This Good Man

“Damage heals,” Paula said calmly.

Straddling a bench across the table from her, he had the uneasy feeling she was seeing further below the surface than he wanted her to. He’d forgotten the way she could always do that.

“I think you’re underestimating yourself, Reid. You’ve changed your life for the sake of a boy you didn’t know a couple of months ago. What’s that but love?”

Love? He snorted. “I feel responsible.” So responsible, he’d started job hunting in central Oregon the minute he’d brought Caleb here. Left a job that satisfied him for one he wasn’t so sure he was going to like. Yeah, he’d gone out on a limb for this brother, but he’d rather call it guilt than love.

“Responsible? Why?”

He eyed her smile warily. “He’s my brother.”

“You’d never met him. It’s not as if you grew up with him.”

“I swore I’d know if that son of a bitch ever had another kid. Instead, I let it go. Caleb has gone through hell because I shut my eyes.”

“No,” she said, correcting him, “he’s gone through hell because your father is abusive. You have no responsibility for your father’s sins.”

He stared at her, baffled and frustrated by her refusal to understand what he was saying. “So I should have shrugged and gone on with my life?”

“Neither of us could have done that.”

“Then your point is?”

“Is this about Caleb at all, or are you trying to save yourself?”

Not reacting took an effort of will. “What kind of psychobabble is that?” he scoffed.

“Same kind I’ve always thrown at you.”

Reid gave a reluctant chuckle.

“Do you see yourself in Caleb?”

“Save the crap, Paula. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“You’ll always be one of my kids.” Her voice had descended a register, letting him hear the tenderness, tying and untying a knot in his chest.

Reid cleared his throat. It didn’t do anything for the lump centered beneath his breastbone. “I’m sorry I haven’t been back to visit in so long.”

“Caleb made you revisit your past.”

Oh, crap. Here we go again. “I’m giving him the same chance I had, that’s all.”

“You’re doing more than that, or you wouldn’t have moved to Angel Butte,” she pointed out. “You’re trying to be family, Reid.” She reached across the table and laid her hand over his. “He needs you and you need him.”

He bent his head and looked at her hand, which was getting knobby with the beginnings of arthritis. So much smaller than his hand. Still so unfailingly...loving.

Shit. Did that mean he knew what the word meant after all? He’d have told anyone who asked that all he felt for Paula and Roger was gratitude and admiration, but...now he wasn’t sure that was true. He’d just as soon the possibility hadn’t occurred to him. Love had never been a safe emotion for him.

“Maybe so,” he said, hearing his own gruffness. “And I’d better go hunt him down before he decides I’m not here to see him at all.”

“Yes, you should.” She let him come around the table to her and lean over to kiss her cheek, but she grabbed his hand before he could turn away and looked at him with those penetrating eyes. “You’re a good man, Reid Sawyer. Trust yourself.”

He felt about seventeen again, as if his feet were still too big, and his cheeks turned red at any compliment. “I may be a decent man,” he said finally. “But good? No. You’re a good woman, Paula Hale. I don’t measure up.”

He tore himself away then. Her voice followed him. “You will, Reid. I have enough faith for both of us.”

Faith. Out of her hearing, he grunted. There was a word more foreign to him than love.

So, okay, she could be right that on some subconscious level he was seeing himself in this younger brother, who looked so much like him. Why else the cauldron of emotions he’d been feeling, the ingredients of which he didn’t even want to identify? That kind of transference was probably inevitable. He’d needed to be saved; now it was his turn to do the saving. Paying it forward was what people called it these days. That’s all I’m doing.

He didn’t think about why he was looking forward to seeing Caleb. Or why he was so disappointed when, twenty minutes later, he conceded defeat.

The disappearing act was so good, it was clear his brother didn’t want to see him. Reid told himself that was okay. The two of them hardly knew each other. When Reid had first come here, he’d been like a feral animal in a trap, suspicious of anything that looked like affection. He didn’t know why he’d expected different of Caleb.

The Hales had a gift for healing wounded, fearful young men. Paula was wrong; Caleb didn’t need his brother, the stranger.

Which raised the question, why had he turned his own life upside down to be nearby when he’d already fulfilled his responsibility? He could have stayed in touch long-distance well enough.

He laughed, short and harsh, as he climbed into his Ford Expedition. Taking a last look at the ramshackle lodge that anchored a line of even more run-down cabins strung along the bank of Bear Creek, he breathed in the distinctive odor of ponderosa-pine forest, sharp despite the near-freezing temperature. Trust Paula to get him analyzing his choices. One of her more irritating characteristics.

But he was a big boy now, capable of resisting. A big boy who, for whatever idiotic reason, had taken on a new job with more scope than he’d anticipated. What he needed to do was concentrate on that job, not hanker for some elusive connection he’d lived his whole damn life without.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_0c711864-dce1-5ad8-bb4f-8e87b769ba6c)

“IT’S ARSON,” REID said flatly. He crouched and stared closely at the distinctive pattern of charring that climbed the interior wood-paneled wall of the cabin. He’d been lucky to find it, given the extent of the damage. “I’m no fire marshal,” he said, rising to his feet, “but I don’t have to be.”

Beside him, Roger Hale grunted. “I thought I smelled gasoline.”

“Hard to miss,” Reid agreed.

He hadn’t expected to hear from either of the Hales so soon after his Wednesday visit. On this fine Sunday morning, he’d been sprawled in bed trying to decide whether he could roll over and get some more sleep or was already too wide-awake when his phone had rung. Given his job, he kept the damn thing close, despite how often he cursed its existence. Hearing what Roger had to say had driven away any desire on his part to be lazy.

When he arrived half an hour ago, a cluster of boys had hovered on the front porch of the lodge. Caleb wasn’t among them.

Walking to greet Reid, Roger had seen where he was looking. “Probably his turn in the shower. We were all pretty filthy by the time we got the fire out.”

Paula had been the one to spot it, according to Roger. She’d gotten up to use the john and seen a strange orange glow out the small window. Roger had yanked on clothes and run outside to find the fire climbing the back wall of the last cabin in the row. Even as he’d hooked up hoses, he had yelled to awaken the boys.

“This wasn’t one of the occupied cabins,” Reid said, turning slowly to examine the interior. Frigid blue sky showed through a gaping hole in the roof. There hadn’t been much furniture in the cabin. No mattress—or at least no springs—but the wooden bed frame was so much half-burned firewood now. On instinct, he started picking through the debris.

“No, we haven’t put anyone in here in...oh, five or six years,” Roger replied. “I’d been thinking I either needed to raze it or do some serious work. But you know we never fill all the cabins.” His expression was troubled. “You’re saying our firebug didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

Yet. Reid didn’t like thinking that, but had to.

“No, this was done either for fun or to get some attention.”

He debated whether to say more, but suspected he didn’t have to. Roger was a smart, well-read man. He’d already been thinking hard, or he wouldn’t have summoned Reid to take a look.