“So what’s up? Did you call to check up on me?”

Paige laughed. “I’m looking for a youth hockey league in the area.”

“You’re in luck. I happen to have a buddy who’s a hockey fan, and he’s coach, commissioner and sponsor of the local youth league all rolled into one.”

“You call it lucky. I call it blessed. You, Grady Jones, are a blessing.”

For moments he literally floundered over the phone. Finally he sputtered, “Uh, n-no one, th-that is, what I mean… I take it this is for your son.”

“Who else? I know it’s an imposition, but my son wants to play hockey. It won’t make him happy, but I thought it might improve his attitude.”

Grady imagined that she seemed as reluctant to end the conversation as he was. He promised to talk to his buddy and get back to her soon. A moment of silence followed, then Paige spoke softly.

“I meant what I said, Grady. You’ve been an answer to prayer for me more than once, and I thank God for that.”

“Makes me wish I believed in prayer.”

ARLENE JAMES

says, “Camp meetings, mission work and the church where my parents and grandparents were prominent members permeate my Oklahoma childhood memories. It was a golden time, which sustains me yet. However, only as a young, widowed mother did I truly begin growing in my personal relationship with the Lord. Through adversity He blessed me in countless ways, one of which is a second marriage so loving and romantic it still feels like courtship!”

The author of over sixty novels, Arlene James now resides outside Dallas, Texas, with her husband. Arlene says, “The rewards of motherhood have indeed been extraordinary for me. Yet I’ve looked forward to this new stage of my life.” Her need to write is greater than ever, a fact that frankly amazes her, as she’s been at it since the eighth grade!

When Love Comes Home
Arlene James

Therefore, let those also who suffer according

to the will of God entrust their souls to a

faithful Creator in doing what is right.

—I Peter 4:19

Victoria, I know you are too small to read or even

understand this yet, but the place you hold in my

heart is immense, and it’s never too early to say,

“I love you.” Granna

Contents

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

Letter to Reader

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

Grady frowned across the desk at his older brother and fought the urge to fold his arms in an act of pure defiance. It wasn’t just that Dan expected Grady to spend Thanksgiving traveling for business but that he expected him to do it with Paige Ellis.

Pretty, petite Paige made Grady feel even more hulking and awkward than usual. It didn’t help that Dan might have just stepped out of the pages of a men’s fashion magazine. Slender and sleek, his dark hair having long since gone to silver, Dan served as a perfect contrast to his much larger—and much less dapper—younger brother. Dan was elegant, glittering silver compared to Grady’s dull-as-sand brown.

Dan’s white shirt looked as if it had just come off the ironing board, while Grady’s might have just come off the floor. The navy pinstripes in Dan’s expertly knotted burgundy tie perfectly matched his hand-tailored suit. Grady’s chocolate-brown neckwear, on the other hand, somehow clashed with a suit that he’d once thought brown but now seemed a dark, muddy green.

The only thing the Jones brothers seemed to share, besides their parents and a law practice, were eyes the vibrant blue of a perfect spring sky. Grady considered them wasted in the heavily featured expanse of his own square-jawed face.

“It’s not as if you’d enjoy the holiday anyway,” Dan was saying.

Grady grimaced, conceding the point. Okay, he wasn’t eagerly anticipating another chaotic feast at Dan’s place in Bentonville. Why would he? A fellow couldn’t even watch a good football game without one of his three nieces or sister-in-law interrupting every other minute.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,” he grumbled. “I said the timing stinks.”

No one wanted to spend a major holiday flying from Arkansas to South Carolina, but for Grady the task seemed especially disagreeable because it involved a woman and a kid.

Grady did not relate well to women, as his ex-wife had been fond of pointing out. She had contended that it had to do with losing his mother at such a young age, and no doubt she was right about that. He always felt inept and stupid in female company, never quite knowing what to say. As for children, well, he hadn’t known any, except for his nieces, and he’d pretty much kept his distance from them. These days their adolescent behavior made him feel as if he’d stumbled into an alternate universe.

Besides, family law was Dan’s forte, not Grady’s. Give him a good old bare-knuckle brawl of a lawsuit or a complicated legal trust to craft. Even criminal defense work was preferable to prenups, divorces and custody cases, though he hadn’t done much criminal defense since he’d left Little Rock. After his marriage had failed he’d come back home to Fayetteville and the general practice established by his and Dan’s father, Howard.

“The timing could be better,” Dan agreed, “but it is what it is.”

Grady made a face and propped his feet on the corner of his brother’s expansive cherrywood desk with a nonchalance he definitely was not feeling. “You’re the attorney of record,” he pointed out. “You should do this.”

Dan had worked every angle on this case from day one. By rights, he ought to be there at the moment of fruition. But Dan had a family who wanted him at the dinner table on Thanksgiving. And Grady had no feasible excuse for not stepping in, even at the last minute.

“Trust me,” Dan said, “Paige isn’t going to complain.”

Paige Ellis had doggedly pursued her ex after he’d disappeared with her son nearly three and a half years ago. Now the boy had been found and was waiting in custody of the state of South Carolina to be reunited with his mother.

Grady was glad for her. He just wished he didn’t have to be the one to shepherd her through this reunion. The petite, big-eyed blonde made Grady especially uncomfortable, despite the fact that they hadn’t exchanged half a dozen words in the three years or so that she’d been a client of their law firm.

“You’ll want to look this over,” Dan went on, plopping a file folder a good two inches thick onto the desk next to Grady’s feet. “All the pertinent paperwork is ready. You should probably take it with you when you inform Paige about her son.”

Grady bolted up straight in his chair, his feet hitting the floor. “Now hold on! The least you can do is deliver the news.”

Dan turned up both hands in a gesture of helplessness and rocked back in his burgundy leather chair. “Look, I’d love to deliver the good news, but this needs to be done in person ASAP, and Chloe has a jazz band program at three.”

Grady knew without even looking at his watch that it was at least half past two in the afternoon now. No way could Dan get to Nobb, where Paige Ellis lived, and back to Bentonville, where his daughters went to school, by three o’clock. If he skipped out on Chloe’s performance, Dan’s wife, Katie, was liable to skin him alive. Katie wasn’t shy about demanding that Dan make his family a priority. Grady didn’t understand how his brother could be so disgustingly happy in his marriage, but he was fond enough of Dan to be glad that it was so.

After a few more minutes of discussion, Grady sighed in resignation, gathered up the file folder and strode back to his office, grumbling under his breath. Just thinking about Paige Ellis made him feel even more hulking and plodding than usual.

Thanks to an expensively outfitted home gym, he was in better shape than most thirty-nine-year-olds, but that didn’t keep him from feeling too big and too clumsy. Standing a bare inch past six feet in his size twelve shoes, his square, blocky frame hard packed with two hundred pounds of pure muscle, he wasn’t exactly a giant, but he’d felt huge and oafish since puberty, when he’d dwarfed the other boys. In the company of some delicate, feminine little creature like Paige Ellis, he felt like a lumbering monster.

Entering his office, Grady turned down the lights, crossed the thick, moss-green carpet, dropped the folder onto his desk and switched on a lamp. He sat down in his oversize brown leather chair, tilted the bronze shade just so and opened the folder. He began thumbing through the notes and documents, scanning the material and jotting down notes as he went.

His ability to read quickly and comprehend completely was his greatest asset and brought in a considerable amount of income in consulting fees. Other attorneys knew that Grady by himself could accomplish more in the way of research than a roomful of clerks. Consequently he spent a good deal of his time alone at his desk.

Grady reached the end of the last page in the file. After making a copy of his notes for the folder, he tucked it into the file and carried the whole thing to the office of Dan’s terribly efficient personal secretary.

Janet was none too fond of Grady. She stared at the file that he placed on her desk, then looked up at him, her pale pink frown seeming to take issue with his very existence.

“What is this?”

“Case file.”

She blinked at him, her lashes too black and clumped together. “I can see that it’s a case file, but why are you giving it to me?”

“You’re Dan’s secretary.”

She let out a long-suffering sigh and narrowed her eyes at him, her lips compressed into a flat line.

Janet had given up complaining that Grady didn’t have his own personal secretary, but she made her displeasure known by grudgingly performing those tasks which he did not perform for himself or push off on the young receptionist. Grady had made a halfhearted attempt to find a male secretary at one point, but without success. He’d gotten by with a part-time male law clerk from the University of Arkansas School of Law. Having no personal secretary was an inconvenience, but he had no desire to stutter and stammer his way around a strange female.

Janet flipped open the file folder and checked the contents for herself. “Ah. The Ellis file.”

Grady’s face heated.

Without a word the secretary handed over the necessary warrants and writs that would be required to prove identities and custody assignments to the South Carolina authorities. She also passed Grady a map and a pair of printed sheets showing the next day’s available flights to and from South Carolina via the regional airport and Tulsa, some ninety minutes away. Then she immediately rose and carried the folder into the back room, where it would be swiftly and efficiently filed.

Donning a camel tan cashmere coat that reached midcalf, Grady took the elevator down to the parking lot and a cold, drizzling rain, briefcase in tow. He slung the briefcase on to the seat of his Mercedes and followed it, resisting the urge to huddle inside his coat until the heater started blowing warm air.

While navigating the forty-some miles between Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the tiny community of Nobb tucked into the foothills of the Ozarks to the northwest, Grady mulled over what he would say to Paige Ellis, much as he would have thought out an opening statement. He found the Ellis place on the edge of the village just past a pair of silos and a big, weathered barn. A dirt lane snaked upward slightly between gnarled hickories and majestic oaks, past tumbledown fencing and rusting farm implements to a small, white clapboard house.

After parking his sedan next to a midsize, seven-year-old SUV in dire need of a good washing, Grady stepped out of the car. A scruffy, well-fed black lab got up from a rug on the porch and lumbered lazily down the steep front steps to greet Grady with a sniff.

Dan had judged it best not to call before arriving, and Grady hadn’t questioned that decision. Paige Ellis worked from her home as a medical transcriptionist and kept regular hours, so she was apt to be available on any given weekday. Suddenly, though, Grady wondered if it was too late to warn her that he was about to descend upon her. Then the dog abruptly opened its yap and did that for him.

