Always A Hero

Justine Davis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Copyright

About the Author

JUSTINE DAVIS lives on Puget Sound in Washington. Her interests outside of writing are sailing, doing needlework, horseback riding and driving her restored 1967 Corvette roadster—top down, of course.

Justine says that years ago, during her career in law enforcement, a young man she worked with encouraged her to try for a promotion to a position that was at the time occupied only by men. “I succeeded, became wrapped up in my new job, and that man moved away, never, I thought, to be heard from again. Ten years later he appeared out of the woods of Washington state, saying he’d never forgotten me and would I please marry him. With that history, how could I write anything but romance?”

To all of those who, in whatever kind of uniform,

stand between us and the dark side.

Chapter 1

“I hate you! I hate this place. I want to go home.”

“I know. Just do it.”

Jordan Price threw down the rake, scattering the leaves he’d just gathered. His father chose not to point out that he’d just guaranteed himself more time spent in the task he loathed.

“I’m never going to be such a jerk to my kids.”

Wyatt Blake smothered a sigh, but managed to keep his tone reasonable; he remembered thinking much worse thoughts about his own father. And at younger than thirteen, too.

So that’s how you want you and Jordan to be? Like you and your father?

He fought down his gut reaction and spoke calmly.

“If you don’t learn to finish what you start, your kids won’t listen to you anyway. If you can even find a woman who’d have them with a man who doesn’t keep his word.”

Yeah, right. You’re such an expert on keeping promises.

“I don’t know why Mom married you anyway.”

“It’s a mystery. Finish.”

The grumbling continued, with a couple of words muttered under the boy’s breath that Wyatt decided not to hear. He had enough on his plate at the moment, trying to keep the kid out of serious trouble, without expending energy on his language. If he didn’t straighten around soon, a few obscenities would be the least of his problems.

Later, when after another battle Jordan had gone to bed, Wyatt went through his nightly ritual at the computer that sat in the corner of the den. Jordan wasn’t allowed to have it in his room, another bone of contention. But tonight something disrupted the usual process; a message alert window popped up. One he had hoped he’d never see.

He went still. Maybe it was a mistake, a computer glitch. They were prone to that, one-time, inexplicable weirdness.

For a long moment he did nothing, postponing the inevitable. A measure of how far he’d come, he supposed, that he didn’t dive in instantly.

Finally, knowing he had no choice, he began the digging process that would take him to the program buried deep within the computer’s file structure. There was no convenient icon for this one, no listing on the menus, no easy way to get there. And once he was there, the encryption was so deep it would take him five minutes to work his way through all the levels.

Assuming he could remember the damned process, let alone the multiple passwords.

In the end it took him six minutes and change. But at last the screen opened. The message was short. Far too short to have the effect it did.

Old acquaintance asking for you. Afraid I gave him wrong directions, but maybe he’ll find you anyway. Was a friendly when you knew him, but keep your eyes open.

He stared at the unsigned message. He didn’t need a signature, there was only one person who knew how to contact him this way. Who knew how to contact him at all. When he’d left that world he’d literally cashed out, cutting all ties. The man who’d sent him this email had spent a great deal of time convincing him to agree to this one thin thread of connection.

The message was innocuous enough on the surface, but he knew better. It was a warning as surely as if it were a fire alarm.

He’d spent most of his adult life knowing his past could catch up with him someday. That past held too many grim memories for him to relish the idea, but that didn’t change the possibility. He’d always looked upon it as a cost of doing business, his business at least.

But now there was Jordan, and that changed everything.

Knowing there was nothing more to be gained by staring at this unexpected jab from the past, he quickly typed one word that would serve as both acknowledgment and thanks, and sent it. Then he deleted the message, reset the encryption and exited. The small but sophisticated program would erase its own tracks as it went, and go back into hiding.

He had a little time, thanks to the misdirection, but he’d have to redouble his watchfulness. In the meantime, with that ability to compartmentalize that had worked so well for him back in those days, he returned to his original task.

When the social networking site was loaded, Wyatt called up the usual page and without a qualm entered the password Jordan didn’t know he knew. Then he hit the next link in the process.

My father has to be the most boring guy on the planet.

The first post since he’d last checked glowed at him.

Wyatt didn’t wince, even inwardly, at the damning—at least in a thirteen-year-old’s view—indictment. In fact, he felt a certain satisfaction. Boredom, he’d often thought, was highly underrated.

He went on reading, scrolling through the entries from where he’d left off last week. Jordan, of course, had no idea he knew the page existed. The boy had never asked if he could do it, had just set it up on his own shortly after they’d moved in. Perhaps he’d known if he’d asked the answer would be no. Better to beg forgiveness later and all that.

And that thought did make him wince. Hadn’t he lived by that credo himself, often enough?

And now Wyatt was glad he’d done it, and was using it against him. At least, that’s what Jordan would think. He went back to reading. He noticed the new friends added, made a note of a meet-up Jordan had been invited to next Saturday night. Invited several times by several people Wyatt already had been wary of after checking their respective pages. He didn’t like the sound of it, so he’d have to make sure his son was otherwise occupied.

He kept reading, and reached the final post.

I hate him. I wish he was dead and my mom was still alive.

The last entry sat there, unchanging, undeniable. He blinked. Closed the browser. Shut down the computer. Got up from the desk. Walked up the stairs. Opened the first door on the right.

Jordan lay curled up on his side, like his mother had said he used to sleep when he’d been much, much smaller. The room was a mess, clothes strewn about, belongings scattered. But he was there, and for the moment, safe. Wyatt went on down the hall to his own room.

Mechanically he went through the rituals of getting ready for sleep, as if that would help it come, or that it would be restful when it did. He knew what would happen. He would lie down, resisting the urge to draw up in a fetal curl himself. And then it would begin, the nightly parade of images and memories. And if he was really exhausted, the idea would occur to him that all the people around the world who had damned him were getting their wish.

He turned out the bedside light. His head hit the pillow.

He closed his eyes, wondering if this would be one of the nights he regretted going to sleep. In the silence of the house, broken only by the occasional creak or snap as it contracted in the rapidly chilling night air, the latest in the long string of confrontations played back in his head. He thought of all the things he’d done, all the places he’d been, all the situations he’d faced, all the times when he’d been written off as dead or likely to be.

He’d survived them all.

But he wasn’t at all sure he was going to survive a thirteen-year-old boy.

I hate him. I wish he was dead and my mom was still alive.

“So do I,” he whispered into the darkness.

Kai Reynolds heard the guitar riff signal from the front door of Play On as she got to the last line of the vendor form. She’d rigged the system to rotate through a series of recorded bits daily. This week it was the classics. Yesterday had been a few seconds of Stevie Ray, today was The Edge on her fave, that sweet Fender Strat, tomorrow would be the simplest and oldest, that classic single chord from George Harrison’s Rickenbacker 12-string that opened “A Hard Day’s Night.”

Next week it would be some Wylde, Rivers Cuomo and Mustaine balanced by a variety pack of Atkins and Robert Johnson leavened with a bit of Urban.

She took three seconds to finish checking the order against her inventory of guitar strings, then looked up. She quickly spotted who had come in, one who didn’t often have to ask because he usually knew, even from the three- to five-second clips, who was playing. For a kid his age, Jordan Price had a good ear.

An idea struck her, that she should add in some people he might not know. Ry Cooder, maybe, or Derek Trucks. And to bolster the feminine side, some of Raitt’s sweet slide and Batten’s two-handed tapping.

“Hey, Kai,” Jordan said, his face lighting up when he saw her behind the counter.

“Jordy,” she acknowledged with a return smile. The boy had told her some time ago, rather shyly, that he allowed no one else to use that nickname. She knew he had a bit of a crush on her, so she’d gently told him that someday he’d meet another girl he didn’t mind it from, and then he’d know she was the one.

“The Edge, right? The Stratocaster?”

“Right in one,” she said, her smile becoming a grin.

“You oughta put you in there.”

Her smile became a grin at the words he said at least two or three days a week when he came in after school. “Nah. I’m not in their league.”

“But that riff you did on Crash, that was killer.”

“I borrowed it from Knopfler.”

“But yours sounded completely different.”

“That was the Gibson, not me,” she said, as if they hadn’t had this conversation before. “What did you do, run all the way?”

