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tell himself it wasn’t a defensive gesture. But it did seem defensive. What she said next, though, told him the gesture wasn’t meant for him.
    â€œBoy, my parents would be so thrilled if this were all really true,” she said, her voice tinged not with teasing now but with a hint of melancholy.
    â€œThey didn’t want you to go into law enforcement?” he asked.
    â€œWell, they always told me they wanted me to be whatever I wanted to be, and to pursue a career that would make me happy, because that was all that was important,” she hedged.
    â€œBut?” Sam asked, because he heard the word coming.
    She expelled a soft sound of resignation. “But I think they always hoped that what would make me happy would be to marry a wealthy local businessman, preferably the son of one of my father’s colleagues, then buy a house up the street from them like this one and be a full-time mom to a houseful of kids, preferably with names like Ashley and Emily and Brandon and Biff.”
    Sam couldn’t quite help but smile himself at that.“And instead, you go for names like Destiny and Zenith and Aurora, is that it?”
    Now Logan smiled, too, and where she had been merely dazzling before, suddenly she was downright beatific. And those, too, were words Sam knew he shouldn’t be using in relation to her. So what if they were totally appropriate?
    â€œActually, it’s not so much the names I object to as the actual children. Don’t get me wrong,” she hurried on to say before he could comment one way or another, “I think raising kids is probably the most important job out there, for a woman or a man. But it’s not for me. I wouldn’t be good at it. Which is another reason why this assignment is going to be so difficult.”
    It was going to be difficult for Sam, too, but for different reasons. Because there had been a time when he did want a houseful of kids, and they could have been named John Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmidt and Pippi Longstocking for all he cared. But just when he’d thought that family would become a reality, it had been stripped away from him, brutally and treacherously, and it had left him wary of ever wanting one again.
    â€œIt’s funny, actually,” Logan went on, bringing Sam’s thoughts back to the present, “because I always told my family I wanted to be a cop or investigator of some kind. My Christmas list was always filled with things like chemistry sets and Trixie Belden books and weapons of destruction and handcuffs. But what I always found under the tree was Barbies and stuffed cats and Little House books and an Easy-Bake Oven. All the stuff I wanted ended up on David’s side of the living room instead.” She smiled. “So I just ignored my stuff and played with his.”
    Sam found himself wishing she would talk more about herself, about her past, about her dreams and hopes, about her… Well, just about her, but he stopped himself. None of that was any of his business, he told himself again. None of it was germane to the case at all. Besides, once you got a woman like Logan talking about herself, she probably wouldn’t shut up. He had other things to think about right now. And any minute, he’d remember what they were, too, by God.
    Thankfully, Logan also seemed to remember the case, because she suddenly stopped smiling and looking all dreamy-eyed, and clipped herself into a sturdier posture. “Anyway, getting back to the matter at hand, our first order of business as newlyweds moving closer to my family is to consult my family’s pet project, Children’s Connection. Because we’re anxious to start a family right away and can’t. Is that correct?”
    â€œThat’s correct,” Sam said.
    â€œAnd the reason we already know we can’t have kids the old-fashioned way is because…?”
    She didn’t know the answer to that question, Sam knew, because they