Mallory found herself staring into a pair of deeply blue eyes.

A strikingly familiar blue.

She froze. Her lips parted, but no words could emerge, since her mouth had gone bone dry.

He was the one to break the silence, his voice deep and slightly gruff and definitely in keeping with his rough, unshaven jaw and the tousled dark hair on his head that looked in need of a good barber. “You’re Dr Keegan?”

She swallowed. Nodded.

His gaze was sharp. Studying. Almost as if he were memorizing her appearance before he stuck out a bare, long-fingered hand. “I’m Ryan Clay.”

Her hand seemed to rise of its own accord and settle against his for the briefest of moments.

The contact still managed to leave her feeling shaky.

And that shakiness had nothing to do with the words that she knew were going to come out of his mouth, before they actually did.

“I’m here about your daughter.”

Dear Reader,

Every month I receive letters or e-mails from readers asking about various members of the Clay family, or wanting an update on what’s going on at the Double-C Ranch or in Weaver. I have a really large collection from those who’ve wanted to know what’s been going on with Ryan. Where is he? Is he coming back? Is he dead? Is he alive?

As an author it is so rewarding to know that these people have found a place where they’re welcomed and cared about—like members of a family. That’s how they are in my mind, and it’s wonderful to know I’m not alone!

Well, I’m happy to say Ryan is, indeed, quite alive, and never more so than when he encounters the Keegan women, and he discovers that there is existing…and then there is living.

He’s been through a lot, our Ryan. But now he’s back for good. I hope you enjoy the homecoming.

All my best,

Allison Leigh

A Weaver Holiday Homecoming

by

Allison Leigh

www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author

ALLISON LEIGH started early by writing a Halloween play that her grade-school class performed. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.

She has been a finalist for a RITA® Award and a Holt Medallion. But the true highlights of her day as a writer are when she receives word from a reader that they laughed, cried or lost a night of sleep while reading one of her books.

Born in Southern California, Allison has lived in several different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a cosmetologist, a computer programmer and a secretary. She has recently begun writing full-time after spending nearly a decade as an administrative assistant for a busy neighborhood church. She currently makes her home in Arizona with her family. She loves to hear from her readers, who can write to her at PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.

This is for all of you who’ve kept asking for Ryan’s story. Thank you for your patience!

Prologue

“This isn’t an assignment like anything else you’ve ever done. That we’ve ever done.” The silver-haired man watched him steadily from across the small table. “There are even fewer guarantees than usual.”

Around them, the small backwater pub was crowded with people. No one seemed interested in what any of the other patrons were doing. Or discussing. This wasn’t the kind of place where people came to be seen.

It was the kind of place where people came to remain invisible.

Which was why it was a perfect meeting place for Ryan Clay and his boss.

He eyed the older man who’d just outlined the dicey undercover scheme and slowly twisted his glass in the ring of sweat the ice had left on the scarred wooden tabletop. “I can handle it,” he said, since Cole seemed to be waiting for some sort of response.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Cole warned.

Needlessly.

Nothing to do with the agency had ever been easy. It hadn’t been for any of the agents on Hollins-Winword’s very secretive payroll—several of whom came from Ryan’s own family.

And it was family that had grabbed his interest when Coleman Black gave Ryan the rundown. How many families were being destroyed by the trafficking ring he was being assigned to infiltrate?

“I can handle it,” he said again. A little impatiently, because if his boss hadn’t already known that point, he wouldn’t have chosen to offer Ryan the assignment in the first place. Coleman Black was a hard-as-nails man. But he was also practical. He didn’t like losing good agents. They were too hard to come by.

By the time an agent got to the level Ryan held within the organization, assignments weren’t doled out by demand. They were offered. And always with the expectation that it was no sin for the agent to decline.

Mostly, because some agents never made it back.

Ryan easily pushed the thought out of his mind and met his boss’s sharp gaze. “Let’s just get on with it.”

Coleman watched him for a moment longer. Measuring.

Then he nodded. He sat forward. And then their low talk began in earnest.

Chapter One

Five years later.

He couldn’t handle it.

Ryan Clay stared into the black depths of his coffee mug, wishing it were whiskey—except he’d given that up a year ago—and thought about all the ways he could escape.

The simplest way, of course, would be to just disappear. Again.

It had worked before. For a while. The fact that he still felt guilty for letting everyone who loved him think the worst was beside the point. Better for them to have thought he’d perished doing the honorable thing—living up to the Clay family standards—than knowing the truth.

That he’d walked away from a mission without finishing it, and he’d done it with blood on his hands.

But if he really believed that, then why the hell had he come back at all? He could have stayed right where he was…in a corner of the world surrounded by people equally miserable as he.

He hooked his boot heel over the rung on his counter stool and lifted the coffee mug. Grimaced as he swallowed.

“You sure you don’t want a refill?” Tabby Taggart stopped on the other side of the counter, holding the coffee carafe aloft. “You’ve been nursing that cup for an hour now, Ryan. Gotta be cold.”

It was.

Cold and bitter.

Pretty much just like he was.

“No. Thanks,” he tacked on. The last time he’d seen Tabby, she’d been a high school kid. It didn’t seem as if she’d changed much. She was still a kid to him, seeming aeons younger than his thirty-seven, but he knew she was already out of college. Waiting tables at Ruby’s while she tried for some fancy position at an Italian museum.

Nor had Ruby’s Diner changed much in all the years he’d been coming there. Not since his mother had moved them to the small town of Weaver, Wyoming, when he’d been nine.

The chrome-padded stools at the counter were still topped with shining red vinyl. The booths lining the square room were still full of people. The most popular item, though, wasn’t even on the menu.

Gossip.

He could just imagine what the wagging tongues would end up making over his presence here in the diner. Alone. Again.

Like he’d been at Colbys bar the night before. And the night before that.

They could add it to the oddity of him staying at the Sleep Tite motel since he’d come back to town, instead of staying with his folks or any one of his plentiful relatives.

He pressed a fingertip to the pain throbbing behind his right eyebrow. Closing his eyes for a minute, he tried to block out the clatter of flatware against sturdy white crockery, the tinny Christmas carols and the conversations—mostly seeming to focus on what so-and-so was doing or the town’s upcoming Holiday Festival. There’d been a time when he could turn off every distraction and focus only on a single thought, a single quest, a single goal.

“Hey there, Chloe.” He heard Tabby’s cheerful voice and opened his eyes again to stare into his black coffee. He was vaguely aware of the dark-haired little girl who’d come up to the counter to stand a few feet away from him. She’d been sitting in the corner booth with a small-framed old woman with white sausage-curls covering her head.

“Grammy and I want to take Mom a piece of pie,” the kid was saying. “That one.” She pointed a slender finger at the glass-enclosed pie case that was draped with silver-and-red garland, but Ryan could feel the sideways glance the kid gave him as Tabby assured the child that she’d wrap up the slice, and began pulling the pie out of the case.

“She don’t like pumpkin,” the kid told Ryan as if he had indicated some interest. “It’s a surprise.”

He managed to twist his lips into a smile that he hoped wouldn’t scare her.

She was cute—dressed in purple from head to toe with the exception of her lime-green snow boots—and he’d had enough in his lifetime of scared little girls.

“If she likes pecan pie, she’d probably like the cinnamon rolls here, too.” From the corner of his eye he caught the glance Tabby gave him. She looked only slightly less surprised at his comment than he felt. “They’re loaded with pecans.”

“Dr. Keegan’s already discovered them,” Tabby offered, sliding a small pink box across the counter toward the little girl, along with an easy smile. “I think she might like them almost as much as you.”

The little girl—Chloe—turned her bright eyes toward Ryan again. The edge of her small, white teeth nibbled at her pink lower lip as she looked at the lone mug sitting in front of him. “Arntcha hungry? There’s still some left.” She pointed at the remaining pie that Tabby was putting back into the case.

It’s what he got for giving an opening. Pint-size conversation. “No.” He tried softening the terse word with a smile of sorts and probably failed miserably, judging by the way the kid started chewing her lip again.

“So the pie is a surprise for your mom?” Tabby filled the silence before it could turn awkward and the girl nodded as she pulled a wad of crumpled cash and a few coins out of the front pocket of her purple jeans.

“Uh-huh.” This time when the tip of Chloe’s tongue appeared between her lips, it was in concentration as she smoothed the dollar bills and carefully counted out the change. “She hadda work even on a Saturday. So Grammy and I were Christmas shopping.”

Tabby leaned her arms on the counter, smiling conspiratorially. “Where’d you go?”

