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She shook off the silly thoughts and tried to focus on the television, but her gaze kept slipping back to the man, who was still looking at her little brother.
“You want to bring me some of that newspaper from your mom’s crystal?”
“She’s not my mom,” Dillon said as he slid off the couch and retrieved the crumpled papers that Abby had tossed aside. He sidled over to the man, holding them out at arm’s length.
She almost missed the speculative glance the man gave her before he took the paper from Dillon. He wadded it up and stuck it in the fireplace, between a couple of angled logs. “Got a match, bud?”
“Here.” Abby quickly pulled a lighter out of her purse and carried it over.
“You smoke?” His tone was smooth, yet she still felt the accusation.
“You sound remarkably like my grandfather used to.”
A full beat passed before his lips quirked. “My sister keeps telling me I’m getting old before my time,” he said. “Must be true if I strike you as grandfatherly.” He took the lighter and set the small flame to the newspaper. When he was sure it took, he straightened and left the lighter on the wood mantel.
“Abby’s my sister,” Dillon said so suddenly that she shot him a surprised look.
The man didn’t look surprised. And he wasn’t the least bit grandfatherly, though Abby didn’t figure it would be appropriate to tell him so. He simply nodded at this additional information, not knowing how unusual it was for Dillon to offer anything where a stranger was concerned. He set the fireplace screen back in place. “What grade are you in?”
But her brother’s bravery only went so far. He ducked his chin into his puffy down collar. “Second,” he whispered and hurried back to the couch. He sat down on the edge of a cushion again and tucked his bare fingers under his legs.
Abby knew the best thing for Dillon was to keep things as normal as possible. So she ignored the way he was carefully looking away from them and focused on the tall man as he straightened. She was wearing flat-heeled snow boots, and he had at least a foot on her five-one. Probably a good eighty pounds, too, judging by the breadth of his shoulders. “Do you have kids?” Maybe a second-grader who’d become friends with Dillon.
“Nope.” Which didn’t really tell her whether there was a wife or not. “How much more do you need to unload?”
She followed him onto the porch. “A few boxes and our suitcases.”
He grabbed the shovel as he went down the steps and shoved it into the snow, pushing it ahead of him like a plow as he made his way to the car.
“You don’t have to do that,” Abby said quickly, following in his wake.
“Somebody needs to.”
Her defenses prickled. “I appreciate the gesture, but I’m perfectly capable of shoveling my own driveway.”
His dark gaze roved over her. “But you didn’t. And I’m guessing if you’d had a shovel in that little car of yours, you’d have already used it so you could get the car into the driveway.”
Since that was true, she didn’t really have a response. “My grandfather had a snowblower,” she said. “I didn’t really have a good way to move it here, so I sold it.” Along with most everything else that her grandparents had owned. Except the crystal. Ever since Abby had been a little girl, her grandmother had said that Abby would have it one day.
And now she did.
The reality of it all settled like a sad knot in her stomach.
She’d followed her grandfather’s wishes. But that didn’t mean it had been easy.
They’d lost him when he’d died of a heart attack two years earlier. But they’d been losing her grandmother by degrees for years before that. And in the past year, Minerva Marcum’s Alzheimer’s had become so advanced that she didn’t even recognize Abby anymore.
Even though Abby was now a qualified RN, she’d had no choice but to do what her grandfather had made her promise to do when the time came—place her grandmother into full-time residential care.
“So you’ll get another blower,” the man was saying. “Or a shovel. But for now—” he waggled the long handle “—this is it.” He set off again, pushing another long swath of snow clear from the driveway.
She trailed after him. “Mr., uh—”
“Sloan.”
At last. A name. “Mr. Sloan, if you don’t mind lending me the shovel, I can do that myself. I’m sure you’ve got better things to—”
“—just Sloan. And, no, I don’t have better things to do. So go back inside, check the fire and unpack that crystal of yours. Soon as you can pull your car up in the driveway, I’ll leave you to it.”
She flopped her hands. “I can’t stop you?”
“Evidently not.” He reached the end of the driveway, pitched the snow to the side with enviable ease and turned to make another pass in the opposite direction. At the rate he was going, the driveway would be clear of the snow that reached halfway up her calves in a matter of minutes.
