Their Small-Town Love

Ryan couldn’t resist the urge to glance back in Ivy’s direction. “You don’t suppose Olie’s ill, do you?”

Holt’s expression grew troubled. “He didn’t look well the last time I saw him, but with Olie it’s hard to tell.”

Not the most pleasant of men, Olie had always worn a rather sour expression. Some said he’d been that way since his wife had abandoned the family many years earlier. Ryan just barely remembered the woman himself, but he knew that Ivy had resented her. He’d once overheard her say, with that certainty peculiar to teenagers, that it would have been easier for everyone if her mother had died when Ivy was a baby rather than just take off and leave her.

Ryan vehemently opposed that notion himself, since his own mother had taken her life after his father had died in an oil field accident when he was twenty. That experience had been anything but easy, though it had all happened long ago, almost fourteen years. Shocked to realize that it had been at least that long since he had last spoken to Ivy, he decided to rectify the situation.

“I’ll be back.”

“But you just got here,” Holt protested. Ryan ignored him and fixed his gaze on Ivy’s table as he made his way through the chattering throng. He could visit with his siblings anytime. This might be his only chance to catch up with Ivy Villard, and suddenly that seemed much more important.

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

Ivy looked up. This was not the first time she’d heard that particular sentiment tonight. It was, of course, less than accurate, but at thirty she was old enough to appreciate hearing it. She was not sure how she recognized this particular former schoolmate, however, for he had changed immensely. She recalled a tall, thin young man with large features and extremities and too much thick, wavy, golden brown hair. He’d grown into those features, and those hands and feet no longer looked like they belonged to someone else. Even the hair fit now. Ivy smiled.

“Hello, Ryan Jefford, and thank you.”

Ryan’s oddly familiar hazel eyes warmed. “It’s good to see you, Ivy. It’s been too long.”

“Yes. Yes, it has,” she agreed, shifting sideways to drape an arm across the back of her folding chair. She let her gaze sweep down and then up again. “You don’t look anything like your brother or Hap,” she told him. “I saw Holt standing over there and knew him at once.”

Ryan chuckled. “I take after our other grandfather, Michael Carl Ryan, or so I’m told. Seems appropriate since I’m named after him.”

“He must have been a handsome man,” she said bluntly, making a show of reading his name from the badge pinned to his chest, “because you, Ryan Carl Jefford, look great.”

Inclining his head in thanks, Ryan said, “Well, then, that makes two of us, Ivy Madeline Villard.”

She laughed. To her surprise, he pulled out the chair on her right and sat down. After exchanging words of greeting with Rose, he began to chat with Daniel about an upcoming track-and-field event, allowing Ivy a moment to take stock of the familiar-yet-unfamiliar man beside her.

In high school, she had found Ryan to be a very nice guy, but rather stolid and even a little boring. She no longer trusted the judgment of the foolish young woman she had been, however. That former version of herself had chosen the flash and dash of Brand Phillips—he wasn’t called “FireBrand” for nothing—over any chance of marriage and family.

Looking back, she marveled at how easily she had jettisoned the idea of a normal, responsible life. She could not even claim that she hadn’t known what she was doing. Brand had made no secret of the fact that he considered marriage and parenthood unnecessary, confining, boring and a trap. He’d only promised her a grand adventure and she had to admit that he had delivered, but at what a high, painful cost to her!

For one horrible moment, Ivy suddenly hovered on the verge of tears. The pain never seemed to leave her for long or diminish in intensity. Ryan turned to her then and stunned her by seeming to read, with appalling ease, the distress that she had hidden for so very long. Abandoning the discussion with her brother-in-law, he reached toward her, his big, solid hand covering hers lightly.

“You okay?” His hazel eyes peering intently into her darker ones. Blinking, Ivy said nothing for several seconds before he went on. “I can’t help wondering if all is well or if some problem has brought you back just in time for the reunion?”

“Problem?” she echoed.

“Is your father all right?” he asked, wondering what troubled this beautiful woman whom he remembered only as a teen.

Ivy swung her gaze back to him, her mouth opened to blurt that she wouldn’t know, but then Rose jumped in, the stylish cut of her nut-brown hair swinging jauntily above her shoulders as she nodded. “Dad is fine,” she supplied.

“Looking forward to another grandchild,” Daniel added, smoothing a hand over his wife’s distended belly.

Ryan chuckled, and Ivy felt his hand relax atop hers just before he took it away. “Home to greet the new baby, then?”

“Not exactly,” Ivy hedged.

“That is,” Rose interjected uncertainly, “the baby is still two months or better away.”

Ivy frowned, her gaze going at once to Rose’s greatly expanded waistline. Although shorter and sturdier than her, Rose looked much too large to be eight or more weeks away from giving birth.

“Are you sure you’re not having twins?” Ryan joked, apparently agreeing with Ivy’s assessment.

Rose crinkled her pert nose. “It’s awful, isn’t it? I’m big as an elephant.”

“You are not,” Daniel insisted. As near to full-blood Choctaw as could be found, Daniel surprised Ivy by flushing hotly. Even the scalp beneath his ink-black hair seemed to glow a dark, dusky red. “It’s what they call a high-pressure pregnancy, lots of fluid.”

“All the more cushion for our little girl,” Rose said, smiling down at her stomach.

Little girl.

Ivy’s heart cracked open inside her chest, and the grief she’d kept bottled up for all these years poured out. Memories stormed her, yet she managed, just barely, to maintain a rigid calm.

“It’s a girl,” she heard the nurse say, cold metal gliding over her skin as the fuzzy, black-and-white image coalesced on the screen beside the examination table.

“It’s a girl,” the doctor announced months later, whisking the baby away.

A little girl, whom Ivy had never held or even seen, except at a distance.

A little girl who called someone else “Mommy.”

Chapter Two

“My sister-in-law, Cara,” Ryan said, standing in front of his chair. He’d stayed longer at Ivy’s table than he’d intended, so long that his family had finally wandered over in search of him, necessitating a spate of introductions.

Ivy clapped her long slender hands to her cheeks, gaping at Cara. “I’m so sorry! I had no idea you were part of the Jefford family.”

Ryan glanced from one to the other, surprised that they had evidently already met.

Cara laughed. “No reason why you should have known. I understand you haven’t been around for a while, and the wedding was just three weeks ago. I should have made my identity clear when we met at the motel.”

“I just never dreamed that Holt had married,” Ivy said, exclaiming, “And you, too, Charlotte! It’s been a season of weddings for the Jeffords.”

Charlotte laughed. “So it has.”

Ryan said, “I was telling Ivy about the house you and Ty are building.”

“Yes, the old Moffat place, just east of here,” Charlotte said, smiling that utterly content smile of hers.

“What a beautiful spot,” Ivy murmured. “I’ve always loved that place.”

“Listen, Cara’s been on her feet all day,” Holt interrupted, his arm curling around Cara’s shoulders as he addressed his brother. “We’re going to find our seats now.”

Ryan nodded saying, “You go on. I’ll be along shortly.”

“I could use a chair myself,” Ty announced, urging Charlotte to follow Holt.