if she thought the best thing he could do was stay here, make a respectable name for himself and pass it on to the kid? He’d do that, too. At least, he would try.
And he would ignore the fact that almost everything he tried failed. He’d give himself maybe thirty-seventy odds of succeeding.
If he was a gambling man.
Chapter 2
Because she worked such long hours, Grace was under doctor’s orders to spend much of the day with her feet propped up, which was easier than a person would suspect, given the nature of folks in Heartbreak. Most of her customers had been customers so long that they knew their way around the shelves and were perfectly willing to help themselves. They would even make their own change from the antique cash register if she gave them the chance. Last week old Pete Davis had brought her a thermos of his granny’s famous chicken soup because he’d thought she looked a bit peaked, and Mavis over at the five-and-dime had brought her a puffy quilt to warm up under on dreary, gray days like this.
But she rarely felt the need to stretch out with her feet up. In fact, she’d had more energy in the last few months than ever before. Doc Hanson said it was because she walked every day. Callie, the midwife who would deliver the baby when it was time, credited the primarily vegetarian diet she’d started Grace on.
Personally, Grace believed it was her father’s absence. Living day in and day out with overwhelming bitterness and anger could suck the life force right out of a body. Life without Jed not only was different, but it felt different. Even the very air smelled different. And Callie swore her aura was totally changed, too.
Life was darn near perfect.
While the store was empty, she dragged a stepladder out so she could combine straightening the shelves with taking inventory. Jed had always insisted on doing inventory on the last day of the month, so Grace spread it out over several days at the beginning of the month. He’d made her sweep the floors first thing in the morning; now she did it last thing at night. He’d never extended a penny’s credit to anyone in his life. She offered it to everyone.
The further her pregnancy progressed, the harder taking inventory got. Not because she had a problem, but because people fussed at her for climbing ladders, lifting boxes, being on her feet. She’d learned to do it in quick snatches when the store was empty and liked doing it that way. It gave her time to wonder over the fact that all this was hers—well, hers and the suppliers’. She, who’d grown up with constant reminders that she owned nothing, not even the clothes on her back, owned this store. She marveled over it every day.
She was standing on the top step of the ladder when the bell over the door dinged. “I’ll be right with you,” she called as she quickly sorted and counted the boxes used to restock the shelves below.
Footsteps crossed the store and came around the corner into her aisle as she made notations on her clipboard. “Take your time, Melissa,” a quiet voice said, then deliberately added, “Or should I call you Grace?”
Ethan James. She froze in place. She hadn’t heard his voice in seven months, but she would have recognized it after seven years. A woman who’d lived her life without affection, without even a kind word from anyone else, wouldn’t soon forget the first voice to call her darlin’, or to tell her she was beautiful.
She would never forget the voice of the man who’d fathered her child.
Her hands were trembling as she carefully laid the clipboard and pen on the shelf, then turned on the narrow step to face him. He’d stopped ten feet away and was watching her with a totally unreadable expression.
He looked more handsome than ever, with unruly blond hair and wicked blue eyes, with a stubborn jaw and cover-model-perfect features. Every young man in the state owned the same outfit—faded Wranglers, a white T-shirt, jeans jacket, scuffed work boots—but he wore them with more ease than she imagined anyone else could. Snug and comfortable, like a second skin.
As she looked at him, appreciating the sheer beauty of him, he looked back. Was he disappointed, she wondered uneasily, that the wild, curly red hair, the sexy clothes, the lovely woman on the make—Melissa in her entirety—had all been an illusion? Was he dismayed that he’d spent a good part of a long summer night naked and hot with her? Was that why his features were schooled into such blankness? Why his blue eyes were so cold? Why his voice had been so flat?
She wished she had the nerve to lie, to swear that he was mistaken, that she didn’t know him. But, except for that night, she’d never lied, and she didn’t have the desire to start now. Slowly she came down the ladder, relieved when she felt the floor solid under her feet.
Folding her hands tightly together behind her back, she said in the calmest voice she could muster, “I…didn’t expect to see you.” Again. Ever. She didn’t add the qualifiers, but he heard them. It showed in the tightening of his jaw.
“You can thank Olivia and Shay Stephens for it. They thought I should know—” his gaze raked her up and down “—about you.”
“Rafferty,” she said nervously.
“What?”
“Shay Stephens. Rafferty. Easy came home last fall, and he and Shay got married in November…or maybe October. I’m not sure. It was before he started buying the horses for his ranch but after her birthday. October, I think, but—”
“Forget Shay,” he said sharply, and she sucked in whatever rambling words she might have spoken with a startled breath. He gave her another hard look up and down, one that made her fingers knot where he couldn’t see them. “Olivia tells me I’m…responsible for this.”
In Heartbreak responsible was not a word people used in reference to Ethan James. Irresponsible, yes. Trouble. Lazy. Dishonest. Disloyal. Selfish. She could stand there the rest of the day, listing every negative quality she could think of and still not cover all the failings attributed to him.
But he was waiting for a response to his comment. Which did he want—yes or no? How did he feel about being a father? How did he feel about fathering a child with her?
He was here. That said something, didn’t it? He’d come back to his least-favorite place in the world because he’d been told his one-night stand had produced an eighteen-year commitment. Surely that meant he wasn’t totally averse to the idea.
Unless he’d come back to buy her silence. To give her some reason not to make demands of him. Maybe he wanted her to continue to keep his identity secret. After all, he had a reputation to protect. Charming rogues like Ethan James did not get suckered into one-night stands with plain Janes like Grace Prescott. Or maybe he’d settled down somewhere, with someone special, and didn’t want word of an illegitimate child leaking out to tarnish his future.
“Well?” Impatience colored his voice and gave her the courage to shrug carelessly and start toward the counter.
“I never mentioned you to Olivia or anyone else.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.” He leaned on the counter as she circled to the other side. “Is that— Am I—” He dragged his fingers through his hair, muttered a curse and tried again. “Did we…?”
After studying him for a moment, she knew the answer he wanted. It was in his scowl, his clenched hands, the sinking feeling in her stomach. It was foolish to be disappointed. She was twenty-five, a woman on her own, about to become a