The boy walked from the middle school that was about a mile away. Then, when he was done, he walked back to school, usually in haste, before his father got there to pick him up. She thought it odd, since she was closer to where the boy lived than the school was, but Jordy said his father insisted because he didn’t trust him.

“Should he?” she’d asked.

“Sure,” Jordy had answered, his expression grim. “Where am I gonna go in this town?”

There had been a wealth of disdain in his voice, but Kai had let it pass.

“Nah, it’s just hot out today,” he said now.

“Enjoy it. Fall’s hovering.” The boy made a face. “Maybe we’ll get snow this winter.”

His expression changed slightly, looking the tiniest bit intrigued, as she’d guessed a kid who’d grown up in Southern California might at the idea.

“That would be cool,” he said, then smiled at his own unintentional pun.

“So how’s life today?”

“Sucks,” Jordy said, his smile fading.

“Still not getting along with your dad, huh?”

“He’s an as—” Jordy broke off what had obviously been going to be a crude bodily assessment.

“Good save,” Kai said, acknowledging the effort. “Your mom probably didn’t like you swearing.”

“Only reason I stopped,” Jordy muttered, looking away. Kai guessed he was tearing up and didn’t want her to see.

“If we can’t cry for the ones we’ve loved and lost, then what good are we?” she asked softly.

He looked up at her then, and she indeed saw the gleam of moisture in his eyes. Those green eyes, she thought, were going to knock that girl he’d meet someday right on her backside.

“You understand, because you lost someone, too.”

The boy not only had a good ear, he was perceptive.

“Yes.”

“Kit.”

She didn’t talk about him, ever. But this was a kid in pain, worse today than she’d ever seen it, and she sensed he needed to know he wasn’t alone. And she suspected he already knew how Christopher Hudson had died; the info was out there, on the Net, and easy enough to find.

“Yes. And I loved him very much,” she finally said. “But it wasn’t like your mother, who didn’t want to leave you. He did it to himself.”

Jordy’s eyes widened. “He killed himself?”

No outside source would have said that, she knew. They all said it was accidental. She didn’t look at it that way. But then, she’d been in the middle of it.

“Slowly. Years of drugs.”

“Oh.” Jordy was silent for a moment before he said, in a small voice, “How long ago?”

She hesitated again. Was he wondering how long it took to feel life was worth living again?

“A long time ago.” Six years ago was almost half his lifetime, so she figured that was accurate. “And,” she added quietly, “yesterday.”

She saw his brows furrow, then clear as he nodded slowly in understanding.

“So you haven’t … forgotten?”

Panic edged his voice. Ah, she thought. So that was it. “No. And I never will. And you won’t either, Jordy. I promise you.”

“But … sometimes I can’t remember what she sounded like.”

Interesting, she thought, that it was sound and not image that he was worried about.

“But do you remember how you felt when she talked to you, told you how much she loved you?”

The boy colored slightly, but nodded again.

“Then you remember the important part. And you always will.”

It was a few minutes before the boy got around to asking if he could have the sound room and the slightly battered but well-loved Strat she often let people use. Jordan was just starting out, and it was a bit too much for his hands. She had a small acoustic in back she thought he’d do better with, but he thought acoustics were boring and wasn’t interested. Yet.

Now there was something to add to the door rotation, she thought. Some of her personal favorite acoustic bits, six- and twelve-string, Steve Davison and Jaquie Gipson first on the list, Kaki too, and John Butler and his custom eleven strings. Nobody could listen to them and still think acoustics were boring.

But in the meantime, the boy wanted the solace that laboriously plinking out chords until his fingers were sore brought him.

“No,” she said to his request, startling him; she’d never declined him before. But at her gesture he followed her into the former storage room she’d had converted into a soundproof room with a small recording system set up. Nothing fancy, but enough for accurate and fairly full playback. The conversion had cost her, but it had paid for itself by the third year; not many aspiring players could resist the temptation of purchasing the instrument they liked best once they’d heard the sound played back for them. There was something about the process that was an incredible selling tool.

Jordy followed her into the room, knowing to dodge the corner of the keyboard in the slightly cramped space before she even flipped the lights on. She walked across to the rack where she’d put the Gibson SG when she’d finished last night; the mood had been upon her and she’d indulged in a rare these days midnight jam, playing riff after riff until her own out-of-practice fingers were sore.

She picked up the gleaming blue guitar and held it out to the boy.

“Try this one.”

The boy’s eyes widened and she heard him smother a gulping breath. “BeeGee?”

She grinned at his use of her old nickname for the guitar, B for the color, and G for Gibson. A name she’d come up with before it had been pointed out to her that she’d inadvertently chosen the name of her mother’s favorite group, back in the day. It had taken her a while to get over the humiliation of that, but the name had stuck.

And the gesture had the result she’d wanted; the boy completely forgot the pain he’d been mired in. For the moment, he would be all right.

She closed the door behind her, thinking it might be better if she couldn’t hear what sounds his untrained fingers might coax out of her baby. The neck was small enough, but it tended to be a bit head-heavy and might give him trouble. Maybe it would teach him that form had a big role in function; right now he was too taken with looks and flash to absorb that.

When she got back into the store she found Mrs. Ogilvie waiting, a new book of piano music in her hands. Marilyn was desperate to get her youngest daughter seriously interested, although Kai knew Jessica couldn’t care less. At sixteen, her life was full of other things. But her mother kept trying, and Kai wondered if at some point, despite the steady stream of money, she should try and explain that some people just didn’t have the desire or the talent.

Maybe I should suggest she take lessons herself, Kai thought. Then at least somebody would get some use out of all these books.

“I saw Wyatt’s boy come in,” Marilyn said as she rang up the sale.

“He comes in almost every day,” Kai said. Marilyn glanced around questioningly. “He’s in the sound room,” Kai explained. “Practicing.”

Marilyn sniffed audibly. “At least he will practice. Is he taking lessons?”

“He’d like to, but his father won’t let him. I guess he’s pretty strict.”

“Now that’s hard to believe,” Marilyn said with a laugh.

Marilyn would have likely known Jordy’s dad, Kai realized; she’d lived here for most of her life. She, having only been here four years, knew nothing about him outside of Jordy’s litany of complaints.

All he does is work and hassle me, the boy had told her once.

She remembered smiling at the typical complaint, one she’d made about her own father before she’d grown up enough to appreciate the love behind both actions.

“You remember him?” Kai asked, curious to see if there was another viewpoint on the man, curious enough to endure Marilyn’s rather scattered conversational style. “From before, I mean?”

“Wyatt Blake? Anybody who lived in Deer Creek then remembers Wyatt. Smart, restless, and reckless. When he left town at seventeen, nobody was surprised. We all felt bad for Tim and Claire though. Tim was strict, but Wyatt needed that, reckless as he was.”

This hardly fit with Jordy’s description, Kai thought. But people changed. Or maybe that was why he was strict with Jordy, because it was all he knew.

“They were good to that boy,” Marilyn added, “worked hard to give him a good life, and he still couldn’t wait to get out of here. They almost never heard from him. Then when it’s too late for them, he shows up back here, a widower with a young son, and won’t even talk about it. Why, I tried to tell him how sorry I was, and he wouldn’t have any of it.”

“Maybe he didn’t want any pity or sympathy.”

“But he was downright rude about it. Claire would never have stood for that.”

“Seems like he learned from them after all, though,” Kai said. “Jordy says he works hard.”

And boring work, Jordy had added, as if it were a crime.

“Yes,” Marilyn said.

“And he did come back home.”

Marilyn brightened at that. “Yes. Yes, he did. Not a word out of him about where he’s been or what he’s been doing for more than twenty years, but he did come home. Moved himself and the boy back into their old house.”

As the woman later went on her way, Kai wondered yet again why people had kids at all. Seemed to just be asking for pain and tears.

I should call Mom, she thought. Let her tell me again how it was all worth it.

Except that that would be followed by the inevitable lecture, very wearing considering she’d been so consumed by Play On that she’d barely had time to breathe, let alone date. But it didn’t stop her mom from declaring it was time she found a good man and settled down to the task of a family herself. The very idea still gave her the shivers. She liked kids well enough, but babies made her very, very nervous. And she couldn’t imagine sending a baby to sleep with a smoking riff on BeeGee; they needed soft, lullaby stuff. Someday, maybe. But that day was a long way off.

