be on his own altogether. Which was fine. He wouldn’t starve. But he was the first to admit he wasn’t so great on the baking sweets end of things.
The coffee cake sat on a cooling rack and he imagined cutting a slice while it was still warm. He smiled to himself. Linda Briggs would give him heck if he pulled such a stunt.
Linda always kept a notepad beside the phone, too. He went to the counter and grabbed a pen.
“Clay!”
He jumped at the sound of his name, nearly dropping the pen.
Megan stood at the junction between hall and kitchen wearing jeans and a sweater and a towel wrapped around her head. She looked anything but happy to see him. “Don’t you knock?”
He forced a calming breath. “Since when have we ever knocked?” He picked up the pen and began writing, trying to look far more composed than he felt. His heart was beating a mile a minute. As he scribbled the note he said, “And as a matter of fact, I did knock. No one answered.”
“I was upstairs.”
He looked up. She didn’t wear a speck of makeup and the dark blue towel contrasted with her flawless complexion. He could smell the flowery scent of her soap or shampoo from where he stood and it felt disturbingly intimate. “So I gathered. I’ll be out of your way in a minute. I’m just leaving a note for Dawson.”
He finished and ripped the paper off the tablet. “Where is he, by the way?”
Megan’s lips twisted and she looked away. “He didn’t come home last night. And he has my car.”
Clay remembered the goofy way his friend had looked at Tara Stillwell last night as she’d waited on them at the Spur. Dawson had been interested in her for weeks, but Clay hadn’t realized the attraction went both ways so completely. “Tara’s a nice girl. He could do worse.”
“Tara … you mean Tara from my graduating class?” She finally moved from the doorway and into the kitchen.
“You didn’t know?”
Megan shook her head, looking genuinely distressed. “Not a clue. He never said a word to me about it.”
“I guess you haven’t been here to see,” Clay replied, unable to resist the slight dig.
Fire flashed in Meg’s eyes as the towel slipped on her head. With a look of annoyance she took it off. “I’m well aware that I’ve been out of town,” she snapped. “I don’t know why you feel you must continue to bring it up. And my family did visit me, you know. If Dawson kept his personal life to himself, I’m not totally to blame for that, too.”
Clay heard the sharp words but they bounced off him at the shock of seeing her hair. It was short, sleek and lighter than he remembered, even though it was wet. A light reddish-brown color that reminded him of Tinkerbell. Short and saucy and cute.
But it was the cause of the change that felt like lead in his feet, heavy and immovable. All her gorgeous dark curls were gone. The woman in front of him seemed even more of a stranger.
Her wide, honeyed eyes looked into his. “The chemo,” she acknowledged quietly. There was no resentment in the words—just acceptance, and it damn near ripped his heart out.
“Meg.” The word came out like a croak; he hadn’t realized how his throat had closed over. Seeing her in boots and with a shovel in her hand had been one thing. She had been Dawson’s little sister, Clay’s old friend. It had been easier to pretend that there wouldn’t be physical changes after what she’d been through.
But this was evidence. Proof of what she’d suffered. Proof of things changing when Clay wanted them to be the same as they’d always been. Easy. Damn, it had always been easy with Meg, right up until the time she got sick and everything changed.
“It’s okay,” she replied, folding the towel neatly. “It’s coming back in now, it just takes some getting used to. I like it. It’s easy to care for.”
She smiled but he caught the wobble at the edges. For the first time ever he was glad she’d done her treatment in Calgary. Yes, she’d have had support in Larch Valley, but he wouldn’t have been the man to provide it as much as he’d like to pretend otherwise. Megan was a friend and he’d wanted to be there for her, but he couldn’t handle this sort of thing and he hated what that said about him.
He’d had no choice but to watch his father waste away. He’d been ten years old and there had been nowhere for him to go, no escape. He’d idolized his dad, even when the big man had been reduced to a shadow of his former self. Now Clay was torn between resenting Meg for running away and being grateful that he hadn’t had to witness the harsh realities of her treatment. It was over, but just the idea of Meg being completely bald seemed unreal and made his stomach do a slow, heavy twist.
“I’d better get going.” He put the note on the counter and headed back for the mudroom and his boots.
“Is it really that ugly?”
Her soft voice chased after him and he stopped, dropping his head. He couldn’t leave knowing she thought … Oh hell. How women thought was far beyond him most days but he was bright enough to realize that he’d hurt her feelings by reacting the way he had. She’d lost all her hair. Megan had never been what he considered high maintenance, but he understood that she had to be feeling insecure about her appearance. He wasn’t totally insensitive.
He turned back. “No,” he said, the kitchen so perfectly silent that his quiet response filled every corner. She was absolutely gorgeous if he were being honest with himself. The fact that he noticed was quite troubling. But he wouldn’t deny her the words. He wasn’t that cold. “It’s not bad at all. You’re as beautiful as you ever were.”
It was the last thing he expected that would make her cry.
CHAPTER TWO
“You’re as beautiful as you ever were.”
The burst of emotion was so sudden and unfamiliar that Megan choked on the sob that tore from her throat. She quickly covered her mouth with her hands, but Clay was staring at her like he’d never seen her before. Megan Briggs did not cry, especially not in front of anyone. But this time she seemed unable to control her reaction. It hit too close to her heart.
Clay Gregory had just said she was beautiful. She closed her eyes and two tears slid down her cheeks. The irony hit her like a fist—she wasn’t beautiful. Not anymore, not even close. For years she’d longed to hear those words from his lips, and now that she didn’t want them they were offered in the bitterest of circumstances. Because she was less than whole, she was vulnerable and worst of all—needy.
She’d solicited his remark, rather than simply accepting his tepid reaction to her pixie-short hair. And of course he would say that, out of duty. Out of sympathy.
Clay didn’t know the changes cancer had wrought on her body and the scars it had left behind. Losing her hair was nothing in the greater scheme of things. She was missing a breast. She’d had treatments that had changed so much of her body’s chemistry that things she’d barely given a passing thought to before—like one day being married and having a family—were suddenly important and very uncertain. And yet somehow she knew, deep inside, that even if Clay was only
