Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good ManPromises Under the Peach TreeHusband by Choice

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Making up her mind, she made a call rather than starting back toward Angel Butte.

  “Carol? Anna Grant. Listen, I know you wanted a longer break before you took another kid, but is there any chance you’d house a boy for a day or two until I can find another place for him?”

  Carol Vogt was, hands down, Anna’s favorite among the foster parents associated with AHYS. A widow whose own two boys were in their thirties, she worked magic on troubled teenagers.

  “A day or two.” Carol snorted. “What you mean is, ‘Will you take him just long enough so you decide you didn’t really want that break anyway?’”

  Anna grinned. “Guilty as charged. But I promise, I’ll move him if you ask me to. Yancey is only thirteen, and he’s being tormented by the older boys in the home I had him living in. Which was his second since he came into the system. He ran away today and the police just picked him up. I’ve got receiving homes, but...”

  She didn’t have to finish. This was a kid who needed stability, not another way station.

  A sigh gusted into her ear. “Fine,” Carol said. “But you owe me one.”

  “I already owe you a few thousand,” Anna admitted. “Bless you. We’ll be an hour or two.”

  “I’ll have his bedroom ready.”

  Anna was smiling when she finally made the turn out onto the highway.

  * * *

  CALEB HOVERED AT the head of the stairs where he knew he couldn’t be seen. Voices drifted up from the kitchen.

  “I’m not sure where he is.” That was Paula Hale, who with her husband ran this place. “Caleb’s been spending a lot of time with Diego. They’re probably over in the cabin Diego shares with another boy.”

  “I’ll take that coffee, then. Thanks.” This time, Reid’s voice came to Caleb clearly. He must be facing the stairs. “Sugar?”

  “You always did have a sweet tooth. And you can’t tell me you’ve forgotten where I keep the sugar bowl.”

  Caleb’s brother gave a low chuckle. “I was being polite.”

  “You weren’t polite when you lived here. Why start now?”

  This time they both laughed.

  Caleb felt weird, an unseen third presence. He knew Roger, Paula’s husband, was outside working on Cabin Five. This place was an old resort that must have been shut down, like, a century ago. Most of the boys were paired up in the small cabins. The Hales’ room was on the main floor in the lodge, and Caleb and another guy were in bedrooms upstairs. If there were any girls in residence, Caleb had been told, they always had the rooms upstairs in the lodge so they were near the Hales. Otherwise, those bedrooms were used for new boys, until they had “settled in.” That was how Paula put it. Caleb wasn’t sure how he would ever prove he had, or even if he wanted to. He didn’t like it here—but nothing on earth would make him go back to his father’s.

  “You know he doesn’t have to be here.” Paula’s voice came especially clearly.

  What did that mean?

  Stiffening, Caleb strained to hear Reid’s answer. It was brief, an indistinguishable rumble.

  What you need isn’t anything I have in me. Remembering the expressionless way his brother had said that, Caleb sneered. Was that what Reid was telling Paula?

  He couldn’t catch the beginning of what Paula said in response, but the tail end made his heart thud. “...you could prove abuse if you wanted to.”

  “You refusing to keep him here?” Reid asked more clearly.

  “You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “He needs to know you want him.”

  Caleb quit breathing through the long silence that followed. And then his brother’s voice was so soft, he came close to missing it.

  “I do.” Pause. “And I don’t.”

  A skim of ice hardened in Caleb’s chest. The I do part was a joke. The only honest part of that was I don’t.

  Paula said something, and then Reid did, but their voices were fading. They must have left the kitchen for what Paula called the great room.

  He needs to know you want him.

  I don’t.

  His brother had found him, rescued him, but then palmed him off on someone else because he couldn’t be bothered.

  Caleb eased down the stairs, then out the kitchen door without even pausing to grab a parka.

  * * *

  “YOU DON’T?” PAULA SAID. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Reid made an impatient gesture. “Come on. You know what I mean. I’m not father material. I told Caleb I’m damaged, and it’s true.”

  Paula didn’t take her gaze from his as she sat on one of the benches at the long tables where meals were served in the main room of the lodge.

  Despite having stayed in touch and contributed financially, he hadn’t actually seen either of the Hales in something like ten years until the day he’d brought Caleb here. He had been shocked to see Paula’s long braid was turning gray. She’d always looked like an aging hippie to him, but that had been from the perspective of a boy. Now she really was aging. Roger’s dark hair and beard were shot with gray, too. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d imagined them, and this refuge they guarded, as eternally the same. Reid hated to think about the time when they couldn’t take in kids anymore.

  “Damage heals,” Paula said calmly.

  Straddling a bench across the table from her, he had the uneasy feeling she was seeing further below the surface than he wanted her to. He’d forgotten the way she could always do that.

  “I think you’re underestimating yourself, Reid. You’ve changed your life for the sake of a boy you didn’t know a couple of months ago. What’s that but love?”

  Love? He snorted. “I feel responsible.” So responsible, he’d started job hunting in central Oregon the minute he’d brought Caleb here. Left a job that satisfied him for one he wasn’t so sure he was going to like. Yeah, he’d gone out on a limb for this brother, but he’d rather call it guilt than love.

