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Not long after the two women returned to the office, Rick and Lupe were saying goodbye. They made Jim promise to stay in touch and then they were gone. Jim looked uncomfortable as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, then cleared his throat.

“I didn’t really do all that much for Rick,” he said. “He was basically a good kid who lost his way.”

“It sounded a little bit more than that to me,” Heather countered.

The sun was low in the sky and light poured through the west-facing windows. Jim stood a little hunched over, with his hands in his pockets. His hair needed cutting and a five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw. He should have looked a mess. Instead, he was so good-looking, her thighs trembled.

“So am I supposed to bow when I come into the room?” she asked teasingly. “I’ve never been around a real, live hero before.”

“I’m not a hero.”

“Rick and Lupe would disagree.”

“They’re just kids.”

“Out of the mouths of babes and all that,” she persisted.

She wasn’t sure why she was pushing him. It’s not as if she wanted to know that he was incredibly special. If anything, that information would make him harder to resist. But she was getting a lot of messages from different people and they all said the same thing—that Jim Dyer wasn’t like every other guy around and that she was lucky to have him in her life. Even if they were just friends.

She went to her desk and began tidying up. It was getting late and she should be heading home. But she couldn’t forget what she and Lupe had talked about or what the younger woman had said about Jim’s being lonely.

“Have you ever been married?” she asked suddenly.

Jim walked over to his desk and settled on a corner. Heather’s question had caught him off guard. He’d expected her to ask about Rick or the other kids who worked for him, but not about his own past.

“Married?” Who would have wanted him? “No. You?”

He asked the question automatically; it was one of those social responses that seemed required. When someone asked about your weekend, you asked about his. He expected her to say she hadn’t been.

“Once,” she said, “a long time ago.”

“You were married?” he asked without thinking.

She looked up from the papers she’d been sorting and smiled. “Don’t sound so surprised. When I’m not nine months pregnant or recovering from giving birth, I clean up pretty good.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he told her. “You’re very attractive. I was expressing surprise because I didn’t think any man would let you go once he’d found you.”

Her gaze narrowed. “And here I was thinking the same thing about you,” she said cryptically but didn’t explain her remark. “I was very young and even more foolish.” She lowered herself into her chair. “You sure you want to hear the story?”

“If you want to tell it.” For him, it didn’t matter what Heather talked about; he just liked listening to the sound of her voice.

“I met Peter in high school. He was a year older than me, very cute, athletic, but not much of a scholar. He was also the first guy who ever paid attention to me.” She leaned back in her chair and smiled. “I was not the ideal body type back then as you can imagine. I was even thinner and a little too studious to be popular.”

“I bet you had your share of guys with crushes on you,” Jim said. If he’d known her then, he knew he would have been one of them.

She raised her eyebrows. “If they existed, they were a very quiet and subtle group. Anyway, I fell madly in love with Peter, and when I finally graduated from high school and he wanted to get married, I said yes. I also had a partial scholarship to a state college, but it was out of town, so I had to choose.”

“You picked Peter.”

She nodded. “My mother was heartbroken, but she didn’t judge me. I can only hope I’ll be as good a parent to Diane.” She toyed with the collar of her loose-fitting white blouse. “A few months after Peter and I got married, my mother met the man she’s married to now. It was a whirlwind courtship, and before I knew what happened, she’d moved to Florida and I was all alone. Or so it seemed.”

He didn’t like listening to the story. Even though it had been years ago and had obviously ended badly, he didn’t want to know that Heather had given her heart to a foolish young man. He wanted her to have always been happy.

“You had Peter.”

“Sort of,” she agreed. “But he wasn’t ready to grow up. So while I worked two jobs to support us, Peter partied with his friends and dreamed about playing football for the local community college. He didn’t want to take classes. He just wanted to play ball.” She drew in a deep breath as if preparing herself for what happened next.

“One day, when we’d been married for about three years, I came home early from work and found Peter in bed with a high school cheerleader. I packed my bags and vowed that I would learn from the experience.”