The seemingly placid dog howled an alarm that could have put the entire nation on alert. The lab couldn’t have been more vociferous if Grady had shown up wearing a black mask and hauling a crate full of hissing cats.

Feeling like a felon, Grady hotfooted it to the house, practically leapt the steps leading up to the porch and skidded to a halt in front of the door, which needed a coat of white paint. He saw no bell, but a brass knocker with a cross-shaped base had been attached to the door at eye level and engraved with the words, As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.

Somehow Grady was not surprised to find this evidence that Paige Ellis was a believer. Dan and his family were Christians, active in their local church and given to praying about matters, as was his father, but Grady himself was something of a secret skeptic. He didn’t see any point in arguing about it, but he privately wondered if God even existed. If so, why would He let so many bad things happen, like his mother’s death and Paige Ellis’s son being abducted by her ex-husband?

With the dog still barking to beat the band, Grady reached for the knocker, but before his hand touched the cool metal, the door yanked open. There stood an old fellow with more balding head than sooty, graying hair. Slightly stooped and dressed in a plaid shirt, khakis, suspenders and laced boots, his potbellied weight supported on one side by a battered cane, he swept Grady with faded brown eyes recessed deeply behind a hooked nose that had been broken at least once. Apparently satisfied, he looked past Grady to yell at the dog.

“Shut up, Howler!”

To Grady’s relief, the aptly named dog seemed to swallow his last bark, then calmly padded toward the porch.

“Matthias Porter,” the old man said, stacking his gnarled hands atop the curved head of his cane. “Who’re you?”

Grady had at least four inches and fifty pounds on Porter, and that cane wasn’t for show, but the way the old fellow held himself told Grady that he was a scrapper and the self-appointed protector of this place. Grady put out his hand, aware of the dog moving toward the rug on one end of the porch.

“Grady Jones. I’m here to see—”

“Jones,” the older man interrupted, “you’re Paige’s attorney, ain’t you?”

Grady nodded. “Actually, my brother, Dan—”

Porter didn’t wait to hear about Dan or anything else. Backing up, he waved Grady into the house, saying, “I don’t shake. Too painful. Arthritis in my hands. And you’re letting in cold air.”

His ears still ringing from the dog’s howling, Grady stepped forward and found himself in a small living room. He took in at a glance the braided rag rug on the dull wood floor, the old-fashioned sofa covered in a worn quilt, the yellowed shade on the spotted brass lamp next to a broken-down recliner and a wood-burning stove that filled a corner between two doors. A shelving unit stood against one wall at an angle to the recliner and couch. In its center, surrounded by books and numerous photos of a young boy, sat a combination television-set-and-VCR.

Grady knew that the search for Paige Ellis’s son had been expensive. If the condition of this house and its furnishings were any indication, the search had required every spare cent that she could scrape together. Feeling out of place and too big for the space, Grady watched Matthias Porter hobble through a door and disappear into a hallway. He had no idea who Matthias Porter was, but it didn’t matter. Standing there like an overgrown houseplant, the handle of his briefcase gripped in one fist, he waited with a strange combination of dread and anticipation for Paige Ellis to show herself.

Paige looked up from the computer screen as Matthias entered the room, her fingers automatically typing out the words that continued to drone into her ears. The interruption was sufficiently unusual, however, to have her shutting off the recording a moment later.

Matthias had been a great comfort since he’d moved in nearly two years ago, and he never interrupted her work with anything trivial. Beneath his gruff, somewhat aloof exterior, he was really very sweet and considerate, not to mention protective. She tossed the headphones onto the desk.

“What’s wrong?”

“Dunno. But something’s up. You got company.”

“Who is it?”

The answer knocked her back down into her chair. “Jones.”

Her heart thudded heavily. Vaughn. This could only be about Vaughn. Why else would her attorney arrive here unannounced? “Lord, please let this be good news,” she prayed, gulping. She looked up at Matthias. “Did Dan Jones say why he’s here?”

Matthias shook his head. “Not Dan. Big fella. Says his name’s Grady.”

Grady Jones was Dan’s brother and law partner. She could see even less reason for his presence. As curious as she was shaken now, she stood up to her full five feet height and moved woodenly around the desk that occupied almost all of her tiny office.

The room was really nothing more than a screened-in back porch roughly converted with plywood, batts of insulation and plastic sheeting. When Matthias had moved in, she’d refused to even consider taking over Vaughn’s bedroom, so this had become her only option.

Paige tugged at the cardigan that she wore with jeans and a flannel shirt and led the way down the hall to the living room, smoothing her fine, yellow blond hair en route. The last cut had been a bit too short and shaggy for her taste, but the stylist had insisted that the wispy ends feathering about her triangular face made her chin look less sharp and brought out the soft green of her eyes. Since her large, tip-tilted eyes already dominated her slender face, Paige wasn’t so sure that was a good thing, but it was too late now to worry about it.

Matthias skirted the stove and went into the kitchen as Paige greeted Grady Jones, offering her hand.

“Mr. Jones.”

He backed up a step, before slowly reaching out to briefly close his large, square palm around her small hand. Her heart flip-flopped. She’d seen him often around the office in Fayetteville when consulting with Dan, but they’d rarely spoken. A big man with even, masculine features, he reminded her of a bear standing there in that expensive tan overcoat, a wary bear with electric-blue eyes.

“Can I take your coat?”

“Oh, uh, that’s all right,” he said, shucking the long, supple length of it and draping it over one arm.

“Won’t you have a seat then?” She gestured toward the sofa.

Nodding, he backed up to the couch and gingerly folded himself down onto it as if worried he might break the thing. For some reason she found that endearing. She perched next to him, crossing her ankles, and waited until he placed his briefcase at his feet and dropped his coat onto the cushion beside him.

“What’s going on?” she asked warily.

“First of all,” he said, his voice deep and rumbling, “I want you to know that Dan would have come himself if possible.”

She swallowed and nodded her understanding, afraid to ask what was so important that her attorney’s partner and brother would come in his stead. Fortunately, Grady Jones didn’t keep her in suspense.

“It’s good news,” he stated flatly. “We’ve found your son.”

She heard the words, even understood that her prayers had finally been answered, but for so long she’d accepted disappointment after disappointment, while trusting that this day would eventually come. Now suddenly it had, and she sat there too stunned to shift from faith to realization.

Then Grady Jones began to explain that Vaughn had been picked up from school by child welfare officials in South Carolina, where his father was being held under arrest after an alert state trooper conducting a routine traffic stop, had recognized him from one of the many electronic flyers they’d distributed to law enforcement agencies around the country. Finally, the realization sank in.

Vaughn was safe and waiting for her to come for him! At last, at long last, her son was coming home!

Clasping her hands together, Paige did the only thing she could think to do. She closed her eyes, turned her face toward the ceiling and thanked God.

“Oh, Father! I praise Your holy name. Thank You. Thank You! Vaughn’s coming home!” She began to laugh, tears rolling down her face. “He’s coming home. My son is coming home!”

Grady Jones cleared his throat. Paige beamed at him. With two bright spots of color flying high in his cheeks, he looked down. That was when she realized that she was gripping his hand with both of hers.

She was crying and laughing at the same time. How was a man supposed to react to that? Grady wondered. Displays of emotion always unnerved him. He’d been uncomfortable before; now he wanted to crawl into a cave somewhere. Racking his brain for something, anything, to say, he came up blank, which left him feeling even more hopelessly inadequate than usual.

She suddenly released him, jerking her hands back into her own lap as if he’d snapped at them with his teeth. He felt a fresh flush of embarrassment, but at least his brain began to work again. After a few moments he realized that certain matters had to be addressed. He opened his briefcase and extracted documents, explaining each in detail.

The first would allow the Carolina authorities to release information which would help prove the boy’s identity and had already been faxed to the appropriate party. The next proved her identity. Another granted her custody in the state of Arkansas. The fourth proved that such a grant both superseded and complied with Carolina law, and so on. The last document was a charge filed against Nolan Vaughn Ellis for interference with the lawful physical custody of a minor, allowing the state of South Carolina to hold him until such time as the issue of jurisdiction could be settled. Finally came the flight schedules.

“We assumed you wouldn’t want to wait until after the holiday to be reunited with your son,” Grady told her matter-of-factly.

“I’d go right this minute if I could!” she declared, wiping at her eyes with delicate, trembling fingertips.

He thought of the fresh, lightly starched handkerchief in his pocket, then he looked into her eyes and promptly forgot it again. Those enormous eyes, sparkling now with happy tears, were a soft, muted sea green. He was vaguely aware of the perfect cupid’s bow of her dusky pink lips and the adorable button of her nose, but up close like this he couldn’t get past those big eyes. Her long, brown lashes, spiked now with her tears, seemed gloriously unadorned. She put him in mind of a sprite or a fairy, her sunny yellow hair wisping at the nape of her neck and around her face. The delicate arch of her pale brows proved that the blond shade was completely natural.

Grady gulped and forced his mind back to the issue at hand.

“Uh, that’s, uh, why I’m here instead of Dan. Th-the holiday, I mean. Dan has to consider his family, you understand, but I have no obligations of that sort.”

She tilted her head as if trying to figure out why that should be the case. After a long moment she said, “I see.”

He winced inwardly, feeling as if she’d looked him over and found the reason why he, unlike his brother, was alone and unattached.

“You, um, you just tell me which of these times works best for you,” he mumbled, flushing with embarrassment yet again.

Smiling slightly, she took the printed flight schedules into her small hands and bent her head over them. The edges of the paper trembled. Realizing that she was very likely in shock, he felt duty-bound to point out that the flights leaving from Tulsa were considerably cheaper than those leaving the regional airport.

She nodded and after several seconds said breathlessly, “Early would be best, wouldn’t it?”

“If we hope to get there and back in the same day, yes, I’d say so. Plus, they’re an hour ahead of us on the East Coast, and we could have lots of legal hurdles to jump before we can bring a minor back across the state lines.”

“Well, then, the 5:58 a.m. flight is probably best.”

