aware of the rasp of whiskers. Shaving hadn’t been high on his list lately.
He looked bad enough that an innocent kid figured he needed a handout and was cagey enough to mask the charity out of her hard-earned dusting money.
He swallowed an oath and leaned over to swipe up the dollar in his fist, then turned back to the counter. “Tabby. The little girl. Chloe. What do you know about her?”
Tabby shrugged and wiped her hands on a damp towel. “Her mom is Mallory Keegan. The O.B. who’s filling in over at Doc Yarnell’s practice while he’s on sabbatical. The office is over on Sycamore,” she added when he gave her a blank look.
The street he knew. The name of the doctor, he didn’t. Ryan could remember a time when his mother was the only doctor in the area. Now she ran the Weaver hospital, and the town had enough obstetrical needs to support a doctor who could go on sabbatical.
Some things did change.
“Thanks.” He shrugged into his jacket and left.
Outside, the afternoon was cold, the sky overhead heavy with gray clouds. Looking one way, he could see the sheriff’s office. For more years than Ryan could remember, his father had been the sheriff. He’d retired several years ago—back when Ryan had been MIA—but he couldn’t look at the brick building now, without thinking about his dad.
Both of Ryan’s parents had been plainly happy when he’d returned from the dead. As had the rest of the family. To them, it had been a miracle.
Ryan, though, still felt dead.
No miracle.
No honor.
He pulled out a cigarette, lighting it as he turned the opposite direction from that stalwart brick building of law and order and flipped up his collar. Sycamore was just two streets down from Main, but it was a long street—and God only knew where the doctor’s office was. It could be close—here in the original, older part of Weaver. Or it could be out in the newer part of town where a crop of apartment buildings had sprung up during the years of his absence, along with a giant Shop-World and a gaggle of other stores.
Some things hadn’t changed in Weaver. And some things had. But Ryan was willing to bet that he’d be able to find Chloe Keegan by the time the afternoon was out.
He’d spent three years trying—and too often failing—to save girls not all that much older than Chloe from being sold off to the highest bidder. The last thing his conscience needed right now was the additional weight of some little kid with a soft heart.
“Mom!”
Mallory Keegan lifted her head at the hollered greeting, only to smack it smartly against the inside frame of the cabinet she was presently tucked halfway inside. She muttered an oath even as the wrench slid out of her hand, clanging loudly against the water pipe.
The pipe that she had just managed to get to stop leaking.
So much for that.
She swiped her hand over the fine mist of water that spurted anew from the pipes, spraying her right in the face and backed out of the cupboard.
“Upstairs,” she yelled back down to her daughter as she grabbed the bath towel off the rack on the wall behind her. She dashed it down her face and then tossed it over the thin but copious spray.
She collected Pap smears and delivered babies.
She did not fix plumbing of this sort at all.
Which meant she’d have to add a plumber’s repair bill to the budget that month. A budget that was already tight, particularly with Chloe’s birthday and Christmas looming.
She could hear her daughter’s boots clomping rapidly up the stairs but the long day—an unexpected cesarean for a third-time mom and a miscarriage for a first-timer—had her tiredly sitting back on her heels and just waiting.
It didn’t take long.
Chloe careened around the corner of the bathroom, a small pink bakery box clutched against the midriff of her purple sweatshirt. Her boots slid a little, squeaking against the hardwood floor that still bore the dampness that Mallory hadn’t succeeded in wiping away.
The sight of her daughter’s face, wreathed in smiles, was enough to counter her exhaustion, though, and she opened her arms just in time to stop Chloe’s momentum in a hug. The feel of her daughter’s strong, sturdy little body was enough to melt her frustration.
The bakery box knocked against Mallory’s head as Chloe’s arms wound around her neck. “Didja have any babies today?”
Long used to Chloe’s bursts of speech, Mallory laughed a little. “I delivered a baby today,” she said, and caught the box that was in danger of being crushed altogether. “What’s this?”
Chloe straightened. “Pie.” She stuck her head under the sink. “Is it fixed?”
“Don’t move the—” Mallory could tell the moment Chloe’s curiosity prompted her to move the towel from the pipe, because she squeaked and jumped back out of the indoor sprinkler “—towel,” she finished.
Her daughter wasn’t a large fan of water in her face. She tolerated her baths out of necessity, but anything more—swimming, splashing in a sprinkler on a hot, summer day—was mostly out of the question.
But Mallory hadn’t temporarily uprooted her family from New York to settle in this small Wyoming town for the purpose of getting Chloe over her fear of water.
Her reasoning had been much more involved.
“Here.” She pushed aside the disquiet that was all too willing to coil anxiously in her stomach these days, and handed Chloe another towel off the towel rack.
She dropped the wet towel back over the leaking pipe and pushed to her feet. “It’s going to take a person who actually knows what they’re doing to fix it, I’m afraid.”
She steered Chloe out of the bathroom toward the stairs and peeked into the bakery box at the enormous pecan-laden wedge of pie. Her mouth watered. Between the hospital and the leaking pipe, she hadn’t managed to find time for a decent meal. “Looks delicious.” She leaned down and kissed the top of Chloe’s nut-brown hair, spotting her grandmother when they reached the foot of the stairs and turned to the kitchen. “Thank you,” she told them both.
“Thank her.” After less than two decades in the United States, Kathleen Keegan’s voice still held plenty of her native Ireland as she waved at Chloe. “She paid for it out of her allowance.”
Mallory set the pie on the narrow breakfast bar and found a fork in the drawer. “Did you have fun shopping before you stopped for lunch?” Kathleen was notorious for finding bargains in the oddest of places.
She looked up as she sank the fork into the rich dessert and caught the secretive glance Chloe and Kathleen shared. “All right, you two. What’d you buy?”
“Nothing.” Chloe’s voice was innocent, but her eyebrows were riding an inch above normal, hiding beneath the tousled bangs covering her forehead. “I found
