Chapter 1

      “Hoo baby, Anna. You’ve got a hot one at booth number nine!”

      Anna Larkin glanced at the back of the diner and the lone man hunched in the last booth, looking intensely uncomfortable, as if he wanted to shrink into nothingness. As if he was attempting to be invisible, or at least to blend in with the locals.

      Not happening. He was tall, broad-shouldered and gorgeous, with dark hair and eyes so blue she could see their color from the other end of Pittypat’s Diner. Not the kind of guy who would ever blend in with the mere mortals of Sunny Creek, Montana.

      He’d given it a good try, though. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and she would bet he was wearing jeans and cowboy boots under the scarred linoleum table.

      “Well, go on,” Patricia Moeller, the Pat of Pittypat’s, urged her. “Say hello to the pretty man with no wedding ring.”

      Anna rolled her eyes at her boss. But she did tug down the hem of her T-shirt before she headed over with a glass of ice water.

      Hoo baby didn’t cover the half of it as she drew near her customer. His face was tanned, his features strong, his cheekbones chiseled out of Montana granite. She guessed him to be about thirty years old. A thin, red scar started near his ear and ran down into his shirt collar along the powerful neck of an athlete.

      She studied him more closely. He looked familiar. But surely she would remember a face like that if she’d ever seen it before.

      The old caution kicked in. She knew better than to fall for a pretty face. Much better. She’d suffered enough psychological wounds from the last pretty-faced man who crossed her path to make her skittish for a lifetime.

      Maybe that was why she plunked this one’s water down a little too hard, sloshing it onto the table and into his lap. He jumped, and their hands collided reaching for the paper napkin folded under his fork.

      Hot. Hard. Strong. The sensations raced through her almost too fast to name. She jerked back, scalded. “I’m so sorry!” she stammered.

      “It’s just water. I won’t melt,” he said gruffly. He lifted the napkin out of her slack fingers and mopped at his crotch.

      Realizing in horror that she was staring at his groin, she mumbled, “I’ll, um, get you another glass of water.”

      “I’d rather have a cup of coffee.”

      “Right. Uh, how do you like it?”

      His gaze snapped up to hers, startled and wary, as if some alarming innuendo was buried in her question. But then a faint smirk bent his lips. “I like it hot and sweet.”

      She stood there staring down at him like she’d lost her marbles until he murmured, “Coffee? May I have a cup?”

      “Coffee. Right. Coming up.” She whirled away, her face flaming in embarrassment. Good Lord. She’d been standing there, staring at him like a starstruck girl. And she was neither starstruck nor a girl anymore. She’d been both when she’d left Sunny Creek at the ripe old age of eighteen, but Eddie Billingham had stolen both her innocence and the stars from her eyes long ago.

      “You okay?” Patricia asked her at the coffee station. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

      “No ghosts in here,” she retorted. Just ghosts in her head. The ghost of her innocent self. The ghost of her girlish hopes and dreams. The ghost of Eddie—

      “I don’t know,” Patricia was saying. “Is that one of the Morgan boys? He looks mighty familiar.”

      Anna glanced over her shoulder at the customer and jumped to see him staring at her. Intently. She looked away hastily, staring unseeing at the coffeemaker. The Morgan family had four sons and two daughters, but they’d all moved away from Sunny Creek in the past decade. Last she’d heard, none of them showed any signs of returning.

      Pattie continued, “He’s got the look of a Morgan about him with that dark hair and those blue eyes. Good-looking like a Morgan, too.”

      “If you say so.” She’d only had eyes for blond-haired, pale-blue-eyed Billie in high school. Stupid her. Anna poured a mug of coffee and piled a handful of sugar packets and containers of creamer on the saucer beside the