“All over.” The kid bounced up and down on the heels of her snow boots. “But the bestest place was the thrift store in Braden. I got Mom’s present there and still had allowance left.” She slanted Ryan a look. “I gotta earn it dusting,” she confided. “I saved every week.” Chloe’s thin shoulders went up and down in a huge sigh. “It wasn’t ’nuff, though. Not to get the video game I wanted, too. It’s the new Purple Princess. Right there at the thrift store. It was only twenty dollars.” Her wide eyes still held amazement. “It’s over fifty at the regular store.”

“Christmas is in three weeks,” Ryan couldn’t help pointing out. “Put it on your letter to Santa.” He figured she was still young enough to believe in that particular Christmas miracle.

“My birthday’s before Christmas.” She held up seven fingers, managing not to drop the cash wadded in her palm in the process. “I’ll be seven. But Mom says it’s still too ’spensive. I’m going to have a birthday party, though. With seven of my new friends. I never had a birthday party before.”

“Chloe, dear.” The white-haired woman from the corner booth was waiting near the door. “You’ve visited long enough and your mama’s probably waiting by now. Come on now.”

“Comin’ Grammy.” Chloe fumbled with the cash, pushing it into her pocket before scooping up the pie box. “Thanks, Tabby.” She shot Ryan a look. “Nicet’ meet you, mister.” She turned on her toes with a squeak of her rubbery boots. “Looks like you dropped something,” she added in a rush before she joined her grandmother at the door and scooted out into the afternoon.

Ryan frowned a little, watching the elderly woman and the child for a moment before turning back to his cold coffee. But the clatter of crockery and impossibly cheerful Christmas music suddenly felt like a fine edge cutting into his brain and he dropped a bill on the counter beside it and slid off the stool. “See you later, Tab.”

Already busy pouring coffee for another customer, she lifted her free hand in a wave.

He didn’t notice the dollar bill by his boot on the floor until he hooked his jacket off the empty stool beside his and turned toward the door.

He stared at it for a moment. He knew he hadn’t dropped it. The smallest bills in his pocket were twenties.

The brown-haired, blue-eyed girl had dropped it. Claimed it to be his.

He ran his hand down his jaw, absently aware of the rasp of whiskers. Shaving hadn’t been high on his list lately.

He looked bad enough that an innocent kid figured he needed a handout and was cagey enough to mask the charity out of her hard-earned dusting money.

He swallowed an oath and leaned over to swipe up the dollar in his fist, then turned back to the counter. “Tabby. The little girl. Chloe. What do you know about her?”

Tabby shrugged and wiped her hands on a damp towel. “Her mom is Mallory Keegan. The O.B. who’s filling in over at Doc Yarnell’s practice while he’s on sabbatical. The office is over on Sycamore,” she added when he gave her a blank look.

The street he knew. The name of the doctor, he didn’t. Ryan could remember a time when his mother was the only doctor in the area. Now she ran the Weaver hospital, and the town had enough obstetrical needs to support a doctor who could go on sabbatical.

Some things did change.

“Thanks.” He shrugged into his jacket and left.

Outside, the afternoon was cold, the sky overhead heavy with gray clouds. Looking one way, he could see the sheriff’s office. For more years than Ryan could remember, his father had been the sheriff. He’d retired several years ago—back when Ryan had been MIA—but he couldn’t look at the brick building now, without thinking about his dad.

Both of Ryan’s parents had been plainly happy when he’d returned from the dead. As had the rest of the family. To them, it had been a miracle.

Ryan, though, still felt dead.

No miracle.

No honor.

He pulled out a cigarette, lighting it as he turned the opposite direction from that stalwart brick building of law and order and flipped up his collar. Sycamore was just two streets down from Main, but it was a long street—and God only knew where the doctor’s office was. It could be close—here in the original, older part of Weaver. Or it could be out in the newer part of town where a crop of apartment buildings had sprung up during the years of his absence, along with a giant Shop-World and a gaggle of other stores.

Some things hadn’t changed in Weaver. And some things had. But Ryan was willing to bet that he’d be able to find Chloe Keegan by the time the afternoon was out.

He’d spent three years trying—and too often failing—to save girls not all that much older than Chloe from being sold off to the highest bidder. The last thing his conscience needed right now was the additional weight of some little kid with a soft heart.

“Mom!”

Mallory Keegan lifted her head at the hollered greeting, only to smack it smartly against the inside frame of the cabinet she was presently tucked halfway inside. She muttered an oath even as the wrench slid out of her hand, clanging loudly against the water pipe.

The pipe that she had just managed to get to stop leaking.

So much for that.

She swiped her hand over the fine mist of water that spurted anew from the pipes, spraying her right in the face and backed out of the cupboard.

“Upstairs,” she yelled back down to her daughter as she grabbed the bath towel off the rack on the wall behind her. She dashed it down her face and then tossed it over the thin but copious spray.

She collected Pap smears and delivered babies.

She did not fix plumbing of this sort at all.

Which meant she’d have to add a plumber’s repair bill to the budget that month. A budget that was already tight, particularly with Chloe’s birthday and Christmas looming.

She could hear her daughter’s boots clomping rapidly up the stairs but the long day—an unexpected cesarean for a third-time mom and a miscarriage for a first-timer—had her tiredly sitting back on her heels and just waiting.

It didn’t take long.

Chloe careened around the corner of the bathroom, a small pink bakery box clutched against the midriff of her purple sweatshirt. Her boots slid a little, squeaking against the hardwood floor that still bore the dampness that Mallory hadn’t succeeded in wiping away.

The sight of her daughter’s face, wreathed in smiles, was enough to counter her exhaustion, though, and she opened her arms just in time to stop Chloe’s momentum in a hug. The feel of her daughter’s strong, sturdy little body was enough to melt her frustration.

The bakery box knocked against Mallory’s head as Chloe’s arms wound around her neck. “Didja have any babies today?”

Long used to Chloe’s bursts of speech, Mallory laughed a little. “I delivered a baby today,” she said, and caught the box that was in danger of being crushed altogether. “What’s this?”

Chloe straightened. “Pie.” She stuck her head under the sink. “Is it fixed?”

“Don’t move the—” Mallory could tell the moment Chloe’s curiosity prompted her to move the towel from the pipe, because she squeaked and jumped back out of the indoor sprinkler “—towel,” she finished.

Her daughter wasn’t a large fan of water in her face. She tolerated her baths out of necessity, but anything more—swimming, splashing in a sprinkler on a hot, summer day—was mostly out of the question.

But Mallory hadn’t temporarily uprooted her family from New York to settle in this small Wyoming town for the purpose of getting Chloe over her fear of water.

Her reasoning had been much more involved.

“Here.” She pushed aside the disquiet that was all too willing to coil anxiously in her stomach these days, and handed Chloe another towel off the towel rack.

She dropped the wet towel back over the leaking pipe and pushed to her feet. “It’s going to take a person who actually knows what they’re doing to fix it, I’m afraid.”

She steered Chloe out of the bathroom toward the stairs and peeked into the bakery box at the enormous pecan-laden wedge of pie. Her mouth watered. Between the hospital and the leaking pipe, she hadn’t managed to find time for a decent meal. “Looks delicious.” She leaned down and kissed the top of Chloe’s nut-brown hair, spotting her grandmother when they reached the foot of the stairs and turned to the kitchen. “Thank you,” she told them both.

“Thank her.” After less than two decades in the United States, Kathleen Keegan’s voice still held plenty of her native Ireland as she waved at Chloe. “She paid for it out of her allowance.”

Mallory set the pie on the narrow breakfast bar and found a fork in the drawer. “Did you have fun shopping before you stopped for lunch?” Kathleen was notorious for finding bargains in the oddest of places.

She looked up as she sank the fork into the rich dessert and caught the secretive glance Chloe and Kathleen shared. “All right, you two. What’d you buy?”

“Nothing.” Chloe’s voice was innocent, but her eyebrows were riding an inch above normal, hiding beneath the tousled bangs covering her forehead. “I found a Purple Princess game, though. The new one. It was only twenty dollars!”

Mallory hid a smile and tried not to groan in pleasure as she swallowed the forkful of gooey pecan. Chloe adored Purple Princess video games and could endlessly wax eloquent about the reasons why she just “had-had-had” to have each new one when they came out. And usually, the games came at a much higher price tag. “Why didn’t you buy it, then? I know you had more than twenty dollars in your wallet when you and Grammy started out this morning.” And Mallory could have returned the unopened game that she’d already purchased and hidden high in the closet.

Chloe’s gaze darted to her grandmother again. Her round cheeks turned rosy. “I gotta go to the bathroom,” she suddenly announced, and darted out of the kitchen.

