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How in the name of all that was holy could a pragmatic man like his father believe something so shaky as a dream of that magnitude? The old man couldn’t let go. Of anything.
Brent had his chance years ago.
But he didn’t want to think about failed dreams today. He didn’t want to think about anything. Maybe he’d go back to his feather-stuffed bed. Or doze in the hammock strung between the two Bradford pear trees in the corner of the yard. He rarely had time to enjoy the peaceful oasis he’d helped his mother create between the carriage house he rented and his parents’ small Victorian.
He whistled for Apple and she ignored him.
As he stood, a baseball came whizzing over the fence. It bounced on the path and crashed into a red clay planter, knocking it over, spraying potting soil into the air.
What the hell?
The ball rolled into a daylily clump and stopped. Apple pounced on it, slobbering all over the well-used baseball.
He walked over and pulled it from Apple’s mouth. She grinned up at him as if a game of fetch was about to commence.
“Hey, that’s mine.” The voice came from the left.
Brent turned to find two brown eyes peeking over the wooden fence. They belonged to a boy whose leg crept over the top of the fence. The boy hoisted himself up and straddled the two yards, his eyes portrayed wariness.
Brent motioned the kid to come on over and the boy tumbled down, dropping like a sack of potatoes onto the bag of mulch his mother had left in the corner.
Apple trotted close and sniffed him.
“Hey,” he said to the dog, rubbing her head before standing up and brushing himself off.
Brent felt like an alien had beamed down. But it wasn’t a little green person. It was a boy who looked to be about seven or eight years old.
Brent flipped the ball to the kid. He caught it with one hand. Impressive. Apple wondered off to find more frogs and lizards to chase.
“Clean up the mess,” Brent said, pointing to the dirt covering the brick path.
The boy looked at the broken pottery and spilled soil. “Oh, sorry. My hand got sweaty.”
Brent nodded. “It happens.”
The boy didn’t say anything more. He knelt and used a finger and thumb to lift a broken shard.
“You staying at the bed-and-breakfast?” Brent asked.
The boy nodded and picked up the upended planter and started stacking the shards inside. “Yep. My mom made us come here. Right at the beginning of my baseball season. It’s absurd.”
Something about the boy’s disgust and vocabulary made Brent smile. He knew how that felt. He’d loved baseball season. Especially in early April. The smell of the glove, the feel of the stitches of the ball against his hand, the first good sweat worked up beneath the bill of the baseball cap. Sweet childhood.
“Well, it’s just for the weekend,” Brent said, toeing the spilled soil with his bare foot.
The boy sighed, dropped to his knees and began scooping up the dirt. He tossed it out into the grass. “I wish. She’s making us live here. I don’t even know for how long.”
“Oh,” Brent responded, watching the boy as he labored. His reddish-brown hair was cut short, almost a buzz cut. Freckles dotted his lean cheeks and for a kid his age, his shoulders were pretty broad. He’d moved with a natural grace, like an athlete. Like Brent had always moved. “What’s your name? Since we’re going to be temporary neighbors.”
“Henry.”
“Hmm…I wouldn’t have taken you for a Henry.”
The boy gave him a lopsided smile. “My mom likes Henry David Thoreau. I got my name from that dude.”
“You look more like a Hank,” Brent said offhandedly, picking up the base of the broken planter, stuffing the flower’s roots into the scant soil and setting it aside.
“Like the baseball player I saw a show on. Hank…”
“Aaron?” Brent finished for him.
“Yeah, that’s the guy. Cool. I can use that name here. No one knows me yet.”
“Well, you better ask your mom about that. You know moms.” Henry was funny. Brent liked kids better than he liked most adults.
Henry picked up the ball and rolled it around in his hand before sending it airborne. He caught it neatly. “Yeah, my mom can be crazy about stuff like that. About sports and stuff. She doesn’t think sports are important.”
Brent feigned horror. “What’s wrong with her?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m good at them. I play football, baseball, basketball and soccer. I even took karate before my dad died. I liked kicking boards and stuff. It’s pretty cool.”
The boy tossed the ball as easily as he’d tossed out information. He’d lost his dad. Tough for a boy like Henry. He seemed headstrong and sturdy, the kind of boy who needed a firm hand. A good mentor. A man to toss the ball with.
