“You do need to take some credit for it,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “I need you to understand that none of this would have happened if not for your involvement in our lives.”

  Alex’s heart pounded. The way he was looking at her made her forget what they had been talking about. During the day, when Jack was around, it was easier to keep her head on straight — to remember that this gorgeous man was her boss, and that her presence here was only temporary. But now, her head lightly buzzing from the wine, standing in the quiet kitchen surrounded by the dark of night outside, it felt as if all the restraints that held them back during the day had fallen away.

  And she was standing so close to him. Much too close. What had she been thinking? She should have kept her distance…

  Elijah reached out to her. The time it took his hand to close the space between them seemed interminable — but then his thumb came to rest on her upper lip, brushing away the residue of the wine that had been left there by her glass.

  Alex would never remember what had compelled her to do what she did next.

  She closed her eyes, leaned in, and pressed her lips to the pad of his thumb, her body nearly vibrating with sudden heat and desire.

  For half a heartbeat, she was afraid to open her eyes. She was sure that his reaction would be one of shock over the fact that the two of them had gotten themselves in over their heads like this. He would recoil from her. He would tell her that they had made a terrible mistake. He would withdraw again, and Jack would be the one to pay the price for this moment of weakness—

  And then Elijah’s mouth was on hers, hot and wanting, and Alex forgot all her worries and gave in to his kiss.

  She knew she shouldn’t. She knew there was every chance in the world that she would regret tomorrow what they did tonight. It wasn’t a mistake she should allow herself to make when the stakes were this high.

  But it was too late. She had fallen into him, and she couldn’t turn back now.

  CHAPTER 16

  ELIJAH

  Elijah did his best to go on with his life. He poured himself into his work, and he tried not to neglect the new, improved relationship he had started to build with his son. Jack needed him. There would be no excuse for the night he and Alex had spent together if the result was that Elijah pulled away from Jack again.

  But it was hard. Every time he was around Alex, images from that night sprung up in his head. He found himself sucked into fantasies about her at the most inopportune times, and it was utterly maddening. As they stood around the breakfast table on the morning of Family Day at school, putting the finishing touches on the family tree, Alex dropped a marker and bent over to pick it up, and Elijah felt as if he was going out of his mind. He hadn’t been that carried away with lust for someone since he was a teenager.

  He closed his hands into fists and ran his fingers over his own calluses to distract himself from the memory of what it had been like to touch her soft, smooth skin. “We’d better go ahead and get that thing in the car,” he said, indicating the tree. “You’re taking Jack to school today, right, Alex?”

  “Yes,” Alex said. Was it Elijah’s imagination, or was she avoiding eye contact? He had to wonder whether she was having as much trouble shaking off the memory of their time together as he was. “Jack, do you have everything you need for school today?”

  “It’s all in my backpack,” Jack said. “Everything except the tree.”

  “You’ll have to put the tree on the floor of the car between your feet, I think,” Alex said. She looked over at Elijah. “You’re going to come by the school around ten, right? That’s when his teacher said the presentations would be starting.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there,” Elijah said. “I just need to meet with one of my foremen first.” He felt guilty about the fact that this meeting had been scheduled for the same day as Jack’s presentation, but he couldn’t exactly put it off. He had been putting off a lot of things lately, and this was just too important.

  “Don’t be late,” Alex said, giving him a look that was laden with significance.

  “I won’t be,” Elijah assured her. “I wouldn’t miss this.”

  And he wouldn’t. Today was the culmination of all the hard work Jack had put into this project, and it was also his very first big school event. The family tree was going to be impressive. Elijah found it hard to imagine that any of the other students could have made anything that would top it. It would be a victory lap for Jack, a chance for him to really take pride in something he had accomplished.

  Elijah was so grateful to Alex for everything she had done to make this happen. Without her help, he knew, Jack wouldn’t have had nearly so impressive a project, and it was amazing to see his son start off his school career on such a positive note. Elijah couldn’t have given Jack this moment no matter how hard he’d tried; they had needed Alex to make it happen.

  “I’m going to carry the tree out to the car,” Jack announced.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to do it for you?” Alex said. “It’s not heavy, but it is pretty big.”

  “No, I can be careful,” Jack said. “I want to carry it myself.”

  “Okay.” Alex lifted the tree off the table and placed it carefully in his arms. “Walk slowly, all right?”

  “I will.” Jack set off gingerly out the front door and along the porch toward the car.

  Elijah watched him go for a minute. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked. “If he dropped it, that would devastate him.”

  “Well, I don’t think that’ll happen,” Alex said. “I mean, look at how careful he’s being. He isn’t going to let that thing fall. But even if it did, it’s really solid. It probably wouldn’t break. And if it did break, we could always repair it.”

  “But why take the chance at all?” Elijah asked. “Why run the risk of letting something happen to it when he’s worked so hard?”