  “Responsible? Why?”

  He eyed her smile warily. “He’s my brother.”

  “You’d never met him. It’s not as if you grew up with him.”

  “I swore I’d know if that son of a bitch ever had another kid. Instead, I let it go. Caleb has gone through hell because I shut my eyes.”

  “No,” she said, correcting him, “he’s gone through hell because your father is abusive. You have no responsibility for your father’s sins.”

  He stared at her, baffled and frustrated by her refusal to understand what he was saying. “So I should have shrugged and gone on with my life?”

  “Neither of us could have done that.”

  “Then your point is?”

  “Is this about Caleb at all, or are you trying to save yourself?”

  Not reacting took an effort of will. “What kind of psychobabble is that?” he scoffed.

  “Same kind I’ve always thrown at you.”

  Reid gave a reluctant chuckle.

  “Do you see yourself in Caleb?”

  “Save the crap, Paula. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “You’ll always be one of my kids.” Her voice had descended a register, letting him hear the tenderness, tying and untying a knot in his chest.

  Reid cleared his throat. It didn’t do anything for the lump centered beneath his breastbone. “I’m sorry I haven’t been back to visit in so long.”

  “Caleb made you revisit your past.”

  Oh, crap. Here we go again. “I’m giving him the same chance I had, that’s all.”

  “You’re doing more than that, or you wouldn’t have moved to Angel Butte,” she pointed out. “You’re trying to be family, Reid.” She reached across the table and laid her hand over his. “He needs you and you need
him.”

  He bent his head and looked at her hand, which was getting knobby with the beginnings of arthritis. So much smaller than his hand. Still so unfailingly...loving.

  Shit. Did that mean he knew what the word meant after all? He’d have told anyone who asked that all he felt for Paula and Roger was gratitude and admiration, but...now he wasn’t sure that was true. He’d just as soon the possibility hadn’t occurred to him. Love had never been a safe emotion for him.

  “Maybe so,” he said, hearing his own gruffness. “And I’d better go hunt him down before he decides I’m not here to see him at all.”

  “Yes, you should.” She let him come around the table to her and lean over to kiss her cheek, but she grabbed his hand before he could turn away and looked at him with those penetrating eyes. “You’re a good man, Reid Sawyer. Trust yourself.”

  He felt about seventeen again, as if his feet were still too big, and his cheeks turned red at any compliment. “I may be a decent man,” he said finally. “But good? No. You’re a good woman, Paula Hale. I don’t measure up.”

  He tore himself away then. Her voice followed him. “You will, Reid. I have enough faith for both of us.”

  Faith. Out of her hearing, he grunted. There was a word more foreign to him than love.

  So, okay, she could be right that on some subconscious level he was seeing himself in this younger brother, who looked so much like him. Why else the cauldron of emotions he’d been feeling, the ingredients of which he didn’t even want to identify? That kind of transference was probably inevitable. He’d needed to be saved; now it was his turn to do the saving. Paying it forward was what people called it these days. That’s all I’m doing.

  He didn’t think about why he was looking forward to seeing Caleb. Or why he was so disappointed when, twenty minutes later, he conceded defeat.

  The disappearing act was so good, it was clear his brother didn’t want to see him. Reid told himself that was okay. The two of them hardly knew each other. When Reid had first come here, he’d been like a feral animal in a trap, suspicious of anything that looked like affection. He didn’t know why he’d expected different of Caleb.

  The Hales had a gift for healing wounded, fearful young men. Paula was wrong; Caleb didn’t need his brother, the stranger.

  Which raised the question, why had he turned his own life upside down to be nearby when he’d already fulfilled his responsibility? He could have stayed in touch long-distance well enough.

  He laughed, short and harsh, as he climbed into his Ford Expedition. Taking a last look at the ramshackle lodge that anchored a line of even more run-down cabins strung along the bank of Bear Creek, he breathed in the distinctive odor of ponderosa-pine forest, sharp despite the near-freezing temperature. Trust Paula to get him analyzing his choices. One of her more irritating characteristics.

  But he was a big boy now, capable of resisting. A big boy who, for whatever idiotic reason, had taken on a new job with more scope than he’d anticipated. What he needed to do was concentrate on that job, not hanker for some elusive connection he’d lived his whole damn life without.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “IT’S ARSON,” REID said flatly. He crouched and stared closely at the distinctive pattern of charring that climbed the interior wood-paneled wall of the cabin. He’d been lucky to find it, given the extent of the damage. “I’m no fire marshal,” he said, rising to his feet, “but I don’t have to be.”

  Beside him, Roger Hale grunted. “I thought I smelled gasoline.”

  “Hard to miss,” Reid agreed.

  He hadn’t expected to hear from either of the Hales so soon after his Wednesday visit. On this fine Sunday morning, he’d been sprawled in bed trying to decide whether he could roll over and get some more sleep or was already too wide-awake when his phone had rung. Given his job, he kept the damn thing close, despite how often he cursed its existence. Hearing what Roger had to say had driven away any desire on his part to be lazy.