Not to mention there was that “good man” problem.

The Edge modulated his way through that six-note arpeggio again as the door opened. A man stepped in, a stranger to her, and she almost grinned at the juxtaposition of his sudden appearance and her own thoughts. Especially since he certainly had the looking part of good down. His hair was a little short for her taste, but she liked the sandy blond color. And he had that body type she liked—lean, wiry. And just tall enough; she liked a man she had to look up at even in heels, but not get a neck ache doing it.

He glanced around the store, quickly, almost assessingly, in a way that was somehow disconcerting. She had the odd thought that if she made him close his eyes and describe it to her, he’d get it perfectly, down to the Deer Creek High School Musical poster on the wall behind him.

And he moves like a big cat, she thought as the man began to walk toward the back of the store. All grace and coiled power.

She shook her head, laughing inwardly at herself.

It’s because he’s a stranger, she told herself. Deer Creek was a small enough town that she’d seen most of the men around, and none had even come close to sparking such a sudden interest.

He paused for a moment to look at the one personal souvenir she’d allowed herself here; a photograph of her onstage at the peak of Relative Fusion’s brief but promising existence, playing a packed, full-size arena for the first time. For her it had been the pinnacle, a height she would never see again, because Kit had tumbled off the high wire he’d been walking soon after that night, and her charmed life as she’d known it had ended.

She slid off the stool she’d been sitting on and took a couple of steps toward the man. She put on her best helpful smile, and in a tone to match she asked, “Help you find something?”

“Someone,” the man said, still looking at the photograph.

Ooh, great voice, too, Kai thought. She had such a weakness for that rough, gravelly timbre.

Then he looked at her. Gave the photo another split-second glance.

“Never mind,” he said, obviously realizing it was her in the photo, despite the fact that she had looked radically different in those days, with her hair long and wild and a ton of makeup and glitter on.

She met his gaze as this time he focused his attention on her unwaveringly. “You’re Kai Reynolds.”

Three things hit her in rapid-fire succession.

She was being assessed, in much the same way as his surroundings had been when he’d first come in.

Second, she knew those eyes. Jordy’s eyes. The same vivid green, although somehow muted. Tired, she thought.

And at last came the realization. Impossibly, this was the stuffy, boring, staid Wyatt Blake.

And he was looking at her as if she’d crawled out from under the nearest rock.

Chapter 2

It was worse than he’d feared.

Wyatt stared at the young woman before him. He’d hoped, when he’d first seen the tidy, well-organized store that perhaps he’d been wrong to expect a problem here.

Play On hadn’t been here when he’d lived here as a kid. He’d heard that the woman who owned and ran it had once been in a semi-successful rock band, which had registered only as an oddity in a little town like Deer Creek. But Mrs. Ogilvie—who had been the local information center when he was a teenager seemingly in trouble at every turn, and apparently still fulfilled that obligation—told him that Jordan came here after school almost every day, he’d known he had to check it out. Especially since Jordan had told him he was studying at school. He didn’t like being lied to, especially by his own son. If this was going to work at all—and he had serious doubts about that—there had to be honesty between them.

The hypocrisy of that high-flown thought, given his own secrets, made him grimace.

“You’re the owner,” he said.

It came out more like an accusation than a question. He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but his thoughts had put an edge in his voice.

She said nothing, but he’d spent his life gauging people’s reactions, and as clearly as if she’d shouted it he knew he’d gotten her hackles up already. That wasn’t how he’d wanted to approach this, but damn, she looked like his worst nightmare as far as Jordan was concerned. The rock-and-roll history was bad enough, but the slightly spiky red hair that fell forward to surround a face that managed to look sexy and impish at the same time, and the slim, intricate, knotted bracelet of a tattoo in a deep bluish-green color around her left wrist finished it for him. She would be an impossible-to-resist lure for an impressionable boy.

“Well?” he said, his voice even sharper.

“Was there a question?” she asked, her tone as cool as the steady gaze of smoky gray eyes. Whatever else she was, she wasn’t easily intimidated.

He took a deep breath, and tried to rein it in. After all, she wasn’t some rock gypsy any longer, was she? She’d quit that life, so maybe there was some sense behind those eyes.

The question was, how much of that life had she brought with her here?

“Where’s the paraphernalia? In back?”

She blinked then, looking genuinely puzzled. “What?”

“The cigarette papers, the bongs, the glass pipes.”

She went very still. The smoky gray eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “This is a music store, not a head shop.”

“Right. And you never touched the stuff when you were a rock star.”

She looked at him levelly. She was tall, he thought, five-eight or so. She wore black jeans and a gray shirt that had some sort of shine to it. Unremarkable, except for the way the shift and sheen of it subtly emphasized curves beneath it.

A subtle rocker? Hard to believe, he thought.

“As a matter of fact,” she said icily, “I never did. And also as a matter of fact, I was never a rock star. I played in a band.”

“A successful one.”

“For a while.”

“And you use that.”

“Marketing,” she said. “I’d be a fool not to, if I want to stay in business in a tough world.” The practical assessment surprised him. “You have a problem with that?”

She was challenging him now.

“Only when you use it to lure in kids.”

She went very still. When she spoke, her voice held a new edge that made him wary. “Lure?”

“Sexy girl rocker,” he said. “If you’re a teenage boy there’s not many lures bigger.”

For an instant she looked startled. But her voice was no less edgy, and the edge sharpened as her words came bursting out.

“That dream died thanks to the kind of thing you’re accusing me of selling. I would no more have drug paraphernalia here than I’d cook up meth in my kitchen.”

At the fierceness of her voice Wyatt drew back slightly. Perhaps he should have done some research before he’d come charging in here. He didn’t care for the way she was looking at him. Which was odd, since he’d come in here not caring what she thought, only wanting to find out what drew his son here day after day.

“You know,” she said, “when Jordy told me his father did nothing but work and hassle him, I thought he was being a typical teenager. That his situation just made normal parenting seem like hassling. Seems I was wrong. You really are a … hard-ass.”

Wyatt had the feeling Jordan had used another word, and he noted the fact that even angry she had not repeated it. He assumed a woman who’d lived in the rock world had much worse in her vocabulary, so either she’d censored herself because she didn’t use the language with a potential customer, or because she was protecting Jordan.

Belatedly—much too belatedly—he realized that she knew he wasn’t a potential customer at all, that she knew who he was.

“How did you know?”

To her credit, she didn’t play dumb. “Please. Like there’s more than two sets of those eyes in Deer Creek.”

He blinked. He’d of course known Jordan had the same color eyes. It was one of the reasons, along with childhood pictures of each of them that could be interchangeable, that he’d never doubted Jordan was his son. He just hadn’t expected a total stranger to notice it within five minutes.

And he hadn’t wanted to tick off the one person in town that Jordan seemed to voluntarily gravitate to within that first five minutes, either. He wasn’t even sure what had set him off. There had been a time when he’d been smoother, when he’d assessed a person accurately and chosen the right approach to get what information he needed from them.

Apparently that time was long past.

“Is my son here?” he asked, not even bothering to comment on her recognition.

“He’s in back.”

His brows furrowed as he glanced at the hallway behind her. “Doing what?”

“Smoking dope.”

His gaze snapped back to her face.

“Isn’t that what you expected?”

There was no denying the sour tone, or the annoyance in her voice.

And there was no denying that, if she was telling the truth, he had it coming. He just couldn’t seem to find the right path on anything connected to Jordan.

With an effort he was almost too weary to make, he pulled his scattered thoughts together and made himself focus on the reason he was here and the best way to get what he needed from this woman, not the woman herself. It was surprisingly difficult. She had a presence, and he had the brief, flitting thought that she must have been something onstage.

“Ms. Reynolds,” he said, trying to sound reasonable, “I’m just looking for my son.”

“What you’re doing,” she said, “is driving him away.”

“He’d have to be a lot closer before I could drive him away,” he said wryly.

Something flickered in her eyes, whether at his rueful words or his tone he didn’t know. But it was a better reaction than that fierce anger, or that icy cool, and he’d take it.

“Look, I just found out how much time Jordan spends here. I wanted to check the place out.”

