Picket Fence Surprise
Page 28
He didn’t want to see his father. But he damn well wanted to know his half sister, if only to see with his own eyes that she was okay. The firstborn of Clayton’s parents had died of crib death while the two so-called adults drank themselves into a stupor. Their next kid was Clayton, and it had taken him half his childhood to get into the foster system, a golden ticket out that he’d only learned about after his drunken, jobless, abusive parents had birthed kid number three, a boy Clayton loved with all his heart. When Eddy was four years old, child protective services took him away after a neighbor called to complain about seeing him unattended on the playground.
Of course, Eddy hadn’t been unattended for any moment of the day when Clayton was around. But the neighbor probably hadn’t considered a seven-year-old brother to be adequate supervision. Why CPS claimed Eddy at that time and not Clayton remained the biggest injustice of Clayton’s life. It had separated them for the next twelve years until Clayton figured out how to find people. By the time he’d gotten himself taken out of his home—not that difficult to do, but still, there was a process—he’d bounced to a different foster home every year, finally winding up at the Hasting house, where he’d graduated school and aged out of the system.
His life had ended up better than Eddy’s. And on that sobering note, he ground his teeth together.
Now, with the wind plastering his jacket to his chest, he tried not to think about his brother’s fate, his long-dead older sister and the smattering of other kids his parents had brought into the world—some as a couple, others with equally crappy partners as parents. It bothered Clayton to think he’d missed Mia, but she’d lived with her mother until a two-year stint in foster care, during which she’d lobbied her birth father to spring her from the system. Somehow Pete had gotten clean and sober enough to fool the social worker into giving him one last chance to be a dad.
Mia was sixteen now, he’d heard, and had been living with their father for the last eight months, helping to care for the old man as he grew weak from cirrhosis and heart disease.
Clayton planned to make sure she knew she had a way out of her father’s house. That alone was worth going to see Pete Yancy—aka the negligent jackass—one last time. Clayton would have gone as soon as he’d arrived in Heartache, but he’d been tapped for bodyguard duty by his friend. He would put in an appearance at his dad’s place after school that day and cross his fingers she’d show up, too, so he could fulfill his obligations in Heartache and head back to Memphis once the reunion was done.
Steering his vintage low rider along the road that ran parallel to the interstate, Clayton slowed down as the Owl’s Roost came into view, a diner he remembered from when he’d lived in town. Nostalgia and hunger lured him off the road and into a parking spot to grab some breakfast since it was early to book a motel room anyhow.
The figure of a woman walking across the Roost’s front porch flagged his attention as he locked up the bike and his bag. Keeping the guitar strapped to his back, he turned to watch the slender form half covered by a big, black hoodie that hid her profile. He wasn’t sure what it was that caught his attention. The quick, sharp walk. Long, elegant legs that a pair of loose pants couldn’t fully conceal in the late-autumn wind.
Something about her made him pay attention.
So it happened that he was staring right at her when she stopped and turned to look out into the parking lot, her pale blue eyes landing on him.
The delicate features hadn’t changed. A wisp of dark blond hair fluttered across her cheek in the breeze.
“Clay.” She said his name softly.
Or he imagined she did. Her mouth moved with some comment before she raised her hand to cover her lips. As if she could retrieve whatever she had murmured.
“Gabriella Chance.” His feet were already heading toward her, his gaze not able to let her go. “I wondered if I’d ever see you again.”
Copyright © 2017 by Joanne Rock
ISBN-13: 9781488016929
Picket Fence Surprise
Copyright © 2017 by Christine Fletcher
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