For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,21

Rose, if you give them the chance. They’ll support whatever we decide. Brian’s parents..." She hesitated. "I don’t know. At the moment, he’s washed his hands of the whole thing. My pregnancy wasn’t planned, and..." She swallowed whatever she had been going to say, perhaps suddenly aware that she had been going to reveal too much that was private to a relative stranger. "Well," she said, a little awkwardly. "Certainly there’s no rush, where they’re concerned. Right now, it’s just Shelly and me."

"Not anymore," he murmured.

Her startled glance became troubled, but she said nothing, although the small creases stayed between her brows. He understood how she felt. They were both between a rock and a hard place.

"Does Rose want to go to the beach?"

Adam cooperated with her desire to put their visit on conventional ground. "She can’t talk about anything else."

"Then shall we?" Lynn nodded toward the register. "I have someone to mind the shop for me."

Belatedly he noticed that she wore jeans, faded canvas sneakers and a T-shirt the color of the Aegean Sea. Her hair was gathered into a ponytail, making her look absurdly young, with that round face and sprinkling of freckles. The fact that he couldn’t help noticing her long legs and tiny waist was a useful reminder that her husband had suspected her of infidelity. He couldn’t let her resemblance to Rose disarm him.

"Rose wanted to pick out a couple of books first," he said. "Maybe I’ll do it for her. Any suggestions?"

Lynn led him into the children’s area and offered several of Shelly’s favorites.

"We’ve read this about two hundred times," he said, setting one aside. "I liked it the first hundred."

She grinned, her nose crinkling. "Yeah, me, too. But, hey, most of them wear thin after five or ten repetitions."

Under other circumstances he’d have been attracted to her, Adam realized in dismay. Don’t, he told himself sharply. Talk about messy.

He grunted and probably glowered, and pretended to concentrate on the book he was flipping through. After a moment Lynn turned away and began straightening a rack of paperbacks for middle-grade readers, but he didn’t forget her presence. He’d never be able to forget her, he thought grimly. How could he? She was the mother of his daughter. Of both his daughters, one way or another.

How many men could say that about a woman they’d never touched?

Irritated with himself at a thought, Adam raised his voice. "Rosebud, you want to go to the beach?"

He heard whispers above his head. Then Rose said, "Okay, Daddy. If Shelly can go."

"You bet." Lynn smiled as if she hadn’t noticed his withdrawal.

The sounds of scrambling within eventually produced both girls, his Rose in her pink flowered overalls with matching shirt, and Shelly in a bright red dress—he thought it was a dress, made out of T-shirt fabric—over purple leggings.

"I know, I know," Lynn murmured, evidently seeing his astonishment. "She wants to dress herself, and mostly I let her."

"Ah." Rose accepted what he laid out. A difference in temperament? Or was Rose, as he feared, immature for her age? What if there was even something wrong with her?

But her language was well developed, he reminded himself.

"Hey, kiddo," he said. "You still want some books?"

She approved his selection and added two more with scarcely a glance inside the covers. He carried the pile to the register and let Lynn ring it up, not even wincing at the total.

"Let me give them to you at cost," she offered.

He shook his head brusquely. "Don’t be ridiculous. This is your business. If I weren’t buying them here, it would be somewhere else."

"I thought..." Her expression closed. "Thank you."

She was a stranger, he told himself. He hadn’t hurt her feelings in some way he didn’t understand. How could he? She didn’t have the power to hurt his.

Lynn smiled brightly as she came out from behind the counter. "Shelly, Rose, let’s go use the bathroom before we head off." She raised her eyebrows at him. "Adam?"

"No. If you don’t mind taking Rose..."

Her sidelong glance reeked of irony. Oh, no. She wouldn’t mind taking his daughter. He couldn’t help a minor feeling of loss when Rose willingly took Lynn’s hand and went without a look back.

They returned hand in hand, the pretty woman, his Rosebud and Shelly, so much like Jennifer that his heart spasmed again.

His face revealed too much once more, because Lynn said in an achingly gentle voice, "Shelly, this is Rose’s daddy."

"Hi, Shelly." He sounded gruff to his own ears. "I see you have