She ought to be grateful. Instead, she just felt inadequate. And she hated feeling inadequate.
Short of trying to wrestle the shovel out of his hands—which was a shockingly intriguing idea—she could either stand there watching or do something productive.
Like checking the fire and unpacking.
She went back inside. The fire had already started warming the room. Dillon had shed his coat and was sitting on the beige carpet, setting his video games neatly inside the cabinet. “When’re we gonna visit Grandma?”
Abby stepped around his plastic crate and went to the fireplace. “I thought we’d go next weekend.” She moved the fire screen aside and took a piece of wood from the stack. She jabbed the end of it against the burning logs, sending up a blur of sparks before tossing it onto the top. Then she replaced the screen and straightened. “We can’t go every day like we used to.”
“I know.” He pushed out his lower lip, studying the cover of his video game. “Would she ’member us if Grandpa hadn’t died?”
Abby sat down on the floor next to him, pulled off her coat and put her arm around him. “No, honey. Losing Grandpa has nothing to do with it. But we remember her.” She ignored the tightening in her throat. “And we’ll visit her every chance we can, just like I’ve told you. Okay?”
She felt his nod against her cheek.
“Okay.” She pressed her lips to his forehead before pushing to her feet. “Why don’t we leave the rest of our unpacking until later and get the television hooked up. I’m finally going to beat you at ‘White Hats.’”
He snorted softly. “Yeah, right.”
Which just eased the tightness in her throat and made her smile instead. She turned away from him only to stop short at the sight of Sloan standing inside the door. She hadn’t even heard him open it.
“Driveway’s clear.”
She pulled at the hem of her long sweater. “Thank you. I’ll have to figure out a way to return the favor.”
His dark gaze seemed to sharpen. And maybe it was her imagination that his eyes flicked from her head to her toes, but then that would mean it was also her imagination that her stomach was swooping around. And she’d never been particularly prone to flights of imagination.
“That might be interesting.” Then he smiled faintly and went out the door again, silently closing it after him.
Abby blinked. Let out a long breath.
If Mr. Just-Sloan did have a wife, he had no business making new neighbors feel breathless like that.
“Come on, Abby,” Dillon said behind her. “I wanna play ‘White Hats.’”
“I know. I know.”
And if he doesn’t have a wife?
She ignored the voice inside her head and pulled the television out of the box.
Whether the man was married or not didn’t matter.
All she wanted to do was start her new job at the elementary school and raise Dillon with as much love as her grandparents had raised her.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
So she carried the new television over to the cabinet and began hooking it up. In minutes, the distinctive music from Dillon’s video game was blasting through the speakers. He handed her a controller and she sat cross-legged on the carpet next to him as she set about trying not to be bested yet again by a seven-year-old.
She was no more successful at that than she was at not thinking about the man next door.
Chapter Two
“Sloan, it’s New Year’s Eve. You shouldn’t be spending it alone,” his sister, the voice of reason, said through the phone at his ear.
“I’m not interested in crashing your evening with Axel.” Even though Tara had been married to the man for a few years now—had two kids with him, even—it was still hard for Sloan to say his brother-in-law’s name without feeling a healthy dose of dislike. Axel Clay was part of the darkest time of Sloan’s life. His sister being happily married to him made the situation tolerable. Barely. If not for that, Sloan could have gone the rest of his life hating the man. No more than he hated himself, though.
“You wouldn’t be crashing anything, Bean.” Tara laughed. “Most of the family’s going to be here. It’s not like Axel and I will have a chance to be romantic while there’s a half-dozen kids chasing each other around.”
Bean. The nickname she’d called him when they were kids. Considering everything that Sloan had put her through—the disruption he’d caused in her life by the choices he’d made in his—it was a wonder that she could even recall the days when he’d been her Bean and she’d been his Goober.
They were twins. And they’d grown up in a family that never stayed in one place for more than a few months at a time. As an adult, all Tara had ever wanted was a stable place to call her own. While Sloan had kept right on with the rootless lifestyle.
Which was why he was living here in Weaver at all. Trying to make up for the acts of his past. Trying to make things right with the only female left in his life that he loved.