Grady nodded, mentally cringing at how early he’d have to get up to have her at the airport in Tulsa before five o’clock in the morning as security rules dictated. Might as well not even go to bed. Except, of course, that he had to be alert enough for a two-hour drive to the airport in Oklahoma.

“Can you be ready to leave by three in the morning?” he asked apologetically.

She nodded with unadulterated enthusiasm, handing over the papers. “Oh, yes. I doubt I’ll sleep at all, frankly.”

“I’ll be here for you at three, then.”

“No, wait,” she muttered thoughtfully, drawing those fine brows together. “You’ll be coming from Fayetteville, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

She smiled, and he caught his breath. She literally glowed with happiness.

“Then I’ll come to you,” she told him. “It’ll save time.”

Grady frowned. “I couldn’t let you do that.”

Her tinkling laughter put him in mind of sleigh bells and crisp winter mornings.

“You forget, Mr. Jones,” she said with mock seriousness, “that you work for me. Shall we meet at your office? Say, three-thirty? That’s cutting it fine, I know, but I can’t imagine we’ll encounter much traffic along the way.”

Her plan would save him over an hour all told, but he just couldn’t handle the thought of her being out on the road alone at that hour.

“I’ll pick you up here,” he insisted.

She blinked, then she smiled. “I guess I’ll see you here at three in the morning.”

Only then did it occur to him that he might have explained his reasoning instead of just growling at her. Confounded, he snapped the papers inside his briefcase once more and got to his feet, muttering that he had to go.

She popped up next to him, asking, “How can I thank you?” Then next thing he knew, she’d thrown her arms around him in a hug.

“N-no need,” he rumbled, his face hot enough to incinerate.

“Please thank your brother for me, too,” she went on, tucking her hands behind her and skittering toward the door.

Grady had heard the term “dancing on air” all his life; this was the first time he’d actually witnessed it.

He ducked his head in a nod and stuffed one arm down a sleeve, groping for his briefcase. Getting a grip on the handle, he headed for the door, still trying to find the other armhole of his coat.

“Mr. Jones,” called a rusty voice behind him.

He froze, looking back warily over one shoulder, his coat trailing on the floor. Matthias Porter stood next to the stove, beaming, his eyes suspiciously moist. Grady lifted his eyebrows in query.

“I’ll see she gets some rest,” the old man promised. “Don’t you worry none about that.”

“Very good,” Grady muttered.

Paige opened the door, and he charged out onto the porch. The dog pushed itself up on to all fours and assaulted his eardrums with howling, multioctave barks, the top end of which ought to have shattered glass.

“Howler, hush up!” Matthias Porter bawled from inside the house, and the fat black thing dropped back down onto its belly as if it had been felled with a hammer.

“Thank you again!” Paige called. “Try to get some rest.”

Grady scrambled for his car in silence, desperate to get away, but once he was behind the wheel and headed back down the rutted drive, he found that the day was not so gray as it had seemed before. He thought of the happy glow that had all but pulsed from Paige Ellis’s serene eyes, and he couldn’t help smiling to himself.

He suspected that he’d never again think of Thanksgiving as merely a turkey dinner and a football game.

Chapter Two

Paige sighed with pure delight and settled comfortably onto the leather seat of the Mercedes. She couldn’t stop smiling. She suspected, in fact, that she’d smiled in her sleep, what little of it she’d managed to get.

Matthias had insisted that she retire to her bed immediately after dinner, and she had done so simply to humor him. Surprisingly, she’d actually slept a few hours. When the alarm had gone off in the dead of night, she’d awakened instantly to dress in a tailored, olive-green knit pantsuit, her excitement quietly but steadily building.

Her parting with Matthias, who had insisted on getting up to see her off, had been predictably unemotional. He, more than anyone else, knew what this meant to her, but his pride didn’t allow for overt displays. Paige understood completely. For a man with nothing and no one, pride was a valuable thing, a last, dear possession.

When they’d heard the vehicle pull up in the yard, Matthias had practically shoved her out the door, rasping that she’d better call if she was going to be returning later than expected. After almost falling over Howler, Paige had climbed into Grady’s sumptuous car, where a welcome warmth blew gently from the air vents.

Excitement percolating in her veins, Paige unbuttoned her yellow-gold wool coat and removed her polyester scarf before securing her seat belt. Grady Jones had been right to insist that she not drive herself to his office. She was much too anxious to manage it safely.

“Coffee?” Grady offered as he got them moving. He nodded toward a tall foam cup in the drink holder nearest her.

His voice and manner were gruff, but she didn’t mind. Even if it had been a decent hour and she hadn’t been on her way—at last!—to her son, Matthias had taught her that gruff was often just a protective mannerism. Besides, it had been thoughtful of Grady to provide the coffee, so even though she rarely drank the stuff, she put on her sweetest smile and thanked him.

“There’s sugar and cream in the bag,” he said, indicating the white paper sack between them.

“Black’s fine,” she assured him, unwilling to risk trying to add anything to a cup of hot coffee in a moving vehicle. Saluting him with the drink, she bade him a happy Thanksgiving.

He inclined his head but said nothing, concentrating on his driving. She noticed that his drink holder contained a metal travel cup emblazoned with the logo of a Texas hockey team. She’d seen the same logo on a framed pennant in Dan Jones’s office. The brothers apparently shared an interest in the game. They seemed to share little else, other than their occupation.

Besides the obvious physical differences, Dan was friendly and chatty with a quick, open smile, while Grady struck her as the strong, silent type. She felt oddly comfortable with him, safe, though she sensed that he did not feel the same ease in her company. Perhaps he was a loner, then, but a capable one judging by the way he handled the car, and a thoughtful one, too. He’d brought her coffee, after all.

Smiling, she sipped carefully from her cup and found that the beverage was much less bitter than Matthias’s brew. Then again, what could possibly be bitter on this most thankful of Thanksgivings?

They traveled for some time in silence while she nursed her coffee and stared out the window. Unsurprisingly, she looked fresh and eager, her big, tilted eyes glowing. That just made Grady feel even more worn and rumpled than usual and did nothing to improve his mood. He knew he ought to say something, but as usual he couldn’t think of anything that seemed to make sense.

Somewhere along the turnpike southwest of Siloam Springs, she pointed out across the dark hills and valleys, exclaiming, “Oh, look! Christmas lights.”

Grady turned his head and saw a two-story house outlined in brilliant red. “Little early,” he rumbled without thinking.

“It is,” she agreed, “but aren’t they pretty?”

He didn’t say anything. Red lights were red lights, so far as he was concerned. He suggested that she might want to get some sleep. “It’s still an hour or more to Tulsa.”

“I’ll sleep once my son’s tucked in his own bed again,” she commented softly, and they fell back into silence.

After a few minutes, he reached for his coffee and was surprised when she said, “So you’re a hockey fan?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s on your travel mug.”

He glanced at the item in question, drank and set the travel cup aside. “Right. Yeah, I like most sports.”

“Me, too.”

That surprised him. “Yeah?”

“Uh-huh, I’m really hopeful about the Hogs’s basketball season, aren’t you?”

Surprised again. “Football’s more my thing.”

“Oh, that’s right. You played corner for the Hogs football team, didn’t you?”

Surprised didn’t cover it this time. “How did you know?”

“I looked you up on the computer right after my first appointment with your brother.”

“You looked me—” His gaping mouth must have appeared comical, for she laughed, and the sound of it brightened the interior of the night-darkened car.

“I have a propensity for trivia, sports trivia in particular. The name sounded familiar to me, so I looked it up.”

Grady worked at shutting his mouth before he could mutter, “I don’t think that’s ever happened before.”

“Oh, you might be surprised,” she told him. “There are some big sports fans around. My father was one of them, you see, and having only daughters, he literally pined for someone to discuss statistics with. My older sister, Carol, wasn’t interested. She lives in Colorado now.”

“And you were? Interested, I mean.”

“Very. I much preferred sitting in the living room with Dad discussing RBIs and pass completion rates to washing dishes with Mom in the kitchen.” She laughed again.

“So it was more an attempt to get out of your chores than a real interest in sports,” he surmised.

She shook her head. “No one got out of chores in our household. I just like knowing things. Information is powerful, don’t you think?”

Did he ever. “Key to my success as an attorney,” he heard himself say, and then when she asked him to explain that, he did. She asked a question, which he answered, and before he knew what was happening they were in Tulsa.

He quickly became consumed with finding a parking spot in the crowded terminal lot. As a consequence, it didn’t hit him until he was dragging his briefcase out of the backseat of his car that he’d just spent over an hour in conversation with a woman talking mostly about himself—and he had enjoyed it!

The thought literally froze him in place for a moment. Then Paige Ellis tossed her plaid scarf around her neck and tucked the ends into the front of her bright gold, three-quarter-length coat, looking more polished and lovely than a woman in cheap clothes ought to. Grady shook himself, recalling that she was in an emotional stew at the moment and probably wouldn’t remember a word that had been said between them. Her distraction had no doubt led to his own.

Feeling somewhat deflated, he trudged toward the terminal. She fell into step beside him. It had apparently rained in Tulsa the evening before, and little glossy patches of damp remained along the pavement. Paige failed to see one, and the slick sole of her brown flat skidded, so naturally Grady reached out to prevent her from falling. Somehow, she wound up in his arms. She beamed a smile at him, stopping the breath in his lungs. After that he couldn’t seem to find a way to let go of her, keeping one hand clamped firmly around her arm until they were safely inside the building.

Thirty minutes later as they moved from check-in to the passenger screening line he began to worry that arriving a mere hour ahead of their departure time had been foolishly shortsighted. Thanksgiving, after all, was the busiest travel day of the entire year.

Paige chattered about first one thing and then another. His fear that they might not make their flight was reason enough not to interrupt her ongoing one-sided conversation about… He lost track of what it was about. But it allowed him to worry for them both, then to be relieved when they walked onto the plane and into their seats with minutes to spare.

When she reached for the in-flight magazine, he knew a moment of mingled relief and disappointment. Apparently, she thought he would be interested in an article, for she began a running commentary on a piece about the latest in computer technology.

