She’d been so nervous and yet so eager when Ryder kissed her that first time. Her heart had pounded so hard she was half-afraid it was going to leap right out of her chest. Every kiss, every touch had felt like magic, and she’d known her life would never be the same...
And oh, hadn’t she been right about that even if she’d been so wrong about everything else?
“Hey, Lindsay.” Was it her imagination or did Ryder’s voice sound a little deeper, a little rougher around the edges, as if he, too, was suffering from some flashbacks of his own? “Good to see you again.”
Her stomach twisting into knots, she asked, “What...what are you doing here, Ryder?”
His familiar grin was back, and Lindsay resisted the urge to slap herself. Hadn’t he proved time and again that that night had meant nothing to him? He’d hardly spoken to her in the weeks that followed, striding through the high school halls with Brittany Baines on his arm. Prom king and queen, the school’s golden couple. He’d forgotten all about her in the time it took to drop her back on her front porch and drive away.
“Your gran invited me.”
“What? Why?” For a split second, the room spun as her world tilted. Her grandmother couldn’t possibly know—no one knew about her and Ryder. No one except for Tony Pirelli, the boy—man now, though Lindsay hadn’t seen him since the summer after she graduated—whom everyone believed to be Robbie’s father. And even then, Lindsay hadn’t mentioned Ryder’s name when she confessed her terrifying secret.
Only that she’d been so, so stupid and was so, so scared...
“I don’t know what to do, Tony. I can’t tell the father. I just...can’t.”
“So don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t say anything. Anyone asks about the father, tell ’em it’s none of their business.”
“But you know people will think—”
“People can think whatever the hell they want. The trick is learning not to give a damn.”
It was a trick Tony Pirelli could give lessons in. He’d already angered his parents, first by dropping out of college midway through his second semester and more recently with his intention to join the marines.
“But what...what will you tell your family?”
He’d grinned at her—his typical indolent, almost insolent smile. “That’s easy. I’ll tell ’em the last thing they’d ever believe.”
“What’s that?”
“The truth.”
His plan had worked. The more he protested his innocence and hotly denied responsibility, the guiltier he sounded. Before long, everyone accepted he was the father of her baby—including his family. And for all these years, for the sake of their friendship, Tony had carried the weight of their disappointment so that she could keep the true identity of Robbie’s father a secret.
“Didn’t you know, Lindsay?” Ellie was asking. “Ryder moved back last year.”
“Yes, I’d heard. But that doesn’t exactly explain why you invited him over for breakfast,” Lindsay answered back in an aside that must have been loud enough for Ryder to hear, judging by the way one side of his mouth kicked up.
Ellie laughed. “I didn’t invite him for breakfast—though you’re welcome to join us,” she called over her shoulder to the man in question.
“Love to.”
Of course he would, Lindsay thought as she drew in a breath. Nightmare. Really, really had to be a nightmare. “Then why did you invite him over, Gran?” she asked even as habit kicked in and she reached for the plates to set the table.
“To take a look at fixing up the house. Isn’t that what you and your parents have been trying to get me to do for months now?” Ellie’s expression seemed a shade too innocent, but Lindsay was too caught off guard by her words to focus on the meaning behind them.
“But Ryder—” Her protest died on her lips as she realized she didn’t know exactly what Ryder had been doing for a living since he returned home. He’d worked at his in-laws’ firm in San Francisco, building billion-dollar, award-winning high-rises. Not something there was much need for in Clearville.
Still... “You’re...you’re a handyman?” Lindsay asked as she carried the plates toward the eat-in nook.
A very small nook she couldn’t get to without stepping way too close to Ryder. She tried to squeeze by, but he moved directly into her path and reached for the plates. “I do like to consider myself handy.”
Lindsay didn’t want to remember all the places those skilled hands had once touched while standing in her grandmother’s kitchen. Didn’t want to remember—ever. But she did. She remembered every touch, every kiss, every mistaken belief that what she was feeling—what they were both feeling—had to be love.
And that Ryder seemed to want her to remember was just...cruel. Like tossing her foolishness for falling for him, for thinking making love with him meant something, back in her face.
The stoneware plates, still caught between both their hands, rattled as her hands shook. “Hey, Lindsay,” Ryder said softly, his eyebrows pulling low. But whatever else he might have said was lost by the thump of footsteps coming down the stairs.
“Mom, what’s—”
Robbie’s typical question of “what’s to eat?” cut off as the boy slid to a stop in the kitchen doorway, his gaze shifting between his mother and Ryder. Lindsay jerked back so quickly only Ryder’s fast reflexes saved the plates from crashing to the tile floor.
“Hey, honey.” Reaching out, she restrained herself from pulling him into her embrace. Instead she took small comfort in resting a hand on her son’s narrow shoulder. He wasn’t big on hugs anymore, at least not when other people were around. And she no longer had the power to kiss an owie and make the hurt go away. It was all part of growing up, she knew. Part of changing from boy to man, a transition she knew nothing about.
And seeing the two of them—father and son standing side by side for the first time—she felt a wave of dizziness rock her. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, drowning out all other sounds and blurring the edges of her vision until she could see nothing else but her boy and the man in front of her.
Everyone had always told her how much Robbie took after her. But then again, everyone also thought dark-haired, dark-eyed Tony Pirelli was her son’s father, and he and Robbie looked nothing alike. So little wonder people saw the resemblance between mother and son in their dark blond, wavy hair, blue-green eyes and slender builds. It was all Lindsay ever saw—until now.
But now, with Robbie and Ryder together, wasn’t there a similarity in the shape of their chins, their wide foreheads, the arch of their eyebrows? Even, heaven help her, the cowlick at the part of their hair, far more noticeable
