What was left of her composure disappeared about the time his arms slid around her shoulders. She was pressed against a wall of muscle and a swiftly beating heart before she had time to consider rejecting the comfort he offered.

"This is embarra.s.sing. I didn't mean to fall apart." She wiggled, trying to pull herself out of his embrace.

"Hush," Joseph said, rea.s.serted his hold on her, and rested his chin on the top of her hair, trying not to dwell on the shape of her next to the shape of him. "And I didn't mean to step on your ghosts. I've got enough of my own."

Molly heard what he said, knowing that what he'd just admitted was as much a warning as a consolation.

"Well," she said, trying to smile through tears. "I think I've just overstayed my welcome. Thanks for dinner, and tell Joey thanks for the ride."

"You don't have to leave yet," Joseph said, refusing to relinquish his hold, yet unwilling to admit to the comfort he felt in holding her against his chest.

"I think it's time all good girls were in bed," Molly said, and pushed herself out of Joseph's arms.

"That could be arranged," he said, teasing her with a practiced leer.

"You're going to deserve whatever troubles your son dumps in your lap during the next few years if you don't watch what you say around him," Molly warned.

"He's asleep," Joseph said. "He won't hear a thing."

"That's what my parents used to think. But I can remember faking sleep just to lie awake and listen to their laughter...and the secrets I imagined they were telling...and then the silence that always followed."

The image she'd painted of two people in love was staggering, and there was nothing left to say. The night was over, she was going home, and he knew it.

Why do I keep drawing out the need to say good-bye? What was so special about one woman that he couldn't even bring himself to say good night?

"See you around, neighbor," Molly said. "Next time, maybe the meal can be on me."

Joseph grinned. "As long as it's not burned wieners, you've got a deal." He slid a brotherly arm across her shoulder and walked her to the door.

"I'll call," he said.

"I'll answer," she replied. And then she was gone.

Joseph watched until he saw the light come on in her house next door, and then kept watching until sometime later when the lights went out. Only then did he give up his vigil, close the door, and go to his own room, and a lonely bed...and face the fact that he was falling for a temptress from the Garden of Eden.

Three.

Almost a month had come and gone since Molly had revealed her past to Joseph, and she still knew nothing about his. The vague references he made toward Joey's mother were anything but compliments. And while she knew little about Joseph, what she knew, she liked. He was a man who liked to touch, whether it was the curls around her face or the texture of her skin. He gave good hugs, and he loved his son and his job, and he liked to laugh.

Whatever he had left behind him in Mississippi seemed to still be there. He gave no indication of having brought any unfinished business with him. Not once during their frequent evenings together did he make even the vaguest of references to life before Joey. All Molly could do was hope and pray that someday Joey's mother didn't present herself in righteous indignation to reclaim her man and her child. And while she wondered and wished, she found her feelings for her next-door neighbors growing deeper and deeper.

Molly glanced up at the clock, muttering under her breath as she slipped a number six wire up through the base of a long-stemmed American Beauty. Her fingers flew as she wrapped it several times around the p.r.i.c.kly stem to give it stability before clipping the excess wire from the end of the rose. With the skill that comes from years of repet.i.tion, she eyeballed the piece of florist's foam anch.o.r.ed to the bottom of a deep crystal bowl as well as the other twenty-three roses already in place, and slipped it into the perfect spot.

The arrangement was to be the centerpiece for a forty-fourth wedding anniversary dinner, and she wanted it to be special. The way Molly looked at it, anyone who could live with another human being for more than forty years and still smile deserved, at the very least, a decent bowl of flowers.

"Hey, Harry." She slipped an extra length of eucalyptus in between the two tallest roses. "It's ready for delivery, and just under the wire. Can you get to Nichols Hills before four?"

Harry swiped his hand across his balding head, looked down at his watch and then up at Molly, his eyes twinkling as he answered. "Are you willing to pay the traffic ticket?"

"No!"-she motioned toward the woman who was entering the front of the shop-"and neither is Cora."