Grady remembered his brother saying that because he lived with four women he heard at least 100,000 words per day. At that moment, Grady didn’t doubt Dan’s assessment. But surprisingly Grady found himself interested. Afterward, they found themselves discussing her work.

Paige Ellis, it turned out, was a marvel of ingenuity and self-discipline. Not only was she a self-taught medical transcriptionist, she had her own cottage industry. By means of a small business loan, she had supplied state-of-the-art computer transcription equipment to four other women, all of whom worked out of their homes and were paid by the hour. By concentrating on doctors in the smaller communities around Fayetteville, Paige had garnered the lion’s share of the transcription contracts in the area. Due to the lower costs of her business format, she was able to undercut her competition substantially.

“Thank the good Lord,” she declared happily, “I will have the time I’ve been dreaming about to spend with my son before it’s too late.” She laughed, and then, to Grady’s shock and dismay, she suddenly began to cry.

For Grady it was like being pulled out of a comfortable chair and thrust on to a torture rack. He didn’t know what to do or say, so he just sat there like a deer frozen in the headlights and listened to her.

“He’s eleven now. Eleven! I’ve missed four birthdays!”

Grady already knew from reading the case file that Nolan Ellis had ostensibly taken the boy for a two-week camping trip at the end of June, three-and-a-half years earlier. It was to have been Vaughn’s birthday gift from his dad, and they were to have returned before the boy’s actual birth date of July 1. The camping trip, of course, had been a ruse meant to give Nolan a two-week head start to disappear, and it had worked like a charm. Only as she’d sat alone hour after hour, she told him, waiting to light the candles on Vaughn’s birthday cake, had Paige begun to realize that the two weeks of her son’s absence might well turn into a lifetime.

The particulars of the divorce were likewise already known to Grady, though the Jones firm had not handled it. That, in his opinion, was most unfortunate, something she matter-of-factly confirmed as the story spilled out of her.

High school sweethearts, she and Nolan had married young. By the time their son had reached the age of four, Nolan had decided that he didn’t want to be married, after all. Resentful over his “lost youth” and the burden of family responsibilities, he had simply walked out.

Even more shocking, the divorce papers had alleged that Nolan might not be Vaughn’s father. Angry and hurt, Paige had signed without even consulting an attorney. Only later did she realize what Grady, or any other halfway competent attorney, could have told her: she had, in effect, signed away her and Vaughn’s right to financial support.

She’d realized her mistake when she’d transcribed notes concerning a case in which one of her clients, a medical lab, had been called upon to verify paternity so that child support could be levied. After hearing Paige’s story, a helpful lab technician had arranged for Vaughn to be tested and had also recommended an attorney who dealt with paternity cases. When Nolan predictably resurfaced several months before Vaughn’s eighth birthday, Paige had been ready. She’d hit Nolan with a court order, proved that he was Vaughn’s father and been awarded substantial monthly child support. Nolan had been livid, but he’d seemed to calm down fairly quickly.

“I did think he might disappear again after the court decision went against him,” she said, sniffing, “but after he stuck around for a while, I started to believe that he really wanted to be a father to Vaughn. That’s what my little boy wanted, and who could blame him? Every little boy wants a daddy. I never dreamed Nolan would take Vaughn and disappear.”

“It’s not your fault,” Grady said, wondering when his arm had come to be draped about her shoulders.

“I can’t help wondering if he’s missed me,” she whispered.

“Little boys want their moms, too,” Grady assured her.

“Do you really think so?”

Grady realized suddenly that all this chatter was a product of her emotional state, so when she turned that hopeful, tear-stained face up to him, what else could he do but tell her about his own experiences?

“I know so. I was six when my mom died, and nothing’s been quite right in my world since.”

How on earth they got from talking about losing his mom to talking about his divorce, he would never know. At some point he started telling her how his marriage had fallen apart.

“So, she left you to marry your boss,” Paige clarified sharply, both surprising and puzzling him.

Embarrassment and pain roiled in his gut, but he’d come so far already that he didn’t see any point in pulling back now. “Technically he was her boss, too, since we both worked for the same Little Rock law firm.”

“And how did that come about?” Paige wanted to know.

Grady shrugged. “I asked them to hire her.”

Paige folded her arms at this. “So let me get this straight. First she refused to stay in Fayetteville and join your family’s practice.”

“There aren’t any opportunities for advancement in a small family partnership,” he explained.

“Then, the firm in Little Rock hired you, and wanted you bad enough to take her in the bargain. Right?”

Eventually he nodded. “Right.”

“So she used you to get into a firm she couldn’t have gotten into on her own, then she left you for someone with more power and prestige.” Paige threw up her hands, exclaiming, “Well, at least she stayed true to form!”

“T-true to form?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? She manipulated you, and when she found someone else who could offer her more, she traded up.”

He was so taken aback by the idea that for a moment he couldn’t even give it proper thought. Paige must have taken his silence for censure, for she suddenly wrinkled her pert little nose, sighed and muttered, “Okay, I shouldn’t be judging, but such selfishness gets to me.”

His family had hinted at the same thing, that Robin had left him for his boss not just because the man was elegant, affable and downright loquacious but because she was greedy. It hadn’t made sense at the time. His bank account was hefty enough, after all. Since then he’d avoided thinking about it because it was too painful.

Now, after several years, he could see things from a different perspective. Robin had used him. That didn’t make the hurtful and numerous accusations she’d thrown at him any less true. Did it?

He shook his head. Robin was correct about him being inept with women. Had she not pursued him, he doubted that they’d have ever gotten together. One-on-one with a woman, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his mind went completely blank. The more attractive he found her, the worse it was.

Usually, he amended silently, glancing sideways at Paige.

It was nuts to think that he might be any different with Paige. If his poor communication skills and emotional ineptness were not enough, there was his clumsiness. Okay, maybe once he’d been fleet of foot and a force to be reckoned with on the athletic field, but those days were long gone. That he’d been able to discuss them, even briefly, with Paige Ellis had been terribly flattering, which had led to hours of conversation. The fact that he’d enjoyed those hours so much suddenly made him seem especially pathetic.

None of this meant anything to Paige, after all. She was an admitted sports freak; he’d allowed her interest in the fact that he’d once played college football to become more personal than it was surely intended to be.

Disturbed, Grady let his seat back, mumbling that they had a long day ahead of them, and closed his eyes. She agreed with him and curled up in her seat, but she did not sleep. He knew this because he didn’t sleep, either.

They changed planes in Atlanta, and on that last, short leg of the trip, he avoided personal conversation by discussing business, beginning with a particular form that she needed to sign. He’d mentioned it before, but she’d been in too much shock to really understand at that time.

“In other words,” she said, after he’d gone over the whole thing once again, “if I sign this, we’ll be pressing charges against Nolan in South Carolina as well as Arkansas. Is that correct?”

Pleased that she’d grasped the concept this time, he reached for an ink pen. “Exactly.”

“But I’m not sure that’s what I ought to do.”

His hand stopped with the slim, gold-plated barrel of the ink pen still lodged within the leather loop provided for it. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not sure I want to prosecute Nolan.”

Grady’s tongue seemed to run away with him. “Why on earth not?” he demanded. “The man kidnapped your son!”

The spike-haired lady across the aisle turned a curious gaze on them, and Grady realized he’d raised his voice.

“You think I don’t know that?” Paige said with some asperity. “Believe you me, I know what it’s like to miss your child with every fiber of your being, minute by minute, hour after hour, day after day after week after month…. And I realize that I’m about to do the same thing to Nolan that he did to me. The pain of that may be punishment enough.”

“That’s not the point,” Grady told her urgently, doing his best to keep his voice down. “This is about protecting you and Vaughn.”

“That is the point,” she insisted, sliding into the far corner of her seat and folding her arms. “I can’t let this be about retribution, and right now, for me, it is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t expect you to. Suffice it to say that I’ve been seeing a counselor for some time now, and she, along with my Christian ethics, warn me against seeking any sort of vengeance.”

“What about what’s best for your son?”

“I think this is what’s best for my son,” she stated firmly. “Nolan is his father. Do you think he wants his father punished? I don’t think so.”

“I would,” Grady insisted. “Knowing he kept me away from my mother, I surely would.”

Paige shook her head. “You only say that because you can’t see the other side. You haven’t been a parent. You don’t know what it means to put the welfare of your child first. I’m sure Dan would understand what I’m trying to say.”

That stung, far, far more than it should have. She was correct, but that didn’t keep Grady from feeling great alarm on her behalf. As far as he was concerned, allowing Nolan Ellis to walk around free was a reckless and frightful thing for this woman and her son. His every instinct screamed for prosecution on every possible level, but all he could do was point out the legal loopholes that she would be leaving open if she failed to follow his advice.

She listened, but he could tell that he wasn’t convincing her. Frustrated, he searched for a way to compel her to accept his reasoning.

“No one would blame you if you locked him up and threw away the key!”

“That’s beside the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

“Doing the right thing.”

For a moment he could only stare at her, wondering if she was for real. “This is the right thing.”

She stared back and finally said, “I’ll pray about it.” With that she turned away from him.

Confounded, Grady watched her bow her head and retreat into herself. He’d made his best case, giving her good, solid legal advice, but he might as well have saved his breath. Obviously they didn’t communicate as well as he’d thought.

This wasn’t the first time his legal advice had been rejected, after all, not by a long shot, but he’d never been more disturbed about it.

Popping his seat back again, he folded his arms and shut his eyes, determined to finally catch a few minutes of rest or at least some peace.

Both would prove to be in very short supply.

They touched down at the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport at a quarter past eleven that morning. After renting a car, they drove to the Greenville County Sheriff’s Department where Vaughn waited, having spent the previous night in a group foster care facility. Grady had not pressed Paige for a decision about prosecuting Nolan, which was good since she truly didn’t know what she was going to do.

Now that the moment to see her son again—after three years, six months and one day—had finally arrived, Paige was so nervous she felt ill. Pressing a hand to her abdomen and surreptitiously gulping down air in an effort to settle her stomach, she walked through the heavy glass door that Grady held open for her. They met briefly with a polite, efficient uniformed officer who checked their paperwork and led them through a narrow hallway to a private conference room.