“So you come in with an attitude and a lot of assumptions?”

She had him there. “Yes,” he admitted simply.

That won him the briefest trace of a smile.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not realizing he was going to say it until the words were out.

“About which?” she asked, clearly requiring more than just a simple, blanket apology.

He looked at her for a moment. She held his gaze steadily. Nerve, he thought. Or else he’d lost his knack for intimidation entirely in the last year. Since that had been his goal he should be happy, not standing here missing the skill.

“The attitude,” he said finally. “And the assumptions … they should have stayed at the possibilities stage.”

“Every music store is a haven for druggies and their gear? A bit old-school, aren’t you? Why risk it when people can get whatever they need or want online, with no open display of wares to get hassled over?”

She had, he knew, a very valid point. Several of them. He really should have thought more before he’d barged in here on the offensive.

“I was just worried about Jordan.” He let out a long breath, lowering his gaze and shaking his head. “I pretty much suck at this father thing,” he muttered.

“It’s a tough gig.”

The sudden gentleness of her tone caught him off guard. “I know this has been … difficult for him.”

“Ya think?” she said. “His mom dies, the father he never knew shows up out of nowhere and proceeds to drag him back to that nowhere with him … well, nowhere in his view, anyway.”

He’d been right about that, it seemed, Wyatt thought. Jordan talked to her. A lot. Certainly more than to him.

“I know he hates it here,” he said.

“I know. ‘It’s too cold, half the roads aren’t even paved, and there’s hardly any people,’” she said, clearly quoting something Jordan had told her.

“That’s exactly what I like about it,” Wyatt said.

“The cold, the roads, or the lack of population?”

“Selection C.”

Her brows rose. “So it’s not just me who sets you off, it’s people in general?”

He wasn’t quite sure there wasn’t something about her in particular, but he didn’t want to delve into that now.

“I’ve seen what people can do.”

For a moment she just looked at him. Then, with an odd sort of gentleness, she said, “I have, too. They can build skyscrapers, write incredible poetry and stories, and impossibly beautiful music. They can be kind and generous and pull together when others need them. They can weep at pain and sadness, or at a beautiful sunset.”

He stared at her. “And they can inflict pain, murder and mayhem on each other.”

She didn’t flinch. “Yes. That too. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever had to deal with the reality.”

Her gaze narrowed, and he regretted the words. And not for the implied criticism. Hastily he looked for something to divert the question he could sense was about to come.

“What kind of name is Kai?”

It sounded rude, and abrupt, but it accomplished the goal. Instead of asking what he knew about mayhem, she instead said sweetly, too sweetly he thought, “Mine.”

Now that she’d been diverted, he backed off. “I mean, where did it come from?”

“My parents.”

She wasn’t obtuse, he already knew that, so she was paying him back for his attitude, he supposed. He also figured he had it coming.

“And what,” he said evenly, “was their inspiration?”

She studied him for a moment before saying, “It’s Kauai without the u a.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Island in Hawaii? Fourth-largest? The Garden Isle?”

She was talking to him, he realized, as if he were the obtuse one. And he somewhat belatedly realized he would do well not to underestimate this woman.

“Were you born there?” That seemed a reasonable question, he thought.

“No. The fun part happened there.”

His mouth quirked. And she smiled, a bright, beautiful smile, and much more than the tiny alteration in his own expression deserved.

“Mom shortened it to the one syllable, to avoid me having to remember what order all the vowels came in when I was little, a thoughtfulness I still thank her for.”

The quirk became a smile of his own, he couldn’t seem to help it. And when he asked this time, the attitude was missing.

“What’s Jordan really doing?”

“Playing.”

He blinked. “Playing. Video games? Poker? Bingo?”

She didn’t take offense this time. Instead, the smile became a grin, and it hit him somewhere near the solar plexus and nearly took his breath away.

“A Gibson SG.”

“A guitar?”

“That one, to be exact,” she said, gesturing at the photograph he’d seen near the guitar display.

He didn’t have to turn to look; the image seemed to have been seared into his mind. But he only vaguely remembered the blue guitar. What he remembered was the flash and lighting pouring down over the stage, creating a sort of halo around the woman—a girl, really—in a sleek, black outfit that looked painted over long legs, sweet curves, and a tossed mane of red hair. Brighter, longer, and wilder than her hair now, it gleamed like wildfire with the backlighting.

“He’s playing a guitar,” he repeated, to be sure he’d heard right. “Your guitar.”

“Seemed like he’d had a bad day. Thought it might cheer him up.”

“I didn’t … He’s really playing?”

“Well, he’s trying. Practicing. Hard. He really wants to learn.”

Since he hadn’t seen Jordan try hard at a damn thing, Wyatt was more than a little taken aback. “Since when?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’d say he started coming in about six months ago.”

About a month after he’d returned to Deer Creek, Jordan in tow.

“You didn’t know he was interested?”

He shook his head. “His mother never said.”

She looked at him consideringly, no doubt wondering why he hadn’t known himself, without being told. But all she said was, “I’m sorry, it must have been awful, her dying like that.”

“Yes.” It had been awful. Painful and hard, and those last days when Melissa had been in such an anxious rush to tell him all he needed to know were days he would never forget.

“He misses her.”

“I know.”

“You don’t,” she said, eyeing him with that assessing look again.

“I barely knew her.”

“Well enough to have a child with her.”

He wasn’t about to explain that complicated story to this woman he’d just met.

“My mistake,” he said.

He saw the abruptness of his answer register. But when she spoke it wasn’t in response to that.

“Do you know your son any better?”

“No,” he admitted, his earlier frustration rising anew.

“Maybe if you’d ever had anything to do with him, you’d be in a better place with him now.”

She didn’t say it accusingly, but it bit deep just the same. He didn’t make excuses, ever. He’d been determined not to discuss this with anyone, for Jordan’s sake if nothing else, and he certainly didn’t want to do it here and now and with this woman. But the pressure of not being able to handle one thirteen-year-old boy, he who had handled far worse, was wearing him down. And for the second time since he’d walked in here, words he’d never intended to say surged out.

“Hard to do when until seven months ago I never even knew he existed.”

Chapter 3

Kai stared at the man standing on the other side of the counter. So many impressions were tumbling through her mind that she’d almost forgotten her first one, that those eyes, Jordy’s vivid green eyes, looked far too exhausted for a man in his line of work.

Jordy’s whine—because the long, wound-up complaint had indeed been that—echoed in her head. He’s a pill counter. He counts how many packages of cold pills they put in the boxes. How lame is that? And he wouldn’t even have that job if old man Hunt didn’t owe him a favor.

She had understood Jordy’s anger about his life, agreed he had a right to be upset, having been uprooted from the only home he knew and dragged a thousand miles away, away from his school, his friends. But this had hit a hot button with her, and it had been an effort to answer quietly.

“My dad worked in a canning plant once,” she’d told him. “Dead fish all day. He hated it. But he did it. Because he had a family to take care of, because he wanted me to have a roof over my head and food on the table. It’s called responsibility, Jordy. It’s called being an adult.”

Jordy had stared at her incredulously. “You standing up for him?”

“Nobody does everything wrong.”

Those words came back to her now as she stared at the pill counter. Of all the things this man might be in life, that was one she never would have guessed at if she didn’t already know. Because despite the weariness in his eyes, he was the most intense man she’d ever seen, and in her former life she’d seen some prime examples.

And she wasn’t sure she liked that intensity being turned on her.

Sexy girl rocker….

How could she be so flattered and so irritated at him at the same time? Perhaps it was the way he’d said it, so casually, as if it were self-evident. And he couldn’t know he was hitting a nerve.

A nerve that made her say, rather sharply, “Your wife has a kid and you never knew? How did that work?”

“She … wasn’t my wife. Then.”

Kai considered this, puzzled over it, and the only answer that fit was that he’d married her after he found out about Jordy. The boy hadn’t mentioned it, only that he’d never known his father, and wished his mother had never married him. She’d assumed he’d walked out on them, which had given her even more reason not to like the man.

Seven months, he’d said.

Jordy’s mother, he’d told her, died six months ago.

Which meant Wyatt Blake married her knowing she was dying.

Or perhaps because?

