“Yeah,” he said, “but they only want me for my apples.”

Before they returned to the house, total blackness had descended on the orchard. Without benefit of a moon, they slowly, blindly picked their way along the dirt road.

“You sure you know where you’re going?” Maggie asked.

“Of course I know where I’m going. This is my apple orchard.”

“There aren’t any bears around here, are there?”

“The closest thing we have to a bear is Bubba, and he’s pretty much harmless. Of course, if you’re afraid you can come cuddle up to me, and I’ll protect you.”

“I thought you weren’t making any more moves.”

“If I’m not breathing heavy, it doesn’t count as a move.” He groped for her hand in the darkness. “Give me your hand, and I’ll make sure you get home safe and sound.”

She slid her hand into his, not because she was afraid, but because, even though his reputation left something to be desired, she liked him enormously. He was fun and he was comfortable. And she liked the way her hand felt in his. It felt like it belonged there. She was feeling a little homesick for all of the things she used to hate about Riverside, and it was good to know that at least her hand was in the right place.

They crested a small hill and were greeted by a single dot of light. Elsie had put the porch light on before she’d gone off on her date. Hank guided Maggie to the front porch and opened the screen door.

“We forgot to lock up the house,” Maggie said. “We didn’t even close the door.”

“I can’t remember the last time I locked this house. I don’t even know if I have a key.”

“My Lord, anyone could walk right in.”

“I guess that’s true, but no one ever has. Except Bubba, of course. And Bubba wouldn’t care if the door was locked. He’d just give it a good kick and that would be the end of that.”

“Don’t you have any crime in Skogen?”

He switched the light on in the foyer. “Not since I promised to behave myself. And that was a good while ago.” He went into the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator. “I could use a pudding. How about you?”

Maggie got two spoons from the silverware drawer. “A pudding sounds great.” She sat across from him at the table and dug into her pudding. “What sort of crimes did you commit before going straight?”

“The usual teenage stuff. I borrowed a couple cars.”

“Borrowed?”

“Technically I guess I stole them. But they were my father’s. And I always returned them with a full tank of gas.”

“Anything else?”

“Got a few speeding tickets. Got caught buying beer with a forged ID a couple times.”

“I know you’re saving something good for last.”

“There was this thing about Bucky Weaver’s barn, but it really wasn’t my fault.”

Maggie cocked an eyebrow. “Am I going to need another pudding to see me through this?”

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

She took the last two puddings out of the refrigerator and gave one to Hank.

“It was a deciding factor in whether or not I should try pro hockey,” he said. “Actually I had my choice of hockey or the army.”

“Uh-huh.”

A splash of color appeared on his cheeks. He really wasn’t enjoying this, but he wanted to tell her before she heard it somewhere else. His whole childhood had been a struggle for in dependence. In fact, looking back, he thought his childhood had been a struggle for survival. There’d been no room in his father’s rigid lifestyle for a little boy with chocolate on his face. His father had no patience with a seven-year-old who couldn’t color inside the lines, or a fourteen-year-old who couldn’t tie a perfect Windsor knot, or a seventeen-year-old who was put into remedial reading because it was finally discovered he had dyslexia.

Every time Hank failed by his father’s standards, the rules and restrictions grew tighter. And the more rules his father imposed, the more Hank had rebelled. If he wasn’t going to get approval, then he sure as hell was going to get attention.

After a couple of years on his own knocking around the hockey circuit he’d grown up, thank heaven. Now he set his own moral standards and imposed his own rules of conduct. The only approval he needed was his own. Until Maggie. Falling in love, he discovered, brought with it a whole new set of needs and responsibilities.

He looked at Maggie sitting across from him and took a deep breath. “One night, about a week before graduation, I persuaded Bucky’s daughter, Jenny, to meet me in the barn behind her house. We had a six-pack of beer. We were up in the loft and it was dark, so I lit the kerosene lantern. Bucky saw the light go on and thought he had a thief in his barn. I don’t know what he thought the thief was stealing, because the barn was empty except for about twelve years’ worth of pigeon droppings. Anyway, he got his old bear gun down from the mantel and blasted the hell out of his barn.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

Hank grinned. “No. But he hit the lantern and burned his barn down.”

Maggie clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. “It must have been terrible,” she finally managed.

He was relieved she could see the humor in it. It hadn’t been too funny at the time, and years later, when he’d returned to Skogen, people were still telling the story about the time Bucky Weaver burned his barn down. “It was a turning point in my life,” he told her. “I had to leave Skogen, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“But you came back.”

He shrugged. “It’s home.”

Maggie wasn’t sure she felt the same way about Riverside. She’d been born and raised there, and she felt a flurry of homesickness from time to time, but she wasn’t sure it was home.

“Couldn’t home be somewhere else? Isn’t there any place else you’d like to live?”

He stared at the four empty pudding dishes on the table. He hadn’t really given it much thought. At least not in a long time. Home had always been his granny’s house, even when he was a kid. This was where he’d laughed and played and felt safe. After his granny had died and he’d moved into her house, he’d realized it wasn’t the house that had made it a home. It had been his granny. Now Maggie made it a home. Home was with Maggie, and he supposed it could be anywhere in the world. He found it astonishing that he could feel that way about a woman he’d known less than a week.

“I guess one place would be as good as another,” he told her, “but it’s hard to move a hundred and ten acres of apple trees. They don’t pack well.”

It was dark in Maggie’s room. The window was open, but there was no breeze to stir the curtains, no moon to splash silvery light across her floor. She’d come awake fast with her heart pounding in her chest, her throat tight with fear. She was afraid to open her eyes. Afraid to move. Afraid the intruder would notice her altered breathing pattern. She tried to think, but her mind was a blind alley that had no outlet for her panic.

Someone was in her room. She could feel it. She knew he was there. Clothing rustled. A board creaked in the floor. Her eyes flew open in time to see a shadow move toward the door. It was a man, and her first thought was of Hank. Let it be Hank, she prayed.

The shadow hurried into the dark hall and Maggie heard Horatio growl. The sound came from deep in the dog’s throat, low and threatening. He was moving slowly and stealthily across the floor, stalking the man. Maggie felt as if the house were holding its breath, and then all hell broke loose as Horatio bolted out of the bedroom. The intruder thundered down the stairs; his only concern to escape from the dog. Maggie was out of bed. She ran into the hall and saw Hank disappear down the stairwell after Horatio. A bloodcurdling scream carried from the front lawn, and then there was the sound of a car door slamming and a car being gunned down the driveway.

Maggie met Hank in the foyer. She reached out for him with a shaking hand, and found nothing but warm skin to hang on to. He’d only taken the time to pull on a pair of jeans. She flattened against him in her cotton nightshirt, and, to her own disgust, began to cry.