Two weeks ago, Lily’s no-spill cup had gone missing from daycare. Poppy’s grandmother, being old-school, thought cups with closed lids and straws were silly. Back in her day, babies learned to drink from a proper cup.

Since she was pinching pennies, Poppy hadn’t bought a new one. She had spent days mopping dribbles instead, and she’d been so happy when the cup had reappeared today.

Unfortunately, Lily was a big girl now. She wanted an open cup. Thanks, Gran.

Poppy considered whether a meltdown right before dinner was worth the battle. She compromised by easing Lily’s grip off her pant leg and then sat her gently onto her bottom, unable to resist running affectionate fingertips through Lily’s fine red-gold curls. She handed her both the leakproof cup and an empty plastic tumbler. Hopefully that would keep her busy for a few minutes.

“I’m putting the biscuits in the oven, Gran,” Poppy called as she did it.

She scooped a small portion of leek-and-potato soup from the slow cooker into a shallow bowl. She had started the soup when she raced home on her lunch break to check on her grandmother. Every day felt like a flat-out run, but she didn’t complain. Things could be worse.

She set the bowl on the table so it would be cool enough for Lily to eat when they sat down.

“The fanciest car has just pulled in, Poppy,” her grandmother said in her quavering voice. Her evening game shows were on, but she preferred to watch the comings and goings beyond their front room window. “Is he one of your models needing a head shot? He’s very handsome.”

“What?” Poppy’s stomach dropped. It was completely instinctive and she made herself take a mental step back. There was no reason to believe it would be him.

Even so, she struggled to swallow a jagged lump that lodged in her suddenly arid throat. “Who—?”

The doorbell rang.

Poppy couldn’t move. She didn’t want to see. If it wasn’t Rico, she would be irrationally disappointed. If it was him...

She looked to her daughter, instantly petrified that he was here to claim her. What would he say? How could she stop him? She couldn’t.

It wasn’t him, she told herself. It was one of those prophets in a three-piece suit who hand-delivered pamphlets about the world being on the brink of annihilation.

Her world was fine, she reassured herself, still staring at the sprite who comprised the lion’s share of all that was important to her. Lily tipped her head back in an effort to drain water from an empty cup.

The bell rang again.

“Poppy?” her grandmother prompted, glancing her direction. “Will you answer?”

Mentally, Gran was sharp as a tack. Her vision and hearing never failed her. Osteoporosis, however, had impacted her mobility. Her bones were so fragile, Poppy had to be ever vigilant that Lily and her toys weren’t underfoot. Her gran would break a hip or worse if she ever stumbled.

There were a lot of things about this living arrangement that made it less than ideal, but both she and Gran were maintaining the status quo, kidding themselves that Gramps was only down at the hardware store and would be back any minute.

“Of course.” Poppy snapped out of her stasis and glanced over to be sure the gates on both doorways into the kitchen were closed. All the drawers and cupboards had locks except the one where the plastic dishes were kept. The mixing bowls were a favorite for being dragged out and nested, filled with toys and measuring cups, then dumped without ceremony.

“Keep an eye this way, Gran?” Poppy murmured as she stepped over the gate into the front room, then moved past her seated grandmother to the front door.

Her glance out the side window struck a dark brown bomber jacket over black jeans, but she knew that head, that back with the broad shoulders, that butt and long legs.

His arrival struck like a bus. Like a train that derailed her composure and rattled on for miles, piling one broken thought onto another.

OhGodohGodohGod... Breathe. All the way in, all the way out, she reminded herself. But she had always imagined that if this much money showed up on her doorstep, it would be with an oversize check and a television crew. Not him.

Rico pivoted from surveying her neighbor’s fence and the working grain elevator against the fading Saskatchewan sky. His profile was knife sharp, carved of titanium and godlike. A hint of shadow was coming in on his jaw, just enough to bend his angelic looks into the fallen kind.

He knocked.

“Poppy—?” her grandmother prompted, tone perplexed by the way she was acting. Or failing to.

