Sam ended abruptly. So abruptly that Kate felt an almost physical pain. It might have been only a fairy tale, but it seemed to her that he'd instilled in it an intimate view of himself-a view that made her want to cry. Then, however, he spoke in a matter-of-fact, nearly lighthearted tone, and the tightness in her throat gradually lessened.

"Has your dad ever taken you up with him in the Mentor?" he asked Francis. "Maybe not, huh? You're a little young yet. But I'll bet you've got a plane somewhere in this toy box, haven't you? I mean, what decent toy box hasn't got at least one plane in it? Let see. . . . Ah! I knew it."

Hearing the clatter of Sam rummaging through the toy hamper, then his satisfied declaration, Kate smiled.

"A P-51 Mustang," he announced, sounding positively reverent. "This is one neat little fighter, buddy. A mite slow by today's standards, but back in World War Two, it was a real razor blade in a fight. Like this, see? Brrrr. . . ."

Impressed with the authenticity of Sam's audio effects, she could almost see the plane climbing, banking, diving through the air. But she blinked, then frowned in puzzlement when Francis added his own buzzing drone-a second engine to Sam's single-engine plane.

"Hey, that's the idea," Sam said. "Here. You take the controls. Come on, now, there's a German Bf 109 at two o'clock! Go for it! Brrr . . ."

How odd, she thought. And how disappointing. For a minute it had seemed as if . . . But, no. Francis obviously thought Sam was playing a spitting game, blowing out air and letting his lips vibrate. The child was quick to mimic actions, and in this case the noise simply followed by accident. Yet as Sam continued to vary the pitch of the toy plane's flight, Francis promptly followed his lead, duplicating Sam's noises almost exactly.

Exactly . . . Too exactly.

"Look out! We're hit, we're hit. And we're leaking fuel! Brr . . . brr-" Sam choked out a vivid rendition of engine cough.

"Brr . . . brr-" came the high-pitched voice of the younger pilot in a nearly perfect counterpoint.

Kate swung around the corner into the living room, her heart suddenly racing. Sam was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and Francis, plane in hand, was running around him in circles. Her gaze was glued to her nephew when Sam spoke.

"Hey, there, Katie. All finished upstairs?"

Her gaze flickered to him briefly. Then, seeing that Francis hadn't yet noticed her, she called loudly, "Francis!"

It was as if the child were attached to a rope and she'd jerked it. He nearly fell over trying to stop as he cast his startled, almost frightened gaze around the room. When he saw her, some of the confusion left his features, but he looked as if he might cry, and she forced herself to give him a rea.s.suring grin and a wave. He looked at her a moment longer, then his expression cleared, and he returned the smile and the wave before taking off with his airplane again.

She didn't believe it. Lifting her foot, she slipped off her flat, leather shoe, waiting until Francis's back was turned, then tossed it across the room. It hit the wall and landed with a clatter on the bare floor-and Francis whirled, his startled gaze shooting across the room, searching for the source of . . . of the noise.

Kate's first impulse was to yell for Cressie. Instead she drew a steadying breath and told herself to stay calm. She didn't want to frighten Francis with any more loud noises. The very thought that she could frighten him that way was staggering.

Slowly, her gaze shifted to Sam.

"He heard me," she said, her voice weak with shock.

Sam unfolded his lanky form from the floor and strolled toward her, his hands stuck in his back pockets. "We've been having a fine time," he said. "You're right, this is one smart kid. He doesn't miss a trick, and -"

"Sam, I said he heard me! He heard me call him, and he heard my shoe hit the wall! He heard your airplane noises, too, and he imitated them. But how could he?" She shook her head, glancing once more at Francis, who had abandoned the plane and was busy constructing a block tower.

Sam shrugged. "So? I know you said he had some problems with his hearing, but-"

"I said he was deaf. Permanently, totally deaf."

"Well, you sure could have fooled me."

"This isn't possible," Kate insisted. "It just isn't."

"Who says so?"

She shot him a quick look. "Some very good doctors and audiologists say so. It has to be a mistake."

He snorted. "Right, and I bet it's those 'very good doctors' who made it."

