Realizing that his hand was cramping, he slowly eased his fingers flat against the counter. He didn’t know what to say. Obviously she would be happy if he accepted her offer to give up any claim he had on her baby and left town, but he knew instinctively that he would regret it if he did. Leaving would only prove that he was no better than his own father. Guthrie would never forgive him. His child would grow up to hate him. He’d have no choice but to hate himself.
And if he stayed? Maybe the kid would still hate him. He wasn’t exactly prime father material. He’d made too many mistakes, disappointed people too many times. No matter how hard he tried, he would never be a father to make a kid proud.
Across the counter, Grace shifted uneasily, drawing his gaze that way. She looked so different from before. Truth was, if he’d met her without meeting Melissa first, he wouldn’t have paid her any attention. He wouldn’t have sat down at her table, bought her a beer, asked her to dance. He certainly wouldn’t have taken her to the motel next door.
And it would have been his loss.
The hair that had been gloriously red and wild that night was really brown, pulled straight back from her face and braided to her waist. The brown eyes that had seemed so soft and hazy then had actually been unfocused. Judging by the thickness of the lenses in the glasses that kept slipping down her nose, she’d been damn near blind that night. That explained why she hadn’t run the other way when he’d approached her.
She wore no makeup, not even lipstick, and her dress was shapeless except where it draped over her belly on its way to her ankles. The sweater she wore over it was equally shapeless, with sleeves that fell three inches past her wrists.
She wasn’t pretty, and she wasn’t homely, either. She was just plain. And yet it had taken him mere seconds to recognize the lovely, sexy Melissa in her.
But Melissa, who had wanted him, didn’t really exist, and Grace, who did exist, didn’t want him. At all.
She fidgeted under his gaze, drawing the front edges of the sweater together and holding them with her arms folded tightly over her chest. “Listen, Ethan,” she said, and he recognized sexy Melissa in the way she said his name. “You came back, you did what was right. You can go now. I’ll convince Olivia and Shay they were wrong. No one will hold it against you. No one will ever even know.”
And because he was irresponsible, worthless, no good, that was supposed to satisfy him. It was supposed to ease his conscience, assuming he had one, and get him back on the road out of town.
He gazed away from her to the dusty plate-glass window that looked out on the parking lot and wondered if his mother had ever encouraged his father to go away and stay away. There was no doubt that Nadine had regretted her marriage to Gordon James. That last time he’d left, she’d waited only days—ten, maybe fourteen—to file for divorce, and though she’d never changed her name legally, she’d gone back to using Harris again. Being ten years old and stupid, he’d asked if he could use the Harris name, too. After all, they were a family, right? And families should have the same last name. But Guthrie had objected, and their mother had made some excuse about needing his father’s permission, and he’d known then that he wasn’t really part of the family.
Now it was payback time. He’d wanted to give up his father’s name, and now his own child was never going to be allowed to know his name. Grace and the baby were one more family that he wasn’t welcome in.
Unless he changed her mind. Unless he proved to her that he was fit to be a part of their lives. The hell of it was, he didn’t know that he wanted to be a part of their lives. He didn’t know if he could live up to the responsibility, or if he would run true to form, disappoint them and run away. Like he always did.
Hell, if he couldn’t trust himself to stick around, how could he ask her to?
He glanced at her but didn’t make eye contact. “I…I don’t think I can do that, Grace.”
He could tell by her voice and no more that she was alarmed. “Why not? You’ve been doing it for years.”
“I don’t know. I just can’t… This is different. Before it was always people I walked out on—adults who didn’t want me around, anyway. This is a baby—”
“My baby,” she interrupted sharply.
“And mine.” He felt the bitterness swell until it threatened to choke him. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone that. I’ll keep your little secret. But I’m not leaving. Not until I figure some things out.” Like what he wanted, and why, and whether he had a right to want anything at all.
He took a few steps toward the door, then turned back. “Olivia has offered me use of the cabin out at their place, if Guthrie doesn’t throw me out. I’ll be around.”
Before she could respond or react in any way, he turned and walked out.
So much for the creaking in Bill Taylor’s bones.
Grace stood at the window in her dark, still bedroom, wearing a nightgown of flannel and wrapped in a quilt, staring out into a quiet, cold and incredibly clear night. She should have been asleep hours ago, but her mind wouldn’t stop spinning long enough to let sleep creep in. She’d prayed for snow all the way home in the Blazer that served as Reese’s sheriff’s car, for the rare kind of blizzard that Oklahoma never saw that would bury her house to its eaves and leave her safe and protected from the world—from Ethan—until the spring thaw.
But there was no snow. No protection, either.
Expect the worst, her father had always preached, and you won’t be disappointed. Never trust anyone, never take chances, never count on someone doing what he should. She’d always thought it was a sad way to live, so sad that she’d gone a hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction. Her motto, since his leaving, had been simpler. Don’t Worry. Be Happy.
She’d thought years would pass before Ethan’s next return, had thought he’d never recognize her as Melissa, and even if he did, he would never have any interest in playing daddy to her child. After all, he was the irresponsible one, the immature one, the selfish one out for himself and to hell with everyone else. Like everyone else in town, she’d been so convinced of it that she almost felt cheated that the image wasn’t entirely accurate. He had a conscience. He felt some sense of obligation, some duty.
How long would it last? A few weeks? A few months or, heaven forbid, a few years? There was no way of knowing. Long enough, though, for everyone in town to guess the truth. Long enough to saddle her child with the burden of the James name, the James reputation.
Long enough to put Grace herself at risk. She’d proven her susceptibility to daydreams and fantasies. Lord knows, she’d lived enough of her life in them. She’d already proved her susceptibility to handsome con artists. Toss in the idea of creating a family—husband, wife, child, in-laws, nieces, maybe soon a nephew—and in a blink of an eye, she just might forget all about her hard-won independence.
But Ethan James wasn’t a family sort of man. He’d been running away from his own family for half his life. He wasn’t likely to accept any ties that might hold him down. Sure, he felt some sense of obligation, probably some unresolved issue from his abandonment by his own father, but it would never be enough to keep him here. At best, he’d stick around just long enough to screw up everything, and then he would leave Grace and their daughter to deal with it while he went on to greener pastures.
Sighing, she turned away from the window and faced her room instead. Until her father had found out she was pregnant and thrown her out, she’d slept every night of her life but one in this room. She’d huddled in the closet over there, hands over her ears, to block out the sounds of her parents’ fights. She’d curled up in the rocker and dreamed about catching the eye of someone at school. Boy or girl, it hadn’t mattered, just someone who would be friends with her and make her feel less desperately alone. She’d lain awake nights in that cramped little bed, lamenting