How? How could he know? Poppy had no doubt that he did. There was absolutely no other reason for this man to be this far off the beaten track. He sure as hell wasn’t here to see her.

Blood searing with fight or flight, heart pounding, she opened the door.

The full force of his impact slammed through her. The hard angle of his chin, the stern cast of his mouth, his wide shoulders and long legs, and hands held in tense, almost fists.

His jaw hardened as he took her in through mirrored aviators. Their chrome finish was cold and steely. If he’d had a fresh haircut, it had been ruffled by the wind. His boots were alligator, his cologne nothing but crisp, snow-scented air and fuming suspicion.

Poppy lifted her chin and pretended her heart wasn’t whirling like a Prairie tornado in her chest.

“Can I help you?” she asked, exactly as she would if he had been a complete stranger.

His hand went to the doorframe. His nostrils twitched as he leaned into the space. “Really?” he asked in a tone of lethal warning.

“Who is it, Poppy?” her grandmother asked.

He stiffened slightly, as though surprised she wasn’t alone. Then his mouth curled with disparagement, waiting to see if she would lie.

Poppy swallowed, her entire body buzzing, but she held his gaze through those inscrutable glasses while she said in a strong voice, “Rico, Gran. The man I told you about. From Spain.”

There, she silently conveyed. What do you think of that?

It wasn’t wise to defy him. She knew that by the roil of threat in the pit of her stomach, but she had had to grow up damned fast in the last two years. She was not some naive traveler succumbing to a charmer who turned out to be a thief, or even the starry-eyed maid who had encouraged a philandering playboy to seduce her.

She was a grown woman who had learned how to face her problems head-on.

“Oh?” Gran’s tone gave the whole game away in one murmur. There was concern beneath her curiosity. Knowledge. It was less a blithe, isn’t that nice that your friend turned up. More an alarmed, Why is he here?

There was no hiding. None. Poppy might not be able to read this man’s eyes, but she read his body language. He wasn’t here to ask questions. He was here to confront.

Because he knew she’d had his baby.

Her eyes grew wet with panic, but through her shock, she reacted to seeing her lover, her first and only lover twenty months after they had conceived their daughter. She had thought her brief hour with him a moment of madness. A rush of sex hormones born of dented self-esteem and grand self-delusion.

Since then, her body had been taken over by their daughter. Poppy had been sure her sex drive had dried up and blown away on the Prairie winds. Or at least was firmly in hibernation.

As it turned out, her libido was alive and well. Heat flooded into her with the distant tingles of intimate, erotic memories. Of the cold press of his belt buckle trapped against her thigh, the dampness of perspiration in the hollow of his spine when she ran her hands beneath his open shirt to clutch at him with encouragement. She recalled exactly the way he had kissed the whisker burn on her chin so tenderly, with a growl of apology in his throat. The way he had cupped her breast with restraint, then licked and sucked at her nipple until she was writhing beneath him.

She could feel anew the sharp sensation of him possessing her, so intimate and satisfying, both glorious and ruinous all at once.

She blushed. Hard. Which made the blistering moment feel like hours. She was overflowing at the edges with mortifying awkwardness, searching her mind for something to say, a way to dissemble so he wouldn’t know how far he’d thrown her.

“Invite him in, Poppy,” her grandmother chided. “You’re going to melt the driveway.”

She meant because she was letting the heat out, but her words made Poppy blush harder. “Of course,” she muttered, flustered. “Come in.”

Explanations crowded her tongue as she backed up a step, but stammering them out wouldn’t make a difference to a man like him. He might have seemed human and reachable for that stolen hour in his mother’s solarium, but she’d realized afterward exactly how ruthless and single-minded he truly was. The passion she’d convinced herself was mutual and startlingly sweet had been a casual, effortless, promptly forgotten seduction on his part.

He’d mended fences with his fiancée the next morning—a woman Poppy knew for a fact he hadn’t loved. He’d told Poppy that he’d only agreed to the marriage to gain the presidency of a company and hadn’t seemed distressed in the least that the wedding had been called off.

