A few weeks after her father had left town, Grace had made one small change in the operation of the store that she was incredibly grateful for these days—she’d started closing at four-thirty on Saturdays instead of six. After a week’s work, she was tired and wanted nothing more on a Saturday afternoon than to get home, put her feet up and watch TV, or read a book or simply daydream about the future.
She didn’t want to think anymore about Ethan and whether he’d left town again. She especially didn’t want to think about the look in his eyes when she’d said his name was a stigma their child shouldn’t have to bear. Yet on her way home she couldn’t help but think about him.
She’d never been cruel, intentionally or otherwise, in her life. She couldn’t even begin to think what had prompted her to do so on Thursday. His talk of marriage, she supposed. His blunt proposal. His awareness of her disappointment. His own disappointment.
Whatever her reason for saying the words, she’d said them. And regardless of the guilt she felt, they were true. Though that was small-enough comfort.
The sound of an engine worked its way into her thoughts, and she looked up to see a battered green pickup barely moving beside her. She’d seen it parked in front of her store twice before, and she wasn’t happy to see it now. She wasn’t.
Ethan leaned across to roll down the window. “Can I give you a ride?”
“No, thanks.”
“If you don’t say yes, I’ll have no choice but to pull over and park and walk with you. You wouldn’t want that, would you? I mean, someone might see us.”
She was embarrassed to admit that no, she didn’t want that. How could she hope to keep his identity a secret if people kept seeing them together? How long would it take for everyone to wonder what in the world a man like him saw in a woman like her? How long until one nosy person—and Heartbreak had plenty of them—remembered Ethan’s last trip home?
“All right. I’ll accept your ride.” She stepped to the curb, and he brought the truck to a stop so she could climb in.
The heat blasting from the vents felt wonderful. She was chilled from head to toe and all the way through. In fact, her stomach was unsettled enough for her baby to be shivering…or was that merely her nerves at being alone with Ethan again?
She rolled up the window, then peeled her gloves off and held her hands in front of the nearest vent. He responded by turning the other vents her way, too.
“Why do you walk when it’s so cold? Don’t you have a car?”
“I’m not very comfortable driving.”
“Why not? You’ve been doing it for—what? Nine years?”
“Three months. My father would never let me learn to drive, so Reese Barnett—he’s the sheriff—taught me how after he left.”
“Why wouldn’t he let you learn?”
She gestured to the road ahead. “I live a mile down this road. A yellow house on the left.” Looking out the window as he pulled away from the curb, she shrugged. “It was one of the ways he controlled me. I never had any money, I didn’t have access to a car, and even if I did, I didn’t know how to drive. It pretty much guaranteed that I wasn’t going anywhere he didn’t want me to go.”
“Why was he so strict? It’s not like you were a trouble-maker who needed firm discipline. I know, because I was. We recognize each other.”
From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of his grin, but resisted the urge to turn toward him and catch the full impact. “He did it because he could. Because there was no one to stop him. Because he was Jed Prescott, and by God, Jed Prescott’s word was law. At least, in his store and his home.”
“He had a reputation for being a first-class bastard.”
“Believe me, he lived up to it.”
When she gestured, he pulled into the driveway angling off to the right, parking between her battered gray car and a great burned area to the left. She hoped he didn’t notice the scorched ground or, if he did, that he wouldn’t comment on it.
After shutting off the engine, he gave her an earnest look. “Not all of us do. Live up to—or down to—our reputations, I mean.”
She looked away. Reputation was all she had to judge him by. Years of gossip and talk. The exasperation and frustration his mother had never been able to hide. The resentment his brother made no effort to hide. When the people who were supposed to love him best didn’t think too highly of him, that didn’t say much for his character, did it?
But that thought was immediately followed by guilt. Using that reasoning, she was no better than Ethan. Her mother hadn’t loved her enough to take her with her when she left Heartbreak, and her father’s feelings for her had gone way beyond frustration, exasperation and resentment. So, by her own logic, that meant she was lacking in character, too, and she knew that wasn’t true. Maybe it wasn’t true of Ethan, either.
When she offered no response to his remark, he climbed out of the truck. She was already sliding to the ground when she realized that he’d come around to help her out. She hadn’t expected that small courtesy.
After she eased past, he closed the door, then looked from her car to her rounded middle, then back to the car. “When you said you weren’t comfortable driving, you meant literally, physically not comfortable, didn’t you?”
Grace patted the Bug’s fender as she walked past. “It was cheap, and it runs well.”
“And after another five pounds, you’re not going to be able to squeeze behind the wheel.”
“Probably not.” She climbed the steps to the porch, then fumbled in her bag for her keys. “Thanks for the ride,” she said when she found them. “I appreciate it.”
She opened the door, stepped inside, then glanced back. He was standing beside the car, his expression mostly blank, a look of—resignation? acceptance?—in his blue eyes. He wanted to be invited in. She knew it as surely as she knew she didn’t want to invite him. It was Saturday evening. She wanted to put on her nightgown, curl up and relax, not be sociable, not think of conversation.
