get into bed with him. He didn’t have to look at the clock to know it was about 4:00 a.m., either. When Willy got into bed with him it was always about 4:00 a.m.
Jace didn’t mind.
He was lying on his back, his hands on his chest, and he just stretched one arm up and out along the second pillow so that the toddler could burrow into his side like a pup looking for warmth.
It made him smile, and once Willy was situated and settled, Jace gazed down at him.
Yep, there he was, curled up to him as close as he could get, sound asleep again, one index finger poked through his security washcloth to rub it methodically against his chubby cheek.
Jace didn’t really understand the appeal of the washcloth. He knew some kids got attached to blankets and stuffed toys, but a washcloth? He couldn’t figure that one out. It had been a stocking-stuffer the year before last—a washcloth with a big, goofy-looking Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on it. Kim had said that Willy wouldn’t go down for a nap or a night’s sleep without it, and for a while after the accident he hadn’t let go of it for a single minute.
But now he was back to just wanting it to sleep with, and that felt like an accomplishment to Jace, as if he’d been able to return Willy to the same sense of love and safety the little boy had felt with his mom and dad.
Jace pulled the covers up over the child, rubbed his head as if he really were a puppy snuggled up to him and waited to fall back to sleep himself.
But that didn’t happen as easily as it usually did. Just the way it hadn’t happened earlier in the night. And for the same reason.
Clair Fletcher.
Jace just wasn’t too sure what to make of her and her sudden appearance in Elk Creek.
She’d said she wanted to be a part of Willy’s life and she wanted Willy to be a part of hers. A simple enough statement. But what exactly did it mean? Did it mean she wanted to be someone who visited him now and then, who maybe had him visit her occasionally? Someone who talked to him on the phone to keep up with him, and sent him gifts for birthdays and holidays?
Or did it mean something more than that?
That’s the part that had Jace on the alert. Because the truth was, his gut instinct told him that she’d meant more than that.
He didn’t have anything tangible on which to base his doubts. But he’d seen her eyes well up with tears when she’d taken her first real look at the boy, and for a minute Jace had thought she might actually reach out, snatch Willy and run with him. From that moment on Jace had had a strong sense that she’d come to claim Willy for herself.
But if that was true, she was in for a rude awakening. Because Jace wasn’t going to let that happen. No matter what she might think, he wasn’t giving Willy up. Not only had he been granted legal guardianship through his best friend’s will, but he’d made a pact with Billy Miller the day Billy’s adoption of Willy had become final. A pact that if anything ever happened to Billy, Jace would take over for him and raise the boy. And Jace didn’t take that lightly.
Besides, he had been more than happy to step up to the plate. He’d been so closely involved with Willy, even before Billy’s and Kim’s deaths, that Willy had seemed like his own son. He’d been Uncle Jace, who baby-sat and brought gifts, who played with Willy and took him on outings to the ranch. Uncle Jace who’d discovered through those tiny tastes of parenthood that he had a pretty strong urge to become a father himself.
Unfortunately, the desire to become a parent was not shared by the woman who had been his wife at the time, so instead of looking forward to having a child of his own when Billy and Kim had died, he’d been trying to put a divorce behind him.
But that was all over now. And he might not have a child of his own making, but he had Willy and he intended to concentrate on being the best dad he could be to the boy.
Sure, he supposed Clair Fletcher could complicate that, if she had a mind to, but she wasn’t going to change it. He’d do whatever he had to do to go on raising the boy, even if it meant war.
It would be too bad if it came to that, though, he thought. Not only didn’t he want a custody battle with her, but there were a whole lot more pleasurable things he could think of to do with her….
An image of her drifted into his mind’s eye, that first image of her when he’d opened the door to find her standing on the porch. No, thoughts of custody battles had definitely not been what she’d initially inspired in him.
She was damn beautiful. A knock-out—that had been what he was thinking when she’d said her name and he’d suddenly recognized the resemblance to Kristin and Willy.
Her hair was darker than theirs. Richer. It didn’t have the pumpkin shades of her sister’s hair or her nephew’s, it was the red of cherry wood. And it was a stark frame to the color of her skin. Flawless, porcelain skin so luminous it almost hadn’t looked real in the porch light.
Her eyes were something, too. Big, wide, green eyes, so light they were like looking at meadow grass through spring frost.
And there was sure nothing wrong with the rest of her. Delicate features—a thin nose, high cheekbones, lips so soft looking and so sweetly curved, the only thing they could be called was kissable.
Plus, her body—what he’d been able to see of it through the opening in the coat she’d never taken off—was great. She had long legs for a relatively short person—he guessed her to be not more than five foot three or four. Small hips and waist. Just the right size breasts…
Oh, yeah, she was not at all hard on the eyes.
But that didn’t make any difference, he reminded himself. Willy was his priority. Raising Willy. And regardless of what Clair Fletcher had on her mind, raising Willy was exactly what he was going to do.
Cherry-wood-colored hair and stunning green eyes or no, Jace swore to himself that he would keep the lovely Miss Fletcher at arm’s length—at arm’s length and in his sights so there wouldn’t be any surprises from her.
And that was all there was to it.
Except that even with his determination in place, it was still hard to get her out of his head….
As Clair stared into her open suitcase trying to decide what to wear to the ranch, she realized that her options were limited.
She’d only packed one pair of blue jeans, so that narrowed that choice. But what to wear with them was more difficult since she wasn’t sure how dirty she might get.
She opted for the oldest sweater she’d brought with her—a hunter-green V-neck that she wore with a white T-shirt underneath—in case it was ruined.
Once that decision was made and the clothes were laid out on the bed, she took a shower and shampooed her hair, all the while trying once again to calm those familiar jitters in her stomach.
The cause was two-fold today—thoughts of Jace Brimley and thoughts of Willy—as her nephew was apparently called.
Although it wasn’t something Clair would ever admit to Jace, she’d never been much of a kid person. Not that she didn’t like kids. She did. She just hadn’t had very much experience with them.
She’d