The boy threw the ball and caught it in one hand, slapping a rhythm Brent couldn’t resist.
“You know, I could get my glove, and we could toss the ball around,” Brent offered. “But first you better make sure it’s okay with your mother.”
The boy’s eyes lit up. “Awesome.”
“So go ask.”
Something entered Henry’s eyes. A sort of oh, crap look. “Um, it’s okay. She’s making bread or something like that.”
The boy’s gaze met Brent’s and a weird déjà vu hit him. The kid’s eyes were the color of cinnamon. Like eyes Brent had stared into a million times. He glanced at the gate that had been locked for over ten years. The gate that led to the Tulip Hill Bed-and-Breakfast on the other side of the fence the boy had climbed.
“Your mom, is she by any chance—”
“Henry Albright! Where the devil are you?” The woman’s voice carried on the wind into the Hamiltons’ backyard.
“Oops, that’s my mom. She’s gonna be mad. I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” Henry said, scrambling toward the fence.
Brent closed his mouth and watched as Henry ducked beneath the redbud tree before grasping one branch and swinging himself toward the brace on the fence. His worn sneaker hit perfectly and he arched himself so the other landed beside it. But the boy hadn’t been fast enough.
The gate opened with a shove because the grass had grown over the once well-worn path.
Henry froze and so did Brent.
A woman stood in the opening. Her curly red hair streamed over a blue apron that was streaked with flour and she wore a frown. Brent allowed his eyes to feast on her, for she was sheer bounty. Her cinnamon eyes flashed, her wide mouth turned down, but the body outlined in the apron was lush and ripe from the long white throat to the trim ankles visible beneath the flowing skirt. Bare feet anchored themselves in the healthy St. Augustine.
Rayne Rose.
Brent swallowed. Hard.
“Hey, Mom,” Henry said, dropping to his feet. “This is—” Henry turned to him. “Hey, I don’t know your name.”
Brent didn’t move, just watched Rayne as she registered his presence. He could see her tightening. See her shock. See her try to recover.
“Brent,” she said.
Something tugged within him at his name on her lips. Her sweet lips. The first ones he’d ever kissed.
“Oh, you know him. Good. We were gonna play a little baseball,” Henry said, trying to slide past Rayne into the yard of Tulip Hill. She caught his shoulder.
“I don’t think so,” she said, looking at the boy. “You are not supposed to wander off. And you are not supposed to talk to strangers.”
“But you know him,” Henry said, shrugging his shoulders in that devil-may-care manner all boys had.
“But you didn’t. Pick up your glove and get in the house. You have some reading to do before we register you for school tomorrow.” Her words were firm but there was a softness in her manner, in the way she patted the boy’s shoulder.
“But, Mom, I—”
“No arguing, Henry.”
A mulish expression crossed his face. “Fine. But I don’t want to be called Henry. From now on, I’m Hank.”
Aggravation set in on Rayne’s face. He’d seen it every day on the face of his own mother. “Hank?”
“Yes,” the boy said, disappearing behind the fence. “I want to be Hank. I hate being Henry. That’s a nerdy name.”
Rayne closed her eyes. Then opened them again. She looked at Brent. “I’m sure this is your doing?”
Brent shrugged and thought about crawling under the porch. “Sorry.”
Her response was to laser him with her normally warm gaze.
“Nice to see you, Rayne,” he said.
She stared at him for almost a full minute before speaking. “Stay away from my son.”
She turned and tugged the gate closed behind her.
And that was it.
That was how he became reacquainted with the only girl he’d ever loved.
CHAPTER TWO
RAYNE SLAMMED THE GATE and stood a moment, trying to stop her insides from quivering.
Brent Hamilton had always done that to her. She’d been eleven when it had first happened. She’d spied him doing push-ups from over the fence. It was the first time she’d even noticed a boy’s muscles, and she’d stared for about ten minutes before he’d caught sight of her sprawled in the tree watching him. She’d scrambled down and disappeared, much too embarrassed to confront the boy who’d been her friend from the day she’d climbed out of her parents’ VW van, tripped up the front steps of her aunt’s house and noticed a boy throwing acorns at wind chimes.
