Sara shook her head, touched by the concern she saw in his night-shadowed face. “No. Eric is spending the night with a friend, and Hayley babysits for Eli and Brynne practically every Saturday evening, provided she doesn’t have a date. She’s there now, and she’ll sleep over.”

  J.P. smiled. “Good,” he said. “We’ll have a sleepover of our own.”

  Sara giggled like a girl. “I don’t know if I have the strength,” she admitted. “Making love with you, Mr. McCall, is a real workout.”

  He kissed her lightly. “Let’s be fair here,” he teased. “You rode the buck right out of this bronco.”

  That time, she laughed outright. “You enjoyed it,” she reminded him.

  He traced her mouth again, this time with his tongue. “So did you,” he retorted.

  “Oh, yeah,” Sara sighed, still floating languidly in a sea of residual pleasure. “I certainly did.”

  J.P. leaned over, reaching for something on the floor, and came back with her new panties hooked on the tip of his index finger. He gave them a spin.

  “When I saw these, I knew it was going to be a wild night.”

  “Very perceptive of you,” Sara replied, taking the panties and tossing them aside again. The dim light and the mood emboldened her a little—or maybe a lot. “I almost bought crotch-less ones, if you must know.”

  J.P. raised both eyebrows. Gave a low shrill whistle.

  Outside the bedroom door, Trooper whined.

  “Not now, buddy,” J.P. called to the dog.

  Trooper’s tags jingled as he settled down again, keeping his vigil.

  J.P.’s attention shifted back to Sara. “About those crotch-less panties—”

  “What about them?”

  “Next time, wear them.”

  Sara felt a faint flexing between her legs.

  Next time? There was going to be a next time?

  Hallelujah.

  “Why?” she asked, feigning innocence.

  “Because I’m going to want to get right down to business,” he replied.

  “Is that so?” She was getting hot and achy again. Squirmy.

  He was stroking one of her nipples with an expert thumb. “It’s so,” he affirmed. “It’s going to happen. You won’t know where, you won’t know when. And I guarantee you this, Sara Garrett—you’ll howl like a she-wolf.”

  More heat. More ache.

  “You’re trying to seduce me again. Right here, right now.”

  “Whatever you say,” he replied, and with that, he replaced his thumb with his mouth, suckled at Sara’s hardened nipple until she moaned.

  Another few moments of this and she’d be pleading again, thrashing about on the bed.

  And here she’d thought they were through making love for the night.

  “I’m not trying to seduce you, Sara. I don’t have to try.”

  “Now, that is arrogant,” she said.

  J.P. answered by sliding his hand down over Sara’s belly, stroking her.

  Again.

  Her hips began to rise and fall with his caresses.

  He kissed her neck, nibbled at her earlobe, told her sexy stories, broken and breathless in places, about a woman who wore crotch-less panties and the man who meant to take full advantage of that, at the most outrageous times, in the most outrageous places.

  It was glorious.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SARA SNEAKED INTO her house, into her own kitchen, like a guilty teenager, at 6:05 a.m. the next morning, hair askew, shoes in one hand, purse dangling from the opposite wrist.

  It came as a less-than-fabulous surprise to find her son and her ex-husband seated at the table, drinking coffee.

  “Mom,” Eric blurted, clearly shocked. He actually went pale.

  Zachary, for his part, smirked and raised one eyebrow but said nothing.

  Sara decided, in a moment of pure desperation, that the best defense was indeed an offense. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, setting aside her handbag with a thump.

  “I live here, remember?” Eric snapped, furious and faintly contemptuous.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Sara said evenly. It was a struggle not to react to her son’s mood, but she managed, mostly.

  Zachary shambled easily to his feet, obviously enjoying Sara’s predicament.

  “I guess I’d better be on my way,” he said.

  “Good idea,” Sara affirmed, glaring.

  “Dad brought me home,” Eric all but whined. “And he has a right to be here!”

  “The hell he does,” Sara countered without taking her eyes off her ex. “Get out, Zachary.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little bit?” Zachary replied. “You’ve always been so dramatic.”

  “Isn’t that what narcissists always say?” Sara shot back. “When someone calls them on their bullshit, they say they’re overreacting, being dramatic. Get the hell out of my house. Now.”

  Zachary, still smugly jovial, raised both palms, playing the peacemaker. “I’m going,” he said indulgently. “No need to lose it in front of our son, Sara.”

  She was supposed to feel guilty.

  She didn’t.

  She folded her arms, shoes still dangling from one hand, and waited.

  Zachary finally left, going through to the living room and then out the front door.

  It slammed behind him.

  In all that time, neither Sara nor Eric spoke. They were both royally pissed, and it was a standoff.

  Finally, Eric slammed one fist down onto the tabletop, causing the coffee mugs to jiggle. Then he shoved back his chair, got to his feet and stormed out of the kitchen.

  Welcome back to the real world, Sara told herself silently.

  Thanks to the encounter just past, her delicious night with J.P. seemed like a distant dream.

  And she was wide-awake now.

  “Crap,” she muttered, and headed for her own quarters on the other side of the house.