Embarrassment at being such an easy conquest had her staring at his feet as she closed the door behind him. “Will you take off your boots, please?”

Her request gave him pause. In his mother’s house, everyone wore shoes, especially guests. A single pair of their usual footwear cost more than Poppy had made in her four months of working in that house.

Rico toed off his boots and set them against the wall. Then he tucked his sunglasses into his chest pocket. His eyes were slate-gray with no spark of blue or flecks of hot green that had surrounded his huge pupils that day in the solarium.

After setting his cold, granite gaze against her until she was chilled through, he glanced past her, into the front room of the tiny bungalow her grandfather had built for his wife while working as a linesman for the hydro company. It was the home where Gramps had brought his bride the day they married. It was where they had brought home their only son and where they had raised their only grandchild.

Seeing him in it made Poppy both humble and defensive. It didn’t compare to the grandiose villa he’d been raised in, but it was her home. Poppy wasn’t ashamed of it, only struck by how he could so easily jeopardize all of this with a snap of his fingers. This house wasn’t even hers. If he had come here to claim Lily, she had very few resources at her disposal. Maybe it would even be held against her that she didn’t have much and he could offer so much more.

“Hello,” he greeted her grandmother as she muted the television and set the remote aside.

“This is Rico Montero, Gran. My grandmother, Eleanor Harris.”

“The Rico?”

“Yes.”

Rico’s brows went up a fraction, making Poppy squirm.

“It’s nice to meet you. Finally.” Gran started to rise.

Poppy stepped forward to help her, but Rico was quick to touch her grandmother’s arm and say, “Please. There’s no need to stand. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Oh, he knew how to use the warmth of his accented voice to slay a woman, young or old. Poppy almost fell for it herself, thinking he sounded reassuring when he was actually here to destroy their small, simple world.

Yet she had to go through the motions of civility. Pretend he was simply a guest who had dropped by.

Gran smiled up at him with glimmers of adoration. “I was getting up to give you privacy to talk. I imagine you’ll want that.”

“In that case, yes please. Allow me to help you.” Rico moved to her side and supported her with gentle care.

Don’t leave me alone with him, Poppy wanted to cry, but she slid Gran’s walker in front of her. “Thank you, Gran.”

“I’ll listen to the radio in my room until you come for me.” Her grandmother nodded and shuffled her way into the hall. “Remember the biscuits.”

The biscuits. The least of her worries. Poppy couldn’t smell them yet, but the timer would go off any second. She moved her body into the path toward the kitchen door, driven by mother-bear instincts.

“Why are you here?” Her voice quavered with the volume of emotions rocketing through her—shock and protectiveness and fear. Culpability and anger and other deeper yearnings she didn’t want to acknowledge.

“I want to see her.” He set his shoulders in a way that told her he wasn’t going anywhere until he did.

Behind her, the sound of bowls coming out of the cupboard and being knocked around reassured her that Lily was perfectly fine without eyes on her.

A suffocating feeling sat on her chest and kept a vise around her throat. She wanted him to answer the rest of her question. What was he going to do about this discovery? She wasn’t ready to face the answer.

Playing for time, she strangled out, “How did you find out?”

If they hadn’t been standing so close, she might have missed the way his pupils dilated and his breath seemed to catch as though taking a blow. In the next second, the impression of shock was gone. A fierce, angry light of satisfaction gleamed in his eyes.

“Sorcha saw a photo you posted of a baby who looks like Mateo. I investigated.”

Odd details from the last two weeks fell into place. She dropped her chin in outrage. “That new dad at the day care! I thought he was hitting on me, asking all those questions.”

Rico’s dark brows slammed together. “He came on to you?”

“He said he took Lily’s cup by mistake, but it was an excuse to talk to me.” Poppy was obviously still batting a thousand where her poor judgement of men was concerned.

“He took it for a DNA sample.”

“That is just plain wrong,” she said indignantly.

“I agree that I shouldn’t have to resort to such measures to learn I have a child. Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked through clenched teeth.

He had some right to the anger he poured over ice. She acknowledged that. But she wasn’t a villain. Just a stupid girl who’d gotten herself in trouble by the wrong man and had made the best of a difficult situation.