  “I could drop it too,” Alex said. “So could you. This is Jack’s project. If he’s willing to risk carrying it himself, we need to let him do that. We need to let him test himself and make mistakes. It’s part of growing up, and if we do everything for him, he’ll never learn how to trust himself.”

  Elijah looked at her. She was still watching Jack, but he was blown away by what she had said — by the way she had said it. She sounded as if she was talking about her own child. And he would have expected something like that to make him angry, to feel as if she was stepping on his toes by trying to talk about how Jack should be raised as if it had anything to do with her. But he didn’t feel that way at all.

  It reminded him of how he had felt in the garden shop, when the three of them had been mistaken for a family — how strange that had been, but how unexpectedly pleasant it had felt. The feeling now was the same. Technically, Alex had probably crossed some kind of line by acting as if she was Jack’s parent. But it felt so good to have someone share in loving and caring about his son that Elijah couldn’t find it in him to complain.

  He bit his lip. A lot of lines were being blurred lately. It had felt all right to give in to that moment at the garden shop, to let the woman behind the counter believe that the three of them were a family. It had felt all right — no, far better than all right — to give in to temptation when they’d opened the bottle of wine together the other night. It had been wonderful to let someone share his bed again, and he had hoped at the time that sleeping with her would get the constant, nagging attraction to her and desire for her out of his system so that he would finally be able to stop thinking about her in that way every time they were around each other.

  That hadn’t happened at all. Now, watching her show such love and care for his son, he felt more full of desire than ever, and he didn’t know what he could do to make that subside. It wasn’t even physical, what he was feeling right now. It was emotional. He didn’t want to take her clothes off — or rather, he did; he was still a man and she was still the incredibly alluring woman who had been driving him wild ever since she had come into his life. But what he really wanted was to put his arms around her, to hold her against him, to watch Jack out the window together.

  And that was the most confusing thing of all. He understood how he could be attracted to such a beautiful, sexy woman, even though it was something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. It made sense, at least. But this was different. This wasn’t attraction. This felt more like he might be falling for her.

  It couldn’t be that, though. That was just too complicated. Alex wasn’t here for him. She was here for Jack. And Elijah might be enjoying her company and benefitting from her presence, but it would be wrong of him to forget that fundamental fact.

  He cleared his throat. “Maybe we should take a moment to talk before you go,” he said.

  “He’s going to be late for school,” Alex said.

  “You have a minute,” Elijah said. “As long as you leave by five to eight, he’ll be there in plenty of time.”

  Alex bit her lip, her eyes still on Jack, who was now carefully maneuvering the family tree sculpture into the passenger seat. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “About the other night,” he said. “We haven’t had a chance to discuss… what happened.”

  “And you want to do this now?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Do you really think this is the best time?”

  “I know it isn’t. And I’m sorry. I should have brought it up sooner, I know that.”

  “It’s not as if that’s your sole responsibility,” she said. “I could have brought it up too, and I didn’t. I guess I’ve been nervous to talk to you about it.”

  “Did we make a mistake?” He held his breath. If they had, if he had created an environment that made her want to consider leaving Jack behind…

  Alex shook her head quickly. “No,” she said. “No, it wasn’t a mistake.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear that you feel that way,” he said. “I was worried I might have taken things too far.”

  “If anyone took things too far, it was me,” she said. “I started it.”

  That was debatable, Elijah thought. Looking back on that night, it was hard to remember who had escalated things and when. He had been the one to open the bottle of wine, but she was the one who had come to stand so close beside him. He’d touched her face — touched her lips — but then she had kissed his hand. And from there, the whole thing had spiraled out of control in a hurry.

  “It was both of us,” he said, and Alex nodded her agreement. “And if it wasn’t a mistake, then I think we’re all right… aren’t we?”

  “I’m all right if you are.”

  They lingered for a moment, looking at one another, and Elijah would have given all the money in his bank account to know what she was thinking. Did she fantasize about that night the way he did? Had she also struggled to get it off her mind? How did she feel about it now?

  She glanced at the clock over the stove. “I really need to get going,” she said. “And you have that meeting to get to. I’ll meet you at the school at ten, right?”

  “Right,” Elijah said.

  “Make sure you’re on time. Maybe even a little early, if you can swing it. I think Jack is nervous about presenting his project, and he’ll feel better when he sees you.”

  “I’ll come straight there from my meeting,” Elijah assured her.

  She smiled at him and hurried out the door. He watched through the window as she got in the car and she and Jack pulled away, heading for the school.

  Only once she was gone did he realize that, in his relief over the fact that Alex hadn’t regretted their night together, he had failed to ask the question he really needed to know the answer to — was there any possibility that it might happen again?

  It wasn’t a fair question to ask, of course. Elijah couldn’t have answered it for himself. He didn’t know whether or not he wanted something more to happen between the two of them. It was painful to think of saying right here and now that he didn’t. But it was just as difficult to think about the implications of what might happen if they didn’t resist.