This put a whole new light on things for her. Whatever else his sins were, and according to Jordy they were many, Wyatt Blake was obviously trying to do the right thing by his son. The concern that had driven him here was apparently real, and somehow knowing that made his rude, accusatory questions easier to stomach. No less annoying, but slightly less temper-provoking.

“Look, Mr. Blake,” she began, “Jordy’s having a tough time. He misses the place he knew, his friends….”

“Those friends he misses are why we’re here. He was headed down a bad road.”

“At thirteen?”

“You think there’s an age limit? You of all people should know better.”

She bristled anew, her kinder thoughts about him forgotten. “Me, of all people?”

He jerked a thumb toward the photograph. “Half the kids in that audience were probably high.”

That hit a little too close to a nerve that would never heal, and she didn’t want to talk about it, especially not to this man who seemed intent on his interrogation and entirely oblivious of her efforts to be reasonable.

“What exactly do you want, Mr. Blake? I told you your son is here and what he’s doing. If you’re afraid of him falling under my evil sway, you can order him not to come back. But I’ll tell you up front that you’ll regret it.”

His brows lowered, and he looked even more intense. And, she admitted, intimidating. But she stood her ground, even when he said in a voice that sent a chill through her, “Is that a threat?”

“That,” she said determinedly, “is a simple fact. Playing is the one thing, the only thing, Jordy likes in his life right now. You take it away from him, give him no solace for what’s been done to him, and you’ll lose him completely.”

“Done to him? I brought him here to keep him out of some serious trouble. He was hanging with some kids who were headed that way fast.”

“Fine. But he’s in no danger here. Contrary to what you think.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Exasperation crowded out the wariness his voice had roused in her. “Why shouldn’t you? Or do you approach everyone you don’t even know with the assumption they’re lying?”

For an instant she saw something that looked like surprise cross his face. Then, in a voice she found, perhaps oddly, incredibly sad, he gave her an equally sad answer. “Yes.”

Again she got that impression of utter and total exhaustion. Not so much physical, he looked too fit and leanly muscled for that, but mentally. And emotionally, if she was willing to admit he might have any emotions other than anger, which she wasn’t. She—

Her thoughts broke off as Jordy emerged from the soundproof room. The boy stopped dead when he spotted his father.

“What are you doing here?”

The words held a barely suppressed anger tinged with a hurt it took a moment for Kai to figure out. Then she realized this had been Jordy’s safe place, the one place his father hadn’t known about and therefore didn’t intrude upon. And now that was gone, and, judging by his expression, he felt he had nothing left that was his.

“Looking for you. So you can explain why you lied about studying after school.”

Jordy flushed. “I lied to keep you off my back.”

“Yet here I am. Again. Go get in the car.”

Something in his words made Kai remember Jordy’s story about the times he’d run away after they’d first come here, and how his father always seemed to find him and drag him back, no matter how hard he tried to hide where he’d gone. That had to mean he cared, didn’t it? Or did it mean Jordy was right, that his father only wanted him so he could push him around?

When Jordy had first started coming here—after the third futile effort to run away—she’d wondered, enough that she kept a close eye on the boy for any sign of abuse. Finally she’d asked him, and Jordy’s surprise, then grudging admittance that his father had never struck him, told her it was the truth.

“He put a fist through a wall once, though,” Jordy had said, as if he felt he needed to prove to her that his father was as bad as he’d been saying.

“Better than backhanding you in the face,” she’d pointed out, and Jordy had subsided. She wasn’t so far removed from her own teenage years that she didn’t remember what a pain she herself had been, and sometimes she wondered why her own father hadn’t slapped her silly a time or two.

So she empathized with Jordy, tremendously. But now that Wyatt Blake was standing here, looking at the boy who looked so much like him with such frustration, she found herself empathizing with him as well. Not because of the frustration, but because beneath it she thought she saw something else.

Fear.

Whether it was fear of failing at the job he thought he sucked at, or of what would happen to Jordy if he did fail, she didn’t know. But either way, she knew that deep down this man did care.

“My mom was so wrong,” Jordy said. “She always told me you were a hero. But you’re not and I hate you.”

His father just took it. He never even reacted, and Kai guessed he’d heard it all before. His flat “I know” tugged at something deep inside her. Moved by that unexpected emotion, and remembering what Marilyn had said earlier, she spoke as if Jordy hadn’t said any of it.

“So, were you glad to come back home?” she asked.

The man frowned as he looked at her.

“Me?” he finally asked, with such an undertone of puzzlement that she wondered if he’d spent any time at all dealing with his own feelings since he’d apparently taken Jordy on.

“You,” she said, keeping an eye on Jordy, who was still glaring at his father. “You moved from wherever you were living, too.”

“No,” his father said. “I wasn’t glad. I never wanted to come back here.”

She saw a flicker of surprise cross the boy’s face. He’d obviously never thought of this. Perhaps never thought about his father having feelings at all. But he quickly recovered, the sullen expression taking over again.

“And you never wanted me, either.”

Again his father didn’t react to the fierce declaration.

“Get in the car, Jordan,” he said. “You’ve got homework to do.”

Jordan opened his mouth, and for an instant Kai held her breath, thinking Jordy might earn that backhand with the words she could almost feel rising to his lips. But the boy conquered the urge, and after a long glare at his father he stalked toward the door. She saw Blake pull a set of keys out of his jeans pocket, aim one toward the glass door and hit the unlock button. The lights on a black SUV parked just to the right of the shop entrance flashed. He watched the boy open the door and climb into the passenger seat.

“He walks here from school, you know. He could walk home,” she said.

“Not safe,” he said, almost absently, still focused on the car.

“In Deer Creek?”

“Any where.”

He muttered it, so low she could barely hear it. And then he turned back to look at her. The key was still in his hand, and she saw his fingers move over it.

“Wishing you could lock him in it?” she asked. “Maybe until he’s eighteen?”

His head snapped around. She felt that assessing gaze once more, as if he were gauging if she’d been joking or seriously accusing.

“Thirty,” he said after a moment, apparently going with the former.

That was progress, she supposed. And she couldn’t help smiling widely at the so normal, parental answer. “Now you sound like my father.”

He seemed to pull back a little. His gaze flicked once more to the photograph of her on the wall. “He probably still wishes he had kept you locked up until you were thirty.”

So much for progress, she thought. “You get scorned by a girl in a band once, or what?”

“Can’t imagine any father wanting that life for his daughter.”

Her father had, in fact, expressed his concerns. On occasion, strongly. But he’d done it gently, out of love, not out of … whatever it was driving Wyatt Blake to snipe at her.

Which drove her to say, very, very sweetly, “Oh, no. Much better that she live a nice, normal life, maybe fall for some guy who takes what he wants then walks blithely away, not even bothering to find out if she might be pregnant.”

The hit scored, and by his expression it was a good one. Which, she supposed, told her a little more about this man; if he was a complete jerk he wouldn’t be feeling anything.

But then, if he were that jerk, he wouldn’t have bothered to take Jordy, would he? She fought back a growing curiosity about how it had all happened. Why she was feeling that at all was beyond her, after the way he’d talked to her. His concern for his son excused a lot, but to come in here, into her own place, and talk to her like that, was beyond infuriating.

“So are we done?” she asked, letting her feelings show completely this time, now that Jordy was safely out of earshot.

“No.”

Startled, she drew back slightly.

“You’re going to forbid him to come here? Take that away from him, too?”

He ignored that. “I hear there are some guys who hang out here, guys I don’t want my son around.”

“Bands practice in my sound room. A lot of guys—and girls, thank you—hang out. Would you rather have them maybe going somewhere they could find some real trouble?”

What you’ll drive Jordy to if you’re not careful, she added inwardly.

Again, he ignored her point. “These aren’t musicians of any stripe. Where this kind hangs out, there’s trouble, eventually.”

Although she admitted silently that there were a couple of customers she could do without, exasperation prodded her to say, “Even the cops have to wait until somebody does something to convict them.”

Something flashed through his eyes then, something dark and grim, and her breath caught. “Thankfully I’m not a cop. I don’t have to wait.”

Still unsettled by that look, Kai changed her tactics. “There’s no one who causes trouble in my store,” she said, then added pointedly, “so I keep my nose out of their business.”