“I didn’t realize I was pregnant until you were married. By then, it was all over the gossip sites that Faustina was also expecting.”

It shouldn’t have been such a blow when she’d read that. His wedding had been called off for a day. Loads of people had a moment of cold feet before they went through with the ceremony. She accepted she was collateral damage to that.

She had been feeling very down on herself by then, though. She ought to have known better than to let herself get carried away. She hadn’t taken any precautions. She had been careless and foolish, believing him when he had told her that he and his fiancée hadn’t been sleeping together.

The whole thing had made her feel so humiliatingly stupid. She had hoped never to have to face him or her gullibility ever again.

So much for that.

And facing him was so hard. He was so hard. A muscle was pulsing in his jaw, but the rest of him was like concrete. Pitiless and unmoved.

“Faustina died a year ago last September,” he said in that gritty tone. “You’ve had ample opportunity to come forward.”

As she recalled the terrible headlines she’d read with morbid anguish, her heart turned inside out with agony for him. She had nursed thoughts every day of telling him he had a child after all, but...

“I’m sorry for your loss.” She truly was. No matter what he’d felt for his wife, losing his child must have been devastating.

His expression stiffened and he recoiled slightly at her words of condolence.

“My grandfather was quite ill,” she continued huskily. “If you recall, that’s why I came home. He passed just before Christmas. Gran needed me. There hasn’t been a right time to shake things up.”

His expression altered slightly as he absorbed that.

She imagined his sorrow to be so much more acute than hers. She mourned a man who had lived a full life and who had passed without pain or regret. They’d held a service that had been a true celebration of his long life.

While Rico’s baby had been cheated of even starting its own.

Rico nodded acceptance of her excuse with only a pained flicker as acknowledgment of what must have been his very personal and intensely painful loss.

Had grief driven him here? Was he trying to replace his lost child with his living one? No. The thought of it agonized her. Lily wasn’t some placeholder for another child. It cracked her heart in half that he might think she could be.

Before she could find words to address that fear, the timer beeped in the kitchen.

Lily had become very quiet, too, which was a sure sign of trouble. Poppy turned to glance around the doorframe. Lily sat with one finger poking at the tiny hole on a bowl’s rim, where the bowl was meant to be hung on a nail.

Firm hands settled on her shoulders. Rico’s untamed scent and the heat of his body surrounded her. He looked past her into the kitchen. At his daughter.

Poppy told herself not to look, but she couldn’t help it. She was afraid he would be resentful that Lily had lived when his other baby hadn’t. Even as she feared he was planning to steal her, she perversely would be more agonized if he rejected her. He had come all this way. That meant he felt something toward her, didn’t it? On some level, he wanted her?

His expression was unreadable, face so closed and tense, her heart dropped into her shoes.

Love her, she wanted to beg. Please.

His breath sucked in with an audible hiss. He took in so much air, his chest swelled to brush against her back. His hands tightened on her shoulders.

At the subtle noise, Lily lifted her gorgeous gray eyes, so like her father’s. A huge smile broke across her face.

“Mama.” The bowls were forgotten and she crawled toward them, pulling herself up on the gate.

Lily’s smile propelled Poppy through all her hard days. She was Poppy’s world. Poppy’s parents were distant, her grandfather gone, her grandmother... Well, Poppy didn’t want to think about losing her even though she knew it was inevitable.

But she had this wee girl and she was everything.

“Hello, button.” Poppy scooped up her daughter and kissed her cheek, never able to resist that soft, plump bite of sweet-smelling warmth. Then she brushed at Lily’s hands because it didn’t matter how many times she swept or vacuumed, Lily found the specks and dust bunnies in her eager exploration of her world.

This time when Poppy looked to Rico, she saw his reaction more clearly. He was trying to mask it with stoicism, but the intensity in his gaze ate up Lily’s snowy skin and cupid’s-bow mouth.

Her emotions seesawed again. She had needed this. Her heart had needed to see him accept his daughter, but he was a threat, too.