  There, she dropped her shoes, took off her sundress—with some difficulty since it zipped in the back—and let it fall to the floor.

  After that, she padded into her bathroom, loosening her hair from its braid as she went. She showered thoroughly, shampooed and conditioned her long tresses, and after drying off and wrapping her head in a towel, she donned regular clothes—ordinary jeans, a plain short-sleeved cotton blouse and flip-flops.

  She was sitting on the back patio, brushing her hair before re-plaiting it, when Hayley appeared in the doorway, her eyes round.

  “Eric is freaking out,” the girl announced.

  “Eric,” Sara answered coolly, “needs to mind his own business.”

  “He said you were out all night, with some guy,” Hayley went on with delight. “I didn’t tell him you were with J.P. McCall.” A pause. “You were with J.P., weren’t you?”

  “That,” Sara replied, a bit tersely, “is no more your business than it is Eric’s.”

  Hayley pulled up a patio chair and plopped into it. “Okay,” she answered companionably, “that’s fair.”

  In that moment, Sara imagined a scene from her good-natured daughter’s future career as, Hayley hoped, the first female sheriff of Wild Horse County.

  You’re under arrest, she heard Hayley say cheerfully, but I hope that doesn’t make you feel bad. You can definitely turn this thing around. In fact, I’ll help.

  Inwardly, Sara smiled.

  “How was the babysitting gig?” she asked, partly to change the subject and partly to get her mind off the prospect of searching the internet for a source of crotch-less panties. She certainly wasn’t going to buy local in this case.

  Hayley’s face, already bright, lit up even more. “It was great. Those baby cousins of mine are beyond cute. Smart, too.”

  Sara smiled. She loved her brother’s twin sons as much as her daughter did.

  “Did your uncle Eli take his gorgeous wife out for a glamorous evening?” she asked pleasantly.

  “Yes,” Hayley answered. “Dinner and dancing.”

  Dancing.

  Sara remembered slow dancing with J.P. on his darkened patio and a jolt of passion zigzagged through her.

  “Very romantic,” she said.

  Hayley picked up the conversational thread without a hitch. “Speaking of romantic,” she teased, “is this thing between you and J.P. going anywhere? Eric says you were out all night and came in carrying your shoes.”

  “Back to Eric again,” Sara said with a sigh, and began weaving her damp hair into its customary single braid. She loved her son, but right about then she could cheerfully have throttled him for his attitude.

  Hayley, probably realizing that the conversation would go no further, at least for now, rose to her feet, stretched her long arms toward the sky, yawned and said, “I think I’ll catch a couple of hours of sleep. I binged on episodes of Virgin River between the time I put the babies to bed and Uncle Eli and Brynne came home.”

  Sara smiled. She liked the show herself.

  “Sleep tight, kiddo,” she said as Hayley went back into the house.

  Anticipating a few minutes of sunshine and peace, Sara was a little disappointed to hear the French doors open again.

  “Mom?”

  This time, it was Eric.

  “What?” She spoke patiently, gently, though it was an effort.

  Eric took the same chair his sister had occupied only minutes before. “I’m sorry,” he said glumly. “I acted like a butthead.”

  Sara suppressed a smile. “Yes,” she agreed. “You did. But I accept your apology.”

  “Thanks,” he answered, splaying his fingers through his hair and lowering his forehead to his palms.

  Sara’s finely honed mother’s intuition kicked in. “What’s up, Eric?” she asked quietly.

  “It’s Dad,” Eric confessed. “I thought he was going to try to get you back, but instead he’s getting married. To some bimbo.”

  “Eric,” Sara corrected her son, “the word bimbo is sexist.”

  “So I have to be politically correct, even with my own mom?” The whine was back, though it was mild.

  “We don’t call other people names like that, ever. It’s wrong to slap a simplistic and insulting label on another person, especially when we barely know them.”

  Eric looked up, drew his hands down his face, distorting it comically in the process. A wicked grin tilted one side of his mouth.

  “So you’ve never labeled Dad with an insulting name?”

  “I have, actually,” Sara confessed. “I’m working on that.”

  “Who did you spend the night with, Mom?”

  “That is an intrusive question,” she said.

  “I’m your son. Don’t I have a right to know if there’s an incoming stepfather?”

  “If there’s ever any indication that he’s about to become your stepfather, I’ll give you a heads-up right away.”

  Sara hadn’t pictured J.P. as a stepfather to her children.

  Or as a husband to her.

  What would that be like, adding a fourth person to their small family circle?

  A chain of questions followed that one.

  Did J.P. want kids of his own?

  Did she want little ones when her own children were nearly grown?

  Eric would be going away to college in just a year and, though Sara would definitely miss him, she saw his departure for school as a finish line of sorts.

  One she meant to fling herself across, figuratively speaking.

  He’d be homesick when he left, for about five minutes.

  Then he’d be into college life, busy with classes and new ideas and new friends.

  Hayley would not be far behind; she was already planning to enter the University of Montana. She, too, would be preoccupied with her studies and boyfriends and the sports—softball and swimming—she loved.

  Would she, Sara, even want to start over, have more children?

  Or was she past it, past sleepless nights and changing diapers and all the other things that went with raising little ones?

