ONE NIGHT TOGETHER

"I think it's a baby quilt," she announced, unfolding the blanket to hold it up to show him.

Andrew hadn't thought about babies, but even that possibility didn't make him want to get on his horse and gallop to Mexico. "Do you want children?" he asked.

"Of course. I think this is one of those lone Star patterns." She studied the design as she held it at arm's length. "I'd like to have at least two. And then Francisca would have to be sensible aunt instead of me."

He could have said, 'Marry me' He could have said, 'Stop being sensible and come to bed' But he didn't. Instead Andrew stood and went over to the window to study the setting sun, just as he had thousands of times before. He might as well face the fact that he'd fallen in love with her from almost the first moment he saw her. How else could he explain not being able to sleep? And when he did, he dreamed of snow and making love... and a chestnut-haired woman who was there when he woke up in the morning.

Andrew wasn't an impulsive man, but it took everything he had to keep silent and not embarrass himself. She was an educated woman, a New England woman. She had money and a house on a beach she was independent and beautiful. What could he offer a woman like that?

He turned from the window and caught her watching him, so he hooked his thumbs in his pockets and waited for her to hold up another one of his mother's quilts.

"Thank you for showing these to me," Rose said, smiling at him toward the door. Andrew needed some air and he needed to get away from that bed.

The woman didn't want him, and he'd have to get used to that fact.

He'd been through worse, and he'd get through this, so when Rose turned to him with a question in her eyes, he explained, "I'm going to check on Pook. Close up the chest when you are done."

"GIVE ME JUST ANOTHER MINUTE."

"We are supposed to meet everyone for a beer at the Last Chance," Bobby complained, tapping his booted foot on the wooden floor of the town's only drugstore.

"They will wait," Francisca assured him, wondering what the big rush was about. Here she was, responsible now for the family's nutrition and well-being, and he wanted to rush her away from the local cookbooks tucked in between the mystery novels and the how-to books so he could quench his thirst.

"I want to find some recipes for tomorrow and then we'll need to go to the grocery store to get the things I need to make them."

"Honey." He put his arm around her shoulders.

"Forget about cooking. We can just buy everything at the store. You know, like frozen waffles and a couple of those big chicken pot pies. We've had those before and....."

"Why?"

Francisca thought she'd never seen such a look on a man's face before. She shrugged out of his embrace and handed him the book. "Hold that, will you?"

"Francisca Handel, honey, you don't have to cook," Bobby said, still looking puzzled.

"I need to cook." She reached for a book in something called the Texas cooks series. "You just hired me to be the housekeeper, and I intend to do a good job." She handed the bok to Bobby and turned to the shelf to select another. "Now I wish I'd taken home economics classes in high school."

"Anything you make will be just fine with me," her fiancé declared.

"You are not the problem," Francisca muttered. "Aunt Roro is."

"Why? What's she done?"