“This is Lily.” Her name was tellingly sentimental, not the sort of romantic notion Poppy should have given in to, but since her own name was a flower, it had seemed right.

Poppy faltered, not ready to tell Lily this was Daddy.

Lily brought her fingers to her mouth and said, “Ee.”

“Eat?” Poppy asked and slid her hand down from her throat. “You’re hungry?”

Lily nodded.

“Sign language?” Rico asked, voice sharpening with concern. “Is she hearing impaired?”

“It’s sign language for babies. They teach it at day care. She’s trying to say words, but this works for now.” Poppy stepped over the gate into the kitchen and snapped off the oven. “Do you, um...” She couldn’t believe this was happening, but she wanted to put off the hard conversations as long as possible. “Will you join us for dinner?”

A brief pause, then, “You don’t have to cook. I can order something in.”

“From where?” Poppy chuckled dryly as she set Lily in her chair. “We have Chinese takeout and a pizza palace.” Not his usual standard. “The soup is already made.”

She tied on Lily’s bib and set the bowl of cooled soup and a small flat spoon in front of her.

Lily grabbed the spoon and batted it into the thick soup.

“Renting the car was a challenge for my staff,” he mentioned absently, frowning as Lily missed her mouth and smeared soup across her own cheek.

“Gran said you’re driving something fancy,” Poppy recalled. She had forgotten to look, unable to see past the man to anything else.

“An Alfa Romeo, but it’s a sedan.”

With a car seat? Poppy almost bobbled the sheet of biscuits as she took them from the oven. “Are you, um, staying at the motel?”

He snorted. “No. My staff have taken a cottage an hour from here so I have a bed if I decide to stay.”

Poppy tried to read his expression, but he was watching Lily, frowning with exasperation as Lily turned her head, open mouth looking for the end of the spoon.

In a decisive move, he removed his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. Then he picked up the teaspoon beside Poppy’s setting and turned the chair to face Lily. He sat and began helping her eat.

Poppy caught her breath, arrested by the sight of this dynamic man feeding their daughter. His strapping muscles strained the seams in his shirt, telling of his tension, but he calmly waited for Lily to try before he gently touched the tip of his teaspoon to her bottom lip. He let Lily lean into eating it before they both went after the next spoonful in the bowl.

Had she dreamed of this? Was she dreaming? It was such a sweet sight her ovaries locked fresh eggs into their chambers, preparing to launch and create another Lily or five. All she needed was one glance from him that contained something other than accusation or animosity.

“You said the timing was wrong.”

It took her a moment to realize he was harking back to the day they’d conceived her. She could only stand there in chagrined silence while a coal of uncomfortable heat burned in her middle, spreading a blush upward, into her throat and cheeks and ending in a pressure behind her eyes.

He glanced at her. “When we—”

“I know what you mean,” she cut him off, turning away to stack hot biscuits onto a plate, suffused in virginal discomfiture all over again. He’d noticed blood and asked if she had started her cycle. She’d been too embarrassed to tell him it was her first time. She was too embarrassed to say it now.

“I should have taken something after.” She didn’t tell him she had hung around in Spain an extra day, hoping he would come find her only to hear the wedding was back on.

That news had propelled her from the scene, consuming her with thoughts of what a pushover she’d been for a man on a brief furlough from his engagement. Contraception should have been top of mind, but...

“I was traveling, trying to make my flight.” Poppy hugged herself, trying to keep the fissure in her chest from widening. She felt so exposed right now and couldn’t meet his penetrating stare. “I honestly did think the timing was wrong. I didn’t even realize I was pregnant until I was starting to show. I had next to no symptoms.” There’d even been a bit of spotting. “I thought the few signs I did have were stress related. Gramps’s health was deteriorating. By the time it was confirmed, you were married.” She finally looked at him and let one hand come out, palm up, beseeching for understanding.

There was no softening in his starkly unforgiving expression.

“I didn’t think you would—” She couldn’t say aloud that she had worried he wouldn’t want his daughter. Not when he was feeding Lily with such care.

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