Her heartbeat grew louder and the knots in her stomach pulled tighter and tighter with every step that she took, so that by the time Grady paused with his hand on the plain, brushed steel doorknob, she could barely breathe.

“Ready?” he asked softly.

Reminding herself that Vaughn might be ambivalent at first, she pulled her spine straight and nodded. As that heavy, metal door swung inward, she began to tremble. Grady pushed into the small, crowded room. She practically ran over him, suddenly so eager that she could not contain herself.

Everything registered at once: pale walls, pale floor, pale, rectangular table flanked by lightweight metal chairs with blue, molded vinyl seats. A green-and-white bag with some team logo printed in red sat in the center of the table, stuffed so full of clothing that it couldn’t be zipped. Two women—one young, white and plump with a brown ponytail, the other African-American, slender and slightly older—occupied two of the chairs on the near side of the table.

Across from them sat a boy, a stranger, who shot abruptly to his feet.

Paige’s first thought was that they’d made a mistake. This could not be her son. He stood at least as tall as her own five feet, with no trace of the bright copper-blond hair that had crowned her baby boy. Instead, the thick, fine locks falling haphazardly over his brows, tangling with the thick lashes rimming his warm brown eyes, was a rich auburn. Then he tossed his head defiantly, and she caught a glimpse of a jagged scar just above his right eyebrow, the scar he’d gotten tumbling headlong off the porch into the shrubbery.

“Vaughn!”

How she got around the table she didn’t know, but when she threw out her arms, he flinched and backed away. She’d been told to expect this, and yet disappointment seared her trembling heart. Sucking in a deep breath, she forced her feet to slow.

It was like approaching a feral animal, once domesticated but now wild. He seemed uncertain, but she sensed that he definitely recognized her. Carefully, her lips quivering, she slipped her arms around him. Perhaps it wasn’t wise, but she had to, had to, hold him, if only for a moment.

“Mom,” he whispered in a voice she would never have recognized and yet somehow knew.

Only with great effort did she manage not to sob, but stopping the tears completely was impossible. She smiled through them, cupped his slender, oval face in her hands, pulled it gently forward and laid her forehead to his as she had so often in the past.

“Thank You, God. Thank You. Thank You.”

Chapter Three

Vaughn let her hold him for a time, but then the two women at the table introduced themselves, and he pulled away. The young one was a caseworker with Child Protective Services, the other a Victims Services agent with the county sheriff’s office. After making themselves known, they seemed content to sit back and observe, leaving Paige to focus once more on her son.

He had backed into the corner of the room, his arms tightly folded across his chest. It was not a good sign. Paige tried not to take offense. It was only to be expected. He’d spent the last three-and-a-half years with his father. He was bound to be confused. She couldn’t help noting that he was a handsome boy whose shoulders were already broadening, and now that she got a good look at him, she realized something else.

“You look like my dad.”

He frowned. “No, I don’t. I look like my dad.”

“You’re built like Nolan,” she agreed quickly, aware that she was tiptoeing through a minefield here, “and you have the same coloring, but that’s my father’s chin and nose you’ve got.” He bowed his head, as if rejecting anything she might say. Paige gulped and searched for some way to meaningfully engage him. “Do you remember your grandfather?”

Vaughn snorted, glancing up at her sullenly. “’Course. I wasn’t that little when he died.”

He’d been five and inconsolable. The memory of how he’d cried for his grandpa wrenched her heart. Had he cried like that for her? She wouldn’t ask, for both their sakes.

Chairs scraped back as first the Child Protective Services caseworker and then the Victims Services agent rose. “I think we’ve heard all we need to,” the VS agent said, her dark face parting in a smile that was half congratulatory, half sympathetic. “You should have some paperwork for us.”

“The desk officer has it,” Grady replied.

“Yes, of course.” She stepped forward and addressed the boy. “You take care, Vaughn. Happy Thanksgiving.”

He did not so much as acknowledge her words. The CPS caseworker skirted the table and hugged him.

“Cheer up, honey. It’s going to be okay.” He nodded glumly, but didn’t speak. She patted his shoulder and turned to Paige. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“A very happy Thanksgiving,” Paige murmured, clasping the woman’s hand. “Thank you both from the bottom of my heart.”

“Just doing our jobs,” she said.

The two women quickly exited the room. The instant the door swung closed, Vaughn all but attacked. “What happens now?”

“We’re going home, son,” Paige said gently. “I thought you knew that.”

“I know I gotta go with you,” he declared, his voice breaking with the weight of his emotion, “but it’s not my home, not anymore. What I mean is, what happens to my dad?” He started to cry. “They got him in jail! He always said you’d put him away if you found us. That’s not right! He doesn’t belong in jail!”

“Don’t worry,” she urged, pulling him into her arms again. She couldn’t let herself be hurt by his concern for Nolan. What counted now was putting Vaughn’s fears to rest. She knew what she had to do, had known how it would be. Taking a deep breath, she firmly stated, “I have no intention of pressing charges against your father.”

“That may not be wise,” Grady warned, but she shook her head at him, convinced that she was right in this.

As much as she believed Nolan had wronged her and their son, as much anger as she’d carried with her over their separation, no good would be served by punishing Nolan legally.

“Does that mean they’ll let him go?” Vaughn asked hopefully. “I’ll leave with you if they’ll let him go.”

“You’ll go with her anyway,” Grady pointed out to Vaughn, pitching his voice low. “You don’t have a choice. Paige, you need to think about this.”

“I have thought about it.”

“We need to consider this carefully,” Grady argued.

“My mind’s made up, Grady.”

“For pity’s sake, Paige!” Grady Jones erupted, and that triggered Vaughn.

“It’s none of your business!” he shouted at Grady, then rounded on his mother. “What’s he got to say about it, anyway? Just ’cause he’s your boyfriend or something, that doesn’t—”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” she exclaimed, grasping the boy by the tops of his arms. “He’s my attorney.”

“One of your attorneys,” Grady corrected smartly.

“One of my attorneys,” she snapped, glaring at him over her shoulder.

Vaughn shuffled his feet and bowed his head, muttering, “It’s still none of his business.”

“It’s not his decision, but it is his job to advise me,” Paige pointed out calmly.

“For all the good it does,” Grady muttered.

Paige ignored him, looking to her son, who asked, “So Dad can go home?”

“I can’t say what the South Carolina authorities will do,” Paige told the boy, “but your dad won’t stay in jail because of me, Vaughn, I swear it.” Sliding one arm around his shoulders, she turned to face Grady. “Can the South Carolina authorities keep him if I don’t press charges?”

Grady clenched his jaw and looked away, but then he answered. “No.”

“What about the state of Arkansas?”

He fixed her with a level stare. “They may want him held for failure to pay child support.”

She could feel Vaughn trembling beside her and lifted her chin. “What if I speak in his favor, petition for leniency on his behalf? Forgo the back payments?” Grady was so clearly appalled by the mere suggestion of her intervention that she felt her temper spark.

“That would not be wise,” he rumbled.

“That is not an answer to my question.”

“You haven’t thought this through,” he insisted.

She took that to mean that her intervention on Nolan’s behalf would likely result in him doing no time. She turned back to her son. “I’ll keep him out of jail,” she promised.

Vaughn slumped with obvious relief. Paige put on as bright a face as she could manage and announced, “Our plane doesn’t leave until almost three, so Mr. Jones made lunch reservations for us at a hotel downtown.”

Vaughn put on a sullen face and grumbled, “I’m not hungry.”

“No? But it’s Thanksgiving, and you love turkey. I know you do. Especially the drumstick.” He made a face at that, and she supposed that his delight with drumsticks at Thanksgiving dinners past seemed babyish to him now. She quickly went on, changing the subject. “We should be home before nine this evening.”

He lifted his head, looked her in the eye. “My home’s in South Carolina.”

She felt her heart drop, but swallowed down the part that seemed to have lodged in her throat. “But Nobb’s your home, too,” she said softly. “You’ll see that if you just give it a chance. I’ve missed you so much, Vaughn, more than you can possibly know, and we’re going to work everything out, I promise.”

He said nothing, just ducked his head, sighed and dragged his feet toward the door with all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner on his way to the gallows. Pushing aside her heartache, Paige reminded herself that this was to be expected. Only God knew what adjustments they had in store for them, but then only God could make them a family again.

Grady determined that he would not let his own dissatisfaction with Paige’s decision not to prosecute her ex-husband color the meal. He was furious with her, worried about her and just generally disgruntled, but after an hour or so in the boy’s icy, hostile company, he decided that his mood was definitely the brighter of the two.

Paige, for all her quiet joy and steely determination, could not lighten the atmosphere. Nevertheless, she tried, commenting gently on the quality of the food and the service, remarking what a treat it was not to have to cook Thanksgiving dinner for herself, asking quiet, neutral questions about Vaughn’s life, most of which he answered with as few syllables as possible.

Did he like school? Sometimes.

What was his best friend’s name? Toby.

Favorite junk food? Barbecue potato chips.

Last book he’d read? Didn’t know.

She appeared to take no offense at his sullen, almost belligerent replies. When the meal arrived she prayed over it, simply bowed her head and began, as if it was perfectly normal.

“Father, we have so much to be thankful for today. I cannot thank You enough for bringing my son back to me. You have heard my prayers, and I know that You will continue to do so. Give each of us wisdom now, Lord, as we work to make of our lives what You would have them be, and bless the Jones brothers for all that they have done on our behalf. Amen.”

As she spoke softly, Grady looked around the room self-consciously, while Vaughn sprawled in his chair, glaring at him. Grady noted with some surprise that several other diners had also bowed their heads.

The meal crept by with Paige pretending not to notice that Vaughn wasn’t eating. She did try to deflect his glower from time to time, without much success. Grady fumed, uncertain just what the boy’s problem was. The crazy kid seemed to blame him, Grady, for his father’s problems!

