The last thing he wanted to do was see Tally in a sympathetic light because it blurred his resolve. On the other hand, her man wasn’t chasing her trying to get her hair down, and she had coped with a sick sister.

“I’m sorry she was sick,” he heard himself saying. “I really am, Tally.”

She blinked rapidly, and then said, way too brightly, “Anyway, I’ve found out all I wanted to know. You’ll be happy to know I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning. No more questions.”

“I am happy to know that,” he said, but he didn’t feel completely happy or completely convinced, either.

“Goodbye, J.D.,” she said. She stuck out her hand.

He made the mistake of taking it. He felt a little shiver of desire for her, the smallest regret it was over before it ever started.

He yanked his hand away and went back down Mrs. Saddlechild’s walk more troubled than when he had gone up it. Something was wrong here.

But he’d gotten what he wanted, an assurance she was leaving. He went home and went back to work. He ate supper and showered, no singing. Unease niggled at the back of his mind, as if he had missed a piece of the puzzle, as if he should know something that he didn’t. He felt as if she had never given him the real answer to why she was here, but that if he just thought hard enough, he would figure it out.

When no answer came, he ordered himself over and over to forget it. But as soon as he let down his guard, the unanswered question filled his mind again.

He went to sleep nursing it.

J.D. woke deep in the night, moonlight painting a wide stripe across his bedroom floor, the cry of a coyote still echoing in the air, lonesome and haunting. He lay still, aware of the deep rise and fall of his own chest, feeling momentarily content.

But then the question he had gone to sleep pondering swept back into his mind, and the contentment was gone, like dust before a broom.

Why was Tally Smith really here? Beyond driving him crazy? And beyond getting the citizenry of Dancer worked up into a nice gossiping frenzy, the likes of which had not been seen since Mary Elizabeth Goodwin, prom queen, had gotten pregnant without the benefit of marriage almost a half-dozen summers ago.

All this nonsense about Tally wanting to see who her sister had loved, about being intrigued by a photograph, just did not add up. Elana might have been compulsive, but her little sister looked cautious, organized, responsible.

The person least likely to act on an impulse.

For some reason Tally Smith was lying, or at the very best, not telling him the full truth. He could see it in her eyes—and in her ears and nose and throat, come to that. In the darkness of his room, he allowed himself the luxury he had not allowed himself during the day. J.D. contemplated the color of her eyes.

They were astounding, shifting from indigo to violet, sending out beacons when she felt guilty and troubled. He thought of that one moment when she had smiled, and a brief light had chased the somberness from her eyes.

The coyote howled again, and the sound shivered in the night, and that shiver went up and down J.D.’s spine, and stopped at the base of his neck. It tickled there, a premonition that his life was about to change in ways he could have never imagined.

Why was she asking people if he liked children?

Had there been the tiniest bit of truth threaded through her statement that Elana had left him an inheritance?

And then he knew. With that clarity that comes in the night sometimes, in those moments partway between sleep and waking, he knew.

He sat up, his heart racing crazily.

He tried to tell himself it couldn’t be, that it was not even possible, but he failed utterly to convince himself. A sense of urgency overcame him, and he tossed back the tangle of sheets and blankets and put his feet on the floor. He hoped the cold would slam him back into reality, but the sense of urgency did not abate.

Cursing, he pulled his jeans from a heap on the floor and yanked them on. He shoved his arms in the sleeves of his shirt as he ran for the truck, not stopping for shoes, barely aware of the rocks digging into his bare feet.

What if she hadn’t waited until morning? What if she was gone already? He didn’t know one single thing about her, except that she was Elana’s sister and that she was from north of the border. How many Smiths would there be?

It wouldn’t matter. If he’d missed her, if she had folded up her tent and slunk away in the night, he would track down every last Smith in Canada, until he had confirmed the truth that had unfolded in his heart and his head a few minutes ago.

He didn’t bother to button the shirt, just started the truck and barreled toward town. Not much law enforcement out this way at the best of times. None at—he glanced at his watch—three-thirty in the morning. He pressed down the accelerator, and watched with satisfaction when the needle jumped over ninety.

J. D. Turner knew how to rebuild a truck engine. If he was as good at other things, it might not have taken him so long to figure out why she was here.

The roar of the engine split the quiet of the prairie night. He squealed his tires at the one stop sign on Main Street. If he wasn’t more careful, if all of Dancer wasn’t speculating about him and Tally Smith by now, they certainly would be soon.

He felt almost weak with relief when he raced into the parking lot of the Palmtree and saw the little gray Nissan parked in front of a darkened cabin. It was the only car at the Palmtree. Good. He didn’t have to wake up everybody in the whole place banging on doors until he found her.

He got out of his truck and hammered on the door closest to her car, waited, hammered again.

After a long moment, he saw movement at the cabin window. The curtain flicked open ever so slightly and then flicked back into place, swiftly. Silence. Not a hint of movement outside, or inside either. He could picture her standing with her back against the wall, palms flat against it, holding her breath.

“Tally Smith, I know you’re awake.” It was a challenge to find the right voice volume—one she would hear, but not the rest of the town.

Silence.

“Open this door right now or I’m breaking it down.” This a little louder.

More silence. After all her research, she should really know better than to try calling his bluff.

“I’m counting to three.” He was just a little short of the decibel level that made walls shake and blew out windows.

Did he hear a little scuffling noise on the other side of the door?

“One.” He lowered his voice, marginally.

He heard the bolt move.

“Two.”

The handle twisted.

“Thr—”

The door opened a crack, and she put one eye to it, and regarded him with grave annoyance.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. “You’ll wake up everyone in town.”

Her hair was spilling down around her shoulders in an untamed wave that gave complete lie to the long-sleeved, high-collared nightgown, straight off Little House on the Prairie.

“Let me in,” he demanded.

“No. It’s the middle of the night. Are you drunk?”

Drunk? “No, I am not drunk,” he told her dangerously. “Isn’t that somewhere in your notes? That J. D. Turner doesn’t get drunk?”

She sniffed. “There’s a first time for everything.”

“You know, come to think of it, if I was going to get drunk, you would be a pretty good excuse.”

“I’m not going to stand here in the middle of the night and be insulted by you.” She tried to shut the door, but he slipped his foot in.

“We need to talk,” he told her.

“It will have to wait until morning.”

She was so bossy. This took on new and significant meaning now that he knew his life was going to be tangled with hers, one way or another, forever. “It’s morning actually.”

She opened the door all the way, and glared at his foot until he put it back on the other side where it belonged. Her hair was all sleep-messed. It looked exactly the way he had known it would had he been given a chance to remove the pins from it—thick and rich and wild, tumbling over her shoulders and softening the lines of her face. She looked more approachable. Sexy, actually.