Brent was still a good-looking son of a bitch with a rippling body and overtly masculine aura. But the emphasis should be on the son-of-a-bitch part.
She wasn’t a silly little girl, so she willed her shaking legs to obey and marched toward the peeling porch.
Henry stood there, arms crossed, brow wrinkled. He opened his mouth. “Mom, I want—”
“Don’t start, Henry. You violated a big rule, buster. Haven’t we talked about this before? You climbed into a stranger’s backyard.”
“I didn’t think anyone was home. Besides, you know him. You said so,” her son said, kicking the rail, causing the rooster planter to teeter.
“Stop before you make the planter fall. It’s my starter of cilantro,” she said, climbing the steps. She peeked into the pot. The sprouts had given birth to the fan shapes that would become the flavorful herb. “And it doesn’t matter that I know the neighbor. You don’t, and to do what you did is dangerous.”
“You said this town is safe. That I could run around and play and stuff. Can I go back and throw ball with him? Please?”
“Absolutely not,” she said, surprised her normally cautious son would want to go. It was the baseball that pulled him. But she didn’t want Brent messing around with her son. Brent was a lot of things. Charming. Egotistical. Unreliable. Things she didn’t want Henry to glean from a man who’d once had the town wrapped round his golden arm, and who would no doubt do the same with her impressionable son. “Every place has dangers. From now on, you consult me before you leave this yard. Got it?”
He made a face. “Okay, but can I go throw? Please. Please. Please.”
“Did you hear me?” She shook her head in wonder. Were all males born with selective hearing? “No. Now up to tackle that reading. I want you to make a good impression tomorrow.”
“I hate that dumb book. It’s about stupid cats and mice. You know I don’t want to read that stuff.” He kicked at the rail again. The planter tottered. She caught it with one hand.
She gave him the evil eye. He immediately stepped away from the rail and dumped his glove on the pew that sat to one side of the porch. “The book I bought for you is on the accelerated reader list. It’s a Caldecott book. They’re always good.”
Henry shrugged and tugged open the door of the bed-and-breakfast. “I don’t see how a book about mice can win awards. Everyone knows mice can’t really talk. It’s absurd.”
He disappeared into the house before she could say anything else. And he’d left his glove again. He kept forgetting they were not at home. They were at an inn and he couldn’t leave his things lying about.
Rayne placed her hands over her face and blew out her breath. Then she picked up the glove and sank onto the old wooden pew. Round one for the day. She could only guess what round two held.
She’d give her life for her son. She loved him with a passion that rivaled all others, but the boy was as alien to her as a Moroccan desert. Foreign. Exotic. And she didn’t speak the language.
He’d been that way since he’d turned nine months old and said his first word. Had it been mama or dada? No. It had been ball.
And thus it had begun.
The boy’s obsession with sports was epic.
And ever since he’d learned to throw, run, hit and kick, he’d reminded her of the boy who’d grown up next door to her aunt. The boy who’d climbed trees with her, studied stars with her, shared his dreams with her. He was near about the spitting image of Brent.
But Brent was not his father.
Rayne hadn’t even seen her childhood crush in over fifteen years. Not since the day she’d shaken the dust of Oak Stand from her sandals and headed for a new life and a new dream in New York. She’d locked up the memory of Brent and told herself not to think of him. But her heart hadn’t been good at following her head’s directive. She still thought about him at the oddest times. Such as when a baby bird fell out of its nest at the house in Austin. Or when Henry had hit his first grand slam. Or when she lay lonely in her bed staring out at a harvest moon.
She’d always been drawn to Brent Hamilton.
Even on the day she’d kissed Phillip Albright in front of the preacher and all their friends, she’d been half in love with the boy who had once sung Elvis songs to her while twisting her hair around his forefinger. She supposed it had been horribly unfair to Phillip to harbor tender feelings for a boy who’d never been hers to begin with, but she suspected Phillip didn’t mind. Their marriage had never been a head-over-heels, can’t-keep-our-hands-off-of-each-other kind of thing. More of a mutual respect, burning desire to succeed, quiet love and amiable friendship kind of thing.