Mallory eyed Kathleen. “Well?”

“Aye, don’t be looking at me, child.” Kathleen waved her hand in a shooing motion. “I’m not going to blab on her secrets.”

Mallory’s smile broke loose. “Christmas shopping, perhaps?”

“I’m going to have to hire a plumber,” Mallory said, returning to the most pressing issue when Kathleen merely smiled.

“Call your nice Dr. Clay and ask her to recommend someone.”

Mallory gnawed the inside of her lip. Prevailing on Rebecca Clay was something she wanted to avoid and not merely because Mallory could guess who the woman would recommend for the job. It was because of the other woman that they were in Weaver at all.

She could hear Chloe’s footsteps from overhead.

Well, it wasn’t precisely Rebecca Clay that was the reason Mallory and her crew had come to Weaver six weeks ago. Rebecca had just facilitated it.

The real reason was Chloe.

The anxiety inside Mallory swamped her hunger, and she covered the remainder of the pie and rinsed her fork at the sink. “I’ll find someone,” she murmured as she headed to her office at the back of the house. But the squawking sound of the ancient doorbell had her changing course.

She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, which were damp from the water leak, and yanked open the heavy door without any of the caution she would have normally used in her apartment building back in New York.

The tall, broad-shouldered man standing there on the porch staring at the ground raised his head as the door swung open, and she found herself looking into a pair of deeply blue eyes.

A strikingly familiar blue.

She froze. Her lips parted, but no words could emerge, since her mouth had gone bone-dry. No amount of mental preparations had been enough, she realized. Meeting the man in person had been her plan. Her goal. Yet faced with him now, she felt unprepared. Not at all ready.

His heavy, dark eyebrows quirked together for a moment, but he was still the one to break the silence, his voice deep and slightly gruff and definitely in keeping with his rough, unshaven jaw and the tousled, dark hair on his head that looked in need of a good barber. “You’re Dr. Keegan?”

She swallowed. Nodded.

His gaze was sharp. Studying. Almost as if he were memorizing her appearance before he stuck out a bare, long-fingered hand. “I’m Ryan Clay,” he introduced with spare brevity.

Her hand seemed to lift of its own accord and settle against his square palm for the briefest of moments.

The contact still managed to leave her feeling shaky.

And that shakiness had nothing to do with the words that she knew were going to come out of his mouth, before they actually did.

“I’m here about your daughter.”

Chapter Two

It was almost like looking at a ghost, Ryan thought, staring at the woman. Dr. Keegan.

She was staring back at him, her eyes wide. They were distinct, those eyes. A honey-brown that was oddly translucent.

And oddly familiar, though he knew for a fact that he’d never met her before.

“What about my daughter?” Her smooth voice had a faint lilt to it. And though it might have held suspicion, given the way he was showing up on her doorstep like this, it didn’t seem to.

But it held something. Something he couldn’t quite identify.

He realized she was hugging her arms across her chest; the white cable-knit sweater she wore not doing enough to hold the cold air at bay. “I want to return this.” He held out the dollar bill that Chloe had left. “And give her this.” He pulled an envelope out of his coat pocket.

The doctor moistened her lips, drawing attention that didn’t need to be drawn considering he’d already taken note of their shape. Their soft fullness. The fact that they were bare, pale pink.

The envelope crinkled softly between his fingers.

God. She was so damn familiar—

“Mom! Grammy said to tell you the water in the bathroom’s getting worse.” Chloe suddenly appeared next to her mother, sliding between the doctor’s slender body and the door. Her smile widened when she spotted him. “Hi. What are you doing here?”

Her mom’s hand slid over the girl’s shoulder, closing protectively across her chest.

He didn’t blame the woman. Kids needed protection in this world. Even in little towns like Weaver, Wyoming.

He crouched down until he was more on a level with the kid and handed her the dollar bill. “This is yours. I really didn’t need it as much as you thought.”

She didn’t take it, though her spiky black lashes lowered and her eyes shied away guiltily. “No, it’s not.”

“Chloe? What’s going on?”

Ryan looked up at the doctor. It had been easy enough to track them down to this old house in this old neighborhood. Once he’d found the office on Sycamore, all he’d had to do was visit a few of the neighboring businesses to ask about the new doctor in town, and tongues had started wagging.

Before long, he’d learned all about the house she’d rented about six weeks ago near the town park; the fact that she was friendly but not too; that her daughter was attending school and the grandmother helped watch the girl.

None of the talkative souls he’d run into had mentioned a man in the mix.

“Your daughter has a generous heart, Dr. Keegan.”

She tucked a wave of streaky brown hair behind her ear. “Mallory,” she said faintly. “And, yes. She does. But I’m afraid I don’t understand what this is about.”

“Here.” Since the kid wouldn’t take the dollar, he stuffed it into the mom’s hand instead and handed the kid the envelope, which she tore into eagerly as he rose to face the mom again. Though that was a relative term, since Mallory Keegan stood damn near a foot shorter than he did. “Your daughter and I ran into each other at Ruby’s. She thought I needed a…loan,” he settled on.

“Look, Mom!” Chloe had pulled out the gift certificate from the envelope and was waving it between them. “It’s for the new Purple Princess game! That’s what it says, right? F—r—e—e,” she spelled out.

Mallory’s brows drew together and she tugged the vivid, purple card he’d picked up at CeeVid—his uncle’s computer gaming company—out of her daughter’s grasp, looking from Ryan’s face to it. “Yes, that’s what it says.” She focused on Ryan again. Uncertainty clouded her gaze as if she were waging some internal debate.

He wasn’t sure who was on the winning side, though, when she took a step back, leaning against the open door to push it wider. Her arm was still around Chloe, the dollar crumpled between her fingers. “Maybe you’d better come in.”

He could see past them both into the warmth of the house.

He’d returned the buck. Given the kid a gift just because it was easily convenient for him, thanks to family connections, and it was time to go.

He shifted sideways a little and stepped past her, into the house.

He immediately spotted the white-haired woman from the diner, coming down the stairs. Her arms were full of bath towels. Sopping wet, judging by the water dripping off them.

Mallory pushed back her hair again and gave him an awkward smile. “Have a seat.” She waved in the general direction of a living room opening off the hallway where they stood. “Chloe, sit with Mr. Clay and introduce your grandmother. I’ll be back in a moment.”

She hurried over to the elderly woman and took the towels. Water squished out of them even more during the exchange, and she left a wet trail behind her as she disappeared down the hall.

Realizing he was watching the sway of her shapely jean-clad rear, he nearly jumped out of his skin when a small, slightly damp hand slid into his.

“Come on.” Chloe tugged him toward one of the sleek beige couches that nearly consumed the living room, their style screaming modern against the aged brick of the fireplace that they flanked. “Grammy, this is Mr. Clay,” the little girl called over her shoulder as they went. “Mr. Clay, this is Grammy.”

He caught the amused glint in the woman’s eyes as she followed them. “Kathleen Keegan,” the lady elaborated in a distinct brogue. “Can I take your coat?”

The hairs at the nape of his neck prickled. He suddenly felt surrounded by women.

Ordinarily, that wasn’t exactly a situation to cause him undue strain. But something about the Keegan women—all three of them—made him distinctly edgy.

He should have just let the kid give up her dollar. She’d have felt good about donating to a charity case and he wouldn’t be standing there wondering what the hell he was doing.

But as soon as the wish crossed his thoughts, what was left of his conscience smacked him hard.

So instead of keeping the coat exactly where it was—on and ready for him to make a quick exit—he shrugged out of the scarred leather and handed it over to the old woman, who beamed at him as if he were four and had just correctly recited the alphabet.

“Sit. Sit.” She waited until he’d perched on the awful couch. “What can I get you to warm yourself?”

He caught sight of Mallory crossing the hallway again and squelched the wholly inappropriate answer he could have given. “Nothing, ma’am. I’m fine, thank you.”

He could see the argument forming in her eyes even before he finished speaking, and pushed to his feet. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be nosy, but do you need help?”

He scooted around Kathleen to intercept Mallory. She was carrying a bucket and a mop, with another towel, dry this time, tossed over her shoulder. “Do you have a water leak or something?” Chloe had said something about water getting worse—he hadn’t paid any attention because he’d been too busy cataloguing her mother’s soft lips, and his unwelcome and very physical reaction to her appeal.

Mallory shook her head. “No worries. Everything’s fine.”

It wasn’t exactly an answer and he gave a pointed look at the items in her hands and her cheeks went pinker than her lips.