Out of sight behind the door her fingers curled tightly around the knob, itching to slam the door shut and twist the lock. Instead, she used her free hand to push her glasses back up her nose, then, in a tone that was grudging at best, she asked, “Do you want to come in?”
The invitation sounded as foreign as it felt. In all her life, no one had ever set foot inside this house besides her, her mother and her father. Any repairs that had needed doing, Jed had done himself. Deliveries had come no farther than the front door. They’d never had company—no friends to entertain, no relatives who cared to visit. She’d never invited a classmate home from school, had never invited Ginger or Reese inside in the months since Jed had left.
Interesting—fitting—that her first guest was Ethan. After all, he’d been other firsts, too.
He climbed the steps, his boots sounding heavy on the wood, and noticed when the second step shifted dangerously under his weight. He also noticed that the screen door hung crookedly, a souvenir of her father’s last enraged trip out. She’d repaired it the best she could, but while she knew her way around the hardware store, she wasn’t much for actually putting the hardware to use.
When he walked through the door, she tried to see the house through his eyes. The place was old, and so was everything in it. There’d been no new paint or paper applied to the walls, no new flooring laid in her lifetime. The rugs were ancient, as was the furniture, and the styles, patterns and colors were all sadly out of date. All that had mattered to Jed, and therefore all that had mattered to her, was that the place was clean. It was spotlessly clean. And ugly. And depressing.
She began removing layers of clothing even as she gestured to the living room, opening off the foyer on the left. “Go on in and have a seat. I’ll be right in.”
He entered the room, probably feeling as if he’d entered a time warp back to his childhood. She stripped down to dress, sweater and socks, then padded down the hall to turn the heat on, and into the kitchen to check the crockpo
t stew. She debated offering him something to drink, but had nothing to offer but milk or juice. Instead, she returned to the living room empty-handed.
He was standing at one window, the lace curtain gathered in one large, brown palm, looking out. The nearest neighbor’s house was well out of sight—by Jed’s design, she’d often thought, so no one would hear the shouts and tears coming from this house.
She switched on several lamps before settling in an easy chair covered with a brown, orange and white afghan. He glanced at her, then gestured outside before letting the lace fall again. “Burning leaves?”
“Or something.”
He sat at the end of the sofa nearest her. “Interesting answer.”
“Not really.” Jed had set the bonfire the day he’d discovered she was pregnant, and Reese had put it out, but he’d been too late. There’d been nothing left to save. Only her, and on that chilly, overcast November day, she’d thought she might be past saving.
She hadn’t counted on the kindhearted people of Heartbreak, or her own resiliency. She certainly hadn’t counted on the strength of her newly discovered maternal instincts to care for her child.
“I thought, after our conversation on Thursday, that you might have left town again,” she said quietly.
He sounded neither bitter nor hurt when he answered. “That would’ve made you happy, wouldn’t it?”
She wanted to answer affirmatively, as if there were no doubts, but she couldn’t. She’d be lying to herself if she said she hadn’t felt some small measure of pleasure back there on the street when he’d pulled alongside. As much as she didn’t want to marry him, as convinced as she was that she and her baby deserved a better man than Ethan was ever likely to be, there still existed the part of her that had harbored a secret crush on him in school, the part that had spent a long, lovely night with him last summer.
The part that still found him an incredibly handsome, sexy, devilish and, when he chose to be, charming man.
“I thought about leaving, but the simple truth is I have nowhere to go. And the simpler truth is I can’t go.”
“Because…?”
“Because, like it or not, my choice or not, I’m about to become a father. Because I know how it feels to grow up knowing that your father doesn’t give a damn about you. That you aren’t important enough to him to stick around, to remember your birthday, to call sometime. That you don’t exist in his world.”
Such an honest admission would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been through the same experience with her mother. She’d never discussed it with anyone, not even her father, but somehow this seemed the right time. “I—I was twelve when my mother left.”
“I was ten the last time I saw my old man.”
“I used to tell myself that she couldn’t take me with her. She had only one chance to get away, and she couldn’t risk dragging a kid along. I was convinced that whenever she settled someplace else, she would come and steal me away.” But that wasn’t exactly true. She hadn’t been convinced. She’d hoped and prayed, but deep in her heart she’d known she was never going to escape her father and his temper. She was never going to have a chance at a normal life, never going to know peace or acceptance or love.
It was only thanks to Ethan that she had escaped. He was also responsible for giving her that chance at acceptance and love—not his, but their daughter’s. She owed him a tremendous debt for that.
“Did you ever hear from her?” His voice was low, sympathetic.
She shook her head, and her glasses slipped again. “In all fairness, she could have tried to contact me, but my father opened all the mail. He answered the phone. He controlled every hour of my life.” On days when she wasn’t inclined to be fair, though, she could admit that Betty Jean Prescott hadn’t run away from only Jed and Heartbreak. She’d run away from Grace, too. She was a mother. If she’d truly wanted her daughter, she could have found a way. She could have contacted Grace through the school. She could have been waiting for her outside the building one day, could have picked her up during class or snatched her off the street as she walked from school to the store.