Didn’t he understand how lucky he was to be back with his mom? At his age Grady would have done anything, anything, just to share one more meal with his mother. In Grady’s opinion, Vaughn Ellis should be on his knees, kissing his mother’s feet instead of worrying about his self-centered father, and it was all Grady could do not to tell him so.

As soon as the meal was finished and Grady paid the check—determined that this was one part of the trip that wouldn’t find it’s way onto Paige’s bill—Vaughn demanded to see his father. Paige turned troubled, pleading eyes to Grady, and he found himself almost sorry that he hadn’t had the foresight to arrange any such thing. Almost.

He shook his head. “Can’t be done, not on this short notice and a holiday.”

“I’m sorry, Vaughn,” she told the boy sincerely, an arm draped lightly about his shoulders. “You can call him later.”

Grady shook his head at that, at a complete loss. Didn’t she know what Nolan would do if she gave him just half a chance? He’d already absconded with her son once. Did she think he wouldn’t do it again? Grady decided that he was going to have a long talk with his brother about this once he got home. Maybe Dan could make her see reason. What it would take to reach the boy, Grady couldn’t even imagine, but he was glad that he wasn’t in Paige’s shoes. This, he thought morosely, should have been such a happy day, not tense and silent and barely civil.

The ride to the airport was gloomy at best. Sitting in the backseat with her son, who seemed determined to ignore her, Paige didn’t even try to make conversation. They had to visit a shop in the airport in order to purchase a second bag and get the boy’s clothes safely stowed for the trip, but when Paige began to repack his things, Vaughn elbowed her aside, grumbling that he would do it.

She backed away, her arms locked about her middle as if she was trying to hold herself together. Grady found himself at her side, his voice pitched low.

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing right now.”

She flashed a wan smile at him. “I expected it to be difficult,” she said softly, “but I thought my son would at least be glad to see me.”

“Well, sure he is,” Grady insisted, though they both knew better.

Her eyes gleamed with liquid brilliance, brimming with a kind of bittersweet pain that made Grady want to howl. “I don’t know him anymore,” she whispered brokenly. “I don’t even know my own son.”

“You’ll get to know him,” Grady rumbled, squeezing her fingers quickly. “It’ll be okay,” he told her, wishing for an eloquence he’d only ever found inside a courtroom.

Her smile grew a little wider. “You’re a good man, Grady Jones.”

His heart thumped inside his chest. Vaughn rose from his task then, sparing Grady from having to find a reply. He pointed toward the ticket counter, muttering that they had to get the boy checked in for the flight, and walked off in that direction. Only later, when the flight clerk was ready to receive the boy’s luggage, did it dawn on Grady that he’d left Paige and the kid to manage the bags.

He was still mentally kicking himself for that a half hour later when they arrived at the departure gate, having passed through security. The place was surprisingly crowded, and Grady frowned. Weren’t these people supposed to be home eating turkey? He concentrated on finding seats for them in the waiting area, then parked himself against the nearby wall.

Paige had bought Vaughn a couple of magazines in which he’d shown interest at the store, but the brat shook his head mutely when she offered them to him. Deflated, Paige shot a resigned look to Grady, and it was all he could do not to shake the kid. Grady tried not to watch the careful way in which she approached the boy, as if he were a wounded animal, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off them, and every time her son rebuffed her, his temper spiked a little higher.

By the time they were finally able to board the flight, Grady was gnashing his teeth. What was wrong with the kid? Didn’t he see how unfairly he was treating his mother? She hadn’t created this situation; his father had.

Only after they changed planes in Atlanta did Paige again try to communicate with her son. She asked gentle question after gentle question and received in reply only shrugs and sharp glances from the corners of his eyes. When she began to talk about her plans for Christmas, explaining what she and Matthias had discussed, Vaughn finally deigned to speak.

“Who’s Matthias?” he demanded, screwing up his face.

Paige smiled. “Didn’t I say? Matthias Porter is our boarder.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, he rents a room in our house.”

“So we’re poor?” Vaughn surmised caustically.

“No, we’re not poor. We’re not rich but certainly not poor.”

“Then how come you’re renting out rooms?”

Paige looked down, and for a moment Grady thought she’d tell the kid how much money she’d spent finding him. Instead she said, “Matthias had nowhere else to go. He’s elderly but too healthy for a nursing home and too poor to live on his own.”

“What happened to his family?”

“I don’t think he had much. His wife died, and he was left all alone,” Paige told the boy softly. “Like me.”

Vaughn looked away at that. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice like shards of glass, “but if you’ve got Matthias now, why don’t you let me go back to Dad? Or else he’ll be all alone!”

Grady saw the naked pain on her face, even after she squeezed her eyes shut, whispering, “Oh, Vaughn.”

A moment later she reached up and pressed the boy’s head down on her shoulder. He let it stay there, but he wasn’t happy about it. In fact, looking at them, Grady didn’t think he’d ever seen two more miserable people in his whole life. He’d have given his eyeteeth if he could have somehow made it better.

It had never occurred to him that Vaughn wouldn’t be eager to return to his mother, that the boy might actually prefer his father. Didn’t the kid realize that his father had literally stolen him from his mother?

Grady began to understand that finding her son had been a beginning for Paige rather than simply the end of her search. Her waiting and wondering was over, but now she had embarked on a long, new, difficult journey with her son, and that trip promised to make this one look like a romp in the park.

It was dark when the plane landed in Tulsa. Vaughn perked up a bit when he saw the Mercedes, asking his mom, “This yours?”

“No,” she answered evenly. “It belongs to Mr. Jones.”

Vaughn’s manner was almost derisive as he climbed inside, as if she had somehow proven herself a failure in his eyes by not owning the car. Grady had to bite back the impulse to point out that Vaughn’s precious dad had been picked up in a four-year-old truck with a crease in the tailgate.

As chatty as Paige had been on the drive from Arkansas, she was that silent on the long drive back from the airport in Oklahoma. In fact, if a single word was spoken during the first hour, Grady remained unaware of it. Vaughn leaned into a corner of the backseat, crossed his arms and feigned sleep, while Paige sat beside him and bowed her head. Every time Grady looked into the rearview mirror, there she sat with her head bowed, as still as a statue. He began to think that, unlike Vaughn, she really had fallen asleep. Then Grady saw her lips moving and realized that she was praying again.

She looked up at the sigh that gusted out of him, and their eyes seemed to meet in the mirror, though he doubted that she could actually see him. A small, tender smile curved the corners of her mouth before she looked away again. He couldn’t imagine that her smile was for him, but it kept him looking at her in the mirror when he should have been concentrating on his driving.

Eventually Vaughn sat up and complained that he was hungry. Considering that he hadn’t eaten his Thanksgiving dinner, Grady wasn’t surprised. At Paige’s request, Grady found an open drive-through at one of the little towns that they passed along the way to Nobb. Vaughn ordered a burger, tater tots and a drink that looked like it could fill a fifty-five-gallon drum. Grady didn’t say anything about the kid eating in his car, though it was not something Grady normally would have allowed.

Vaughn had wolfed down the food and was sucking air through his straw by the time Grady turned on to Paige’s drive. For the first time, the boy showed some interest in his surroundings. The house came into view, and for an instant Grady thought he saw something pleasant in the boy’s reflection in his rearview mirror before Vaughn sat back and remarked derisively, “Hasn’t changed a bit.”

Grady held his tongue, recalling perfectly well that the address given on Nolan’s arrest record had been that of an apartment complex in Curly, South Carolina, a small town on the outer edge of Greenville County. He heard Paige murmur that she’d had the back porch remodeled into an office, but Vaughn didn’t ask why as Grady parked the vehicle and got out.

The big black dog came down from the porch to greet them, and Grady assumed that his car was now familiar enough that the animal wouldn’t bother barking. The thing hadn’t let out a peep when Grady had arrived in the dark that morning, but no sooner did Vaughn step out of the Mercedes than the dog sat back on his haunches and lived up to his name, throwing back its head and slicing the air with yips and yowls and some sounds Grady had never before heard a living creature make.

Vaughn clapped his hands over his ears, while Paige attempted to scold the dog into silence. Light spilled out of the front door. Matthias appeared, and as before a command from him shut off the awful cacophony.

“Howler!”

Subdued now, the dog’s pink tongue lolled out of its mouth as it waited eagerly for Vaughn to pet it. Instead, he stomped toward the house, leaving his mother to retrieve the bags that Grady pulled from the trunk of the car. Matthias came down the steps toward the boy, a smile—or at least what passed for a smile—on his craggy face.

“Don’t mind old Howler,” the old man said. “He’s all alarm and no guard.”

Ignoring Vaughn’s scowl, he stuck out a hand, but the kid twisted past him and all but ran into the house, slamming the door behind him. Matthias stood for a moment, gazing toward Paige, who sighed. She seemed tired and sad. Finally, the old man turned and made his painful way up the steps and back inside.

Paige turned to Grady. “I tried to prepare myself,” she said, and he heard the trembling uncertainty in her voice. “Knowing intellectually how difficult it might be and going through it are two different things, I guess.”

He wanted to tell her that time would heal all wounds, that the worst was past her, anything to make it better. But what did he know? As she’d pointed out earlier, he had no experience as a parent and no hope of it. She likely would not appreciate words from him, anyway, so he just hoisted the bags and muttered, “I’ll carry these in for you.”

“No,” she said, taking them from him, “you’ve done enough. Thank you. With all my heart, thank you.”

He shook his head, shocked by the urge to hug her. Instead he asked, “You going to be okay?”

She smiled tremulously. “Oh, yes. My son is home. He isn’t happy about it, but I knew he might not be, and I really have tried to prepare myself to deal with it.”

“I don’t know how anyone could prepare themselves for this.”

“I’ve been seeing a Christian psychologist for the past two years.”

“Didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“Oh, yes. Why wouldn’t there be?”

He shrugged. “Just never thought about it.”

“I wanted someone who shares my beliefs. My pastor recommended her.”

“Ah. Makes sense, I guess.”

“Dr. Evangeline’s been very helpful,” she said. “I’m really not surprised by Vaughn’s behavior.”

