"What's wrong?" Noah asked from behind. He had pulled on slacks, but they weren't fastened.

His chest was bare.

"It's just a cold, but enough to make her miserable. She doesn't understand what's wrong or what to do to fix it. Not that there is much," she murmured, and headed for the bathroom, where she wet a cloth and wiped the child's face.

"Will she take something to drink?" Noah asked when she returned to Sami's room.

"Maybe. I'll go down for a bottle after I change her."

"I'll get the bottle. What should I put in it?"

Nothing, Paige wanted to say. I don't need your help. I'm perfectly able to take care of myself. I've been doing it a lot longer than I've known you. Which, from a sensible, level-headed woman, was absurd.

"Apple juice.

She likes that."

"Is everything all right?" Nonny asked from the door. She was a petite wraith in a white nightgown and shawl, who suddenly saw Noah.

"Oh, my. I didn't know we had guests."

Paige sighed. "Not guests, Nonny. Just Noah."

"And not exactly dressed for the weather, I see. I hope she isn't going to kick you out at dawn this time, Noah. Since it's Sunday. And since I already know you're here."

To Noah, Paige complained, "This was how it was when I was growing up.

I'd tiptoe around her about something, then find that she knew about it all along."

Nonny had shuffled to the changing table in her tiny white mules and was feeling Sami's forehead. "Is my pumpkin hot again?"

"No. She must have been frightened when she woke up all stuffy.

Noah's going down for a bottle. You go back to bed."

"And miss the fun?"

"Nonny."

"I'm going, I'm going." She shuffled out of the room.

Noah went down for the bottle. Be the time he returned, Sami was cleaned up. Paige sat on the rocker and let her drink, while Noah leaned against the crib and watched.

"You did this just right," she said softly.

"I'd have thought you'd be rusty." ill always loved feeding Sara."

"Did you do it much?"

"Whenever I could."

Paige continued to rock. Sami, who was helping hold the bottle, took it out of her mouth and rubbed tiny teeth against her lips.

"No more?" Paige asked. "Not even a little?

For Mommy?" The mouth opened and the nipple went back inside. "That's my girl."

Sami drank most of the juice before taking the nipple out of her mouth for good. Paige set aside the bottle and rocked her a bit longer.

Then she put her on her side in the crib, drew up a blanket, and rubbed her back.

"You enjoy her, don't you?" Noah asked. He was standing close beside her.

"She's a sweetie." But it wasn't Sami of whom she was most aware just then. It was Noah. The warmth of him was a physical thing, a lure when she didn't want to be lured.

,Have you thought any more about adopting "No."

"Not in your game plan, either?"

Paige didn't answer. As she rubbed Sami's back she tried to remember what life had been like before Mara had died. Two and a half months.

It hardly seemed possible.

Mara would have said that Paige would be insane not to accept Noah's proposal, because the deep connect was everything.

Maybe it was. But it scared the living daylights out of Paige.

Noah touched her arm. "I think she's asleep."

Paige nodded. She let him drape an arm on her shoulder and guide her down the stairs, because it was so lovely to be guided rather than to guide all the time, but when they were in her bedroom and he turned her to him and took a breath to speak, she put a hand to his mouth.

"Don't say anything. I can't think about the future now, Noah. Not yet. What's happened between us is new for me. Can't we just enjoy it, just enjoy the here and now?"

It was easier said than done, because the words had been spoken and couldn't be taken back. The following afternoon, leaving Nonny and Noah with Sami, Paige slipped into her room and curled up on the love seat with Mara's thoughts on men.

"We had such problems, Daniel and 1, right from the start," she wrote.

But even when things were at their worst, there would be those few precious moments when everything clicked They were like a dream.

They made the hell worthwhile I wasn't taking care of Daniel, any more than he was taking care of me. We were doing it together, really together, two people of like minds, in harmony.

Aliter he died, I thought I'd never experience that again, but I did.

I had it with Nowell Brock Paige was stunned, she had never imagined Mara with Nowell.

for the short time that he hued in Tucker, but there was no huture in it, because he was married. I sometimes felt that was why we clicked It was a safe relationship. Nothing could ever come of it.

And Peter. I had it with Peter. We could be out in the woods at dawn, lying still as the dead on the ground with our cameras glued to our eyes waiting for the deer to feed on shrubs by the brook, and we'd be whispering back and forth, one finishing the sentence the other began.