"No, you don't understand-"

"Katie, let me tell you something." Crossing his arms, he leaned a shoulder against the door frame. "Four days after I crashed that plane, I woke up to find out the right side of my body was more or less wasted. Besides the burns and a concussion, I had a broken back, a crushed leg, a slew of cracked ribs, and a punctured lung. I was missing a kidney, part of the liver, and various pieces of intestines. Just about everything else was being held together with sutures. They waited until my head stopped spinning, mostly. Then the neurologist and the orthopedist told me, if I made it, I probably wouldn't walk again."

In the face of her shock, he noted calmly, "But they were wrong. So, I'm sorry it if offends you, but I don't put much stock in what doctors say. I'd be in a wheelchair, looking at life through a cloud of painkillers, if I'd listened to them."

No, Kate thought, if he'd listened to them, he'd be dead. The Sam Reese she was coming to know wouldn't have tolerated such extensive disability. If he hadn't been able to will himself to walk, she suspected he simply would have willed himself to die. As her gaze skimmed over his tall, straight, and obviously healthy form, it occurred to her to wonder how on earth he could have recovered, not only so well but so quickly. A year ago, he said it had happened, and yet . . . dear Lord, yesterday he'd carried her a good quarter of a mile without so much as a grimace.

It seemed impossible, inconceivable. And yet everybody had heard at least one story of someone who'd defied a bad prognosis to prove the doctors wrong; made-for-TV movies and women's magazine articles about athletes were full of such inspirational tales. "They said he'd never walk again," the stories always began. So, Sam's story wasn't impossible. It was only extremely unlikely.

Hearing loss from nerve damage was a different matter.

She gave her head a quick shake. "Sam, it's almost too amazing to be true, and I'm really glad you had the persistence not to give up after hearing the worst. But this isn't the same thing. Nerve deafness is a medical fact-not something you can just overcome."

"Is that so?" He looked at Francis. "Well, I guess somebody better check those facts again. But, listen" -his gaze dropped to his watch-"it's getting close to lunchtime, and I have to pick up the gla.s.s for that window. Why don't you go tell Cressie the good news, so she can get over being excited- and so you can see to it that Francis gets to hold his sister, which I know you're going to want to do-and we can get out of here sometime before dinner?"

Clearly, Kate thought, his own nearly miraculous recovery had jaded him. He must believe that if he could get better, so could everyone else. Regardless, why was she standing here arguing?

With another quick look at Francis, Kate turned and ran toward the stairs, calling for Cressie.

Five.

An hour later, when they started to town, Sam settled behind the wheel and let out a sigh. "That baby's a real doll, isn't she?"

With a smile flirting at the corners of her lips, Kate agreed. "She sure is."

"It's hard to believe people are ever that little."

"It is pretty amazing."

"You know, Katie, it was a pleasure seeing you with those kids this morning. You're really good with them."

"You're pretty good yourself." She eyed him thoughtfully. With his jacket discarded, one arm draped over the steering wheel, the other resting loosely on the stick shift, and a warm breeze whipping through the open Jeep to ruffle his sun-streaked hair, Sam looked young, almost carefree-not so tough and hard. A result of his time with Francis, she figured. It seemed the tough guy was a sucker for kids. And she was rapidly becoming a sucker for tough guys.

"I like kids," Sam told her. "But liking isn't the same as understanding. And you really seem to understand them, if you know what I mean."

"I think so," she replied. "But, heavens, don't compare yourself to me on that score. I've had a lot of practice."

"Yeah, Ruth Davenport told me you're the oldest of six."

"That's right."

"Do any of them besides Cressie live around here?"

"No, Dad still owns the marina in Ontonagon. My oldest brother, Kyle, is married with two kids, and he works with Dad. Wayne and his wife got transferred four years ago to Vermont by the lumber company he works for. My sister Linda and her husband and daughter live in Chicago. And Joshua is a freshman at Western in Kalamazoo."

"That's quite a lineup," Sam remarked. Pausing briefly, he added, "Mrs. D. also told me your mom died when you were a teenager."

"I was twelve."

"And you took care of the crew after that?"

It must be paranoia, Kate thought. Had a year of listening to Scott Gibson talk about himself made her that suspicious? Maybe, because she couldn't help wondering if Sam was only filling the silence or if he was genuinely interested in her. It was hard to guess with this man. He could communicate volumes with a look. He could also be as unrevealing as a stone wall.

