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chase cats.”
    â€œI said I didn’t know about him chasing any cats. Besides, Fluffy probably provoked him.” Hank unbuttoned his shirt to examine the claw marks in his chest. “You ever check that cat’slineage? You ever find the name Cujo on the family tree?”
    â€œCujo was a dog.”
    â€œTechnicality.”
    Maggie looked at the red welts rising over his hard, smooth muscles and felt a wave of nausea pass through her. His beautiful chest looked like a dart board, and it was her fault. She’d forgotten all about Fluffy, sitting not so patiently in the cat carrier. If she’d remembered to take Fluffy upstairs with her, this never would have happened. “Does it hurt?”
    â€œTerribly. It’s a good thing I’m so big and strong and brave.”
    â€œI’ll keep Fluffy in my room for a couple days until she acclimates.”
    An hour later Maggie was sitting in the kitchen making her way through a mound of potato salad when Hank sauntered in fresh from his shower.
    â€œHow’s your chest?”
    â€œGood as new.”
    â€œI don’t believe you.”
    He grinned at her. “Would you believe almost as good as new?” He took a plate of chicken from the refrigerator and dropped into a chair. “The rain is letting up.”
    â€œI hope it doesn’t stop entirely. I love to fall asleep to the sound of rain on the roof.”
    â€œI like it best when it snows,” he said. “The master bedroom is in the northeast corner and takes the brunt of the winter storms. When there’s a blizzard, the wind drives the snow against the window with a tick, tick, tick sound. I always lie there and feel like a kid again, knowing the snow is piling up, school will be closed, and I’ll be able to go out sledding all the next day.”
    â€œAnd do you still go out sledding?”
    He laughed. “Of course.”
    It occurred to Maggie that she’d never sat across a kitchen table and shared small talk with a man whose hair was still damp. It was nice, she thought. It was one of those little rituals that was woven into the fabric of married life and gave comfort…like a good cup of coffee first thing in the morning or the fifteen-minute break to read the newspaper and sort through the day’s mail.
    Maggie watched the man sitting across from her, and a pleasurable emotion curled in her stomach. It would be easy to believe the marriage was real, easy to become used to this simple intimacy.
    â€œI like your house,” she said. “Has it always been in your family?”
    â€œMy Great-grandfather Mallone built it. He ran this place as a dairy farm. When my grandfather took over, he bought all the surrounding land he could and dedicated some of it to a pumpkin patch. He died ten years ago. My dad didn’t want any part of farming, and Grandma couldn’t manage the business by herself, so she stopped tending the pumpkins and kept only one cow. When I came back after college, I started planting trees where the pumpkins had once been.”
    â€œDo your parents live in Skogen?”
    â€œMy parents are the reason you’re here. My father’s president of Skogen National Bank and Trust.”
    â€œYour own father won’t give you a loan?”
    He slouched in his chair. “I was a problem child.”
    Maggie didn’t know if she was amused or horrified. “Haven’t your parents noticed you’re all grown-up?”
    â€œMy mother thinks if I were all grown-up I’d be married. My father thinks if I were all grown-up I wouldn’t have delusions of grandeur about growing organic apples.”
    His family and hers shared some disturbingly similar traits.
    â€œThis isn’t fair,” Maggie said. “It’s one thing for you to be facing possible bankruptcy and ruin, it’s quite another for you to be having the exact same problems that made me leave Riverside. I just spent