“Watch they don’t get their hands—or worse—in yours,” he said. His tone was as grim as that expression had been, and she of the usually quick comeback couldn’t think of a thing to say.

And then he was gone, turning on his heel and heading for the vehicle where his son sat waiting in a full-blown sulk.

If it wasn’t for the fact that everything she’d said about Jordy coming here was true, she almost wished he really would forbid the boy’s visits. At least then she’d be a lot more likely to never have to speak to his father again. And that was a win on her scale.

Chapter 4

The battles, for today at least, were over.

Wyatt sat wearily in the leather chair beside the now dark reading lamp. After Jordan had gone to bed he’d made a circuit of the house, then the big yard, inspecting every step of the way, looking for any sign those “old acquaintances” had overcome those misdirections and found him anyway.

If it was just him, he’d take his chances, rely on the skills that, while perhaps a bit rusty, he knew were still there, waiting. But now there was Jordan, and that changed everything. He couldn’t even risk assuming his old colleague was right, that the person asking about him was a friendly. Or if he had been, that he still was.

Again relying on that compartmentalization, he had finished the paperwork and reports for work, details he was allowed to complete at home, which in turn allowed him to be here almost all the hours Jordan wasn’t in school. His generous boss had two kids of his own, and although they were adults now, he remembered the teenage years well enough to be sympathetic with Wyatt’s predicament.

And you should be with his, Wyatt told himself, thinking of the suspicious incidents that had been occurring at the plant—evidence of a prowler, footprints, broken shrubbery, movement seen by the young night watchman. But the property surrounding the plant was open forest, with free access, so it was hard to prove it was even connected to the plant.

But he knew it was. He also knew he was lucky just to have the job he had. He’d hesitated to approach John Hunt, not liking the idea of cashing in on the sincere but emotion-driven “I owe you everything. If there’s ever anything I can do,” that the man had delivered years ago. He’d anticipated feeling like a beggar, or worse.

But John had been there like some—too many—of his former bosses never had been. He’d understood immediately, offered him a couple of jobs he knew he didn’t want before they had, reluctantly on John’s part, settled on the inventory control position the man couldn’t believe he really wanted.

“I need to learn how not to think,” he said, wanting to be honest about his reasons even as he realized that was the last thing he probably should have said to a prospective employer.

John Hunt had studied him for a long moment. The man was smart, you didn’t build the kind of thriving enterprise he had built if you were stupid or lazy. Hunt Packing—affectionately known by its employees as “Little HP,” as opposed to the computer giant—was small, but a model of success in a difficult time.

“You can have whatever job you want, Wyatt,” he’d finally said. “If you promise that when the time comes that you want more, you’ll come to me.”

He doubted that time would ever come. He’d had enough, he didn’t want challenge. He wanted numbness. No more life-altering decisions, no more explosive situations.

The thought of things explosive brought back what he’d been trying to avoid thinking about all evening; his abrasive encounter with the high-spirited and strong-willed proprietor of Play On. If stereotypes held a kernel of truth, then she lived up to the hair.

And she’d been more restrained than many would have been under the circumstances. He’d come in firing, and looking back, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d thrown him out, or called those cops. Of course, if she was up to something nefarious that drew those kids he was trying to keep Jordan away from, it wasn’t likely she’d be calling the cops for anything.

It occurred to him he should do some homework of his own, something he should have done before he’d charged into Play On. He supposed it was a measure of his progress in the last year that what would have been second nature in the past had only occurred to him so belatedly.

He didn’t want to move, had been seriously considering trying to sleep right here in this chair. But he also knew he didn’t dare risk Jordan finding out he was checking up on his girl idol, so he’d better do it now.

He got up wearily and walked to the desk in the den. He hadn’t powered the computer down after he’d finished his work, so a touch on the mouse brought it back to life.

He began to build the picture.

She was a couple of months shy of thirty. She’d seemed younger to him, but everyone did lately. Born in the heartland, although her parents, solid, level-headed folks, had moved to the West Coast early on in her life. Ordinary childhood, it seemed. She’d been listed as a flower girl in two family weddings before she was five. Then nothing until some speculation in middle school, after a district tournament in which she had apparently smoked the competition, that she might have a future playing tennis. That surprised him; how did you go from potential tennis player to a rock band?

He found the answer in a quote from her, upon the release of Relative Fusion’s first CD. “Tennis didn’t make my blood sing,” she’d said. “Music does.”

The history of the band was easy enough to trace; there were those who still mourned the end even now, years later. They were praised for deep songwriting, the powerful voice of lead singer Christopher “Kit” Hudson, and the innovative arrangements and playing credited to Kai Reynolds. Some canny internet promotion, also credited to Reynolds, plus rabidly loyal fans who adored their “Kit and Kai”—a bit cute, he thought—had brought them to the attention of a small, independent label. Their first CD release had done well enough to encourage a bigger sales campaign on the second.

“Kai’s the brains,” one label representative was quoted as saying. “She’s got a knack for the business. If she ever quits performing, we’d hire her in a minute.”

So perhaps it wasn’t such a reach that she’d ended up running a small-town music store, that she’d gone from winding up venues full of appreciative fans to selling instruments to the local high school band program.

From electric guitars to tubas, he thought wryly.

But she hadn’t, by all accounts, wanted to quit performing. It had been taken out of her hands. One writer, on a popular blog chronicling the music scene in the Northwest, had told the story in bleak detail; the death of lead singer Kit Hudson, and the resulting departure of lead guitarist Kai Reynolds, had spelled the end for the inventive, talented and rising band.

“The fiery couple were the nucleus of Relative Fusion,” the man wrote. “Onstage and off. When Hudson died tragically of an accidental overdose at twenty-six, it took the heart, and the music, out of Reynolds, and she quit the band shortly thereafter. Without that nucleus the rest of the band disintegrated quickly, going their separate ways.”

… took the heart, and the music, out of Reynolds.

It only took a couple of minutes to find what apparently was the only public statement she’d ever made on her lover’s death.

“Kit’s death is the biggest waste I’m ever likely to see in my life. I loved him, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t stop. I can’t be a part of a world that will remind me every day that he was just the latest in a long line that will continue endlessly.”

He read the words again, and then a third time. Including the reference at the bottom of the article that as Hudson’s executor, she had funneled his entire take from the music into funding a rehab clinic in his hometown.

He could almost feel his view of her shift. And he suddenly doubted she was either doing, enabling or selling drugs in the back of her store.

The blogger may have been right, death may have taken the heart out of her, but she had also apparently seen it for what it was, another in a long line of deaths chalked up to not just the drugs but their prevalence in her world.

So she’d walked away.

She’d left behind a career she probably loved, doing what kids all over the world dreamed of doing, and having achieved some amount of success at it. She probably could have stayed, played with another band, but she’d left before it swallowed her up, too.

And he found himself admiring her for having the wisdom and courage to walk away from a soul-eating existence.

And to do it a lot sooner than he had.

Kai knew who it was the moment she heard the back door open. Only one person came in that way when there was still parking out front. She wasn’t sure why, or why it faintly annoyed her.

“Hello, Max.”

“Hey, sweet thing.”

She tried not to wince at the overdone effort at charm. Max was barely into his twenties, fairly good-looking with thick, medium-brown hair, flashing dark eyes and a killer grin, but he walked and talked with a smug swagger she instinctively disliked. She’d seen it before, and in her experience there was rarely anything of substance beneath all the bravado.

But at least he was alone, this time. When he came in with his two followers, he was a different guy, the bravado taking on an ugly edge. Part of maintaining his leadership in his small posse, she supposed. But whatever it was, she didn’t like it, and she was wary whenever the three of them came in together.

And he was a customer, a regular one. Not for instruments; he spent his time in either the sound system corner, or the small CD section in the opposite corner of the store. The big box store in the next town drew people for the big sellers, so she focused on the stuff they didn’t, the smaller, local groups, Americana, the indies, alternative and the more eclectic, off-the-beaten-path stuff.

Things it was hard to find even to download, not in any coherent manner. It didn’t make a huge profit, but most quarters she broke even on it. And since he was a not-insignificant contributor to that, she kept wearing her best service-oriented smile.

But today he wasn’t looking at CDs; instead he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the counter.

“Remember that sound system we were talking about?”