Just disappointed. Heartsick. Weary. She didn’t have to say it. Grady saw it in the droop of her slender shoulders, the tilt of her head, the dullness of her beautiful eyes.

Grady looked to the house, escaping the weight of her emotions by wondering what might be going on in there. “I guess.”

Her gaze followed his, and she whispered, “I can’t help wondering what Nolan’s told him about me, though. I mean, how did he explain taking him away from me?”

Grady hadn’t thought of that. “Well,” he said slowly, “any number of ways, I guess.”

“And none of them good,” she muttered, adding wistfully, “He was barely eight when they disappeared, just a little boy. He wouldn’t know what to believe or what not to.” She looked to the house again. “Now he’s almost a teenager, and I have to accept that there’s no making up for lost time. He has to learn how to have a mom again.”

It occurred to Grady that he and Vaughn had something in common: they’d both been denied their moms at very young ages. Suddenly Grady thought of the last time he’d seen his own mother.

No one could have guessed that day as she’d dropped him off at school that she would never make it back home. To his shame, he’d shrugged away the kiss that she’d pressed to his cheek as he’d gotten out of the car, and he hadn’t looked back or waved a farewell even though he’d known that she would watch him all the way through the door of the building.

He’d never seen her again. When his dad had shown up at the school later that morning with his brother sobbing at his side, Grady had known that something awful had happened, but he’d never expected to hear that his mom was gone forever. He hadn’t believed it. Sometimes he still didn’t believe it.

Grady didn’t tell any of that to Paige. He had never told it to anyone. It was just something that he lived with. Suddenly Vaughn didn’t seem like such a brat. No doubt the kid was terribly confused right now. Remembering what that was like, Grady hoped that the boy would soon come to see how lucky he was to get his mom back.

Clearing his throat, he said that Dan would probably be calling her in the next couple of days. She thanked him again, and then there was nothing left to do but get back into the car and head home alone.

He should have been relieved, and on one level he was. It had been a long, trying day. Still, he couldn’t help feeling that he was abandoning Paige.

His last sight of her was in his car’s left side mirror. Bathed in the rosy glow of his taillights, she stood there alone with a bag grasped in each hand, a small woman with a big job before her.

If he’d been a praying man, Grady would have said a prayer especially for her. As it was, he fixed his gaze forward and drove home, even more troubled than the last time he’d done so.

Chapter Four

Paige listened to the door slam and dropped down onto the sofa, sighing inwardly.

Nothing she’d done or said in the past month had made her son the least bit happy. He’d hated his room on sight. Too “babyish.”

She’d rearranged everything and bought new linens and window treatments, keeping her regret buried as she’d put away the boy he’d been, all the things she’d treasured to remind herself that he was real and belonged in this place. He hadn’t seemed particularly pleased once the changes had been made, but given how often he retreated to his room in a huff, he must have felt more comfortable with his personal surroundings than before.

Today’s huff had to do with his impending return to school. Or perhaps it was the gifts he’d received yesterday for Christmas. Or the “do nothing” environment of Nobb. It was all tied up together somehow.

She’d kept Christmas low-key, realizing that it might not be the celebration for him that it was for her. Recalling the dreary Christmases she’d spent without him, she tried not to dwell on the fact that this one hadn’t quite lived up to her expectations. He’d spent most of the day bemoaning the fact that he was missing out on a hunting trip his father had promised him.

Before noon on this first day after Christmas he’d declared the video games she’d bought him “boooring,” the radio-controlled car “junk,” the clothes “lame.” Then he’d complained that he didn’t have anyone to do anything with.

Realizing that she was not yet someone to him, she’d made the mistake of suggesting that they invite over a few of the kids from church. He’d rolled his eyes, already having made known his feelings about church, which according to his dad was for “weaklings and nut jobs.”

She wondered if Nolan had always thought that, even during the years that he’d attended with her, starting when they were dating in high school. After Vaughn’s birth Nolan’s church attendance had grown increasingly sporadic, until it finally ceased. Once that had happened, the divorce had quickly followed, but Vaughn didn’t need to know that.

Or did he? She wasn’t sure, and since she wasn’t certain, she kept her mouth shut. Everything she believed told her that it was wrong to point out Nolan’s faults to his son. Yet, she wanted him to understand the importance and value of regular worship. Reminding herself that if she was confused, then he must be even more so, she held on to her patience. And her convictions.

Because Vaughn had nixed inviting over any of the youth from church, she had wondered aloud if he might want to call some particular friend from school. He’d laughed aloud at her idea of contacting one of the boys from his class, declaring that those who didn’t attend the local church were even “dumber” and “hickier” than those who did. In fact, the whole school was “stupid,” he’d declared, and he wasn’t going back after the first of the year. Paige had quietly but firmly refuted that, which had sent him slamming into his room.

Their counselor, Dr. Evangeline, had strongly recommended public school for Vaughn. Paige’s first impulse had been to hold him out until the start of the new semester, giving them a chance to get to know one another again, but Dr. Evangeline had insisted that Vaughn needed the socialization, needed to find replacements for the buddies he’d left behind in South Carolina. When the doctor had pointed out that because of state attendance standards, keeping him home those three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations could cause him to be left behind a year, Paige had been convinced.

She constantly fought the impulse to hold him close and never let go again, so it had been difficult to take him down on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving and enroll him in the Nobb Middle School, which was part of the large, wealthy Bentonville district. He’d hated it from day one.

He hated Dr. Evangeline, too, a fact he’d made known during their first joint session with her. It hadn’t been pretty. Since then he’d repeatedly said that a “guy” would do better, understand more, “actually listen, maybe.”

Paige worried that Vaughn had a problem with women in general, starting with her. He not only disdained the psychologist to the point of rudeness, he disliked his female teachers—though the lone male in the group hardly fared any better—complained that the husband of the couple who taught his mixed Sunday school class deferred too often to his wife, and made sure that Paige knew how far short she fell of the Nolan ideal in parenting, running a household and everything else.

In short Vaughn hated everything and everyone in Arkansas, including her. Maybe most especially her. Those sentiments had grown darker and more vocal over time, especially since Dr. Evangeline had suggested that Vaughn should not be allowed contact with his father at least until he settled into his mother’s household again. That, more than anything else, had enraged Vaughn.

Now Paige no longer knew what the right thing to do was. She only knew that her son resented not being allowed to call his father and that it was just one item on a very lengthy list.

Matthias limped into the living room, his cane thumping pronouncedly on the hardwood floor with every step. The weather had turned sunny and mild, but his arthritis had not noticeably improved. That had nothing to do with the frown on his weathered face, though.

“It ain’t my habit to give advice unasked,” he announced, “but I’m makin’ an exception here and now.”

Resignation weighing heavily on her, Paige crossed her legs, denim whispering against denim. “Go ahead. Say it.”

“It’s time to tie a knot in that boy’s tail.”

“And how would you suggest I do that, Matthias? Take a belt to him?” They both knew that was out of the question.

“Stop letting him walk all over you. Ever since he’s been here you’ve bent over backwards trying to please, but the world just ain’t ordered to his liking. We know who he’s got to thank for that, even if he don’t. Maybe it’s time he was told.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s wise to run down his father to him. That’s Nolan’s game, and it’s bound to backfire. It’s bad enough that Vaughn’s life has been turned completely upside down without me trying to turn him against his dad.”

“He can be glad it ain’t up to me,” Matthias mumbled, heading back into the kitchen where she had a pot of stew bubbling on the stove and corn bread baking in a cast-iron skillet. “I’d show him upside down.”

Paige closed her eyes and fought the bleakness of despair with the only tool she had. Lord, help me do what’s best for my boy, she prayed silently. Show me what needs to be done and give me the strength and patience to do it. Help him understand how much I love him, how much You love him, and thank You for bringing him home to me.

She could only trust that one day Vaughn would be thankful, as well.

“Happy New Year.”

“Hmm?” Grady turned away from the window, a cup of coffee in hand to find his brother standing in their father’s kitchen, grinning.

“What’d you and the old man do last night, party until the wee hours?”

Grady snorted. “Hardly. I might have been the youngest one here, but I went to bed as soon as the ball dropped in New York.”

“Party pooper,” Howard groused, coming into his kitchen with one arm draped around his daughter-in-law’s shoulders. “Look what Katie brought us.”

She slipped free of Howard and carried the enameled pot with its glass lid in sight of Grady before placing it on the range.

“Spaghetti?” Grady noted, surprised.

Katie turned her dentist-perfect smile on him. “You’re not superstitious, are you, Grady?” Katie asked.

“Black-eyed peas are just more traditional.”

She scrunched up her nose. “Never could stand them.”

Grady shrugged, wondering if Paige Ellis would serve black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. He immediately regretted the thought. She should have been out of his head long ago. But at odd moments like this, she suddenly sprang to mind. He couldn’t imagine why.

After the long debriefing he’d had with his brother on the Monday after Thanksgiving, Grady had refrained from asking Dan if he’d heard from her. Other than being pestered more than once by Janet to submit his billing report and expenses from the trip to South Carolina, the case had not been mentioned again except in passing. Grady couldn’t help wondering what the last six weeks had been like for Paige, though.

Had the boy come around? Was he walking the woods that surrounded her old house with that dog at his heels, pretending at some childish fantasy? Did he gaze at his mother with worshipful eyes now and grimace halfheartedly at the way she babied him? Had he made friends with Matthias?

“Where on earth are you?” his father’s voice asked.

Grady realized with a jolt that the conversation had carried on around him. He shook his head, gulped his coffee and said that he needed a good rest in his own bed tonight. He couldn’t for the life of him remember why he’d started sleeping over at his dad’s on New Year’s Eve, anyway. Except, of course, that he never had anywhere else to go, and Howard always claimed to need help with the party he routinely gave. He’d started doing that about the time Grady had gotten divorced.

They were a matched pair, Grady and his father, despite the thirty years between them, both big and square-built with deep, rumbling voices and hands and feet the size of platters. Both alone.

“Do you know what your problem is?” Howard asked, and Grady just barely managed not to roll his eyes.

“Here it comes,” he groaned.

