Having grown up as an only child in a household where there was very little demonstrative interaction and almost no laughter or merriment, Jenna had always wanted her own family to be a big, boisterous one.

She wanted a husband who loved her and loved their children, and a passel of kids running around, making the windows rattle and floors quake. She’d spent years dreaming of holding her own babies to her breast, watching them learn to crawl and then walk and talk, of getting them ready for school in the mornings…

And when she’d met Gage, he’d folded perfectly into those hopes and dreams. She’d been almost giddily eager to start making babies with him, and then to see those little replicas with his Hershey bar brown eyes and mops of black hair similar to both of their dark locks.

They would take walks in the park, swinging a toddler between them, or go on weekend excursions to the lake where they’d deal with inner tubes and water wings, sunscreen and sand castles. She could so clearly picture Gage tossing their son or daughter into the air and catching him or her-or maybe one of each-in his strong arms, eliciting squeals of childish glee.

The day he’d told her he didn’t want kids after all, and had no intention of getting her pregnant, had been the darkest day she could ever remember. Her whole world had come crashing down around her, sending her life and everything she thought she’d known spinning out of control.

Ronnie and Grace knew all that. They’d been the first people Jenna called after the fight to end all fights that had resulted in Gage’s life-altering pronouncement and her eventual petition for divorce. They’d come running immediately, then held her hand, patted her back, let her sob on their shoulders for weeks on end, and alternately sympathized with her or railed at the duplicity of men in general and Gage in particular.

Which was why Grace’s announcement that she thought Jenna had been wallowing for the past year and a half had come as such a surprise. Jenna had tried to work up a good mad at her friend, but any sense of betrayal went down the drain when she realized Grace was right. She hadn’t been herself in months, and she darn well knew it.

But what had shocked her even more was what Ronnie and Grace thought she should do to get herself out of her recent funk.

Maybe it was the margaritas talking. Hell, there was a ninety-five percent chance it was the margaritas talking. But it was what she wanted, what she’d always wanted, and the idea of going through with it gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling deep in her belly that put the tequila-laced smoothies to shame.

So now the kitchen and living room-which twenty minutes ago had looked like a frat house on party night-were spotlessly clean. The dirty glasses, plates, silverware, and blender were all stuffed in the dishwasher. Leftover Mexican food had been boxed and put in the refrigerator. And any signs that Grace and Ronnie were in the house had been completely hidden or removed.

“Okay, I think we’re set.” Ronnie ran a rag over the island countertop one last time before tossing it in the sink. “Are you ready?”

A blip of panic sparked in Jenna’s chest, causing her lungs to freeze and her heart to skip a beat. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Of course you can,” Grace said matter-of-factly. “We did the whole pros and cons list, you did your little self-examination psychoanalysis, and this is what you said you wanted. You said you were sure.”

“I am sure, I’m just… not sure.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “Stop worrying. Stop second-guessing yourself. This is going to work like a charm, and when it’s over, everyone will have exactly what they want.”

“Everybody but Gage, anyway,” Ronnie put in.

With a shoulder shrug, Grace said, “He should have thought of that before he lied to her and wasted three years of her life. Now it’s Jenna’s turn to call the shots and make the big decisions, and he’ll just have to deal with it.”

Grabbing the cordless phone from the wall, she passed it to Jenna. “You’ve got the story straight, right?”

Jenna nodded.

“Good. So dial.”

Taking a deep breath, Jenna focused her slightly blurry gaze on the key pad and very carefully punched in the series of numbers she had memorized, even though she shouldn’t have known them at all.

While she listened to the ring and waited for an answer, Grace pinched Ronnie’s elbow and lured her out of the kitchen and into the other room. At the muted giggle that followed, Jenna closed her eyes, covered her face with her hand, and seriously considered hanging up before the humiliation that was about to befall her kicked in and became absolute.

But then the ringing stopped and a deep male voice sounded in her ear, sending her stomach plummeting toward her toes and making Phase One of their plan complete.

There was no turning back now.

Purl 2

When the phone rang at ten minutes after ten, Gage Marshall had already been asleep for about forty minutes.

It didn’t say much for a thirty-three-year-old man to be passed out in front of the television so early on a Friday night, but his life hadn’t exactly been a thrill a minute lately.

If his friends had been in town, he probably would have met them for some beer and fries down at The Penalty Box, but since they were both on the road for the next couple of weeks for an off-season charity event with some of the other players from the Cleveland Rockets, he was on his own. And on his own meant cold pizza, the last remaining Rolling Rock from a six-pack in the fridge, and whatever half-interesting ten-year-old action flick he could find on the tube.

Even work didn’t seem to do it for him these days. He still enjoyed going undercover for the CPD, but he wasn’t on an active case right now, which gave him more downtime and more time to devote to paperwork than he would have liked.

Downtime meant a lot of time alone and too damn much time to think. He didn’t want to think, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be alone.

But he’d made his bed, he supposed, and now he couldn’t even bring himself to sleep in it.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, he pushed himself up from the couch and searched for the remote to mute the TV. The phone continued to ring, shaking his brain like a snow globe until he grabbed up the handset and barked, “Yeah?” into the receiver.

A second passed with nothing but dead air and he was about to hang up-after muttering a few colorful invectives the prankster wouldn’t soon forget-when a soft, tentative voice played over the line.

“Gage?”

He knew that voice, dreamed of that voice, and it went straight to his gut.

“Jenna?”

For a minute, he thought he might still be asleep. Maybe he was dreaming, because there was no earthly reason he could think of that she would voluntarily call him. Not after the way they’d parted and the length of time they’d been divorced.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said hesitantly while he continued to rub his eyes and tried to make sense of the alternate universe he’d apparently fallen into sometime between arriving home from work and then waking up after passing out on the sofa.

“But I’m at Aunt Charlotte’s house all alone, and there’s something wrong with the pipes under the sink upstairs. There’s water everywhere, and I’m afraid it’s going to start soaking through the floor into the downstairs ceiling.”

Her words trailed to a stop, but only so that she could take a deep breath and dive in again.

“Normally, I’d ask Dylan or Zack to come over and help me out, but they’re both out of town right now. And I’d call a plumber, but you know how expensive they are for evening and weekend visits, and it makes me a little nervous to think about inviting a stranger to come out here with no one else around. Could you… I mean, would you mind…”