He didn’t need hot chocolate.
He needed a cold shower.
“Tightens around the pipe with a rubber gasket,” he said abruptly.
She looked back at the pipe. Her waving hair slid over her shoulder. Brushed her cheek. “And it stops the leak?”
“Yeah.” He shoved to his feet, edging back out of the doorway. Into the hall. Where breathing in didn’t mean breathing in the scent of her. “Hardware store’ll have them. Doesn’t solve the corrosion, though. You’ll want a plumber to look into that soon or you might end up with a few more waterfalls before you’re through.”
She tossed the towel over the leak, pulled the large bucket out to empty into the bathtub, replaced it beneath the leak again and spread the towel out on top of the sink to dry. “I should have rented an apartment in that complex on the other side of town,” she muttered, turning to face him. She dusted her hands down her thighs. “I’m used to apartments. I like apartments. They come with building superintendents to deal with all of this sort of stuff.”
“Then why choose this old place?” She’d have been across town, instead of practically around the block from the Sleep Tite, if she’d have gone the apartment route. “I grew up in this town. The houses in this neighborhood were old when I was a kid.”
She tilted her head back a little, looking up at the ceiling. “Because I’m a sucker for my family. And both Chloe and Gram loved it on sight. Gram because of the enamel doorknobs and crystal chandelier and Chloe because of the park down the street.” She sighed a little and looked back at him. “It seemed the least I could do since it was my decision to uproot them from New York.” Her eyes narrowed a little. “I’m sorry. You’re not interested in all that. Why did Chloe give you a dollar?”
Like it or not—and he pretty much was squarely in the not camp—he was interested in “all that.”
Maybe because there was that nagging familiarity about her. Or maybe it was just because every time he looked at her, his blood stirred in a way that it hadn’t in a very long time. Or maybe it was because his own existence was so freaking pathetic that he was dreaming up excuses to prove otherwise.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. Above her head, he could see his reflection in the ancient mirror above the sink. Lines around his eyes. More gray in his unkempt hair than had been there a year ago. A jaw that hadn’t seen a razor in too many days.
“She didn’t so much as give it to me as pretend it was mine,” he said. “She seemed to think I was more in need of her dusting money than she was.” He couldn’t think of an earthly reason why he was telling her the details. Knowing he’d looked derelict enough to elicit pity from her daughter wasn’t exactly something for him to feel proud of.
She was looking at him again. Her amber-colored eyes measured. “Mr. Clay—Ryan—there’s something about Chloe you need to know.”
He knew enough. She had a tender little heart that he hoped she never had reason to toughen. But, of course, she was only six years old. Life would add calluses sooner or later. “A dollar’s not much, I know—”
“It is to her.” Mallory moistened her lips again. “And it was very kind of you to return it. I already put it back in her piggy bank. The gift certificate wasn’t necessary, though.”
He shrugged it off. “She talked about the game at the diner. My uncle owns CeeVid.”
She looked blank.
“The company that produces the video game.”
“That’s here?” Her eyebrows shot up. “In Weaver?”
“You really haven’t been here long at all, have you?” She couldn’t have been if she didn’t know about the company. Aside from the hospital, it was basically the major employer in the area that, until Tristan established it, had been more traditionally comprised of primarily ranchers and farmers.
“We still have boxes to unpack in the bedrooms,” she admitted. “But still, regardless of your family connection, it’s a much too valuable gift for her. And I don’t want her thinking that a person should be rewarded like that for trying to do a good deed.”
No good deed goes unpunished, he thought cynically. “She’d have bought it herself at some store in Braden if she’d had enough money left from whatever it was she bought you.”
Her lips twisted a little. “All right.” Her voice lowered. “If you must know, I’ve already gotten her the game for her birthday.”
“Then let her use the gift certificate on something else from CeeVid. If you want to take her over to them—you can’t miss it. It’s the multistory building out near the highway if you were heading to Braden. Anyway, she can shop for something on their Web site if you don’t want to go to the store there. Consider it a birthday present if you have to, because I’m not taking it back.”
She sighed hugely. “For crying in the sink,” she muttered.
At the phrase, something inside Ryan’s head clicked into place.
“You do want your way, don’t you,” Mallory was still muttering as she slipped past him into the hall.
“Cassie,” he realized aloud. “That’s who you remind me of. Cassie Keegan. Hell. You’re related to her, aren’t you? No wonder you seemed familiar.”
Mallory went still at his words.
She’d come to Weaver for the express purpose of meeting Ryan Clay. She’d continually debated the decision until she’d convinced herself she was doing the right thing.
So why was she practically shaking in her boots now?
She’d never expected to meet him and feel anything…well…like what she was feeling.
The wrinkle in his forehead that had been there every time he looked at her was gone. “We worked together for a while. She didn’t talk much about her family, though.”
Ryan couldn’t know that he’d just confirmed another piece of the puzzle that had been her sister’s life. “Cassie was my sister.”
The wrinkle returned. In spades. “Was?”
She hesitated. The sound of the leaking water dripping into the bucket under the sink seemed loud. From downstairs, she could hear her grandmother and Chloe talking in the kitchen, along with the clatter of pots and the squeak of Kathleen’s sturdy shoes on the creaking hardwood floor.
She also could hear in her head Ryan’s mother’s voice. And the pleas as well as the caution when it came to her son’s state of mind. Rebecca Clay was desperate to help her son and believed that Mallory could help him find his path again. Rebecca had also gone to great lengths to assure Mallory that no matter what, her position as Chloe’s mother would not be threatened in any way.
“Mallory,” Ryan prompted.
She swallowed again. “I didn’t expect this to be so hard,” she admitted, as much to herself as to him. “Cassie…died.”
He frowned.