  Frankly, she didn’t know.

  She wanted more sex with J.P., that was for sure. She’d never been more alive than when she was entwined with him, soaring in an ecstasy she couldn’t have imagined before last night.

  “Mom?”

  Sara realized she’d been drifting. Brought herself up short. “Yes, sweetheart?”

  Eric cleared his throat. “I know it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, but I love you.”

  Tears burned behind Sara’s eyes. She was an emotional basket case, loved senseless the night before, confronted with her ex-husband and angry son the next morning.

  “I love you, too, Eric. And don’t you forget that.”

  She leaned over, gave her son a one-armed hug.

  “So, tell me about your father’s engagement. In fact, tell me where he’s been all these years, and what he’s been up to.”

  Eric seemed pleased by this invitation, and that touched Sara’s heart in very tender places. She wondered what he’d told Zachary about her—a lot, probably.

  “He met her in a nightclub down in LA,” he began. “That’s where he’s been. He was trying to break into the movie business.”

  Sara bit her tongue. Don’t say it, she warned herself.

  “As an actor?” she asked when she could speak moderately. Without inflection.

  “No,” Eric answered with a shake of his rumpled head. He needed a haircut, and Sara barely resisted pointing that out to him. “He wanted to be a producer.”

  “I take it that didn’t work out,” Sara observed cautiously.

  Again, Eric shook his head. “He couldn’t get a break. Everybody was against him. Jealous, he says.”

  Inwardly, Sara rolled her eyes. Outwardly, she was every bit the good listener. “Okay,” she said in a tone meant to lead her son into further revelations. “How did he make a living?”

  God knew Zachary Worth, would-be movie mogul, certainly hadn’t paid child support.

  Not that she intended to point that out.

  This connection with Eric was too precious, and too tenuous, for that.

  “I guess he had a trust fund or something. It ran out, so he changed his career plans and came back here to see if Grandfather would make a place for him in the family business. You know, the commercial real-estate thing.”

  Eric, Eric, Eric, Sara thought, but what she said was “I see.”

  “Grandfather isn’t a very nice man,” Eric confided.

  Ah. A clear space in the shifting fog.

  It closed immediately, of course.

  “I know,” Sara agreed, remembering her own confrontation with her ex-father-in-law. He had been old then, which meant he was ancient by now. Probably not long for this world. “Isn’t there another son?”

  “Wyatt,” Eric supplied, with a sympathetic sigh. “He’s Dad’s half brother, actually. He’s not a Worth—his mother was the second wife, and when she divorced dear old Granddad and remarried, Wyatt took his stepfather’s name. Anyhow, he and Dad don’t get along. Wyatt’s a couple of years younger, and he’s the head of his own corporation, wants nothing to do with Worth Enterprises. He thinks Dad is a waste of skin. That’s what he said once when Dad asked him to invest in a film project.”

  “Hmm,” Sara breathed.

  “And what do you think my grandfather plans to do?” Eric challenged.

  “I have no earthly idea,” she said.

  Indignation flared red in Eric’s cheeks. He was such a good-looking boy, and so smart. Sara hoped he wouldn’t ruin his life by patterning himself after his father.

  She’d worked hard to keep her son on track, but stranger things had happened.

  “He’s leaving the company to Wyatt, not Dad. Even though Wyatt doesn’t want it, and he doesn’t even go by our last name!”

  “Ouch,” Sara said. The old man was crafty, that was for sure. He hadn’t built a multinational real-estate investment firm by being a sucker.

  And he obviously wanted to stick it to Zachary, financially at least.

  Plus, he surely knew his elder son would run the company into the ground, given the chance.

  “Your dad gets nothing?”

  “A pittance by comparison,” Eric huffed. “It isn’t right.”

  “The money belongs to your grandfather, Eric, and so does the company. He gets to decide who inherits what.”

  Eric tensed. “You love this, don’t you?” he accused, riled up again. “Seeing Dad get the shaft!”

  “Calm down,” Sara counseled. “I do not love this. And kindly watch what you say and how you say it. The truth is I don’t actually care what happens to your father, one way or the other.”

  “Don’t you have any feelings for Dad at all?”

  “I’m sorry, Eric, but the honest answer is no.”

  “Didn’t you ever love him?”

  “I did, way back when. I was a naive young girl with a head full of dreams.”

  “You stopped when he left us? Loving him, I mean?”

  “Yes.” That answer was close enough to the truth. To be more accurate, she’d stopped loving Zachary Worth the night she caught him with another woman.

  Things had come to a head one soft summer night when a friend had called to tip her off that her husband was down at Sully’s making out with a barmaid.

  Sara, who had suspected something was going on but refused to consciously accept the fact, had asked a neighbor to watch Eric and Hayley, both toddlers then, and driven her ancient rattletrap of a truck across town to the popular bar.

  She’d hurtled into the parking lot, tires flinging up gravel, gotten out and raged into Sully’s with angry sparks flaring before her eyes.

  Sure enough, there was Zachary, drunk, draped all over his latest lady friend, plying the old cliché when Sara snatched a mug of beer from an unoccupied table and tossed the contents in his face.