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eyeing Owen as if she wanted to give him a tongue bath. She was tempted to tell her “Go for it, honey, he’s all yours” but her mouth wouldn’t open. A little fact she refused to examine too closely. Instead, Piper edged past the two and nearly ran from the room.





CHAPTER FOUR
    O WEN RETURNED TO THE OFFICE where Big Trees Logging administration did the magic of keeping the business afloat and immediately Gretchen was full of questions. “How’d it go?” she asked.
    “It went great. Thanks for asking me to go,” he said, moving to the stack of mail he hadn’t had the chance to sort through just yet.
    “I was going to ask Danny, but Quinn wanted you,” she said, almost apologetically.
    At the mention of her newest boyfriend, the guy who knocked her up and then decided he needed space to think things through, made Owen want to scowl and say something rude but he held the urge in check. Gretchen had a soft heart and would likely get hurt feelings if he said what he felt right at the moment about the guy who’d bailed on her and their unborn child. “Yeah, not a problem,” he assured her, moving to his office. He paused as a sudden thought came to him. “Oh, and I’ve reconsidered my earlier request to send all calls from Piper Sunday to voice mail. Send any and all calls straight to me.”
    Gretchen’s mouth pinched as she rubbed her distended belly. “Why for? So she can print more lies about you and Big Trees Logging? You ought to sue her and the paper for slander.”
    “You mean, libel.” He grinned at Gretchen’s protectiveness. “I wish my lawyer agreed. Unfortunately, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I just want to put the whole thing behind me. We’re better than that anyway.”
    “Of course we are,” she agreed, nodding vigorously. “But still…seems wrong that she’s going to get away with being so mean.”
    “She’s just doing her job, I suppose.”
    “That’s a matter of opinion,” Gretchen said with a glower but finally sighed as she relented. “You got it. All calls from Piper Sunday will go straight to you.”
    “Thanks, Gretchen.” He was midway to his desk when he remembered something else and poked his head out to call to Gretchen again. “Hey, anytime you need something for Quinn…it’s no imposition. Just ask. You got it?”
    Gretchen’s eyes warmed and he half expected tears to follow as her pregnancy had been doing a number on the waterworks. Once he found her crying over the coffeepot when she’d run out of filters. But to his relief, her eyes remained dry, but appreciative.
    “I wish more people saw what a good man you are,” she said, surprising him. “You act all gruff, but you’re really a sweet guy.”
    Uncomfortable with the praise but knowing it came from an honest place, he simply cocked a grin her way and said, “Don’t tell anyone. It’ll ruin my rep as a badass.”
    Gretchen winked with a broad smile. He returned the grin until he realized he had a missed call from Mama Jo. He frowned and quickly punched in the retrieval code.
    The beloved voice of his foster mother sounded in his ear as she left a short message, wondering if he might be able to come visit soon, perhaps before the heat of summer got too bad. Since it was only spring, he smiled at the request even if a twinge of guilt followed. He hadn’t been home in a long time. He tried to go once a year but he’d been swamped as of late and the time seemed to get away from him.
    Piper Sunday didn’t know everything about him. She knew only the surface stuff. Everyone knew that his father was killed in an FBI raid at the compound at Red Meadows. They also knew that his father was the head of the Aryan Coalition, a racist group with ties to bad things.
    After it’d all gone down, he’d been sent to live with his only living relative, his aunt Danica on his mother’s side in West Virginia. But he’d proven to be too much of a handful for his aunt and she’d relinquished custody