“Just some cleanup,” she added hurriedly, and fairly dashed around him to pound up the stairs. “Gram, fix him some of your famous hot chocolate,” she called over her shoulder.

“It’s a fine mix,” Kathleen said, behind him. “I add a little kick when it’s a strapping young man like yourself drinking it.”

He didn’t want hot chocolate. Even if it were spiked. He didn’t want to be here in this house that smelled like lemon furniture polish and lilacs. He didn’t want to be reminded of things that were good and clean and worthy.

He wanted to be away from Weaver, away from everything that he’d once known and cared about.

He closed his hand over the newel post at the base of the staircase and looked back at Kathleen. “How bad’s the leak?”

She was still holding his coat, folded at her waist. “Pretty bad,” she said. Her eyes—a color she’d passed on to Mallory—twinkled a little. “My granddaughter won’t admit it, but I’m afraid she might be making it worse.”

“Hold the kick,” he told Kathleen.

“Can I have some hot chocolate, too, Grammy?” Chloe piped as he headed up the stairs.

Finding the bathroom wasn’t difficult. All he had to do was follow the trail of wet footprints down the hardwood hall.

She was on her hands and knees, derriere to the door, furiously wielding the fresh towel over the floor. The source of the problem was obvious thanks to the opened cabinet that had been emptied of everything except a pitiful collection of wrenches and a bucket that was near to full beneath the steady trickle of water coming from one of the pipes.

“Galvanized pipe,” he said, and her head jerked around to peer at him over her shoulder.

He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb and forced himself to look at the plumbing and not the very feminine shape before him.

He mostly failed, though.

“Old houses like this often still have galvanized instead of copper or PVC,” he continued. “Unfortunately, it corrodes from the inside out and you sometimes don’t even know you’ve got a problem until—” he waved his hand toward the cabinet and sink “—Niagara Falls.”

Her lips compressed and she turned back to drying the floor. “I’ve tightened again and again. It just won’t stop.”

He crouched down next to her, realizing too late just how close that would put them. “You need a repair clamp.”

She twisted around until she was sitting on her rear. Her shoulder brushed his. “A repair clamp?”

She had a tiny mole above her lip.

He shifted slightly. Put a few inches between them.

He didn’t need hot chocolate.

He needed a cold shower.

“Tightens around the pipe with a rubber gasket,” he said abruptly.

She looked back at the pipe. Her waving hair slid over her shoulder. Brushed her cheek. “And it stops the leak?”

“Yeah.” He shoved to his feet, edging back out of the doorway. Into the hall. Where breathing in didn’t mean breathing in the scent of her. “Hardware store’ll have them. Doesn’t solve the corrosion, though. You’ll want a plumber to look into that soon or you might end up with a few more waterfalls before you’re through.”

She tossed the towel over the leak, pulled the large bucket out to empty into the bathtub, replaced it beneath the leak again and spread the towel out on top of the sink to dry. “I should have rented an apartment in that complex on the other side of town,” she muttered, turning to face him. She dusted her hands down her thighs. “I’m used to apartments. I like apartments. They come with building superintendents to deal with all of this sort of stuff.”

“Then why choose this old place?” She’d have been across town, instead of practically around the block from the Sleep Tite, if she’d have gone the apartment route. “I grew up in this town. The houses in this neighborhood were old when I was a kid.”

She tilted her head back a little, looking up at the ceiling. “Because I’m a sucker for my family. And both Chloe and Gram loved it on sight. Gram because of the enamel doorknobs and crystal chandelier and Chloe because of the park down the street.” She sighed a little and looked back at him. “It seemed the least I could do since it was my decision to uproot them from New York.” Her eyes narrowed a little. “I’m sorry. You’re not interested in all that. Why did Chloe give you a dollar?”

Like it or not—and he pretty much was squarely in the not camp—he was interested in “all that.”

Maybe because there was that nagging familiarity about her. Or maybe it was just because every time he looked at her, his blood stirred in a way that it hadn’t in a very long time. Or maybe it was because his own existence was so freaking pathetic that he was dreaming up excuses to prove otherwise.

He shoved his hands into his pockets. Above her head, he could see his reflection in the ancient mirror above the sink. Lines around his eyes. More gray in his unkempt hair than had been there a year ago. A jaw that hadn’t seen a razor in too many days.

“She didn’t so much as give it to me as pretend it was mine,” he said. “She seemed to think I was more in need of her dusting money than she was.” He couldn’t think of an earthly reason why he was telling her the details. Knowing he’d looked derelict enough to elicit pity from her daughter wasn’t exactly something for him to feel proud of.

She was looking at him again. Her amber-colored eyes measured. “Mr. Clay—Ryan—there’s something about Chloe you need to know.”

He knew enough. She had a tender little heart that he hoped she never had reason to toughen. But, of course, she was only six years old. Life would add calluses sooner or later. “A dollar’s not much, I know—”

“It is to her.” Mallory moistened her lips again. “And it was very kind of you to return it. I already put it back in her piggy bank. The gift certificate wasn’t necessary, though.”

He shrugged it off. “She talked about the game at the diner. My uncle owns CeeVid.”

She looked blank.

“The company that produces the video game.”

“That’s here?” Her eyebrows shot up. “In Weaver?”

“You really haven’t been here long at all, have you?” She couldn’t have been if she didn’t know about the company. Aside from the hospital, it was basically the major employer in the area that, until Tristan established it, had been more traditionally comprised of primarily ranchers and farmers.

“We still have boxes to unpack in the bedrooms,” she admitted. “But still, regardless of your family connection, it’s a much too valuable gift for her. And I don’t want her thinking that a person should be rewarded like that for trying to do a good deed.”

No good deed goes unpunished, he thought cynically. “She’d have bought it herself at some store in Braden if she’d had enough money left from whatever it was she bought you.”

Her lips twisted a little. “All right.” Her voice lowered. “If you must know, I’ve already gotten her the game for her birthday.”

“Then let her use the gift certificate on something else from CeeVid. If you want to take her over to them—you can’t miss it. It’s the multistory building out near the highway if you were heading to Braden. Anyway, she can shop for something on their Web site if you don’t want to go to the store there. Consider it a birthday present if you have to, because I’m not taking it back.”

She sighed hugely. “For crying in the sink,” she muttered.

At the phrase, something inside Ryan’s head clicked into place.

“You do want your way, don’t you,” Mallory was still muttering as she slipped past him into the hall.

“Cassie,” he realized aloud. “That’s who you remind me of. Cassie Keegan. Hell. You’re related to her, aren’t you? No wonder you seemed familiar.”

Mallory went still at his words.

She’d come to Weaver for the express purpose of meeting Ryan Clay. She’d continually debated the decision until she’d convinced herself she was doing the right thing.

So why was she practically shaking in her boots now?

She’d never expected to meet him and feel anything…well…like what she was feeling.

The wrinkle in his forehead that had been there every time he looked at her was gone. “We worked together for a while. She didn’t talk much about her family, though.”

Ryan couldn’t know that he’d just confirmed another piece of the puzzle that had been her sister’s life. “Cassie was my sister.”

The wrinkle returned. In spades. “Was?”

She hesitated. The sound of the leaking water dripping into the bucket under the sink seemed loud. From downstairs, she could hear her grandmother and Chloe talking in the kitchen, along with the clatter of pots and the squeak of Kathleen’s sturdy shoes on the creaking hardwood floor.

She also could hear in her head Ryan’s mother’s voice. And the pleas as well as the caution when it came to her son’s state of mind. Rebecca Clay was desperate to help her son and believed that Mallory could help him find his path again. Rebecca had also gone to great lengths to assure Mallory that no matter what, her position as Chloe’s mother would not be threatened in any way.

“Mallory,” Ryan prompted.

She swallowed again. “I didn’t expect this to be so hard,” she admitted, as much to herself as to him. “Cassie…died.”

He frowned. Muttered a soft oath. “On a case?”

“You mean work?” She shook her head, thinking of the strange company that her sister had worked for. And how difficult it had been to glean information from HW Industries about her sister and her coworkers. “No. She died in, um, in childbirth.” Her mouth felt dry as she gave him the barest of explanations. “With Chloe.”

His eyes were already a sharp blue. But his gaze went even sharper. “I thought you were her mother.”

“I am.” She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. “Legally.” Emotionally, too, which was something Mallory truly hadn’t expected when everything she’d planned for her life had taken a ninety-degree turn courtesy of a four-pound, twelve-ounce infant. “But she’s my niece by birth. She…well, Chloe knows Cassie was her birth mother. I’ve never kept that a secret from her.”

