groan in pleasure as she swallowed the forkful of gooey pecan. Chloe adored Purple Princess video games and could endlessly wax eloquent about the reasons why she just “had-had-had” to have each new one when they came out. And usually, the games came at a much higher price tag. “Why didn’t you buy it, then? I know you had more than twenty dollars in your wallet when you and Grammy started out this morning.” And Mallory could have returned the unopened game that she’d already purchased and hidden high in the closet.
Chloe’s gaze darted to her grandmother again. Her round cheeks turned rosy. “I gotta go to the bathroom,” she suddenly announced, and darted out of the kitchen.
Mallory eyed Kathleen. “Well?”
“Aye, don’t be looking at me, child.” Kathleen waved her hand in a shooing motion. “I’m not going to blab on her secrets.”
Mallory’s smile broke loose. “Christmas shopping, perhaps?”
“I’m going to have to hire a plumber,” Mallory said, returning to the most pressing issue when Kathleen merely smiled.
“Call your nice Dr. Clay and ask her to recommend someone.”
Mallory gnawed the inside of her lip. Prevailing on Rebecca Clay was something she wanted to avoid and not merely because Mallory could guess who the woman would recommend for the job. It was because of the other woman that they were in Weaver at all.
She could hear Chloe’s footsteps from overhead.
Well, it wasn’t precisely Rebecca Clay that was the reason Mallory and her crew had come to Weaver six weeks ago. Rebecca had just facilitated it.
The real reason was Chloe.
The anxiety inside Mallory swamped her hunger, and she covered the remainder of the pie and rinsed her fork at the sink. “I’ll find someone,” she murmured as she headed to her office at the back of the house. But the squawking sound of the ancient doorbell had her changing course.
She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, which were damp from the water leak, and yanked open the heavy door without any of the caution she would have normally used in her apartment building back in New York.
The tall, broad-shouldered man standing there on the porch staring at the ground raised his head as the door swung open, and she found herself looking into a pair of deeply blue eyes.
A strikingly familiar blue.
She froze. Her lips parted, but no words could emerge, since her mouth had gone bone-dry. No amount of mental preparations had been enough, she realized. Meeting the man in person had been her plan. Her goal. Yet faced with him now, she felt unprepared. Not at all ready.
His heavy, dark eyebrows quirked together for a moment, but he was still the one to break the silence, his voice deep and slightly gruff and definitely in keeping with his rough, unshaven jaw and the tousled, dark hair on his head that looked in need of a good barber. “You’re Dr. Keegan?”
She swallowed. Nodded.
His gaze was sharp. Studying. Almost as if he were memorizing her appearance before he stuck out a bare, long-fingered hand. “I’m Ryan Clay,” he introduced with spare brevity.
Her hand seemed to lift of its own accord and settle against his square palm for the briefest of moments.
The contact still managed to leave her feeling shaky.
And that shakiness had nothing to do with the words that she knew were going to come out of his mouth, before they actually did.
“I’m here about your daughter.”
Chapter Two
It was almost like looking at a ghost, Ryan thought, staring at the woman. Dr. Keegan.
She was staring back at him, her eyes wide. They were distinct, those eyes. A honey-brown that was oddly translucent.
And oddly familiar, though he knew for a fact that he’d never met her before.
“What about my daughter?” Her smooth voice had a faint lilt to it. And though it might have held suspicion, given the way he was showing up on her doorstep like this, it didn’t seem to.
But it held something. Something he couldn’t quite identify.
He realized she was hugging her arms across her chest; the white cable-knit sweater she wore not doing enough to hold the cold air at bay. “I want to return this.” He held out the dollar bill that Chloe had left. “And give her this.” He pulled an envelope out of his coat pocket.
The doctor moistened her lips, drawing attention that didn’t need to be drawn considering he’d already taken note of their shape. Their soft fullness. The fact that they were bare, pale pink.
The envelope crinkled softly between his fingers.
God. She was so damn familiar—
“Mom! Grammy said to tell you the water in the bathroom’s getting worse.” Chloe suddenly appeared next to her mother, sliding between the doctor’s slender body and the door. Her smile widened when she spotted him. “Hi. What are you doing here?”
Her mom’s hand slid over the girl’s shoulder, closing protectively across her chest.
He didn’t blame the woman. Kids needed protection in this world. Even in little towns like Weaver, Wyoming.
He crouched down until he was more on a level with the kid and handed her the dollar bill. “This is yours. I really didn’t need it as much as you thought.”
She didn’t take it, though her spiky black lashes lowered and her eyes shied away guiltily. “No, it’s not.”
“Chloe? What’s going on?”
Ryan looked up at the doctor. It had been easy enough to track them down to this old house in this old neighborhood. Once he’d found the office on Sycamore, all he’d had to do was visit a few of the neighboring businesses to ask about the new doctor in town, and tongues had started wagging.
Before long, he’d learned all about the house she’d rented about six weeks ago near the town park; the fact that she was friendly but not too; that her daughter was attending school and the grandmother helped watch the girl.
None of the talkative souls he’d run into had mentioned a man in the mix.
“Your daughter has a generous heart, Dr. Keegan.”
She tucked a wave of streaky brown hair behind her ear. “Mallory,” she said faintly. “And, yes. She does. But I’m afraid I don’t understand what this is about.”
“Here.” Since the kid wouldn’t take the dollar, he stuffed it into the mom’s hand instead and handed the kid the envelope, which she tore into eagerly as he rose to face the mom again. Though that was a relative term, since Mallory Keegan stood damn near a foot shorter than he did. “Your daughter and I ran into each other at Ruby’s. She thought I needed a…loan,” he settled on.
“Look, Mom!” Chloe had pulled
