Still, if Clay had known about the girl before his dad’s bid to win custody, he would have lobbied against the move. His father was just trying to soak up an extra assistance check for housing a kid, and the girl would be better off out from under the Yancy influence. Clayton credited any success he’d had in life to his foster family and their encouragement in settling him down.
Hunting for his missing half siblings had been the start of his PI career. To this day, reuniting families was his specialty. But he’d failed Mia Benson when he’d stopped looking for his own brothers and sisters, assuming his father was done sowing his seed. Apparently failing eight times over at parenthood—with five different women—hadn’t been enough for the old man.
After shaking hands with his host, Clayton walked out of the huge Craftsman-style house and fired up his motorcycle in the damp November fog. With his duffel strapped to the seat and his guitar on his back, he wasn’t the most aerodynamic of riders, but his old Harley wasn’t that kind of ride anyhow. Roaring out of the driveway and heading toward the interstate, he planned to play his six-string for as many hours as it took to unkink the knot in his gut.
He didn’t want to see his father. But he damn well wanted to know his half sister, if only to see with his own eyes that she was okay. The firstborn of Clayton’s parents had died of crib death while the two so-called adults drank themselves into a stupor. Their next kid was Clayton, and it had taken him half his childhood to get into the foster system, a golden ticket out that he’d only learned about after his drunken, jobless, abusive parents had birthed kid number three, a boy Clayton loved with all his heart. When Eddy was four years old, child protective services took him away after a neighbor called to complain about seeing him unattended on the playground.
Of course, Eddy hadn’t been unattended for any moment of the day when Clayton was around. But the neighbor probably hadn’t considered a seven-year-old brother to be adequate supervision. Why CPS claimed Eddy at that time and not Clayton remained the biggest injustice of Clayton’s life. It had separated them for the next twelve years until Clayton figured out how to find people. By the time he’d gotten himself taken out of his home—not that difficult to do, but still, there was a process—he’d bounced to a different foster home every year, finally winding up at the Hasting house, where he’d graduated school and aged out of the system.
His life had ended up better than Eddy’s. And on that sobering note, he ground his teeth together.
Now, with the wind plastering his jacket to his chest, he tried not to think about his brother’s fate, his long-dead older sister and the smattering of other kids his parents had brought into the world—some as a couple, others with equally crappy partners as parents. It bothered Clayton to think he’d missed Mia, but she’d lived with her mother until a two-year stint in foster care, during which she’d lobbied her birth father to spring her from the system. Somehow Pete had gotten clean and sober enough to fool the social worker into giving him one last chance to be a dad.
Mia was sixteen now, he’d heard, and had been living with their father for the last eight months, helping to care for the old man as he grew weak from cirrhosis and heart disease.
Clayton planned to make sure she knew she had a way out of her father’s house. That alone was worth going to see Pete Yancy—aka the negligent jackass—one last time. Clayton would have gone as soon as he’d arrived in Heartache, but he’d been tapped for bodyguard duty by his friend. He would put in an appearance at his dad’s place after school that day and cross his fingers she’d show up, too, so he could fulfill his obligations in Heartache and head back to Memphis once the reunion was done.
Steering his vintage low rider along the road that ran parallel to the interstate, Clayton slowed down as the Owl’s Roost came into view, a diner he remembered from when he’d lived in town. Nostalgia and hunger lured him off the road and into a parking spot to grab some breakfast since it was early to book a motel room anyhow.
The figure of a woman walking across the Roost’s front porch flagged his attention as he locked up the bike and his bag. Keeping the guitar strapped to his back, he turned to watch the slender form half covered by a big, black hoodie that hid her profile. He wasn’t sure what it was that caught his attention. The quick, sharp walk. Long, elegant legs that a pair of loose pants couldn’t fully conceal in the late-autumn wind.
Something about her made him pay attention.
So it happened that he was staring right at her when she stopped and turned to look out into the parking lot, her pale blue eyes landing on him.
The delicate features hadn’t changed. A wisp of dark blond hair fluttered across her cheek in the breeze.
“Clay.” She said his name softly.
Or he imagined she did. Her mouth moved with some comment before she raised her hand to cover her lips. As if she could retrieve whatever she had murmured.
“Gabriella Chance.” His feet were already heading toward her, his gaze not able to let her go. “I wondered if I’d ever see you again.”
CLAYTON TRAVERS STOOD in front of her, like a vision conjured out of a dream.
Seeing him hit her, whoomp, a thump to her chest, robbing her of air for a split second. Over the years his long, lanky body had filled out into a man’s lean frame, his shoulders wider than she remembered. Brown hair tinged with gold grazed the collar of his dark leather motorcycle jacket. Worn-in jeans suited him well, as did the scuffed boots. But it was his face that intrigued her most, his deep brown gaze roaming over her with interest that warmed her even in the crisp bite of a November wind.
With his high cheekbones and a cleft chin, he had become an extremely attractive man. The furtive look in his eyes that she remembered from his teens had been replaced with an easy confidence. A half smile curved his full, sensual lips.
And just like that, the attractiveness worked on her with a strange alchemy that drew her even as it chilled her again. Her feelings for him had grown oddly complicated over time.
“Clay,” she said semi-awkwardly. She might have hugged him if there hadn’t been a wooden porch rail between them. And, on second thought, that probably wasn’t the appropriate greeting for an old high school friend who’d been the recipient of her earliest flirting attempts. She wasn’t some starry-eyed teen anymore. “It’s great to see you again after all these years.”
Actually, it was sort of terrifying given the role he’d played in her past. A role he was completely oblivious to.
But she’d wanted to face him and here he stood.
“Good to see you, too. Time has been...really nice to you, Gabriella.”
Before she could recover from that latest whoomp to her lungs, he continued, “Are you meeting anyone for breakfast?” He nodded toward the Owl’s Roost. A couple of guys in bright orange vests lumbered past, to-go cups in their hands as they emerged from the diner.
“No. I’m staying at the motel next door and was lured by the scent of coffee and bacon. The in-room coffeepot left something to be desired.” She stuffed her fists deeper into the pockets of her hoodie, trying to separate the past from the present and focus on the moment. “Are you, uh, free to join me?”
No time like the present to get over the butterflies with him. She’d be leaving Heartache as soon as Jeremy