“Her birthday is soon.”

“Next Saturday,” she confirmed.

“She’s going to be seven?”

Her throat tightened even more. She nodded silently. Willing him to get to the finish line before she did, but afraid in a way, too, that he would.

“I worked with Cass nearly eight years go.”

“I know.” Her sleeve was beginning to unravel. She shoved the long thread up inside the knit and folded her hands together, only to pull them apart again. “She mentioned it.” Only his first name, though, which had added to her challenge considerably.

He was watching her closely, his face oddly pale. “What else did she mention?”

The muscles in her abdomen were so tight they ached. “She said you…that you worked together once. That you were friends. And that you were a good man.”

But his lips twisted at that. And his eyes were suddenly consumed by a hollowness that was painful to witness. “And did she tell you that we slept together, too?”

Lying was out of the question. “Yes.”

Even beneath the dark, unshaven haze blurring his jaw, she could see a muscle flex there as he absorbed that. “Why, exactly, are you here in Weaver, Dr. Keegan?”

Mallory pulled in a steadying breath. He already knew. She could see it in his face.

But it had been a long haul for Mallory to reach this point. A journey that had taken years and more turns than she could have dreamed of.

She had to say the words.

She looked up at him. Meeting that shocked, hollow gaze with her own. “So that my daughter can meet her father.”

Chapter Three

Even braced as Ryan thought he was, hearing Mallory’s husky words was like taking a blow straight to the solar plexus. “No,” he said flatly. “Can’t be.”

He and Cassie had slept together—what? A handful of times? His brain searched through memories. Sifting. Discarding.

Even less than a handful, he thought.

Twice.

The first time when she’d gotten his tail out of a sling by maintaining his cover that had been about to blow during an identity-theft sting, and the second time a few weeks later after they’d shared a few drinks following a debriefing they’d both attended.

“Obviously, without Cassie, I’ve had to speculate some,” Mallory allowed. “But a test would confirm—”

“No,” he said again. He stretched out his arm. Some portion of his mind recognized that he was backing away from her, as if to keep her and her impossible claim at bay. “I don’t need any tests. I’m not—you don’t want me to be her—” Christ. He couldn’t even say it.

Her eyebrows were pulling together but the only thing he could see in her amber eyes was concern. And—oh, hell. Compassion.

He didn’t want it. Didn’t deserve it. “I’ve got to go.” He turned on his heel and was halfway down the stairs before she could react.

“Ryan, wait. I’m not expecting anything. But please stay.” Her shoes sounded on the stairs behind him. “Let’s at least discuss it.”

He passed Kathleen, who was holding a round tray filled with mugs, and Chloe, who was carrying a plate of Christmas-tree-green frosted cookies. He took in the details as he reached the door, even though their faces were almost a blur.

A second later he was outside. On the porch. Down the snow-covered walkway that bore dozens of footprints heading both to and from the house. This time, his were spaced more widely apart.

He knew he’d left his coat inside but he didn’t hesitate. Just yanked open the squeaking door of the pickup truck and twisted the key that he’d left in the ignition. He gunned the engine and shot down the narrow street.

Yeah, he was running.

So what?

If the women in that house knew what he was—who he was—they’d thank him for it.

With only a bare regard for the stop sign at the corner, he turned at the end of the street. The Sleep Tite parking lot was half-full when he passed it. The parking lot lights that were draped with metal Christmas tree figures were just flicking on to glow against the lengthening afternoon.

He had no destination in mind, other than away, but when he passed the hardware store, an oath blistered his tongue and he swung the truck around and parked it.

The Christmas shoppers were out in force. Even the aisles of the hardware store were crowded when he went inside. It was either the expression on his face or the purpose in his stride that fortunately kept the more familiar faces from trying to stop him to shoot the breeze. He found the repair clamps, bought a couple and headed back out to his truck.

“Ryan!”

He jerked to a stop, recognizing his father’s voice even before he turned to see Sawyer Clay walking along the sidewalk, Ryan’s mother on his arm.

Another downside of small-town living.

Running into people when you weren’t prepared, every time you turned around.

“Dad. Mom,” he greeted when they reached him.

“Where’s your coat?” his mother asked, after she’d tugged his head down to plant a kiss on his cheek.

He had no intention of explaining that one, so he just held up the small plain brown paper sack from the hardware store. “Was just running in and out.” It wasn’t a lie, so meeting his gray-haired father’s gaze wasn’t entirely impossible. “What are you two doing in town?”

“What everyone else in town is doing,” Sawyer drawled. “Taking their wives shopping. It’s either Christmas presents or a dress for that shindig in a few weeks.”

Rebecca made a face at him and batted his arm with her leather-gloved hand. “You said you wanted to come with me.”

“Only to keep your spending in check.” But there was a smile in his voice and an amused tick at the corner of his lips that belied his words. “Haven’t seen you for a few days, son. How are things out at J.D.’s?”

J. D. Clay was his cousin whom he’d been helping out. Or maybe he should say that she was helping him out, by giving him something productive to fill the endless days. She’d moved back to Weaver a few months earlier and started up her own horse-boarding operation, and rather than stare endlessly at the walls of his motel room every day, he’d offered his assistance. So far, he’d begun repainting her old barn, fed and groomed horses and shoveled a mountain of horse manure out of their stalls. Tasks that were a million miles away from the career he’d left behind.

“Between Jake and his boys and Latitude’s recovery, I’ve hardly seen her,” he admitted. Latitude was an injured Thoroughbred that J.D.’s brand-new fiancé, Jake Forrest, had owned until he’d signed over ownership to her barely a week ago.

“Her shoulder is doing well,” Rebecca inserted. She would know since not only was she still practicing, but she ran the hospital where J.D. had gone when she’d dislocated her shoulder after a tumble from a horse. “Doesn’t hurt that she and Jake are clearly head-over-heels for each other.” She dashed her hand over Ryan’s shoulder. “Is everything all right? You look…distracted.”

Distracted didn’t begin to cover it. But talking about Mallory and her claim was the last thing he intended on doing.

“He’s in a hurry, Bec,” Sawyer inserted. “That’s all.” But Ryan still recognized the speculation in his father’s eyes.

“Of course. We won’t keep you out in the cold, sweetheart. But will we see you tomorrow for Sunday dinner? I’m on kitchen duty this time.”

The Clay family members generally rotated around the big family meal every Sunday. Whoever could come did, and whoever couldn’t, didn’t.

But he’d made a point of avoiding the meals since his return to town.

And now, he could see the shadow of disappointment in his mother’s eyes even before he’d formed an answer. From the corner of his eye, he could see the mechanical Santa positioned inside the front window of the hardware store waving merrily.

“Maybe,” he said, instead of the refusal that was ready and waiting on his tongue.

She smiled, so clearly buoyed by a shot of hope, yet so clearly trying to contain it. “Well.” She patted his shoulder again, then tucked her hands around Sawyer’s arm. “You know where we’ll be. Now go on before you catch your death of cold.”

Like the solid unit that they’d been for most of his life, his parents stood close to each other, watching as he headed to his truck. When he got inside and tossed the paper sack on the seat beside him, they waved and smiled, and he lifted a hand before backing out of the parking space.

He drove back to Mallory’s house only to sit, engine idling, at the curb. His hands clenched the steering wheel. He was looking at the house—two-storied, sharply gabled roof, narrow porch running across the entire front—but his thoughts were turned inward.

If Cassie had gotten pregnant, why hadn’t she told him?

They’d both worked for Hollins-Winword, though she—an expert in foreign languages—had been in a support position to Coleman Black, rather than in the field like Ryan had been. Their paths had crossed occasionally. Never more closely than when she’d voluntarily interjected herself into that sting to save his bacon. She’d been smart and gutsy and engaging and he remembered genuinely enjoying her company, brief though it had been. And he was damn sure that her feelings toward him had been no more involved or deep. He hadn’t loved her. She hadn’t loved him.

He pinched the pain behind the bridge of his nose.

It was hard to believe she’d died bearing a child.

Not any child.

Chloe.

He jerked and started when someone knocked on the window beside him, and stifled a curse over his own edginess.

Mallory stood on the curb. This time, she was wearing a long, beige wool coat with a hood pulled over her head. She looked more like she belonged on the cover of a magazine than standing on the curb in little Weaver, Wyoming.

She was holding his leather coat.

“You came back,” she said through the window. “I wasn’t sure you would,” she added, stepping away when he pushed open the door and got out.

He sorely wished he could just give her the paper sack with the repair clamps and be on his way, but some deeply buried streak inside him made him stay. “Does Chloe know? About…who…her father is?” It was a cowardly way of phrasing it. He knew it. She knew it.