“Fine,” he said. “I also don’t want to crash your evening with the entire Clay clan.” He looked out the front window of his house again. Abby had finally moved her car into the driveway. “Maybe I have plans of my own.”
He could almost hear Tara’s ears perk. “What plans would those be? Sitting in the dark, staring morosely into a beer while you dwell on the past?”
Almost guiltily, he set aside the frosted beer mug he was holding. “You don’t know everything, Goob.”
She sighed noisily. “Oh, all right. But you’re not getting off the hook tomorrow. Dinner at the big house. You’ve already agreed, and if you try to back out, I’ll call Max and sic him on you.”
“My boss may be your cousin-in-law, but that doesn’t mean he’s gonna let you tell him what to do.” In Sloan’s estimation, nobody told Max Scalise what to do, not even the voters who put him in office term after term.
“We’ll see,” Tara countered. “Squire’s expecting everyone for New Year’s dinner, and nobody wants to cross him. Not even the mighty sheriff.”
Squire Clay was Tara’s grandfather-in-law and the patriarch of the large Clay family. He was older than dirt. Cantankerous as hell. And one of a few people in Weaver that Sloan could say he genuinely liked.
“I said I’d be there tomorrow and I will.” A flash of red caught his eye, and he watched Abby bounce down the porch steps. But instead of heading toward her car, she started crossing the snow separating their houses.
“But tonight is mine,” he finished. Up close, Abby had looked even younger than he’d expected, but she’d also had the prettiest gray eyes he’d ever seen.
“Okay. Happy New Year, Sloan,” his sister said. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. He wished he could say the same, but he didn’t know what he felt. If anything. “Happy New Year, kiddo.”
Then he hung up and watched Abby cross in front of the window where he was standing. A second later, she knocked on his front door.
He left his beer on the table and answered the door.
“Hi.” Those gray eyes of hers looked up at him, carrying the same cheerfulness that infused the smile on her soft, pink lips. “Sorry to bother you.”
“You’re not.” He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. He ought to feel like a letch, admiring her the way he was. But he didn’t. He felt...interested.
The first time he’d felt interested in longer than he cared to remember.
“What d’you need?”
“Wood, actually.”
The devil on his shoulder laughed at that one. No problem there. The angel on his other shoulder had him straightening away from the doorjamb. “It’s back behind the house.” He pushed the door open wide. “Come on in.”
The tip of her tongue peeked out to flick over her upper lip. “Thanks.” She stepped past him into the house, and he saw the way her gaze took in the sparsely furnished living room. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Nope.” He led the way through the room to the kitchen at the back of the house and outside again. He gestured at the woodpile stacked next to the back steps, protected from the weather by the overhang of the roof. “Help yourself.”
She went down the steps, her shiny hair swaying around her shoulders. He shoved his fingers into the pockets of his jeans and tried not to think how silky her hair would feel.
“Thanks again.” She stacked several pieces of wood in her arms. “I’ll restock as soon as I can.”
“No need.” Thanks to his connection to the Clay family and their gigantic cattle ranch, the Double-C, he had a ready supply of firewood, whether he wanted it or not. “House warming up okay over there?”
She nodded. Her hair bounced. Her eyes smiled.
She’d have the boys at the elementary and junior high schools sticking their fingers down their throats just to have a chance to visit her in the nurse’s office.
The devil on his shoulder laughed at him again. Wouldn’t you do the same?
“Your brother live with you all the time?” Sloan was betting the “brother” story was just that. The boy looked just like her. He was probably her son. Which would mean she’d had him very, very young.
“Yes.” She lifted the load in her arms and started backing away, making fresh tracks in the snow. “Thanks for this. Hope you and your wife enjoy the rest of your evening.”
Interesting. “Who said there’s a wife?”
Her gaze skipped away. “Just assuming.” She smiled again. Kept backing away. Right until she bumped into the side of her house. She laughed and began sidestepping instead.
“Assuming wrong.”
She hesitated. Just for a moment, before continuing right along. But it had been long enough for him to notice.
Definitely interesting.
“Ah. Well.” She clutched the logs to her chest. “Hope you enjoy the rest of your evening, then.” Her smile never faltered.
