style="font-size:15px;"> He glanced in the direction of the approaching passengers. Where was she? Everyone moved toward the luggage carousel, its gears grinding as it began a slow rotation. Then metal clunked and the bags began to drop onto the carousel. Clayton ran his hand, which still stung from the coffee burn, across his face. Somehow the ground crew had gotten the luggage off the plane before she’d disembarked. Now, there was no hope of their making the rehearsal. He’d have to push her, in order to make the dinner.
So she hadn’t changed. He caught sight of her, finally, first spotting her fair hair as she strolled into view behind a group of stragglers pushing strollers. Until the others moved toward their luggage, he could barely see her. She probably wasn’t much over five feet tall. As she got closer, he studied her face, which was framed by a wild mass of curls. Her eyes shone a bright, clear blue between thick fringes of black lashes.
Clayton’s gaze traveled down her body, clad in a ribbed white tank top and tight faded jeans. His stomach lurched again. Abby was still going to be trouble; probably much more trouble as a woman than she’d been as a kid.
Then he noticed that her right hand was wrapped around another smaller hand. At her side walked a little girl of about four or five. With her own blond curls and those same bright eyes, she was the spitting image of her mother. His breath left his lungs as the shock slammed through him.
No one had told him that Abby Hamilton had a child.
Abby glanced around the airport, looking for Molly or Colleen or Brenna, and then her gaze collided with Clayton McClintock’s. His chocolate-brown eyes were wide with surprise. He rubbed a hand over his eyes as if he didn’t believe what he was seeing. Then the hand skimmed down his face, over sharp cheekbones and a square jaw. He didn’t look much different at thirty than he had at twenty-two, except that he wasn’t boyishly thin anymore. His black knit polo shirt strained across his chest and upper arms, and stone-colored khakis encased his long legs. Clayton McClintock was all man now.
Abby exhaled deeply, stirring her bangs so that strands of hair tangled in her lashes. “Oh, no…”
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” her daughter asked as she gave her mother a tug.
Abby’s feet stopped moving—she didn’t want to get any closer to Clayton. No one had told him about Lara. While Abby appreciated her friends’ loyalty, she wouldn’t have minded if they’d broken their promise not to tell anyone in Cloverville about her daughter. Why had she made them pledge their silence in the first place? She wasn’t ashamed of being a single mom. But a part of her was still eighteen, hurting from the disapproval of the townspeople. And no one in Cloverville had disapproved of her more than Clayton.
If only she’d worn one of her tailored business suits instead of her most casual outfit, but now it was too late to change either her clothes or Clayton’s opinion of her.
He walked toward them, eating up the short distance with just a couple of strides. “Abby.”
She drew in a breath and then pasted on a smile. “Clayton.”
“It’s been a long time,” he said, his gaze hard as he stared at her.
Not long enough. He obviously didn’t want her back in Cloverville any more than she wanted to be back.
Then his head dipped, and his gaze softened on her little girl. His throat moved as he swallowed, and then he asked, “So who’s this pretty young lady?”
“My daughter.”
“I can tell,” he said, his lips curving into a warm smile that etched creases into his cheeks.
Abby’s pulse quickened. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen him smile before. Lara, however, was more frightened than charmed and ducked behind her mother’s legs, grasping Abby’s hand tightly with one hand as she clutched a well-loved teddy bear with the other.
“You don’t have to be scared,” she assured her daughter, even though she’d spent much of her childhood fearing her friends’ older brother. But she’d grown up many, many years ago—she’d had no choice. “Clayton isn’t a stranger. I’ve known him a long time. Well, I knew him a long time ago.”
“I knew your mother when she was your age,” Clayton said as he dropped to his haunches, his slacks pulled taut across muscular thighs. “You look exactly like she did the first time she followed my sister Molly home.”
Like a stray dog. That was how he’d always seen her. But then he hadn’t been all that wrong. She used to come to the McClintock house with her clothes dirty, her knees scraped and her stomach growling with hunger. And his mom had always cleaned her up and fed her. Mrs. Mick, as Abby had always called her, had been more of a mother to Abby than her own sad excuse for a mother had been. Mom had spent more time in the bar than at home, and Abby’s dad had always been gone because he drove a semitruck for a living.
“What’s your name?” he asked the child.
The small girl whispered her response. “Lara.”
“Lara?” Clayton glanced up at Abby.
She nodded, then confirmed what he had to be thinking. “Lara Hamilton.”
He straightened up. “So you’re not married.”
“Nope. The closest I’m getting to an altar is Molly’s wedding tomorrow.” The one reason she had come back to Cloverville: she was going to watch her friend make the biggest mistake of her life, unless somehow she could manage to talk Molly out of it. If not for all the projects Abby had had going on in the past couple of months, she would have come back to Cloverville much sooner. She hoped she had enough time to talk Molly out of the wedding. “I’m sorry you were sent to get me, Clayton. I thought one of the others…”
“They’re already at the rehearsal.”
She glanced at her watch, then closed her eyes. “We’re late.”
He probably held her responsible for the computer problems at O’Hare that had delayed their flight. She blamed herself, too, for not coming in earlier. But Clayton was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted to come back to Cloverville at all. No matter what she’d accomplished since she’d left, everyone here—and especially Clayton—would always see her as the poor, screwed-up Hamilton kid who’d been failing high school even before she’d been expelled for malicious mischief and vandalism.
“Is it too late for me to be the flower girl, Mommy?” Lara asked.
Abby’s lids lifted, her gaze on her daughter’s concerned expression. Lara had been looking forward to her “job” in Molly’s wedding, and she’d be disappointed if Abby convinced her friend to cancel.
Clayton turned back to Lara, too, offering reassurance before her mother had a chance to speak. “No, honey, the wedding is tomorrow, and you’re going to be the most beautiful flower girl Cloverville has ever seen.” He closed one dark eye in a wink, his lashes brushing his cheek.
Abby’s heart fluttered. It had to be an aftereffect of flying. Not that she was an anxious flyer. Nope, the nerves were because she was here, less than an hour away from the Cloverville city limits.
“But we do need to get to the rehearsal,” Clayton continued. “So we know what to do tomorrow. And after the rehearsal, we’re having dinner at Mr.