But he gave Mallory credit for not pointing out that particular fact.

She just shook her head and held out his coat. “She doesn’t know anything. And, to be honest, I prefer it that way. Until…until—” She broke off. A line of worry bisected the smooth skin between her eyebrows.

He dropped the paper bag on the hood of the truck and took the coat, pulling it on. “Until?”

She let out a soft, huffing breath that sent a vaporous cloud between them. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know any good way of doing this,” she admitted. “Telling you. Telling her. But Chloe’s welfare is my primary concern. And if you…if you’re not…well, if this is going to cause her any harm—” She shook her head, breaking off again. “I wish there was a manual for situations like this,” she murmured.

“I doubt it would cover someone like me, anyway.” He shoved his hand through his hair and was relieved that it wasn’t shaking, because everything inside of him was feeling pretty damn unhinged. “Keep watching out for your daughter,” he said abruptly. “That’s what a good parent does.”

She was nibbling at her lip and, despite everything, he got distracted by their well-defined softness all over again. “Don’t tell her,” he added doggedly.

“Not yet,” she clarified.

That wasn’t the “not ever” that had been whispering through his brain. “Do you want support money or something?”

Her head reared back, the hood slipping off her shining hair. “That’s what you think this is about? Money?”

He lifted his hand, peaceably. “I’m sorry.” And he was. “I’m not trying to offend you. Just…to understand what it is that you do want.”

The offended glint in her eyes slowly softened. She pushed her hands into the side pockets of her coat and rocked on her feet.

He immediately recognized the motion. Chloe had done the same exact thing in the diner.

“I want my daughter to know she has a father.” Her gaze didn’t meet his. Instead, it was focused somewhere off over his left shoulder.

“Lots of kids don’t have a father around.” Some were better off, too.

The corners of her lips curved downward. “Did you have your father around?”

He’d had two, actually. His mother, believing her relationship with Ryan’s natural father was over, had married Tom Morehouse, who’d raised him until he’d died when Ryan was seven. A few years later his mom and Sawyer reconciled and had never been apart again. “Yeah. I did.” He sighed. The paper sack crinkled as he held it up. “The repair clamp you need,” he said. “I brought you a few extra.”

She blinked a little, obviously surprised. “Thank you. I was going to run to the store before they closed, but—”

“Now you won’t need to.” He jerked his chin toward the house. “I’ll put it on if you want.”

“That’s really not necessary,” she demurred.

But he saw the hopefulness behind the words. “Might as well.” He wasn’t opposed to offering the assistance. He just would have preferred to offer it to an absolute and utter stranger, instead of this woman with her impossibly sexy mouth and her claims about him and her daughter. “I’m here.”

And they were evidently just one big, happy family.

Mallory wasn’t ungrateful for the offer of assistance, but as she led the way up the sidewalk that she hadn’t had time yet to shovel, she found herself wishing the assistance weren’t coming from him.

She hadn’t expected him to do cartwheels of joy when she’d told him about Chloe. She couldn’t think of many men who would appreciate such news coming right out of the woodwork. And while she was trying to be fair—to see the situation from all sides—she didn’t have a hope of really succeeding there, because she was firmly rooted on Chloe’s side.

A child deserved to know their father. Period.

To this day, she still couldn’t understand Cassie’s decision not to tell Ryan about the baby at the time. Growing up, her older sister’s life had been just as devoid of a father as Mallory’s. Maybe Cassie would have changed her mind after Chloe was born if she’d lived to have the chance.

Unfortunately, that was something that Mallory simply would never know.

She preceded Ryan into the house and without a word, he practically bolted up the stairs the minute she’d pushed the door shut after them.

The sensible part of her told her to follow him and watch what he did with those clamp things so that she could do it herself the next time if she had to. But the rest of her mutinied and, instead, she dropped her coat on the hard-backed chair sitting in the front entry next to the narrow console table, and went into the kitchen where Chloe and Kathleen were.

Both were wearing Kathleen’s hand-sewn aprons tied around their neck and waists and both of them were in flour up to their elbows as they kneaded bread dough on the counter. The only difference between them was that Kathleen was sitting on a bar stool while she worked, and Chloe was standing on a chair. Beyond that, their concentrated expressions were almost identical.

And neither seemed to have noticed the sound of Ryan in the house. She decided to leave it that way for now and stood silently in the doorway.

Just watching them eased nerves that were feeling slightly singed.

Are you seeing this, Cassie? Chloe’s making rolls with Gram just the same way you and I used to.

“Get yourself an apron, Mallory,” Kathleen said without looking. “There’s another dough ball for you, too, if you want.”

Mallory just smiled. She walked over behind the only people in the world that she would do anything for, and kissed first the top of Chloe’s head, then Kathleen’s papery-thin cheek. “I need to call the hospital and check on a patient.” She also needed to deal with the very disturbing man upstairs repairing her plumbing.

“Work, work, work,” Kathleen tsked, but without any real heat. “Just remember, there is more to life than work.”

“Yes, Gram,” she agreed dutifully, and just as dutifully admired Chloe’s handiwork with the bread dough before escaping to her office at the back of the house.

She made her phone call to the hospital, talking briefly with the nurse on duty, but that didn’t take long. Her new mom was recovering as nicely as expected.

Which left Mallory with nothing to do but go up the stairs.

She didn’t find Ryan still in the bathroom, though. That small room was quite empty. She looked behind the cabinet door to see the pipe and its new clamp. There was no sign of water leaking, and the bucket she’d used was empty and sitting on the edge of the tub.

He’d even emptied the box containing the shampoos and soaps and whatnot that she’d pulled from the cabinet, replacing everything neatly inside it once more.

His thoroughness—his thoughtfulness—was disconcerting.

Was it possible that he could have left without her hearing his exit?

She slowly closed the cabinet and went out into the hall. Her bedroom was closest to the stairs. Chloe’s was farthest. She turned in that direction and found Ryan there.

He was sitting on the foot of the twin-size bed looking very large and very masculine amid the lilac-hued, childish décor, and her footsteps faltered at the visceral tug the sight of him gave her deep inside.

“I’m getting the hint that she likes purple,” he said after a moment.

She swallowed and managed a faint smile that hopefully masked the strange breathlessness she felt and stepped inside the room, leaning her shoulder back against the doorjamb. “It’s been her favorite color since she discovered the Purple Princess games a few years ago from a school friend.”

“What grade is she in?”

She discreetly hauled in a breath. Let it out. “Third.”

His gaze finally slanted to hers. “Isn’t she a little young for third?”

“She skipped second grade.” She tugged at her ear. “I know that not everyone thinks that’s a good idea, but she’s so bright and I started her in second at the beginning of the school year when we were still in New York, but she was—”

“Bored,” he inserted.

She looked at him a little more closely. It was hard, considering that doing so made her stomach flip around even more in those jittering circles.

But there wasn’t judgment in his deeply blue eyes.

She wasn’t sure exactly what was there, but at least she could tell that. “Yes. She was bored. She was bored through a good portion of the first grade, too.” And bored schoolchildren tended to find more interesting things to keep them busy. Particularly mischievous things.

“I skipped third,” he said.

“Oh.” She moistened her lips.

“And ninth,” he added without expression. “And most of my senior year of high school.”

“That’s…impressive.”

His lips twisted a little. “You registered her over at the elementary school?”

“Yes.” There wasn’t an alternative, anyway. Weaver had one elementary school. One junior high. One high school. And unless it would have been on scholarship, she couldn’t have afforded the tuition for private school even if there’d been one for Chloe to attend. Mallory’s medical school hadn’t come cheaply.

She would be paying off her student loans for some time to come.

“That’s when the school and I decided to start her off here in third grade,” she finished. “So far, she’s keeping up with no problem at all.”

“Sarah Scalise her teacher?”

Was Weaver so small that a single man with no children would know that? Her mind veered off much too easily. Maybe he’d even dated the attractive teacher. “Yes.”

“She’s my cousin.”

She was appalled at the relief that flooded through her. Her interest in the man was supposed to be only because of Chloe. Not…not—

“What are your plans tomorrow?”

Her runaway thoughts screeched to a halt. “Um, nothing much. More unpacking. And Chloe is becoming anxious that we won’t ever get around to getting a Christmas tree, so I imagine I’ll have to find a tree lot somewhere.”

“Folks around here cut their own trees,” he said.

Her lips parted, dismayed. “Like with a saw?”

His blue eyes suddenly lit with amusement, and years seemed to fall away from his face. “That’s the usual method,” he said, only slightly tongue-in-cheek.