But it was easier leaving her behind. Forgetting about her. Letting Grace take her place as Jed’s victim. Hoping he would be satisfied enough with tormenting her that he’d let Betty Jean go.
Giving a shake of her head, she asked, “Have you ever heard from your father?”
“Nope. He never was one to waste much time thinking about anybody else. He was no more attached to me than his father was to him. They figured their responsibility ended once they’d ‘planted the seed.”’ He gave the last words a sardonic twist.
Based on his reputation, Grace had expected him to agree that that was where his responsibility ended, too. It was the easy way out. The James way. “So…because you had a bad father, you think you can be a better one.”
“I sure as hell can’t be worse.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. But why? What made her so certain that she, who’d had an uncaring mother, could be a better mother while she doubted that Ethan, whose father had been equally uncaring, could be a better father?
Because all her life she’d dreamed of this, hoped for it, prayed for it, even when she thought it was impossible. Because she had the love to give, the commitment to make, the honor to see it through.
And Ethan… He had a reputation as a con artist, a liar, a gambler, unreliable, disreputable, just like his father. But not everyone lived down to their reputations, he’d said. And he’d come back, hadn’t he? Had driven halfway across the country as soon as he’d found out that she was pregnant. Had come ready to accept responsibility. Had offered marriage and financial assistance. Would a true con artist, liar and gambler have done that?
Her stomach growled loudly, bringing a blush to her cheeks and drawing her attention to more important matters. “That’s her way of reminding me that dinner’s late,” she said, scooting to the edge of the chair so she could struggle to her feet. “Would you like to stay? It’s just stew.”
“I’d like that.” He followed her into the kitchen, remaining in the doorway while she took bowls from the avocado-green metal cabinets and set places at the chrome dinette pushed against one wall. “Is it definitely a girl, or is that just wishful thinking?”
“Just a feeling.” That was her stock answer. Then, for reasons she didn’t fully understand, she went ahead with the truth. “I think I can handle a girl better. I have little experience with males, most of it not pleasant.”
“Little boys aren’t males, at least not the kind you find unpleasant. Those are men, and most men are far different from your father and me.”
She gave him a level look. “You’re far different from my father.”
“Thank you.” When she continued to gaze at him, he grinned. “It’s not much of a compliment, but it’s the only one you’ve offered. I’ll take what I can get.”
Feeling a warmth inside that hadn’t been there an instant earlier, she turned back to her task. Perhaps she should take his words as a warning, because when the mere sight of his grin sent a heat through her that no furnace could match, she was obviously too vulnerable. What he could take might be no less than everything, and that could leave her with nothing—no hopes, no future, no daughter.
Just a broken heart.
Chapter 5
“This kitchen reminds me of my mom’s when I was a kid,” Ethan remarked after finishing a second bowl of stew.
“Nothing’s been changed, at least since I was born.” Grace looked around as if seeing it all for the first time, and her nose wrinkled slightly in distaste. “My father believed in being frugal. You didn’t cover over a perfectly good paint job just because you were tired of the color. You didn’t stop wearing a perfectly good coat just because it had gone out of style. You never threw anything away as long as it still had some use.”
Except her, Ethan thought as he watched her. Prescott had thrown her away because she’d disappointed him. She’d
turned out to be human, with needs and desires, and he’d turned his back on her for it.
It was probably the kindest thing the bastard could have done.
She started to push her chair back, but he stood first, taking their dishes to the sink, rinsing and stacking them there. He found a covered storage bowl in the cabinet, transferred the rest of the stew to the dish and put it in the refrigerator before rinsing out the crockpot, too.
“Do you cook?” she asked, watching him from her seat.
“I make soup and a killer egg-and-bacon sandwich, but that’s about the extent of my abilities. But I’ve washed dishes since I was old enough to reach the sink. Even earned a living at it for a time.”
“What other kinds of work have you done?”
“Legal or illegal?”
The way her lips pursed gave her a sour look. “Criminal enterprise hardly qualifies as ‘work,”’ she said primly.
“Oh, darlin’, that’s not true. Sometimes it can be very difficult work.”
“Then why did you do it?”
His smile faded. “Sometimes it was a lot easier to find someone to scam than someone willing to take a chance on me. Sometimes I got hooked up with the wrong people and couldn’t seem to get away. Sometimes I was hungry or needed a place to sleep or money so I could move on. And sometimes I just didn’t give a damn.” Those were usually the times when he’d just left Heartbreak—again—or when he’d wanted to come home but knew he wouldn’t be welcome.
The hold this place had on him…when he was here, he’d always been eager to see the last of it. When he was gone, he’d always wanted to see it again—wanted it so much at times that he’d hurt with it. He couldn’t belong but couldn’t stay away, couldn’t fit in with his family but couldn’t give them up.
Resolutely he shook his head, clearing his mind. “Legitimate jobs, huh? Let’s see…I washed dishes and tended bar. I mowed yards. I did a lot of day-laborer stuff—setting up and breaking down carnivals, working as a loader for a moving company, hauling off trash from construction sites. I hired on once as a handyman at an apartment complex, but having a master key to all those apartments was too great a temptation. I quit the first day.” He shrugged. “Not much to brag about.”
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