What the Heart Wants

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It takes a village to write a book.

A big thank you to the Austin, Texas, chapter of Romance Writers of America, especially Janece Hudson, Jane Myers Perrine, April Kihlstrom, Louisa Edwards, and Jessica Scott. And a special shout-out to my RWA guardian angels, Liana Lefey and Colleen Thompson.

I also appreciate the encouragement of beta readers Joan Barton, Tina Bolick, Sharon Kite, Suzy Millar Miller, Ashley Vining, and Linda Wiles, as well as the enthusiasm of literary friends Paula Mitchell Marks, Carol Fox, and Suzy Gregory. Musical friends Mary Bedrich and Marion Mayfield were my expert sources on child prodigies.

Thank you also to my fabulous literary agent, Liza Dawson, who believed in me, and my ever-patient editor, Michele Bidelspach, who made my dream come true.

And, as always, thank you to my long-suffering husband, because he has been unfailingly supportive of my writing career, and my three wonderful children, because they have allowed me to write under my own name.

L
aurel held the long rope of pearls up to the brilliant midsummer sunset shining in her bedroom window.

Here she was, sitting at her dressing table and wondering if pawning Gramma's necklace would provide enough money to pay the bills for the next couple of months. Her finances would straighten themselves out once she sold the house, but she'd had it on the market for almost seven weeks now, and not one soul had expressed interest in her six-thousand-square-foot white elephant.

She should have tried to sell it last fall, but managing her mother's funeral was all she could accomplish back then. Besides, she'd had another year to go on her teaching contract, and her work had become her life after Dave left her and Daddy died.

The past three years had been mind-numbing, one blow after another. Not that she really missed Dave. She'd married him because it was time for Bosque Bend's favorite daughter to march down the aisle, and he'd seemed like the logical choice. Too bad he'd ditched her when being married to Laurel Harlow became a liability rather than an asset.

The last blow came seven weeks ago, when her principal told her she wouldn't get another contract. She should have seen it coming, but she'd thought she was safe in the elementary school across the river, in Lynnwood, the new subdivision populated by new people who didn't know the protocols of old Bosque Bend, and who seemed to care more about her effectiveness as a teacher than her family history.

She'd driven home in a trance from the meeting with her principal, and as soon as she entered the safety of the house and locked the door, she'd whirled into a spate of activity to counteract the numbness that fogged her brain and made her feel like she was dragging around a fifty-pound weight. First she called the Realtor father of one of her students and put the house she'd lived in for most of her life on the market. Next she started contacting school districts in the Rio Grande Valley for jobs. Her days of servitude to Kinkaid House and her family legacy were over.

She rolled the pearls between her fingers. Living alone was the pits. Mrs. Bridges, across the street, employed a live-in maid, had a daughter who visited regularly, and was followed by a big, happy-looking dog everywhere she went. Laurel was her own maid, had no friends anymore, and Kinkaid House hadn't housed a dog since Mama's older sister died of rabies seventy-five years ago.

The doorbell chimed from downstairs. She sighed and nestled the rope of glowing beads back in its padded box. Who was it? Prince Charming magically appearing to rescue her from Bosque Bend?

She stood up and squared her shoulders. She didn't need Prince Charming. She'd make her own happy ending.

The bell rang again as she headed down the hall toward the stairs. Probably the ill-mannered paperboy come collecting, though it didn't seem time for him yet. He always peered behind her down the hall as she handed him the money, then ran as if all the demons in hell were chasing him.

Her overactive conscience, part and parcel of being a preacher's daughter, charged into action. Of course the paperboy was afraid. Who could blame him? This house was notorious. Everyone in town knew what had happened here.

She started down the wide stairway.

If she could just mail in her payment, like when she used to take the
Dallas Morning News
, but Art Sawyer, who put out the town's biweekly newspaper, had never met an innovation he didn't dislike. Thus the
Bosque Bend Retriever
was printed on the same press he'd been using for the last forty years and was still hand-delivered by an army of schoolboys on bikes.

The doorbell pealed a third time. She gritted her teeth.

Sorry, whoever you are. I'm not about to break into a gallop. I might not have anything else left, but I can still muster a shred of dignity.

Three generations of family portraits on the staircase wall watched in approval as she regally descended the steps. As a child, she'd sped past them as fast as she could go to avoid their see-all stares, but now she drew strength from them. She might have to sell the house out from under their gilded frames, but she'd do it with her head held high.

