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Ruth gave an offended sort of huff. “I’ll go, then, and leave you to your pizza since no one wants to hear my opinion.”
Claire was tired suddenly, exhausted from all the years of handling her mother’s moods and piques. She missed the fun, happy mother she now barely remembered, the one Ruth had been before the humiliation of her husband’s murder. She missed cuddles on the sofa under a blanket during a snowstorm and nature walks on Woodrose Mountain and the mom who used to have a funny story for everything. Ruth had gone from smart and capable to needy and helpless, with a side order of bitterness.
“Thank you for picking up Macy,” she said, trying to focus on the positive.
“You know I’m always glad to help. I’ll come by in the morning to pick her up before the soccer game.”
“Thank you for the offer but Holly and Jeff are planning on it. If I hear otherwise from them, I’ll let you know.”
Ruth nodded stiffly and headed out the door, her shoulders tight. She closed the front door carefully behind her and Claire winced worse than if she’d slammed it. She would have preferred a temper tantrum. Ruth’s quiet outrage was far more deadly.
She was going to have to figure out a way to make things right with her mother, but she had no idea how, short of throwing Riley on the pyre of her mother’s animosity, which she wasn’t willing to do.
“I’m sorry, Riley. My mother can be…”
“I know how your mother can be. Blunt but truthful.”
“She has her opinions. Which I don’t share, by the way.”
“Plenty others do. J.D. has a lot of friends who think he should be the police chief right now. The events of this past month haven’t exactly changed anyone’s mind.”
“I meant what I said. You’re doing a good job.”
“Thank you.” He gave her a careful look. “Look, I appreciate the invitation for pizza. It was a nice gesture of support but not necessary. I’ve dealt with worse criticism of my job performance. At least here, nobody’s shooting at me yet.”
“The invitation was sincere, whatever you might think. The kids enjoyed having you over for dinner the other night. They’ll love sharing their pizza.”
“What about you?” His green eyes turned dark, intense, and her insides jumped again.
“What about me?”
“Weren’t you just telling me all the reasons we weren’t good for each other? Do you want me here?”
Here, there or anywhere. But this wasn’t a Dr. Seuss book and Riley was definitely not green eggs.
“I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t,” she answered. “What I said earlier still stands, but just because we have this…thing between us doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”
“Right. Friends.” He studied her for a long moment, then gave a slight smile. “What could be more normal between friends than pizza and a movie?”
TROUBLE. THAT’S EXACTLY what he was.
Riley sat on the recliner in her warm, open family room with Claire on the sofa adjacent to him and the kids sprawled out on thick cushions on the floor. They were watching some superhero movie, but he couldn’t have recited the plot if he were the one about to get run over by a train.
The echo of Ruth Tatum’s words seemed to drown out everything else, ringing there with sonorous, unmistakable truth. He was definitely trouble.
The various women in his life could all take out an ad in the Sunday paper saying the same thing. Riley McKnight had been trouble since the day he was born.
He’s broken his mother’s heart more times than I can count, Ruth had said. He couldn’t argue the truth of that. His mother had cried plenty of tears over him, starting long before his biggest sin in the eyes of the Ruth Tatums of Hope’s Crossing, when his high school girlfriend had gotten pregnant his senior year.
If Lisa Redmond hadn’t lost the baby just a few weeks after she discovered she was pregnant, Riley knew his life would have turned out completely different. He couldn’t even comprehend it. He would have married Lisa at seventeen and taken some blue-collar job around town, maybe construction or maintenance at the ski resort. They probably would have been divorced young, if statistics held true. He would have a sixteen-year-old of his own now, something he could barely comprehend. Lisa had lost the baby, miscarried at nine weeks. Her parents had sent her away to live with an aunt in Idaho for her senior year of high school and Riley had been left here to endure the small-town whispers and finger-pointing, one of the many reasons he had been quick to make his escape while he could.
