you.” She held up his bill and grinned, then put the folder into her apron pocket as she went to the customers’ table to take their order.
He watched her, positive now that he could make out a definite bump under her apron as clear as day.
But Jared’s smile tamed itself as he thought of his own child, and he walked away just as he had the first time, something foreign gnawing at the edges of his heart.
Chapter Two
I never meant to fall in love with her. She is young—eighteen—while I am a man of thirty-five with a past that clings to me like an attached shadow, ready and waiting to tap me on the shoulder....
Jared set Tony’s journal down on the seat beside him as he sat in his green Dodge truck on Horizon Road, the cracked blacktop stretching through lanes of fences. Around him, pastures dotted by trees reflected a February late afternoon, the branches like stark bones against the gray, rain-heavy sky.
He hadn’t made it too far out of the old town before he’d choked off the truck’s engine and opened the journal, fueled by curiosity as he scanned it. He’d even made it through the entire thing, but...
This passage. It was the one he would come back to time after time, as if it were tar that sucked at his boots, keeping him from continuing.
My terrible sins...
A past that clings to me like an attached shadow...
He couldn’t get those phrases out of his head. And they frustrated the hell out of him because, as it turned out, the journal was filled with vague statements like these. In fact, the book was actually more of an outlet for a side of Tony that Jared had never expected: a lovelorn man who’d scribbled his innermost thoughts down over the course of a few months, as if the pages were the only things he could talk to.
And by the last page, when there should’ve been so many answers about who Tony was and what exactly those terrible sins of his were...
The entries just ended.
Par for the mysterious Tony’s life, huh?
Jared gave the journal the stink eye. As much as he was interested in this nameless woman Tony had crushed on way back when—and Jared already had a guess as to who she was—he wanted to know the nitty-gritty. The past Tony kept referring to. The confessions he should’ve been making.
Then again, there was a part of Jared that didn’t want to know the man’s dirty deeds at all because Tony the saint—and Jared’s possible great-grandfather—had a hold on him that wouldn’t quit.
To think, he would’ve finally been proud of something in his life besides the championship rodeo belt buckle he wore—an object that seemed more tarnished than anything to Jared.
He stared down the road out his windshield, which was speckled with a few stray drops of rain.
So Tony had a few sins. What if all his good deeds overcame everything else about the man?
Jared shook his head. He had always looked out for the shadows instead of the sunlight—it was how he’d been raised by Uncle Stuart, an emotionally inaccessible man. Sure, Stuart had gruffly seen to it that Jared had everything he needed, but he hadn’t been a real parent, and he’d seemed to be keenly aware of that. He’d never even tried to live up to the title, leaving four-year-old Jared in a room down the hall shortly after his parents had passed on, his blankets pulled up around his neck, his brain refusing to let him go to sleep because of all the shadows on the walls and all the things out there that would get to a person, whether it was a trick of the nightlight making warped shapes near the closet door or even a nightmare about a train that went off the tracks.
Jared had learned early on to be tough, to close his eyes until his heartbeat smoothed out. To hold back the tears and take care of himself rather than call to his uncle for help, even though Stuart had told him that he could.
Yes, growing up, Jared had learned to distance himself from fear and love because both could disappear if you just closed your eyes.
But this time...shouldn’t he open them, just to see if there was something else out there besides the shadows, like the love Tony had recorded in his journal? What if Tony was related to him and it turned out that he didn’t really have much as far as “terrible sins” went?
Jared longed to find out, to maybe even believe that a good man like Tony might’ve welcomed him into the family more than his granddaughter, Jared’s birth mom, had.
He took his gaze off the book, tapping his fingers on his steering wheel. He could see the cluster of brick condo buildings through the dots of rain on the glass.
The complex they’d built on Tony’s old ranch property.
Annette had told Jared that she’d dug up the journal in her garden. What were the chances that old Tony had buried more there?
Family documents? Pictures? Another journal in which he actually let those terrible sins off his chest?
And what were the odds that Annette might have finished her early shift at the diner by now?
A burst of fire roared through his veins. That shiny moon-blond hair, her creamy skin, her lips...
Jared chuffed and wiped a hand down his face. His mind—or whatever it was—didn’t belong on a woman. He’d had his share of them in the past, both buckle bunnies and cowgirls, and he’d overstayed his welcome only once. It’d been a mistake he was still living with.
Yet, all he needed from Annette was access to that garden of hers.
He sat there for a while longer—time enough for him to turn on the radio for a marathon of country songs. Time enough for him to tell himself that he should probably just drop this and move on.
But then, through the dusk, he saw a bright red Pontiac pulling into the complex and passing the iron gates with a rustic arch that spelled out Heartland—the name of Tony Amati’s original ranch.
Jared rested a hand on his door latch. Didn’t Annette drive a Pontiac? He’d seen it in the parking lot every time she worked.
He blew out a breath.
This was crazy. Was he really thinking of going through with this ridiculous mission?
Then he opened the door. Hell, yeah, he was thinking of it. He hadn’t stayed in St. Valentine because of the meatloaf or ham sandwiches. Or because of the gorgeous blonde who served them.
Right?
As a niggling thought permeated him, he shook it off, pulled his dark shearling coat out of the truck cab, then shut the door. The air smelled as if the earlier rain had made everything new, and that made him think that maybe this was a better idea than he’d first thought.
He ambled to a rose-lined walkway that led to a gate in a brick wall. At the same time, he pulled up the collar of his coat, minding the threat of the moody sky. Up ahead, the walk was sprinkle-damp, and yellow lights from condo windows beckoned.
One of them was Annette’s.
As
