Information about Cal’s background had been hard to glean, but she knew enough. His parents had been farmers on a holding that had been scarcely viable. His mother had abandoned them early. Cal had been brought up to hard times and hard work, and it showed. His bronzed skin was weathered, almost leathery. His deep brown eyes crinkled at the edges, and his strongly boned face spoke of the childhood he’d talked about reluctantly, a childhood where his first memory had been of gathering hay in the blazing sun before a storm on Christmas morning, heaving bales that had been almost as big as he’d been before he had been old enough to stop believing in Santa Claus.

Before he’d been old enough to stop hoping that one day things could change.

But they hadn’t. He hadn’t. He hadn’t changed a bit.

Yet she still loved him. She looked into his shocked face and she felt her heart break all over again.

How could she still love him?

Five years of heartbreak.

She had to move on. He had a life to lead and so did she. There was no room here for emotion.

But… His burnt red, tightly curled hair was just the same as her son’s.

Concentrate on medicine, she told herself fiercely. Use the medical imperative. Medicine had been her lifesaver for five long years and it would be her lifesaver again.

And as for loving?

Get over it.

‘Cal, there’s a baby.’

He was staring at her as if he were seeing a ghost. She might be moving on, but he hadn’t yet. How could he?

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

The harsh words were like a blow and she found herself physically flinching.

But she had to move past this. The baby’s life was too important to waste time on non-essentials.

‘I’ve been at the rodeo,’ she told him. Somehow. It was almost impossible to make her voice work at all, but when she managed it came out expressionless. Businesslike. ‘I found a baby,’ she managed.