The whole experience had been painful and difficult, but he knew he had been so wild and angry back then that he probably would have screwed up the kid for life.
As he listened to the thuds and thumps from some fight scene on screen, Riley thought of his own anger in his teens, how he had channeled his sense of loss and betrayal into wild drinking, partying, unprotected sex with his girlfriend.
He had been stupid and thoughtless, had hurt his mother probably even worse than his father had. Ruth was absolutely right about that.
He hadn’t known what to do with all that anger after his father abandoned the family. As the lone male in a household of women, he’d needed a father in his life, damn it. He’d needed somebody to guide him, show him to rein in his impulses, how to respect others. Instead, his father had thrown everything away so he could follow his own dreams, could move to South America and study the archaeological ruins of long-dead civilizations instead of having to face the drudgery of his everyday life as a high school teacher and administrator.
Over the years, Riley knew he’d become an expert at casual relationships. So what was he doing here, then, with a couple of kids and a woman like Claire, who was the antithesis of everything he told himself he needed all these years? He belonged in this cozy picture of domestic bliss about as well as a beach cabana on top of the quad lift at the Silver Strike. She told him outright she didn’t want a fling and he had never been able to have anything else.
He sensed her watching him. When he turned his attention, she gave him a tentative smile. He gazed at her mouth for a long moment, remembering the particular softness of it, the angle and shape, then he jerked his gaze back to the screen.
She was so lovely, bright and vibrant like sunshine bursting through the clouds on a dank and cheerless day. He always seemed to forget that until he saw her again, when he would experience that “aah” of recognition.
A vague sense of unease settled between his shoulder blades. He shouldn’t be here. He didn’t belong.
“You don’t have to stay,” she murmured and he wondered what in his body language had given away his sudden trapped restlessness.
He should have seized on the exit route she’d offered and headed back down the street to his rental house. It seemed cowardly, however, just one more McKnight who walked away to suit his mood.
“We’re almost to the end. I can’t leave yet,” he answered in the same hushed tone.
She didn’t look convinced, something else unique about Claire. Most women were only too willing to believe whatever he told them. Not her. She seemed to filter every word, every phrase, through her own internal bullshit censor. He had a feeling he’d probably set off alarm bells more than a few times in his dealings with her.
This was it, he told himself. He would watch this movie and then work on extricating his life from hers. Claire Bradford had a couple of broken limbs, an idiot of an ex-husband and two active children. She didn’t need more trouble in her world.
When the closing credits started rolling up the screen, Claire switched on the lamp beside the sofa.
“Great show. Good choice, Owen. Now it’s time for bed. Macy’s soccer game is early in the morning.”
Neither of them answered and Riley realized he hadn’t seen movement from the floor for the second half of the movie, except for Chester’s occasional twitches as he snuggled up under Owen’s arm.
“They beat you to it, apparently. I think they’re both out for the count.”
Claire shifted her body on the sofa for a better angle. She smiled a little sadly. “They look like kittens nestled together. It’s too bad the only time they get along so well is when they’re both asleep.”
“They will. My sisters and I didn’t always get along when I was a kid.”
“No, really?”
He ignored her sarcasm. “Now I find most of them fairly tolerable.”
“Something to look forward, I suppose.”
“So what now? Do you want to leave them here for the night?”
“On the floor?” She sounded appalled at the very idea and he smiled.
“My nieces and nephews prefer the floor to a bed half the time.”
“That may be, but I think they’d probably sleep better and be more comfortable in their own beds. Macy. Owen. Wake up, kids.”
Macy stirred a little but not to full consciousness. Claire repeated her name and the girl blinked her eyes for a moment, then rubbed at them blearily.
“I think I fell asleep.”
Claire’s daughter was as lovely as her mother, with Claire’s blue eyes and warm brown hair. In a few years, she was going to be a stunner. Riley only hoped Jeff Bradford was the sort of dad who could put the fear of God in all the little punks who came sniffing around.