“I think we were drooling more than talking, but yes,” she said, her smile more genuine as she remembered Max’s very real enthusiasm for the very expensive equipment.

Max laughed, and he seemed to drop the swagger. “I want it,” he said.

“Don’t we all. You could blast music all the way to Seattle.”

“No, I mean I want to order them.”

She blinked. “The price hasn’t changed in two weeks, Max.”

“I know. But my … resources have.”

“You get a nine-to-five?” she asked wryly.

“Shit, no,” Max exclaimed with a grin. “I’m a freelancer, you know that. The everyday grind, that’s for drones, you know? Worker bees.”

Like your parents, she thought; the Middletons were a hardworking pair, but they were anything but wealthy. And Max still lived with them, Kai suspected because he had them charmed—or buffaloed—into continuing to support him, negating the necessity for him to actually do something with his young life.

“Don’t tell me you talked your dad into springing for expensive, high-end speaker gear so you can blow him out of his own home?”

He laughed again, but there was an edge in it this time, as if something she’d said had rubbed his pride the wrong way.

“Nah,” he said. “But he’s giving me the garage. I’m going to convert it into the biggest, baddest entertainment room in this whole loser little town.”

Kai had the thought that if the latter was really true, accomplishing the former wouldn’t take much, but kept it to herself.

“So, you gonna order those bad boys for me?”

“Look, Max,” she said frankly, “I can’t afford to eat the cost of an order that big. You sure you can manage it?”

She’d been afraid he would take offense—funny how those with the least reason got their egos in a pucker the easiest—but instead he reacted as if he’d only been waiting for her to ask. With dramatic flair he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of cash.

“Sure, I can. I’ll even pay the whole thing in advance,” he said with a smile that told her she was supposed to be impressed.

“Cash?” she said, surprised.

“I’ve been saving up. Doing some favors for a friend,” he said, with a pious look she couldn’t help doubting. “He’s very grateful.”

He was counting it out as he laid it out on the counter, mostly tens and twenties but the occasional fifty and even a couple of Benjamins.

“You’re sure about this?” she asked, wondering what was wrong with her, why she didn’t just leap at the sale. It would put her well into the black for the month, and lessen the worry about the next month as well. And he could have easily just ordered them online, or gone out of town to one of the big electronic or audio/video stores that would have what he wanted, maybe even in stock. But he’d come here, and she should, she told herself, be more appreciative.

Even if she suspected he had more in mind than just a proprietor-customer relationship.

“There’s more where this came from,” he answered. “There’s always more.” He flashed that smile at her again. “I’m even paying my old man rent, how about that?”

Well, that’s something, Kai thought, and pulled out a form to make the order. She made a call, found out the equipment was available for immediate shipment. When she had all the information, she marked down the amount paid, and signed the receipt.

“Hey, look at that, I finally got your autograph!”

She couldn’t help laughing at that. “I’ll call you when they come in. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of days.”

“And don’t forget the phone number after,” he said, with what she supposed was his best effort at a leer.

Max was always flirting with her, in a clumsy way she found odd and somewhat amusing, a reaction she guessed he wouldn’t be too happy about.

Today’s riff, a Stephen Bruton favorite, sounded again. She looked over, and was relieved to see Jordy coming in. Apparently his father had decided against forbidding the boy to come here.

Or he had, and Jordy was disobeying.

She hoped it wasn’t that. Not only for Jordy’s sake but her own; she so did not want to be in the middle of that mess, with Wyatt Blake coming after her again, the way he had last week. She’d be happy never to see the man again.

But somehow she didn’t think she was going to be that lucky.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

John Hunt looked up and motioned Wyatt into the office.

“Close the door, will you?”

Uh-oh.

Wyatt did as asked, but warily. John was normally the most approachable of bosses, genial and willing to listen, hence the usually open door.

He stopped in front of the man’s desk, shaking his head at the offer of a seat; he hoped he wasn’t going to be there that long. Hoped as well this was just to catch up after the man’s recent business trip. Doubted he was that lucky.

“I meant to tell you this before I left for the East Coast, but I’m afraid it slipped my mind. I’m still not sure if it means anything, but it might to you.”

Truly wary now, Wyatt asked, “What?”

“About a week before I left I got a phone call about you.”

Wyatt went very still. “A phone call?”

“From somebody else who owes you.”

“That’s what they said?”

John nodded. “They thought I might know where you were.”

A week before. And John had been gone two weeks. He could have been already burned three weeks ago. His mind was racing as John studied him.

“I told him I didn’t. Just like you asked.”

“Thank you.”

For all the good it would do. If whoever it was knew enough to call here, then he could find him. John was the only one who knew about his desire for secrecy; they’d decided early on it would make things worse rather than better if they asked everybody at Hunt Packing to keep him secret. Better just to give them nothing to talk about.

But that didn’t help if you had people calling and asking about him directly.

And back then, it had been merely a precaution. Now, this coupled with that emailed warning….

“Wyatt—”

His boss stopped when he shook his head. And let him go.

Wyatt headed back to his cubicle. When he’d gotten tangled up in the mess John’s youngest daughter had gotten herself into, he’d been startled to learn the man’s business was headquartered so close to his old hometown. And been thankful she’d gone off to the big city to get herself in trouble; he’d been nowhere near ready to go home, for any reason.

And now here he was, back again, hiding. Trying to keep his son out of the same kind of mess.

Only now he was wondering if his own less-than-tidy past was going to follow them here.

Wondering if anybody ever got to truly leave their past behind them.

Chapter 5

“Hey, kid,” Max said to Jordy.

“Hi, Max!”

The boy seemed thrilled that the older boy—Kai couldn’t think of Max any other way—had acknowledged him. Did more than just acknowledge him, even gave him a friendly, man-to-man-type slap on the shoulder.

“Been practicing?” Max asked as Kai brought out the boxes containing his speakers and added them to the stack.

Jordy lit up at Max’s attention. “Yeah! Kai let me play BeeGee the other day.”

“Miss Kai,” Max said with a fair approximation of Old World charm, “is a generous soul.”

“She’s the best,” Jordy said, so fervently it made Kai smile.

“Thank you, Jordy,” she said.

“Gonna play in a band someday, like she did?” Max asked, with every evidence of genuine interest in this boy at least ten years younger than he. His two buddies treated the boy like most guys their age would, with annoyance bordering on anger, but a few weeks ago Max had changed, started being nice to Jordy, at least around her.

But it seemed different to her today.

I hear there are some guys who hang out here, guys I don’t want my son around….

Wyatt Blake, that was the difference. He’d unsettled her, made her suspicious.

Even as she thought it, watching the two males talk as if they were of an age, she knew that wasn’t quite true. Because it was odd that Max had started to show up mostly in the afternoons, around the time Jordy always came in. Odder still that someone Max’s age, unless he was a relative, would even pretend such an interest in a kid so much younger. And she’d thought that even before Jordy’s father had come barreling into her life.

So why hadn’t she told him? Why hadn’t she aimed him at Max, let him be the one to ferret out the true reason behind this unexpected kindness by someone who was, from what she’d heard outside the store, generally surly and rude most of the rest of the time?

Because Wyatt Blake aggravated you?

Because he had aggravated her. He had provoked the temper she’d worked hard to quash. She’d worked hard at it because she hated being a cliché, a redhead with a hot temper. And she’d managed to put a respectably long fuse on it, and then hide the matches, after years of effort.

She hadn’t counted on a guy who brought his own lighter.

She yanked herself out of unwelcome thoughts.

“Your old man still giving you a hard time?” Max was asking.

Jordy shot her a quick, sideways glance. “It never stops. Ask Kai. He was in here hassling her last week.”

Max looked at her, his pierced right brow lifting. She shrugged. “He was here. But I can’t blame him for wanting to know where his son spends a lot of time.”

Jordy’s eyes widened, she supposed at the unexpected defense of the man he hated. “He was a jerk!”

There was the tiniest hint of a hovering sense of betrayal in the words, so Kai grinned at the boy and said, “I believe I told him that. And worse.”

In an instant Jordy’s mood shifted. “You did?” he asked, wide-eyed and with an awed tone.

“I did. You can’t, but I can, because he can’t do anything to me,” she said.

“Parents. Always trying to run your life,” Max put in.

