Or of me.

"Thanks," I said sullenly. "I'll let you know where we end up."

"The first thing we have to do, " I told Luke the next day, "is find a nice place we can rent or sublet. Should we focus on the downtown area? Montrose? Or would you be open to finding something close by in SugarLand? We could always go to Austin, but we'd have to take care to avoid you-know-who. And it's a lot more expensive to rent in Austin."

Luke looked contemplative, sucking slowly on the bottle as if he were mulling the possibilities.

"Are you thinking it over?" I asked him. "Or are you working on another dirty diaper?"

I had spent the previous evening doing a lot of Googling, mostly on infant care. I had read pages on diapering dos-and-don'ts, milestones for the first month of life, and schedules of pediatric visits. I had even found directions on how to trim a baby's nails. "It says here, Luke," I had reported, "that you're supposed to be sleeping fifteen to eighteen hours a day. You need to work on that. It also says I'm supposed to sanitize all the stuff you put your mouth on. And it says you're going to learn how to smile by the end of the month."

I had spent several minutes with my face right over his, smiling at him and hoping for a response. Luke had responded with such a solemn grimace that I had told him he looked like Winston Churchill.

After bookmarking a dozen baby-care sites, I had started to check out available furnished apartments in the Houston area. The ones I could afford looked cheap and depressing, and the ones I liked were astronomical. Unfortunately, it was difficult to find something in a decent location and nicely decorated that was also offered at a mid-range price. I had gone to sleep feeling anxious and depressed. Perhaps out of mercy, Luke had only woken three times during the night.

"We've got to find something today," I told him. "And get out of this expensive hotel room." I decided to spend the morning targeting possibilities on the Net, and going to see a few places in the afternoon. As I wrote down the first address and telephone number, my phone rang.

Travis, the display read. I felt a little tumble of nerves and curiosity as I picked it up. "Hello?"

"Ella." I heard Jack's distinctive baritone, fluid as molten pennies. "How are you?"

"Great, thanks. Luke and I are apartment-hunting. We've decided to move in together."

"Congratulations. You looking in Houston, or are you heading back to Austin?"

"We're staying here."

"Good." A brief hesitation. "Do you have lunch plans?"

"No."

"Let me pick you up at noon."

"I can't afford to have another meal with you," I said, and he laughed.

"This one's on me. There's something I want to talk to you about."

"What could you possibly want to talk to me about? Give me a hint."

"You don't need a hint, Ella. All you need is to say yes."

I hesitated, thrown off-guard by the way he talked to me, friendly and yet insistent, in the way of a man who was not accustomed to being told no.

"Could it be a casual place?" I asked. "At the moment Luke and I don't have anything nice to wear."

"No problem. Just don't put pink socks on him."

To my surprise, Jack picked us up in a small hybrid SUV. I had expected a gas-guzzling monster, or maybe a hideously expensive sports car. I certainly hadn't bargained on something that Dane or one of his friends would have felt comfortable driving.

"You, in a hybrid," I said in wonder, struggling to strap the base of Luke's car seat in the back row. "I thought you'd drive a Denali or a Hummer or something."

"A Hummer," Jack repeated with a snort, handing me Luke in his carrier and gently nudging me aside. He reached in to secure the car-seat base himself. "Houston's got enough toxic emissions. I'm not going to add to the problem."

I raised my brows. "That sounds like something an environmentalist would say."

"I am an environmentalist," Jack said mildly.

"You can't be, you're a hunter."

Jack smiled. "There're two kinds of environ-mentalists, Ella. The kind who hugs trees and thinks a single-cell amoeba is as important as a Nova Scotian elk . . . and then there's my kind, which thinks of regulated hunting as part of responsible wildlife management. And since I like to be out in nature as much as possible, I'm against pollution, overfishing, global warming, deforestation, or anything else that messes with my stomping grounds."

Jack took Luke's carrier from me and carefully locked it onto the base. He paused to murmur to the baby, who was strapped in like a mini-astronaut ready for a dangerous mission.

Standing back and a little to the side, I couldn't help appreciating the view as Jack bent into the car's interior. He was a powerfully built man, tight-loomed muscles encased in boot-cut denim jeans, his big shoulders flexing beneath a light blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He had the kind of form ideal for a quarterback, heavy enough to take a hit from a rusher, tall enough to throw an accurate pass over linemen, lean enough to be limber and fast.

As was often the case in Houston, a drive that should have taken fifteen minutes lasted almost a half hour. But I enjoyed the ride. Not only was I happy to be out of the hotel room, but Luke was sleeping, lulled by the air-conditioning and the motion of the car.

"What happened with Dane?" Jack asked casually. "Did you break up?