“Sorry.” Macy yawned. “How did the movie end?”
“The same way it did the last time we watched it,” Claire murmured. “And the time before that. And the time before that.”
Macy offered up a sleepy smile as she gathered her cotton throw around her shoulders. “Maybe that’s why I fell asleep. We need to pick a movie I haven’t seen three times.”
“It was Owen’s turn and this was the one he wanted to see.”
“Only he fell asleep in the middle. Wake up, dork.”
Owen grunted in his sleep but rolled over again.
“We’ve got it, Macy. You can go on up to bed.”
Her daughter unfolded from the floor with angular grace. “Night. Love you, Mom.” She walked to Claire’s sofa and wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck.
Claire looked pleased as she returned the hug. “Love you, too, sweetheart.”
Macy gave him a sleepy smile. “Night, Chief,” she said, then headed out of the room.
“Owen, wake up,” Claire said in a slightly louder tone.
Chester opened his eyes and gave them both a bored sort of look, but Owen didn’t move.
“Come on, kiddo. Time to head up to bed.”
The basset hound gave a jaw-cracking yawn and wriggled out from under the boy’s arm and waddled over to Claire. He nudged at her arm.
“Does he need to go out?” Riley asked.
“Probably. Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
He walked to the back door, Chester on his heels. For the first time in more than a week, the night was gorgeous, clear and cloudless and glittering with stars that looked close enough to pluck with his fingers.
The dog seemed content to sniff around the fence line, checking for intruders, so after a moment of waiting for him, Riley returned to Claire and her son, who didn’t look as if he’d budged.
“No luck?”
She shook her head. “He’s renowned for sleeping through anything. Once he fell asleep on the caterpillar train at the county fair. He rode around three times before we could wake him up.”
“Want me to carry him to his bed? I’m assuming his room is upstairs.”
“It is, but let me try one more time.”
“Owen, bath time.”
The boy’s eyes blinked open blearily. “Do I have to?”
She laughed softly and something warm and dangerous twisted through Riley, tugging at him. “Not tonight. You can take a bath in the morning. Can you make it up to your room?”
“I guess.”
He yawned as big as the dog had done and climbed to his feet. “Why did you let me fall asleep in the middle of the movie?” he asked his mother in an accusatory sort of voice.
“I didn’t realize you were asleep until the movie was over. But we can watch it again tomorrow if you want.”
“Next time, wake me up,” he muttered grumpily.
“Easier said than done, kiddo.”
Owen still looked disgruntled, but he gave a halfhearted wave to Riley, then trudged up the stairs.
“I hate not tucking him in,” Claire said in the same sort of disgruntled tone. “That’s been one of the hardest things about this whole thing, but I just can’t tackle all those stairs.”
“Want me to do it?”
She looked surprised. “Do you mind? Macy usually takes care of it for me, but she’s probably already asleep.”
“I don’t mind. Why would I?”
“I usually just make sure he’s under his blankets and the night-light’s on, that sort of thing.”
“Claire, I might not have any kids, but I’m not completely helpless here. I think I can handle it.”
Color climbed her cheeks and in the low lamplight she looked warm and sweet and completely adorable. “I’m sorry. Of course you can.”
Grateful for the distraction, he headed out of the family room, stopping long enough at the back door off the kitchen to let the dog back inside before he headed up the stairs.
Owen was already in his bed, his eyes almost closed. Riley saw in the jumble of bedclothes that he wasn’t inside his top sheet, only under a quilt with cowboy hat and boot material Riley wondered if Claire had made.
His eyes widened when he saw Riley. “Hi.”
“Hey, kid. Your mom felt bad she can’t tuck you in, so I said I’d check on you. Looks like you need to get between the sheets there.”
Owen looked down. “Oh. Right.”
He quickly adjusted the situation, slithering out of one spot and into the other. “Hey, thanks a lot for fixing my bike,” he said when he was settled. “I’m super-glad we didn’t have to take it to the shop.”