  CHAPTER 17

  ALEX

  “Is my dad going to be here soon?” Jack asked eagerly, tugging on Alex’s arm.

  Alex checked the time on her phone. It was ten minutes to ten, and she was beginning to wonder the same thing herself. “I’m sure he’ll be here any minute,” she told Jack. “Do you need to go up to the front of the room with the other kids and start getting set up? You want to be ready when it’s time to give your presentation.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, his face falling slightly. “I just wanted to see Dad before I went up there, that’s all.”

  “Well, you’ll see him afterward,” Alex said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  She wasn’t at all sure that that was true, as a matter of fact. She was beginning to feel very worried about where Elijah was. He should have been here by now — a meeting with a ranch foreman shouldn’t have taken this long. And he had promised to come directly here. He’d given her the impression that he understood how important this was to Jack, and that nothing would stop him from being here on time.

  Alex could think of only two possibilities. Perhaps she had been wrong and Elijah simply hadn’t understood the importance of today. It was hard to believe that such a thing could be true, after all the work that Jack had put in to his family tree — especially knowing that Elijah had witnessed all that hard work. But it was possible that the significance of the moment had eluded him somehow.

  The other possibility, which she found difficult even to allow herself to think about, was that something might have happened to him. Maybe he had been hurrying to get over here — she had told him to hurry — and he’d gotten into a car accident. She felt sick to her stomach at the thought, and it was strange to find herself feeling as though her world could be so upended by an incident involving someone she hadn’t even known that long. But she knew that if something were to happen to him it would wreck her, and that wasn’t even to mention what it would do to Jack.

  Oh, I hope he’s just being irresponsible!

  It was a strange thing to hope for. But it certainly beat the alternative.

  She checked the time on her phone again. Five minutes to go.

  Jack was at the front of the room now, carefully arranging and rearranging the ornaments he’d hung on the branches of his family tree. Each one represented a member of the family. He hadn’t ended up adding a cactus to the tree — Alex grinned in amusement at that memory — but he had added Alex’s picture, hanging on a branch on the far-right side of the tree. She hadn’t failed to notice that the branch he’d picked for her was connected to Elijah’s branch, and she wondered if they were going to have to have a talk about what he thought her role in the family was. Maybe they’d already let him bond too intensely with her, given that her presence here was only temporary. Maybe things had already gone too far.

  And what could she do if they had? It wasn’t as if she was going to pull away from Jack now. The change in his behavior was mostly Elijah’s doing, she was convinced of that, but at the same time, she wouldn’t deny her own role in it. And she knew that Jack would be hurt if he were to find himself suddenly distanced from a person who had become an important part of his life. He had suffered enough losses already. She couldn’t bring herself to be the next thing that was taken away from him.

  I’m in too deep with this family. And yet I can’t pull away…

  The woman sitting beside her leaned over. “It’s so hard watching this and not running up to help them, isn’t it?” she said. “That’s my daughter there, in the yellow dress.”

  Alex smiled. The little girl in the yellow dress had gone the poster board route with her project, and she was struggling to stand it up so that it could be seen by the audience. Alex felt the mother’s struggle. She knew that if that had been Jack, she would have been aching to run up and help him.

  “Sometimes you have to let them fend for themselves,” she said.

  “Oh, I so agree with you. It’s been hard, letting Cassidy spread her wings as she’s started school, but it’s so rewarding to watch her turning into a self-sufficient little person. They really do grow up so fast.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Alex said.

  “I’m June,” the woman beside her said, smiling.

  “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Alex.”

  “Which one is yours?” June asked.

  Alex hesitated, wondering whether she should explain, but she decided to just go ahead and answer the question in the spirit in which June had asked it. “The boy in the blue and red shirt,” she said, pointing him out. “Jack.”

  “Oh, I know Jack.”

  “You know him?”

  “I’m a room parent,” June explained. “He’s always so polite. I know I shouldn’t have favorites, but… well, he’s one of mine. He always volunteers to help clean up after we have our snack, and he’s always the first one with his hand up when I need something passed out. Just a great little kid.”

  “That’s so wonderful to hear,” Alex beamed.

  “You’re doing something right at home,” June said. “A lot of these little boys could take a lesson from Jack. But I think having a good mother goes a long way.”

  Alex cringed. Now she really did feel as if she ought to say something. June asking which child she was here with was one thing, but openly assuming that she was Jack’s mother was something else, and it would have been too disrespectful of his real mother to allow the misunderstanding to persist. She opened her mouth to correct it, but before she could speak, the lights in the room flashed on and off.

  “Let me have everyone’s eyes,” the teacher called out in a sing-song voice that let Alex know this was how she called her class to order when they didn’t have an audience. The parents cooperated by turning their attention to the front of the room, ready to watch the presentation.