"You and Mrs. D. must have had quite a talk," she said.

Sam offered a sketchy shrug. "So, is it true? Did you take over when your mom died?"

"I wouldn't put it that way," she hedged. "Dad was there as much as he could be, and we spent summers with our aunt and uncle in Grand Rapids. But the marina took up most of Dad's time. He couldn't afford to hire a manager. So, with Kyle helping him, it was natural that I'd take care of the house and the other kids."

Sam was silent for a moment. Then he said, "My mom died when I was two. But I didn't have any brothers or sisters. Seems to me yours were d.a.m.ned lucky they had you. Still, it makes me wonder if having to raise them all is the reason you haven't got any kids of your own."

She started to speak but couldn't. With a few succinct words, he had paid her a compliment that meant a great deal because it came from someone who'd 'been there.' Then, when she was about to tell him how much she appreciated it, he'd plunged a knife into her and twisted it.

"I know a guy," he continued, unaware of her stricken expression, "another pilot, who married a woman who was the oldest in a big family like yours, and she told him straight out, before they got married, that she didn't want kids. Said she never wanted to see another diaper. I always thought she was sort of cold anyway, but I could see her point. If you spent your childhood raising one family, why do it all over again?" Sam shook his head. "But you're nothing like her. You're anything but cold, and you like kids. h.e.l.l, you even deliver babies for a living. But you're the only one of six kids, besides the college freshman, who isn't married. And you're-what? Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?"

"Thirty-one."

"Yeah? So, I wondered if going through all that with your mom dying left you feeling like you've already done your share of diapering."

She couldn't blame him for his curiosity. Everybody else was curious, too, given her choice of careers, about her apparent lack of interest in marriage and a family of her own. But for some reason, it was hard to offer Sam the standard response she offered others: "Oh, I'm too busy delivering babies to think about having them, and besides, I haven't met a man I want to marry." It was a lie-all of it. She thought about having babies a lot, especially when she delivered one. And she had wanted to marry Rick Sommers, regardless of how foolish it might have been.

Gazing out the side of the Jeep, Kate watched the posts of a split-rail fence flash by, as she murmured, "Just because I don't have a family doesn't mean I wouldn't like to have one."

Her eyes closed briefly to block out the pain of knowing what might have been. They snapped open, though, when she felt her hand, lying clenched in her lap, being covered by Sam's.

"Katie, I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I guess I'm the one being too nosy today. I should've kept my mouth shut."

Lowering her gaze to look at his hand resting familiarly on hers, she felt the strongest desire to tell him the truth. It wouldn't matter if he knew; he wouldn't be here long, and no one would be hurt by his knowing. And it had been such a long time that she'd carried the secret locked inside her.

Yet voicing it smacked of feeling sorry for herself, crying about something she couldn't change.

With a fl.u.s.tered wave of her free hand, she said, "It's okay. You don't have to be sorry for asking. Everybody asks me the same thing. Maybe I'm a little sensitive about it because of that."

The woods had disappeared, and the houses of Bourner's Crossing greeted them. Sam gave her hand a little squeeze before letting go to pull the Jeep to a stop at her front gate.

"Tell them all to go to h.e.l.l," he said. "And you can tell me to go to h.e.l.l, too. But first"-he shifted in his seat to face her-"I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me if there's a town within sixty miles that's got a decent restaurant."

She smiled, her good humor restored by his no-nonsense yet sensitive apology and his clever shift of topics. "Sure. This is tourist country, remember. But if you want fancy"-she gri-maced-"well, then, you' ll have to drive for it."

"It doesn't have to be fancy, as long as the food's good."

"Casey's, in Ontonagon, is my favorite. It's about an hour's drive."

"So, go with me Friday night."

Her smile froze on her lips, and her heart jumped to her throat. All morning, she'd sensed something like this coming, but still, he'd caught her off guard. She had a feeling he would always catch her off guard, which was, after all, one of the things that made him both exciting and a little scary. Swallowing the lump in throat, she determined that, before this went any further, they needed to get a couple of things settled between them.

"Sam, I . . ." Looking away from the disturbing heat in his eyes, she began again. "I meet a lot of men who come up here for hunting season or to fish. I don't usually go out with them, because I'm not very good at, well, casual acquaintances. So before I answer you"-she raised her chin slightly and met his gaze -"I guess I'd like to know what your intentions are."