She focused on the older boy for a moment. “When you’re only thirteen, that’s the way it is,” she said, watching Max’s face for any sense of surprise at how young Jordy really was. There was no reaction, and she knew he’d already known. Which made his amiability toward the boy who was barely more than a child even more suspect.

“I can’t wait until I’m eighteen,” Jordy said. “I’ll take off and never come back.”

Kai thought about pointing out that some kids stayed and leeched off their parents into their twenties, but decided poking at Max wasn’t the best path right now. After all, she had nothing to indicate the guy was really a problem, nothing suspicious except the way he treated a much younger boy, and the ready cash with no visible source. His rather awkward but harmless flirting with her, and his kindness and interest in Jordy might be out of character, but hardly a crime.

The money? Maybe he really had done favors for a friend.

And maybe you’re the queen of gullibleville, she told herself drily.

She remembered her thoughts later as, walking back from the grocery store to her apartment over the store, she saw Max and his two regular companions standing outside the local pizza place a block down off the main street, across from the bakery. Most of the local teenagers hung out at Dinozzo’s, and since Max and his friends didn’t seem to have progressed beyond that age, she supposed it was reasonable that they would, too.

She glanced down the street again as she crossed at the corner. There was a row of outdoor tables with umbrellas, lit by lights on the outside of the building. They’d be put away for the winter soon, and the lights dimmed, but for now the area in front was lit like a stage. Just as she reached the opposite curb, she saw Dan, the least likeable of Max’s two regular companions, gesture to an older man around the corner of the building.

She kept walking.

Forget it, she told herself. Just get home. It’s late, you’re starved, and it’s affecting your imagination.

She fired up her barbecue before she put the groceries away, then quickly fixed a salad and put the steak she’d bought on the grill out on her small back balcony, big enough only for the barbecue and a pub-style table with a couple of stools. She liked the high seating because it allowed her to look over the railing and across the small neighborhood that was dotted with so many trees it made for a pleasantly green landscape. In the distance were the mountains, and the vista gave her a feeling of space that was an antidote to the cramped balcony.

Not that her apartment itself was cramped, it was as big as the store below, and two years ago she’d had it remodeled so that the walled off kitchen was now open to the main living area in a great room effect. And she liked it.

“You’ll be bored to tears in that little town,” her mother had warned her.

But for once, her mother had been wrong. She loved it, she loved living here, loved her store, all of it. And despite the confidence she’d expressed all along to her parents, no one had been more surprised than she was that Kai Reynolds was actually a small-town girl at heart.

She decided to eat outside; it would soon be too chilly, and she’d miss the opportunity. For the first few bites she focused on how good the local beef was, and the tang of Mrs. Bain’s homemade salad dressing, well worth the regular trips to the weekend farmer’s market. She’d have to stock up for the winter soon, before the markets ended for the season. She didn’t go for any esoteric, organic reasons, but simply because she liked the feel of it, the way things used to be in a simpler time.

A simpler time. A simpler place.

She thought of what she’d seen by the pizza parlor, Max and his friends, which led her to Jordy. Could she really blame his father for bringing him here when she herself had come here seeking many of the same things? Could she blame him for making assumptions when in a great many stores like hers what he’d accused her of—the paraphernalia at least—was in fact true? Had she been so predisposed because of Jordy’s complaints that she hadn’t given the man a chance?

She played the encounter back in her mind. No, he was pretty much a jerk from the beginning. But, she admitted, she’d made no effort to be conciliatory, either. She’d gone on offense from the moment he’d opened his mouth, reacting to his harsh tone more than what he’d said. And it had gone downhill from there.

She was still pondering when she went to bed. Maybe she should have told him about Max. At least that Jordy was fascinated by the older boys, and the attention Max in particular paid him, enough that Kai was wary. Maybe she still should. After all, his father was only trying to keep the boy out of trouble.

“Or maybe you should just stay butted out,” she muttered into the darkness.

She was certainly no expert on raising kids, her only experience stemming from the kid side. But by his own admission, neither was Jordy’s father.

I should call Mom, she thought again. Ask her how she liked getting parenting advice from strangers who weren’t even parents themselves. That ought to cure the urge.

She rolled over and pounded her pillow into submission. When it didn’t seem to help, when sleep seemed no closer, she sighed aloud.

Damn Wyatt Blake anyway. Wasn’t it enough that he soaked up all the air in the room in person, did he have to invade her thoughts, too?

Apparently so, she thought, humor sparking at last, since she’d been thinking about that rancorous encounter for nearly a week now.

… only trying to keep the boy out of trouble.

She lifted herself up on an elbow, remembering Jordy saying with all his thirteen-year-old determination, “He wants me to do sports or something, and I won’t. I don’t want to do anything he says.”

An idea stirred. She lay there, considering, turning it over and around in her mind.

It might work, she thought. It just might work.

And if it didn’t, they’d be right where they were now, except Jordy’s father would likely be even angrier at her.

But at least this time she would have done something to deserve it. Meddling, her mother would call it.

But then, her mother had also said that sometimes meddling wasn’t all bad.

Decided now, she put her head back down on the pillow. And sleep, as if it had been waiting for a decision, came quickly.

Chapter 6

Saturday morning dawned clear and crisp. Good for a walk, Kai told herself. It would soon be time to break out her beloved shearling jacket and boots, and that made her smile. Maybe she’d learn to knit this winter, so she could make some of those cool beanies and watch caps she loved.

So, she thought, I’m in such a good mood, what better to do than destroy it?

She grabbed the DVD that was the pretext she’d come up with, and trotted downstairs. She pulled on the medium-weight jacket that hung by the back door, stuffed the DVD case in the pocket and stepped outside. She locked up behind her and started west. From Jordy she knew they were living in his grandparent’s old home at the far end of Madrona Street, and that they were both dead. That fact was meaningless to Jordy, since he’d never known his father, let alone his father’s parents.

It was only about a half a mile, nice for a walk on a brisk fall day. She’d have time to get there and back, since she didn’t open the store until noon on Saturdays. And since it was in an area she hadn’t perused much, she was looking forward to it. The walk part, anyway.

She hummed under her breath as she went, pleased that it didn’t bother her overmuch when she realized it was the last song Kit had written. She smiled and waved at people who went by if she knew them, leaving it at a smile if she didn’t. She did a lot of waving. She’d gone out of her way to meet as many people as she could when she’d come here, not just for business reasons. She’d had some idea in her head that the small town might close ranks against the outsider. But instead they’d welcomed her, been thrilled that their little town was going to have a music store, and she’d slid into a comfortable place here more quickly than she’d ever imagined possible.

So, was she about to mess with that, too? Wyatt Blake was one of their own; after all, he’d grown up here. Would they suddenly decide she was an interloper if she started interfering in his life?

She shook her head, nearly laughing out loud at herself. If that’s all it took, then her place here wasn’t as comfortable as she thought it was.

She glanced at her watch, saw that it was after nine now. Her mom liked to sleep in on Sundays, and given the dynamo she was the rest of the week, no one was likely to argue with her. She pulled out her cell phone and made the call she’d been meaning to make for days now.

Her mother never chided her for not calling often enough, which actually made her call more often than her busy life conveniently allowed. Her mother, Kai thought for at least the millionth time, was a very smart woman.

After the usual catching up, and the pleasant news that her father was feeling so much better after knee surgery a few months ago that he’d gone fishing with some friends, Kai asked the question she’d been pondering.

“Do you think someone who’s never had kids can ever have good ideas about raising them?”

“Of course,” her mother said, “if they ever were one.”

Kai laughed. “Did anybody who’d never had them ever tell you what you should do with me?”

“I seem to recall your Uncle Brad having an opinion or two on the matter.”

She laughed again at her mother’s dry tone; her Uncle Brad Reynolds, her father’s brother, made Wyatt Blake look like an overly lenient pushover.

“I always had the feeling Uncle Brad thought kids shouldn’t just be seen and not heard, they shouldn’t be.”

“He would be much more comfortable with them if they were born adults,” her mother agreed.

“Thanks for keeping him at a distance for me.”

“In my job description,” her mother said with a laugh. “Now, you want to tell me what brought this on?”

“Just a kid who’s been hanging around the store. He’s having trouble with his dad.”

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