Raeanne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry Summer

“So am I. Have a good night, Owen.”

“Thanks.” He paused. “Will you leave my door open? My mom might need help in the night and I can’t hear her if it’s shut all the way.”

Riley stared at this kid with the earnest freckled face and his mother’s blue eyes, that peculiar tightness in his chest again. How many eight-year-old boys worried about their mother’s comfort in the night? He sure as hell hadn’t.

He cleared his throat. “You bet.”

“Hey, you want to play basketball sometime? I got a new hoop for Christmas, but it’s been too snowy or rainy to use much.”

“Can you do that with the cast on your arm?”

“Oh, sure. But my mom can’t and Macy would rather play soccer.”

“What about your dad?”

Owen shrugged. “He doesn’t like basketball much.”

Just another mark in the Idiot column for Jeff Bradford. “Sure. Maybe. I’ll have to check my schedule.”

Owen seemed to accept the noncommittal answer with equanimity. “Okay. See you later, Chief.”

“Bye, kid.”

He closed the door a bit and headed down the stairs, where he found Claire waiting for him in the living room, Chester at her feet.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

He should leave right now, just walk out the door without another word. This family was seeping under his skin, finding unguarded spaces to settle into. “Owen wants me to come play basketball with him sometime.”

She gave a rueful smile. “Sorry. I’m afraid he’s a little desperate for someone to play with him right now. He probably assumes because you’re male and, um, fairly athletic that you must play basketball.”

“I can try to swing by sometime. He’s a great kid.”

She was silent for a moment. “You’re really good with him and with Macy. Have you had a lot of experience working with kids as a police officer?”

More than he liked to think about, both as victims and perps. “A bit.”

“Well, you seem to know just the right things to say. I thought so the night of the Spring Fling. You’d make a really great father.”

He snorted loudly enough that Chester gave him a jowly faced scowl.

“Hooo. Wrong guy.”

“Why? Haven’t you ever thought about having kids of your own?”

The very idea made his palms itchy, clammy. “You forget. The McKnight men don’t have a great track record in the family department.”

She stared at him for a long moment, brow furrowed, then she frowned. “You are not your father, Riley.”

He shrugged. “Who’s to say I wouldn’t become like him? I’m sure when he and Mom took vows, my dad never intended to abandon his wife and six kids twenty years later to follow his own dreams.”

“It still hurts, doesn’t it?”

He opened his mouth to tell her his father had been gone nineteen years, dead for fifteen of those, and any pain had long since healed. The lie scoured his gut.

“Yeah,” he finally muttered. “Stupid, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it’s stupid. Only sad. I miss my dad, too.”

He gazed at her, so lovely and pensive there in the low light, and he couldn’t help himself. He leaned forward and brushed his mouth over hers once, then again. She made a tiny gasping sound that sizzled through him. Oh, dangerous. Claire Bradford was a beautiful, hazardous bundle of trouble.

When he moved his mouth slightly to try pulling away in some vain attempt to regain a little sanity, she followed him, leaning forward and up as if she couldn’t bear to break the kiss. He closed his eyes, hating himself, but then he kissed her. Really kissed her. Tongue and teeth, heat and hunger.

The kiss went on and on. Just when he was about to climb onto the sofa with her, cover her body with his, reach beneath her clothing to the soft curves concealed there, a canine snort rasped through the room like someone had just fired up that chain saw again.

He froze and gazed at her, mouth swollen, eyes half-closed. She looked lush and gorgeous, so sensual that he had to move away from the sofa, out of arm’s reach, or he would have grabbed for her again.

“See that?” His voice was low, raw. “I can’t even be trusted to keep my hands off you even when we both know I’m not good for you. I take what I want, regardless of the consequences. Not so very different from my old man, am I?”

She stared at him, blinking back to reality. She gave a shuddering sort of breath, pressing fingers that trembled to her mouth, and he forced himself to look away, hating himself.

“Good night. Make sure you lock up behind me.”

He headed out her back door into the May night.

CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_c8ced3f3-c246-53b9-bbc3-b3abe43698a9)

OH, IT WAS GOOD TO BE BACK.

Claire shifted position in the overstuffed burgundy tapestry chair that now had pride of place beside the antique console table holding the String Fever cash register.

She had no idea where Evie had unearthed the old chair and its matching ottoman. They had been waiting for her when she showed up a few hours earlier, plump and comfortable and exactly the right height.

From here, she could keep her stupid cast elevated yet still be part of the day-to-day action in the store. Evie had even found a little wheeled worktable that fit precisely over the arms of the chair for her laptop and whatever small bead project she might be tackling.

She listened to the chatter of a couple of customers asking Evie a question about a class on the schedule for a few weeks’ time and savored the joy of being back. She felt as if she had been freed from a long, dark winter, tossed headlong into verdant new leaves, warm sunshine, daffodils underfoot.

For the first time in three weeks, she didn’t have that little niggle at the base of her neck, that disconcerting sensation of a life spinning beyond her control. Here, she was centered, calm. She only wished she’d come in a week earlier.

The customers signed up for the class and left together and Evie returned to the inventory list they’d been going over before the women came in.

“So it looks like we’re running low on earring wires and toggle clasps.”

“Wow, already?” Claire exclaimed. “I swear, I just ordered those last week. I guess it must have been longer than that.”

Evie checked the computer. “Looks like six weeks. We had a run on both of those before Mother’s Day. I see you liked your watchband, by the way.”

Claire smile, twisting her wrist to better admire the way the recessed lights played on the gems. “You’re a sneaky thing, aren’t you? What were you doing, encouraging my son to lie to me about his whereabouts?”