And she'd burn the house down to the ground before she'd let it go for taxes.

Think positively, Laurel Elizabeth. Maybe your caller is a prospective buyer that the Realtor has sent over to look at the house.

She opened the heavy oak door a few cautious inches. Just last week someone had lobbed a string of firecrackers at her when she was out in the yard, searching for her newspaper. Of course, it was right before the Fourth, but she doubted that those firecrackers were a patriotic salute.

Dear God in heaven, who was this on her doorstep?

Her caller was a giant, a big man darkly silhouetted against the red blaze of the high-summer Texas sunset. She couldn't make out his face because of the glare behind him, but he was built like a tank and stood maybe six four, six five. Definitely not Prince Charming. More like the Incredible Hulk. She glanced down to make sure the screen door was still locked.

“Laurel? Laurel Harlow?”

The voice seemed familiar. She couldn't quite place it, but her visitor sounded more surprised than dangerous. She pushed the door open wider, and the man's face came into focus as he moved forward to examine her through the wire mesh.

She stepped back a pace. He responded by taking off his dark glasses and smiling, a slight baring of his teeth.

“It's Jase Redlander, from old Bosque Bend High.”

Her heart did a quick rabbit hop. Jase Redlander, of course. His voice was deeper now, his shoulders broader, and he'd grown a good three inches in height, but it was definitely Jase.

Jase, whom she'd loved to distraction. Jase whom she thought she'd never see again. Jase, who sixteen years ago had been run out of town for having sex with his English teacher.

He folded his sunglasses and put them in his pocket. “Sorry to bother you, but I just drove in from Dallas and I've got sort of a…well, a family emergency that might end up in your lap.” He grimaced and glanced behind himself at the evening traffic moving along Austin Avenue. “Can we talk inside?”

The noise got bad this time of day, with everyone driving home from work and out to play. Back in the 1880s, when Great-Grampa Erasmus built Kinkaid House on a narrow dirt road that headed toward the state capital, he never could have imagined that it would one day be widened to four lanes, with a central turn lane being proposed for next year.

Laurel tried to keep her hand from shaking as she unlocked the screen.

“Of course. Come in.” Her voice got stuck somewhere in the back of her throat. “How nice to see you,” she managed to murmur.

But, standing aside as he entered, she saw that this was a different Jase Redlander than the teenager she'd fallen in love with sixteen years ago. The cut of his coal-black hair, the upscale Levi's and European-style polo shirt, the set of his shoulders—everything about him signaled money and power and confidence. Obviously he'd wrestled with life and won. She, on the other hand, had lost big-time. Could he tell?

Not if she could help it.

She relocked both outside doors, led him down the wide central hall, and unfolded the doors into the drawing room.

Three generations of her mother's people, Kinkaid women with money to burn, had managed to make the overlarge room, originally a double parlor, into a popular gathering place for Bosque Bend's moneyed elite in times past. Victorian sofas, heavy chairs, and grotesquely carved little tables, all flanked by potted greenery, formed intimate conversation groups, while fragile undercurtains, confections of snowy lace, filtered the harsh Texas sun coming in the front windows into fantastic arabesques on the oriental carpet.

Jase had always loved this room. Years ago, he'd told her that if he ever died and sneaked into heaven, God's front room would look like this.

She hoped he wouldn't notice that heaven was somewhat the worse for wear. The upholstery was threadbare, the drapes faded, and the windows dingy. She glanced uneasily at the dark rectangles on the far wall, where the more saleable paintings had hung, then at the entrance to Daddy's study, which looked positively naked since she'd sold the fig-leafed marble youths who'd guarded the doorway for as long as she could remember.

The antiquities man from Austin had almost salivated as he loaded them into his van, and the money had, fittingly, paid off the last of Daddy's obligations.

Claiming a spindly ribbon-back chair for herself, Laurel gestured Jase toward the same velvet-upholstered sofa on which the two of them would sit and talk while Jase was waiting for Daddy to emerge from his study and summon him for his weekly counseling session. At first they had discussed school events in stilted little conversations, but after a while, when he started coming half an hour early, they'd relaxed with each other and began talking about what was going on in their lives. Jase had shared her joy when she made straight As and was elected sophomore representative to student council, and he'd consoled her when Mama and Daddy said she couldn't have unchaperoned dates until her next birthday.