Safely hidden behind her back, Mallory’s hands curled. She smiled weakly.

The corner of his lips lifted a little more. The flash of white teeth was brief, but it was still there, when he actually smiled. “Never cut a Christmas tree yourself?”

“Right up there with fixing plumbing leaks, I’m afraid.”

He pushed off the bed and walked toward her. Her spine pressed hard against the doorjamb as she looked up at him when he stopped next to her.

There was plenty of space between them, but her heart rate nevertheless took off like an award-winning marathoner. The only time she’d felt anything remotely similar was the first time she’d delivered a baby. Not even with Brent, her one foray into romance while she’d been a resident, had she been so affected.

His gaze roved over her face and she swallowed hard, afraid he’d hear the pulse roaring in her ears.

“I’ll pick you and Chloe up at noon,” he said, and the amusement was gone from his face as if it had never been there. “That oughta give us plenty of time.”

“Time,” she repeated faintly.

“To find you a tree,” he said flatly, and walked out into the hall. He didn’t look back.

For so long, Mallory had been certain that finding Chloe’s father was the right thing to do.

But just then, watching Ryan head down the stairs as if the devil were at his heels, she realized she wasn’t certain of anything.

Chapter Four

He was twenty minutes late.

So far.

Twenty minutes during which Chloe paced between the windows at the front of the house, pressing her nose against the glass, as she watched and waited. “Are you sure he’s coming?”

Mallory’s gaze snagged in Kathleen’s, who was sitting opposite her, before she looked back down at the medical journal lying open in her lap. Reading it was just a pretense, because Mallory could have easily emulated Chloe’s anxious pacing, waiting for Ryan’s arrival.

“If he doesn’t,” she assured smoothly, “we’ll just get a Christmas tree ourselves.” Maybe there was a tree lot in Braden. The neighboring town was about thirty miles away. Certainly there’d be one in Gillette—though she really didn’t relish the idea of driving quite that far.

The solution, of course, would be an artificial tree, purchased from the discount store on the outskirts of town.

Only Mallory knew that both Chloe and Kathleen would be disappointed. They’d been talking about having a real tree ever since they’d arrived in Weaver. Even when they’d left New York in October, the Christmas decorations had begun appearing in stores. There was barely a fraction of the stores in Weaver, but they, too, had already been getting ready for the holidays.

“Can we get a puppy, too?” Chloe asked, without looking away from the window.

Mallory met Kathleen’s eyes. “No,” she answered. “We’re not getting a puppy.”

Chloe heaved a sigh. “Do you think we’ll find a really, really big tree?”

If he gets here, Mallory thought.

“He’ll be here,” Kathleen said comfortably over the soft clack of her knitting needles. “And I’m sure you’ll find a very fine tree.”

Mallory had the sense that her grandmother was assuring her just as much as Chloe.

She realized she was chewing the inside of her lip and made herself stop. Folding the journal with a snap, she tossed it aside and pushed off the couch, taking her half-empty coffee mug with her. Another ten minutes, and she’d bundle Chloe in the car and they’d drive to Braden. Kathleen had already expressed her intention to enjoy the tree once it was in the living room. Hunting one down whether in the snow or from a tree lot was not something she particularly wanted to do.

“He’s here!” Chloe suddenly darted past Mallory, her boots skidding on the floor as she raced out of the living room to the front door.

Mallory ignored both the jolt that leaped inside her belly and the sideways glance that Kathleen gave her—as if her grandmother knew exactly what Mallory was feeling—and followed her daughter much more sedately to the door.

When she got there, Chloe had already thrown it wide and Ryan stood there on the porch, looking almost unrecognizable with his clean-shaven square jaw. Even his hair looked different. Not cut, necessarily, but brushed away from his face, showing that there was a liberal amount of silver strands among the dark brown.

The severe style made his eyes seem an even deeper, more penetrating blue, and when their focus shifted upward from Chloe to Mallory, every single coherent thought she possessed disappeared in a puff of smoke.

She felt as though he had the ability to look straight down inside her. And was using the ability very well.

It felt…invasive.

Intimate.

She realized belatedly that Chloe was tugging at the hem of her sweater, and she finally yanked her captured gaze away from him. She looked at Chloe, but her brain cells were sluggish. “What is it, sweetheart?”

Chloe’s eyebrows were crinkled. “You’re spilling,” she whispered.

Mallory jerked a little, flushing hard. Along with coherent thought, her hands had gone as lax as her knees had felt, the coffee mug sliding sideways in her fingers. “Silly me,” she murmured, excessively bright.

She grabbed the closest cloth—her red knitted scarf that was hanging over the coat tree—and dashed it over the small spill on the floor. “I’ll be right back.” She couldn’t prevent herself from flicking a glance toward Ryan, then wished she hadn’t, because he was still watching her.

The day before, he’d been a handsome—albeit very scruffy-looking—man.

With his strong features no longer hidden behind too-long, unkempt hair, and a bristled jaw that had been somewhere between a beard and a thirteen-o’clock shadow, he seemed positively devastating.

She felt so rattled that instead of putting the mug in the kitchen where it belonged—and where she’d intended to take it in the first place—she carried it and the red scarf with her upstairs and closed herself in her bedroom.

The mug bobbled sideways when she dumped it on her dresser and she steadied it with a very unsteady hand. The wide mirror hanging on the wall above the dresser reflected most of the bedroom behind her. But she didn’t see the stack of packing cartons in the corner next to the sleigh bed that she’d found years ago in a junk store and refinished with Kathleen’s help.

What she did see were her own eyes staring back at her. Pupils wide, irises a thin brown. So very different from those deeply penetrating blue ones that consumed her mind’s eye.

What had he seen when he’d looked at her?

Who had he seen? Mallory, or Cassie?

Mallory closed her eyes, turning away from the mirror and the thought. She wasn’t in competition with her beloved sister. She was only trying to make sure that Chloe’s life had what hers and Cassie’s had lacked.

A father.

She yanked off the ivory sweater that she’d taken far too long to choose that morning in the first place and replaced it with a gray one, yanking it down over the waist of her blue jeans. In the connecting bathroom, she filled the sink and submerged the coffee-stained scarf in it. Mentally collecting herself seemed fine in theory, but sad to say, she still felt shaky when she went back downstairs.

Kathleen was standing alone in the foyer.

“Where’s Chloe?”

“Outside with Ryan.” Her grandmother’s expression was frank. “Are you certain you know what you’re getting into, Mallory?”

She crossed her arms. Fighting her own uncertainty was hard enough without adding her grandmother’s into the mix. “In life, can anyone ever really know what they’re getting into?”

Kathleen’s lips thinned. “Pretending to wax philosophical won’t wash with me, child.” She pointed at the closed front door. “You’re messing in a lot of lives because of this fixation you’ve got about Chloe and her father.”

“It’s not a fixation.”

Kathleen’s white eyebrows climbed. Ire filled her eyes. “Really, now. It’s been your obsession since Chloe was born. When you should have been finding a man of your own, you were focused only on him.”

“I’m a working single mother,” Mallory returned. “I’ve never had time for a man.” Ergo, the exit of Brent. The fact that she hadn’t been left brokenhearted at the time had seemed to prove that it had been for the best. She’d never been tempted to put a man before her career. “And we’ve talked about this many times.” She’d never made a secret with her grandmother about the reason behind their temporary transplant to Weaver.

“Aye. We have. Yet you’re still determined to do it your way.”

“If I had my way, Cassie would still be here,” Mallory pointed out, struck with pain that was only slightly dulled by the passage of time. “Raising the child she loved enough to die having.” But, of course, Cassie—adventurous, go-with-the-moment Cassie—hadn’t believed she’d ever face that most final result despite Mallory’s warnings. “And choosing what to do about Chloe’s father would have been her decision.”

“She made the decision,” Kathleen reminded. Her face had softened, but her voice was still firm. “She had nearly the entire duration of her pregnancy to contact him. She chose not to.”

“I believe she would have changed her mind.” And arguing the point with her grandmother was as fruitless as the internal debate that had gone on for years inside Mallory about that very point.

She grabbed her coat off the coat tree and shoved her arms into the sleeves. “You seemed to like Ryan just fine, yesterday when he was here. So what’s bothering you about him now, anyway?”

“It’s not me that he’s bothering,” Kathleen said pointedly.

Mallory focused on working her hands into the gloves she pulled out of her coat pockets and tried not to blush. “All I care about is Chloe. Once I’m certain she’s ready for it, I’ll tell her about him and we’ll take it from there.”