  When he arrived half an hour ago, a cluster of boys had hovered on the front porch of the lodge. Caleb wasn’t among them.

  Walking to greet Reid, Roger had seen where he was looking. “Probably his turn in the shower. We were all pretty filthy by the time we got the fire out.”

  Paula had been the one to spot it, according to Roger. She’d gotten up to use the john and seen a strange orange glow out the small window. Roger had yanked on clothes and run outside to find the fire climbing the back wall of the last cabin in the row. Even as he’d hooked up hoses, he had yelled to awaken the boys.

  “This wasn’t one of the occupied cabins,” Reid said, turning slowly to examine the interior. Frigid blue sky showed through a gaping hole in the roof. There hadn’t been much furniture in the cabin. No mattress—or at least no springs—but the wooden bed frame was so much half-burned firewood now. On instinct, he started picking through the debris.

  “No, we haven’t put anyone in here in...oh, five or six years,” Roger replied. “I’d been thinking I either needed to raze it or do some serious work. But you know we never fill all the cabins.” His expression was troubled. “You’re saying our firebug didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  Yet. Reid didn’t like thinking that, but had to.

  “No, this was done either for fun or to get some attention.”

  He debated whether to say more, but suspected he didn’t have to. Roger was a smart, well-read man. He’d already been thinking hard, or he wouldn’t have summoned Reid to take a look.

  Arson wasn’t like shoplifting or half a dozen other crimes Reid could think of, tried by a kid once out of curiosity or on a dare, then forgotten in a generally well-lived life. Famously, arson was one of the classic precursors of a serial killer. A budding pyromaniac, who set fires for the thrill, was bound to escalate in a different way.

  This fire had been relatively harmless. The cabin hadn’t been close to any of the others, and given that the last snowfall had melted only a few days ago, sparks had been unlikely to find dry fuel in the surrounding woods.

  Reid found what he’d sought and wordlessly held out what was left of the side rail of a bed for Roger to see. One end was seared; the other was freshly splintered. As he’d suspected, the bed had been broken up to serve as firewood that would give the blaze what it needed to grow until it had the size and heat to bite into the solid log walls.

  Roger shook his head. “We’ve had our share of troubles, but never a kid who wanted to burn up the world.”

  “There’s a first for everything.”

  “We can’t be sure it’s one of the boys.”

  Reid kept his mouth shut.

  “Goddamn.” Roger vented by kicking at a still-steaming pile of half-burned wood. One piece fell away, revealing an orange spark beneath. Part of the headboard, Reid diagnosed, as he stamped out the ember beneath his booted foot. “Shit,” Roger growled, “we’d better rake through this and be sure there’s nothing that can start it up again.”

  “Yeah, you got lucky none of the neighbors spotted the glow and called the fire department.”

  Everybody around here had acreage, so there were no close neighbors. This fire must have leaped pretty high into the sky before they began fighting it, though. The last thing the Hales needed was a fire marshal out here asking questions. He or she wouldn’t be able to help but notice that the Hales had too many kids. Even if Paula and Roger succeeded in hiding some of them, it would take barely a casual glance to see that a number of the cabins were occupied. With the addition of Caleb, there were currently ten boys in residence in the old resort, which was actually fewer than Reid knew they sometimes had.

  Roger paused in the act of kicking through the charred debris. “Could that have been the point?”

  “To rat you out?” Nice thought. “Only if you’ve got a kid who doesn’t want to be here.”

/>   “Who says it has to be one of the boys? The middle of the night, anyone could have brought a can of gasoline and a matchbook. With this cabin down at the end, he’d have been unlikely to be heard.”

  “It’s a possibility.” Reid wasn’t sure it was one he liked any better than the idea that one of the boys here was a newbie arsonist.

  Roger gusted out a sigh. “We’ll talk to all of them. Along with Caleb, we’ve got two other relatively recent arrivals.”

  Something in Roger’s tone caught Reid’s attention. He turned slowly to meet his shrewd gaze. Damn. Of course that question had to be asked.

  “Caleb has no history of anything like this.” His jaw set. He made the reluctant addition, “That I know of.”

  Roger waved his hand in what Reid knew was a conciliating gesture. “Didn’t think so, but he’s the newest.”

  “And you’ve never had a fire before.”

  “No. We’ve never had a fire before,” Roger echoed. “Guess it had to happen sooner or later.”

  The resigned, even philosophical conclusion wrung a reluctant laugh from Reid.

  They both heard the sound of approaching voices. End of discussion. Damn, he didn’t like to think what was to come. Once the Hales started separating boys and probing, the atmosphere would be poisoned by suspicion. How could it help but be?

  He wouldn’t be the only one looking at every one of these boys differently from here on out—including the brother he didn’t know all that well.

  Frowning at that blackened wall, he shook his head. He almost hoped the fire had been set for fun. Because if it actually had been intended to draw attention to the existence of this illicit shelter, it had failed in its purpose. Whoever he was, the arsonist would not be happy the fire had been put out quietly, causing only the slightest stir and some undirected finger-pointing.