His mouth twitched in amus.e.m.e.nt at her choice of words, but when he spoke, his tone was serious. "My intentions, huh? Katie, I'll be real honest. I spent a good part of last night and a lot of this morning thinking about going to bed with you." His gaze drifted downward, lingering over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thighs. "You are one s.e.xy lady. And if you said, 'Sure, Sam, let's do it,' you can bet I d.a.m.n well wouldn't argue."

Her skin tingled every place his gaze touched, and she knew she was blushing. She forced her gaze to remain steady, though, as his rose once more to meet it.

"I know that's not about to happen," he continued. "You aren't the kind of woman who'd jump into bed with a man she hardly knew. And I guess I ought to tell you, I'm thirty-eight years old, and I've never been married. In fact, I've never had anything with a woman that lasted more than maybe a year- and most lasted a lot less."

The news didn't surprise her, but Kate still felt compelled to ask, "Why not?"

The frown that appeared on Sam's brow was puzzled. "I'm not sure I know why not." Then, his expression clearing, he added, "I just haven't given settling down much thought. And anyway, I think I'd've had a hard time finding a woman who wanted to settle down with me. I work for a man who builds planes that don't look or behave like anybody else's, and my job is to prove they're better than anybody else's. But most women aren't real excited about the idea of getting attached to a man who tests out the latest experiments of some mod-ern-day Wright brother."

Experiments? As in untried? As in the plane in his pilot's fairy tale?

Alarmed curiosity had her murmuring, "I see what you mean." She also saw that flying had been more important to him than anything else that had come along-like a woman. But then, that had been the point of the fairy tale; the only thing that had mattered to the imaginary young pilot was flying. Down here, on the ground, he hadn't been able to make things work. She began to wonder exactly how much of that fairy tale was, indeed, true.

"After the crash," Sam continued, "I spent almost seven months in the hospital. And since then I haven 't-"

"Sam, you don't have to explain yourself to me."

"Dammit, Katie, yes, I do!"

She jumped at his frustrated outburst.

He went on in an only slightly more moderate tone. "You deserve answers to those questions you asked yesterday about what I'm doing here and how long I plan to stay. And all I can tell you is that I've got some things on my mind that I've got to work out, and this seemed like a good place to do it. I don't have any idea how long it's going to take."

They stared at each other, her brown eyes wide and serious as she studied his face, which was set in a troubled frown.

Then, quietly, she said, "I understand."

Gradually, the lines in his forehead smoothed, and his look became strangely sad. "Honey, even I don't understand."

She felt as if the door was opening a crack, but before she could think of a way to prod him into expanding on that cryptic remark, he sighed heavily.

"What I said yesterday about you being a home-and-fam-ily kind of woman-partly what I meant is that you're the kind of woman a man feels he has to make promises to. And the fact is, I can't. I can only say, I'm not out to get you in the sack for a one-night stand." His gaze roamed her features. "I'm not out to hurt you, Katie. I want to see you. Anything else is up to you."

She tried to pretend she wasn't shocked by any of his frank little speech, but it was hopeless. She knew she was way out of her league here, and he had as much as said that he, too, realized it. She was certain he was accustomed to far more experienced-and far less cautious-women than she, and, probably, there had been quite a few of them. Common sense told her that she should thank him for his invitation and politely decline.

Yet something stopped her. Something that looked very much like uncertainty hiding in the deepest recesses of his gray eyes, uncertainty in a man she doubted ever wavered from his beliefs or goals. A man who scorned fear and would never, even under the most dreadful circ.u.mstances, admit to pain. Oh, yes, his machismo was real enough. Yet there was a hint of brittleness, a frayed-around-the-edges quality, about him that came through the tough-guy demeanor every so often. It had been there, in his voice, as he talked of the boy who was mostly alone and felt best when he was flying. It was there now, in his eyes, as he waited for her answer. And she found that sc.r.a.p of vulnerability immensely appealing. She also found it rea.s.suring. He wasn't really so all-fired sure of himself. And maybe she wasn't so far out of her league after all.

Besides, she wanted to know the man who talked about jets racing down a runway like angels lifting off for heaven.