“Right. And then it’ll be time for us to go back to New York. And how do you think Chloe’s going to handle being taken away from the father she’s just met, then?”

It wasn’t a new concern, nor was it one that Mallory hadn’t already given plenty of thought to. “She’ll still be able to talk to him. To see him during school breaks.” She pushed her pager and her cell phone into the breast pocket of the wool coat. “I knew before we got here that if…everything worked out…it would ultimately mean coming up with some sort of visitation agreement.” She reached for the door.

“What if you’re the one who ends up on the visiting side?”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said surely, and pulled open the door.

Ryan and Chloe were bent over an enormous snowball, pushing it together across the yard. The expressions of concentration on their faces were nearly identical.

Mallory swallowed the unease that whispered through her and stepped outside. Chloe had on her coat, her mittens, a scarf and a cap that Kathleen had knitted for her. Usually, she managed to forget the scarf or the hat. “Gram’s going to be popping the corn soon for garland,” she called out to them, “so we’d better come back with a worthy tree.”

Ryan looked over his shoulder. His head was bare. He wore no scarf tucked around his neck. His only concessions to the cold were the gloves on his hands and the scarred-up leather jacket zipped halfway up his chest. “Popcorn garland?”

Chloe straightened away from the snowball that was easily as tall as her knees and held her hands wide as she bounced around, full of energy. “We use Grammy’s needles on long string. It’s fun.”

Ryan continued pushing the snowball toward the house. “If you say so. Where do you want your snowman, Chloe?”

“Right here.” Chloe dashed over to a spot near the steps. “I asked him if he’d ever made one and he said he did, and so we’re getting one now,” she provided needlessly. “I never had a snowman before.” She beamed at Ryan when he nudged the ball to a stop. “Can I have a carrot for his nose?”

The delight in Chloe’s expression would have been impossible to resist, even had Mallory wanted to. “I imagine we have a carrot to spare,” she assured. “But your snowman still needs a little more body before he needs a nose, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Ryan scooped up a large handful of snow before straightening, and packed it between his gloved palms until it was the size of a healthy grapefruit. “Might as well finish it now, kiddo.” He cast an eye toward the sky. “It’s going to be snowing by the end of today—tomorrow at the latest—judging by the sky and then it might be a while before the snow is wet enough again to pack well.”

“What about the tree?”

His gaze skated over Mallory, leaving heat in its wake. “We’ll get to it. Here.” He tossed the snowball toward her and she didn’t react quickly enough to catch it.

It landed harmlessly against her chest and burst into a spray of clumps.

“Mo-om,” Chloe groaned. “You were s’posed to catch it.”

“Sorry.” Mallory went down the steps and scooped up her own snowball. She eyed Ryan, speculatively. He was a perfect target, leaning over, gathering up another handful of snow.

“Wouldn’t try it, Doc,” he warned, without looking at her.

She tossed the snowball from one hand to the other. “Try what?”

He straightened and gave her a glance that succeeded in making her mouth feel parched. It also made a mockery of her innocent claim. “Here.” He handed his latest snowball off to Chloe. “You can do this one on your own. It’s going to be the head, so it doesn’t have to be as large as the base.”

Chloe knelt down and began scooping snow around her assignment. The tip of her tongue peeked out from between the corner of her lips.

Before Mallory even knew he’d moved, Ryan plucked the snowball from her hands. “I’ll take that,” he said, and began adding to it.

Within minutes, both he and Chloe were rolling their snowballs across the yard and right into the neighbor’s property, picking up snow as they went. Mallory smoothed her coat beneath her and sat down on the porch steps, watching.

But Chloe wasn’t having any of that. “Mom, you gotta help!”

So Mallory dutifully rose again and walked over to her daughter.

“Not me,” Chloe said. “Him.” She waved toward Ryan, who, in Mallory’s estimation, needed no assistance whatsoever with maneuvering his snowman-middle even if it were already twice the size of Chloe’s somewhat sausage-shaped head.

It was only the flash of amusement she caught on Ryan’s face—as if he fully expected her to refuse—that made Mallory move over beside him and plant her hands next to his on the snowball. “For someone who didn’t seem very enthusiastic about today,” she said under her breath, “you seem to be ending up quite entertained.”

“And we haven’t even left your neighborhood, yet.” His hands steered the snowball toward the left, circling back in the direction of her house and the snowman’s base.

“Are we really going to find a Christmas tree today?”

“I said we would.” His shoulder brushed against hers. “When I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it.”

“Even if you didn’t want to,” she concluded, her voice just as low.

His jaw tightened. He stopped pushing the snowball, which was easily the size of three watermelons. “What do you want from me?”

She looked at him. The answer should have been so easy. A father for Chloe. Better yet, an…interested and caring father for Chloe.

So why wasn’t it easy?

“Mom. Mr. Ryan. Look at my head!” Chloe stood over her lopsided snowball with pride. “Is it big enough?”

“Looks great,” Ryan answered. He rolled the snowball he and Mallory had formed the last few yards, then picked it up and settled it on the base before adding Chloe’s to the top. “There you go, kiddo. Your first snowman,” he told Chloe.

“I wanna get his face now,” Chloe said, dashing up the stairs and disappearing through the front door that she threw open.

“If I hadn’t wanted to take you out to find a tree, I wouldn’t have offered in the first place,” he told Mallory the second Chloe was out of earshot.

She shoved her hands inside the side pockets of her coat, hiding the fists they had curled into. “Then why did you tear out of here yesterday the way that you did after offering?” Her voice had risen, and she swallowed, looking around.

But Chloe hadn’t come back outside, and the houses flanking hers were as still and silent as they’d been since Mallory had come outside.

The only one around listening to them was the faceless, limbless snowman.

She sighed and pulled her hands out of her pockets again. “Look. I know I dropped a bombshell on you yesterday. Of course it’s going to take some time for you—for all of us—to adjust to that. But—”

“It’s not Chloe that bothers me.” He grimaced. “Well, yeah, but not in the way that you probably mean,” he amended.

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.” He looked at her, only this time his focus was turned inward. “And it’s not something I’m going to explain.”

His choice of words caught her. He wouldn’t explain. Not couldn’t. Not shouldn’t.

“I got his face stuff.” Chloe reappeared and the door slammed behind her, sounding as loud as a gunshot. She was clutching a handful of items against her coat. “Grammy said we could use these cookies for his eyes.” She dropped the rest of her collection onto the snow next to the snowman, and held up two round, chocolate-flavored cookies. “I guess I want him to have eyes more ’n I want to eat them,” she admitted with a giggle. “Here. Put ’em on.”

Ryan nearly winced. Chloe was holding the cookies toward him with such trusting faith in her face that it was painful.

Mallory didn’t say anything. Just continued watching him with an expression that seemed to ride the rails between caution and expectation, hope and compassion.

He wanted to tell her not to expect anything. Not from him. It would be safer all the way around.

But he couldn’t make himself do it.

And he was damned if he knew whether that was because he didn’t want to see the disappointment in her eyes the same way he saw disappointment in the eyes of his family, or if it was because he, himself, didn’t want to feel the loss when that disappointment inevitably occurred.

Instead of taking the cookies from Chloe, he simply went over behind her and lifted her up by the waist so she could reach the snowman’s head. “Give the poor guy some eyes,” he told her.

She giggled again and worked the cookies into the snow. “What’s his name?”

“He’s your snowman,” Ryan reminded. “Think that gives you naming rights.”

“I don’t know no snowman names, though, except Frosty.” She craned her head around to look up at Ryan. “Everyone names their snowman Frosty.”

Mallory picked up the carrot and handed it to Chloe. “You don’t know any snowman names,” she corrected. “And yes, you do. Use your imagination.” She shrugged. “Besides. Maybe your snowman is actually a woman. Have you thought about that?”

Chloe screwed the root end of the carrot into the snow. “Nope,” she said surely. “He’s a snowman.”

Ryan wondered how she made the determination, but figured he was better off not knowing the finer points of how a six-year-old came to such a conclusion. He tipped her almost upside down so she could reach her pile on the ground and she squealed with laughter that didn’t stop even when he turned her upright, again.

“Didja see that, Mom?” Chloe’s feet swung freely, nearly knocking him in the knees and he swung her to his side, holding her against his hip.

“I saw,” Mallory assured. “Are those candy canes for his mouth?”

“Yup.” Chloe reached forward and methodically placed the two red-and-white candies. In Ryan’s opinion, the resulting smile was maniacally cheerful, but Chloe was satisfied. And Mallory was watching her daughter with an indulgent smile.

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