In turn, she tried not to look shocked as she learned about the way he lived. Everyone in Baptist-dry Bosque Bend knew that Jase's father was a bad-tempered bully who kept a rowdy tavern just over the county line, but Laurel had been horrified to learn that Growler Redlander was such a poor excuse for a parent that his son had been working odd jobs since he was nine to support himself.

Jase had shrugged off her concern. “Laurel, I was five six when I was in the fourth grade. By the time I hit middle school, I was five ten and could pass for an eighteen-year-old any day of the week. The car wash is easy, and it's only one night a week. The only problem with the yard work is hiding the mower from my father so he can't toss it in the river like he does everything else.”

Laurel's fifteen-year-old heart had opened to him. He was so brave, so valiant—and so handsome, just like the heroes on the covers of the romances she borrowed from Mrs. Bridges's extensive collection of paperbacks.

But that was sixteen years ago. What had brought Jase back to Bosque Bend? What sort of “family emergency” could possibly involve her?

She watched him deposit himself carefully on the delicately carved sofa, as if afraid it would break under his weight. He focused his gaze on her, and she took a quick breath. She'd forgotten how dark his eyes were—so black that iris and pupil seemed to blend into one. But why was he staring at her like that? Was something wrong? She glanced down at her silky white blouse. None of the buttons had come undone, and the zipper of her gray slacks was still closed tight.

He blinked, waved his hand in apology, and shifted his gaze. “I'm sorry. It's just that you seem so much the same. Somehow I expected you to look, well,
older
.”

Suddenly nervous, she pushed a heavy sheaf of dark hair back behind her ear and gave a little laugh, flattered but disbelieving. She was thirty-one years old, had been through hell, and didn't doubt that every bit of it showed on her face.

Nothing to do but seize the conversational bull by the horns. “You said you have an emergency?”

He exhaled deeply and rubbed his fingers along the nap of the sofa. “It's my daughter. She ran away from home this morning and left a note saying she was going to Bosque Bend to find her roots. I think she might try to contact you.”

His daughter? Jase had a
child
?

Through the years, Laurel's mind had frozen him at age sixteen, standing alone against the world, her tragic lost love. The idea that he would marry one day and have a family had never even entered her head. Jase Redlander hadn't seemed to be the type to settle down. Instead, she'd pictured him as an unshaven roughneck putting out oil fires—or maybe a steel-jawed hero fighting off a Mexican drug cartel. Year by year, he'd become a fantasy figure to her—a heroic dark knight. Certainly not a father.

He pulled a photo from his wallet. “Here's a picture of Lolly from last year. She looks a lot older than she is, but don't be fooled—she's only fifteen.”

Using a thick-barreled pen, he scrawled something on the back of the picture before offering it to her. Laurel reached for it. Their fingers touched and a sizzle of awareness shot through her. The picture fell to the carpet.

Jase bent down to retrieve the photo and placed it on the rococo table beside her, his eyes catching hers for one long moment. “I'm at the old house,” he said, his voice a bit deeper. “It's between renters right now.” His gaze moved to her mouth, and his pitch dropped even lower. “You remember it. You were there…once.”

Laurel picked the photograph up from the table, willing her hand not to tremble, and forced herself to study it. Jase was right. His daughter did look older than she had any right to, but that was how fifteen-year-old girls always looked, even when she herself was in high school. Probably back to caveman times. Lolly was lovely, just as pretty as Jase was handsome. Butter-yellow hair swooped down across her forehead, almost covering her right eye, while her pouting lips and lazy-lidded eyes were studiously sexy. Her eyebrows were long, like her father's—Hollywood eyebrows.

But did she have her father's smile? Jase didn't smile often in the old days, but when he did, it was like the sun coming out—a wide, brilliant, heartbreaking grin, perhaps more effective because it was so rare.

Well, from the looks of him, he had a lot more to smile about these days.

Laurel raised her eyes from the photo and held it out to him, this time careful to avoid all contact of the flesh.
He's married. Off limits.

“If she does show up, I'll be sure to let you know.”

Jase put up a refusing hand. “No, keep it. I wrote my number on the back. Show it to your parents too, in case she comes by when you're not here.”