“Ryan!”
He jerked to a stop, recognizing his father’s voice even before he turned to see Sawyer Clay walking along the sidewalk, Ryan’s mother on his arm.
Another downside of small-town living.
Running into people when you weren’t prepared, every time you turned around.
“Dad. Mom,” he greeted when they reached him.
“Where’s your coat?” his mother asked, after she’d tugged his head down to plant a kiss on his cheek.
He had no intention of explaining that one, so he just held up the small plain brown paper sack from the hardware store. “Was just running in and out.” It wasn’t a lie, so meeting his gray-haired father’s gaze wasn’t entirely impossible. “What are you two doing in town?”
“What everyone else in town is doing,” Sawyer drawled. “Taking their wives shopping. It’s either Christmas presents or a dress for that shindig in a few weeks.”
Rebecca made a face at him and batted his arm with her leather-gloved hand. “You said you wanted to come with me.”
“Only to keep your spending in check.” But there was a smile in his voice and an amused tick at the corner of his lips that belied his words. “Haven’t seen you for a few days, son. How are things out at J.D.’s?”
J. D. Clay was his cousin whom he’d been helping out. Or maybe he should say that she was helping him out, by giving him something productive to fill the endless days. She’d moved back to Weaver a few months earlier and started up her own horse-boarding operation, and rather than stare endlessly at the walls of his motel room every day, he’d offered his assistance. So far, he’d begun repainting her old barn, fed and groomed horses and shoveled a mountain of horse manure out of their stalls. Tasks that were a million miles away from the career he’d left behind.
“Between Jake and his boys and Latitude’s recovery, I’ve hardly seen her,” he admitted. Latitude was an injured Thoroughbred that J.D.’s brand-new fiancé, Jake Forrest, had owned until he’d signed over ownership to her barely a week ago.
“Her shoulder is doing well,” Rebecca inserted. She would know since not only was she still practicing, but she ran the hospital where J.D. had gone when she’d dislocated her shoulder after a tumble from a horse. “Doesn’t hurt that she and Jake are clearly head-over-heels for each other.” She dashed her hand over Ryan’s shoulder. “Is everything all right? You look…distracted.”
Distracted didn’t begin to cover it. But talking about Mallory and her claim was the last thing he intended on doing.
“He’s in a hurry, Bec,” Sawyer inserted. “That’s all.” But Ryan still recognized the speculation in his father’s eyes.
“Of course. We won’t keep you out in the cold, sweetheart. But will we see you tomorrow for Sunday dinner? I’m on kitchen duty this time.”
The Clay family members generally rotated around the big family meal every Sunday. Whoever could come did, and whoever couldn’t, didn’t.
But he’d made a point of avoiding the meals since his return to town.
And now, he could see the shadow of disappointment in his mother’s eyes even before he’d formed an answer. From the corner of his eye, he could see the mechanical Santa positioned inside the front window of the hardware store waving merrily.
“Maybe,” he said, instead of the refusal that was ready and waiting on his tongue.
She smiled, so clearly buoyed by a shot of hope, yet so clearly trying to contain it. “Well.” She patted his shoulder again, then tucked her hands around Sawyer’s arm. “You know where we’ll be. Now go on before you catch your death of cold.”
Like the solid unit that they’d been for most of his life, his parents stood close to each other, watching as he headed to his truck. When he got inside and tossed the paper sack on the seat beside him, they waved and smiled, and he lifted a hand before backing out of the parking space.
He drove back to Mallory’s house only to sit, engine idling, at the curb. His hands clenched the steering wheel. He was looking at the house—two-storied, sharply gabled roof, narrow porch running across the entire front—but his thoughts were turned inward.
If Cassie had gotten pregnant, why hadn’t she told him?
They’d both worked for Hollins-Winword, though she—an expert in foreign languages—had been in a support position to Coleman Black, rather than in the field like Ryan had been. Their paths had crossed occasionally. Never more closely than when she’d voluntarily interjected herself into that sting to save his bacon. She’d been smart and gutsy and engaging and he remembered genuinely enjoying her company, brief though it had been. And he was damn sure that her feelings toward him had been no more involved or deep. He hadn’t loved her. She hadn’t loved him.
He pinched the pain behind the bridge of his nose.
It was hard to believe she’d died bearing a child.
Not any child.
Chloe.
He jerked and started when someone knocked on the window beside him, and stifled a curse over his own edginess.
Mallory stood on the curb. This time, she was wearing a long, beige wool coat with a hood pulled over her head. She looked more like she belonged on the cover of a magazine than standing on the curb in little Weaver, Wyoming.
She was holding his leather coat.
“You came back,” she said through the window. “I wasn’t sure you would,” she added, stepping away when he pushed open the door and got out.
He sorely wished he could just give her the paper sack with the repair clamps and be on his way, but some deeply buried streak inside him made him stay. “Does Chloe know? About…who…her father is?” It was a cowardly way of phrasing it. He knew it. She knew it.
But he gave Mallory credit for not pointing out that particular fact.
She just shook her head and held out his coat. “She doesn’t know anything. And, to be honest, I prefer it that way. Until…until—” She broke off. A line of worry bisected the smooth skin between her eyebrows.
He dropped the paper bag on the hood of the truck and took the coat, pulling it on. “Until?”
She let out a soft, huffing breath that sent a vaporous cloud between them. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know any good way of doing this,” she admitted. “Telling you. Telling her. But Chloe’s welfare is my primary concern. And if you…if you’re not…well, if this is going to cause her any harm—” She shook her head, breaking off again. “I wish there was a manual for situations like this,” she murmured.
“I doubt it would cover someone like me, anyway.” He shoved his hand through his hair and was relieved that it wasn’t shaking, because everything inside of him was feeling pretty damn unhinged. “Keep watching out for your daughter,” he said abruptly. “That’s what a good parent does.”
She was nibbling at her lip and, despite everything, he got distracted by their well-defined softness all over again. “Don’t tell her,” he added doggedly.
“Not yet,” she clarified.
That wasn’t the “not ever” that had been whispering through his brain. “Do you want support money or something?”
Her head reared back, the hood slipping off her shining hair. “That’s what you think this is about? Money?”
He lifted his hand, peaceably. “I’m sorry.” And he was. “I’m not trying to offend you. Just…to understand what it is that you do want.”
The offended glint in her eyes slowly softened. She pushed her hands into the side pockets of her coat and rocked