it was just the slightest movement. “Because our conversations were fairly flirtatious. I looked forward to those chats, because I liked you, too.”
And just like that, Gabriella Chance got under his skin all over again. He’d pinpointed the attraction between them alive and well earlier today. But right now, with her soft confession drifting on the night breeze, and her loose ponytail sliding along the shoulder of his jacket as she looked at him with trusting eyes...
She tapped into a spot in his chest that he hadn’t cracked open in a good long while.
Her cell phone vibrated on the porch rail, the light and the sound startling her. She reached for it.
“Sorry to check this,” she said a little too quickly, breathlessly. She flipped over the screen, and the light illuminated her face as she scrolled the pages. “I only leave the notifications on for family and for messages from the hotline for my victims’ support group, so it could be—”
She went silent, lips pursed as she read.
“Something wrong?” He admired her for using her own experiences as a victim of cyber stalking to help others, even if it interrupted a conversation that had captured his undivided attention.
“There’s a local girl I’m planning to check on while I’m in Heartache—someone I’ve communicated with off and on over the last two years through my online group.” Gabby worked the keypad on the screen while she spoke. “I’m really worried about her. She’s so young and she’s alone taking care of her dying—” after an awkward pause, she stopped typing to peer up at Clayton, her eyes widening with what looked like a “lightbulb” moment “—father.”
“What is it?” He’d been behind the eight ball from the beginning of this conversation, so it was no surprise he’d missed a step somewhere.
“Her father is dying of cirrhosis and he lives just over the town line. Heading toward Franklin.” She frowned. “And you had mentioned that Pete—”
The truth slammed into him.
“You’re meeting my half sister Mia?”
* * *
NOT EVEN CLAYTON’S warm leather jacket could ward off the chill that his words sent skittering over Gabriella’s skin.
Gabriella had communicated with Mia Benson for two years online. And although she hadn’t built up enough trust for the girl to confide her name until a few months ago, Gabriella never had any reason to connect her to Clayton.
They didn’t have the same last name, for one thing. Then again, Mia wouldn’t be the first offspring that didn’t share Pete Yancy’s surname.
“You know her.” She repeated the fact only because she was still having trouble making sense of it. “She’s your half sister?”
Clayton gave a clipped nod. “Yes, she’s my half sister, but I didn’t even know about her until very recently. But why are you worried about her? Is she being bullied? You met her through that victims’ group you run?”
He fired the questions fast. Impatiently.
“She’s not being bullied,” Gabriella assured him honestly, although she could kick herself for mentioning anything about the girl, even if she hadn’t used her name. “But I’m not at liberty to say anything more without her permission. I had no idea you would know her, Clay. I swear. She was in the foster system.”
And just how on earth had Mia ended up in foster care when she had an older brother who might have stepped in? Defensiveness on Mia’s behalf simmered.
Gabriella needed to call the girl back, but since Mia hadn’t flagged the message as urgent, Gabriella couldn’t walk away from this shocking conversation with Clayton just yet.
“I had no idea she existed until Pete told me about her two weeks ago when he called to say he didn’t have long to live.” Clayton shoved out of the wooden chair he’d been seated in, edging past her on the narrow porch to stalk freely around the patch of grass in front of his motel cabin. He paced like a tiger—trapped and not happy about it.
“I’m surprised the foster system didn’t—”
“So am I.” Cutting her off, he swung back toward the railing between them, grabbing the wood in two hands as he leaned closer, his knuckles turning white at the tight grip. “And you know what’s really messed up about that, Gabby? I made it my mission to find all my half siblings after I graduated high school. I ended up being so damn good at it—unearthing one heartbreak story after another in the form of my sad and disjointed family until I had eight of us accounted for.”
The haunted expression on his face made it clear that not all of his siblings had navigated through childhood as successfully as he had. And Gabriella remembered firsthand how rough his experience had been. He’d told her once about getting separated from a younger brother when social services removed the boy from Clay’s father’s house.
“It was good of you to look them all up. Provide a sense of family for them.” She’d relied on her brother so much since her father went to jail and her mother wasted away waiting for him. Her mom had moved to the tiny town in Kansas where her father sat in a federal penitentiary.
If not for Zach, Gabriella wouldn’t have a family.
“Yeah. A real hero. Except that I stopped looking after I accounted for eight kids. As if the old man had suddenly given up going home with strangers and fathering more children he had no intention of supporting.” Clay’s bitterness came through every word, although it wasn’t clear if he was more upset with himself or his father. “I guess I resented the old man so much that once I was done with that job, I didn’t look back. Didn’t visit. Didn’t write. Didn’t ask how many other kids he planned to shove out into the world with no means of support before he finally kicked the bucket.”
With that, he pushed away from the porch rail. Straightening, he walked away from the cabin, out into the moonlit parking area. She watched as he sucked in one long breath after another, before turning on his boot heel to stalk back toward her.
She waited until he was close enough to hear before she spoke.
“I’m glad to know that Mia has you now.” She reached over the rail to take his hand, willing him to look at her. “I’m sure she felt alone and reached out to me because she didn’t know she had you. But things must have changed for her since you came into her life.” Gabriella had been frightened at the references Mia made to much older men back in the days when she was under her mother’s care before social services stepped in. The girl had joined the support group after that, to ask for help dealing with a teenage boy at her first foster home, but she had wound up resolving the issue and moving into a better home before Pete got himself together enough to get her out of the system.
Or so she said.
Still, Gabriella got the impression that Mia had enough dealings with her mother where she was still exposed to some unsavory types.
“That’s kind of you to think, Gabby.” Clay squeezed her hand where she’d taken it, his warm, callus-roughened palm sending a surprise thrill through her despite the grave nature of the conversation. “But since I haven’t even met Mia yet, I’ve been exactly no help at all to her.”
“You
