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       Chapter One

      “Ash! Asher! Get back here!”

      A man’s voice.

      Whispering.

      Something about ashes?

      Coming out of a sound sleep, Issa McKendrick’s first thought was that she was dreaming.

      Until, very near to her ear, she heard, “Pit-tee.”

      Pity?

      Struggling out of heavy slumber, she opened sleep-bleary eyes.

      Staring at her almost nose-to-nose was a very small boy.

      “Hi!” he greeted her happily.

      “I’m sorry.”

      A man’s voice again, this time not whispering, coming from the door to her apartment. The door that was wide open.

      From her position lying on the sofa, Issa bolted upright, alarmed by the fact that she wasn’t alone. That a strange man and child were there.

      “Get back here, Ash,” the man repeated more firmly.

      “Bye,” the child said before he did as he’d been told.

      Issa’s vision was beginning to focus as her gaze followed the child and landed on the man.

      Whoa!

      Dreamy-looking guy—maybe this was a dream….

      “I didn’t mean to just come in,” he said then, convincing her with the deep tones of an intensely masculine voice that she was awake. “I’m Hutch Kincaid, your landlord…”

      Hutch Kincaid.

      Still trying to get her bearings, Issa was not quick on the uptake. It took her a moment to put things together in her mind.

      Hutch Kincaid was the owner of the house-turned-duplex where Issa had an apartment on the upper floor. Her brother had rented it for her when she’d announced that she was moving back to her hometown of Northbridge, Montana and wanted a temporary place while she looked for a property to buy.

      Hutch lived in the lower half of the building, but he’d been out of town when Issa had arrived two days ago, so they’d yet to meet.

      “I got the note you left under my door downstairs and you’re right,” he was saying when she began to gather her wits, “this lock is broken—all I did was knock and the door opened. And then Ash barged in before I could grab him.”

      Issa took in the view of the man standing in her doorway.

      He was very real and very good-looking. Big and strapping, with an athlete’s broad chest and shoulders, a narrow waist and long legs all barely contained in jeans and a lime-green polo shirt.

      And the face—sharp jawline; longish, thin, somewhat pointy nose; just-full-enough lips; the sexiest dip in the center of his chin; and eyes the blue of a cloudless summer sky. Top it all off with short, sunkissed sandy-brown hair worn with the top a hint longer and carelessly disheveled, and he was quite a sight to wake up to.

      “It’s okay,” Issa finally said. Her voice was groggy and small. She was embarrassed to be caught sleeping in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. “Come in.”

      That was as much invitation as the little boy needed—he promptly left Hutch Kincaid’s side and came back to the sofa as Issa pivoted to put her feet on the floor.

      Her intention had been to stand to greet her guests and hopefully regain some of her dignity.

      But it didn’t take more than that pivot to make her so dizzy that she couldn’t get up as the room seemed to spin around her.

      “Just a minute…” she muttered, further embarrassed and feeling as if she were making a spectacle of herself. “I’m really light-headed all of a sudden…”

      “Take your time,” Hutch Kincaid urged as his jeans-clad legs came into her wobbly view in the center of the room, on the opposite side of the coffee table.

      The coffee table where she had a number of illustrated pamphlets in plain sight, all titled things like Pregnancy and You, So You’re Going to Have a Baby and What to Do Now that You’re Pregnant….

      Dead giveaways.

      Of the biggest secret Issa had ever kept and the one most important to her not to let out.

      Any hope she might have had of Hutch Kincaid not becoming aware of the pamphlets evaporated when the little boy pointed them out with a chubby index finger and said, “Bay-bees.”

      “Why don’t you come over here with me, buddy,” Hutch Kincaid suggested.

      “No. Pit-tee.”

      The little boy couldn’t possibly know that she was pregnant, that she was horrified by that fact and that the father of her baby had run like a rabbit from parenthood, so she was facing it all alone. But that was