He didn’t really resent his father’s lectures. His father’s concern for him was a good thing. They had never discussed those difficult early years after his mother’s death when the distance between them had seemed to stretch into infinity. But it was after his divorce, that he’d discovered how firmly his father was in his corner.

“Your problem,” Harold said, ignoring Grady’s irreverence, “is that you spend too much time alone.”

“And you don’t?”

“That’s different.”

“I’ve been alone four years, Dad. How about you? More like thirty-four, isn’t it?”

“Thirty-three. But I’ve had my family. When are you going to start one, Grady?”

“As soon as some woman throws a rope around him and drags him back to the altar,” Katie said drolly.

“That’s pretty much what the last one did,” Dan noted.

“I blame her for this,” Howard announced gruffly.

“You blame Robin for everything,” Grady pointed out. “It’s not her fault that I’m no good with women.”

“She certainly didn’t help things,” Howard grumbled.

“Listen,” Dan said in an obvious effort to change the subject, “we’re throwing a football party in a few weeks. I want you both to put it on your calendars.”

Howard shook his head. “Don’t count on me, son. I’ve already got plans.”

Dan raised his eyebrows at Grady. “Well, can I count on you, then?”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Dan sent a significant look at his wife, who smiled and said, “I have a couple friends coming who I’d like to introduce you to.”

Single, female friends, no doubt. Grady turned back to the window that looked out over the deserted golf course, hiding his grimace.

His family loved him. They tried to be supportive, and he tried to be appreciative, but he was getting real tired of being everybody’s favorite charity case.

It was time he got a life.

He wondered if Paige Ellis was as much of a sports fan as she’d claimed.

“He did not! You take that back!”

Paige heard the angst in her son’s voice even before she recognized the anger and resentment. She’d run out to find a grocery store open on New Year’s Day and grab cans of the black-eyed peas Vaughn had insisted they were supposed to eat for dinner. Vaughn and Matthias were arguing when she returned to the house. Dropping the bag with the cans on the end of the counter just inside the kitchen door, she glared at the pair of them, Matthias in particular.

“What’s going on?”

Vaughn’s face set in mutinous lines, while Matthias’s eyes clouded. “I was just pointing out a few facts of life to this youngun,” the old man grumbled.

“My dad did not kidnap me!” Vaughn declared heatedly.

Paige sent Matthias a quelling glance. “I don’t see anything to be gained by discussing this subject.” She turned to the counter and began removing the cans from the bag, saying brightly, “I got the peas. They may not be the brand you like, but I was lucky to find any at all. I didn’t realize how many people abide by that old custom.”

“I’ll tell you what’s to be gained,” Matthias said doggedly. “The truth. Any other woman would’ve put that man away for what he’d done.”

“Matthias, stop it,” Paige ordered, whirling around, but it was already too late. Vaughn was already screaming at her.

“It’s all your fault, anyway! He wouldn’t have had to take me if you hadn’t kept us apart!”

Paige fell back against the counter. “What are you saying?”

“He didn’t have any choice but to take me! You kept him away ’cause he wouldn’t give you money! That’s why he wasn’t around for so long! You wouldn’t let him be a dad! And now you’re doing it again!”

Paige gasped. After the divorce she’d gone out of her way to include Nolan in Vaughn’s life. She’d begged him to come around. He’d complained that her demands on his time were unreasonable, saying that Vaughn wasn’t old enough to miss him. He’d even threatened to tell Vaughn that he wasn’t his father if she didn’t give him some space.

Only after she’d proved his paternity and won back the right to child support had he taken any real interest in his son, and only then to punish her. She hadn’t cared, so long as Vaughn was happy. Now to hear her son say that she’d kept Nolan from being a dad to him was almost unbelievable to her.

She gulped and stammered, “W-we always have ch-choices.”

“I don’t!” he yelled. “’Cause if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be here!” With that he tore from the room, rocking her sideways as he shoved past her.

“Now look what you’ve done!” she cried at Matthias, but the old man shook his head sorrowfully.

“Not me, girl. That Nolan’s the one who done this, and you aren’t helping that boy by not telling him the truth.”

Paige closed her eyes and put a hand to her head. “Even if he could hear and believe the truth, Matthias, I couldn’t tell him. You just don’t understand the harm it does a child when his parents defame each other.”

“His father don’t have no problem defaming you.”

“All the more reason for me to take the high road.”

“Just be careful you ain’t setting yourself up for a bad fall,” Matthias warned. “If you don’t make that boy understand that his daddy’s a lying, scheming—”

“Stop,” Paige interrupted firmly. “Just stop. Don’t you see? No one can make a child ‘understand’ such a thing.” She shook her head. “I don’t even want him to know it, Matthias. I want him to believe that his father loves him as much as I do. I want my son to grow up believing that both of his parents treasure him beyond anything in this world.”

“Wanting a thing don’t make it so,” Matthias insisted. “You’re setting yourself up for disappointment, if you ask me.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she hadn’t asked him, but she swallowed the impulse as he limped out of the room. Matthias only wanted what was best for her, but she had to think of what was best for Vaughn.

Grady leaned against the window ledge behind his brother’s desk and tried not to stare at her. He’d been surprised when Dan had called and asked Grady to join him and Paige Ellis in his office. His dealings with Paige Ellis should have been at an end. Even if legal assistance was required, her case was Dan’s responsibility, not his. Yet, he’d answered his brother’s summons without complaint, interrupting an important telephone conversation in the process.

Her hair was a little longer, he noted, as if she hadn’t found time to get to the stylist recently. Shadows rimmed her exotic sea-green eyes. For a moment he thought she’d taken to wearing smudged eyeliner; then he’d realized that she was tired, so tired that even the tiny smile she’d found for him had seemed to require great effort on her part.

“Anyway,” she said, glancing at Grady and then at her hands. “I just thought I should run it by you before I made a firm decision.”

Dan cast a veiled look at Grady, who knew instantly what he was thinking. The safety issue loomed large in both their minds.

“The contact would be limited to the telephone, I take it?” Dan asked.

She nodded. “Since you made it impossible for Nolan to return to Arkansas without risking prosecution, it has to be.”

At least she’d acquiesced to that much, Grady told himself. Dan shot him a helpless look, and Grady cleared his throat, prepared to be the bad guy. “That was my doing, and I thought letting Vaughn call his dad was a lousy idea from the beginning.”

“I know you did,” she said softly. “My former counselor agrees with you.”

“But the new counselor does not?” Dan surmised.

Paige sucked in a deep breath, her chest rising beneath the lapels of her brown velvet jacket and the plain front of the simple plaid sheath dress under it. “That’s right. He feels Vaughn will benefit from regular, unhindered contact with his father.”

“But the old counselor apparently thought it was harmful,” Grady pointed out. Paige took it as a bid for clarification.

“She concluded that talking with his father would keep Vaughn from making peace with his new circumstances.”

“Obviously my brother finds merit in her argument,” Dan said. “I think I agree with them, though I have to tell you that this is not a legal issue. There is nothing at this point to legally prevent Nolan from maintaining contact with your son.”

“We could fix that if you want us to, though,” Grady added.

She shook her head. “I’m not here to find a legal impediment. I—I just want to do what’s best for my son.”

If you were sure what that was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, Grady thought. He truly wanted to help her.

“Can I ask you something?” At her nod, he went on. “Why did you switch counselors?”

The slowness of her reply told him that she was choosing her words with great care. “My son relates best to men.”

Dan made a sound somewhere between recognition and conclusion, and Grady knew what he was going to say before he said it. Groaning inwardly, Grady could only listen.

“I’m wondering if a male in this role is the best choice. I mean, we’ve had experience with this issue ourselves. Our dad’s failure to bring a solid female influence into my brother’s life created some difficulties for him, as they both would tell you.”

Grady briefly closed his eyes. “I don’t think Vaughn could have a more solid female influence than his mother, Dan.”

“Right!” Dan waved a hand, swiveling side to side in his chair with what Grady hoped was extreme embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to imply… Actually the situations aren’t that similar. Ours was a male household after our mother died. Grady was only six, so it’s no wonder he never learned how to relate to women.”

Grady groaned aloud this time. “Thanks loads, Dan,” he rumbled.

“I—I probably wouldn’t have, either,” Dan went on lamely, “if not for my wife.”

To Grady’s surprise, Paige Ellis sat up very straight. “Who says Grady doesn’t relate to women?”

Dan chuckled uneasily, as if he thought she was making a bad joke. When he realized that she was serious, both eyebrows shot straight up into his hairline. Paige glanced at Grady and caught him with his mouth hanging open. She flopped back in her chair, huffing with what sounded suspiciously like indignation.

“That’s ridiculous,” she scoffed. “I spent at least eighteen straight hours with your brother, and I assure you he’s perfectly capable of relating as well to women as men.” She nodded decisively here and added, “Better, in fact, than a great many men of my acquaintance.”

Now Dan’s mouth was hanging open. He managed to get it closed, babbling, “Ah. Um, I see. That’s…good.”

Grady grinned. He couldn’t help it. In fact, a chuckle escaped as he came to his feet. But, it was time to bring this discussion to an end before his brother got the wrong idea.

“All right. I think we’re through here.”

“Yes, I really shouldn’t take up any more of your time,” Paige agreed briskly, rising from her chair, “especially since I came in without an appointment.”

“Think nothing of it,” Dan replied graciously, leaning over the desk to offer her his hand.

She shook hands, then allowed Grady to steer her toward the door. He did not dare to so much as glance in his brother’s direction as he moved with her across the room and through the next, which was mercifully empty, Janet being away from her desk.

“It was good of you and your brother to see me on such short notice,” she said as he walked her straight past the receptionist in the outer office and through the door at the glass front of the suite to the bank of elevators beyond.

“You happened to catch us both free,” he lied, pushing the elevator button. The door slid open at once, and the moment for them to part ways had arrived, but he found himself oddly reluctant to do so. Impulsively, he stepped into the elevator with her, an action which required explanation. Belatedly he provided one, saying, “I’m ready for a cup of coffee. Can I buy you one?”

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