Tara Quinn - Somebody's Baby

He grinned over at her, then quickly returned his attention to the highway. “I’ll bet you’re pretty good with a rifle, too, huh?”

“Mmm-hmm.” When she had to be.

“I’ve never fired one.”

As far as she knew, he was the first man she’d ever met who’d never fired a gun.

“We had a bear on our property once,” she told him, more to direct the conversation away from things he might bring up than because she really wanted to share her past with him. She never knew if what she said would make her seem too strange to someone like him.

“Randy was in town getting seed and the bear came right up to the barn. I saw him out there getting close to my henhouse and I didn’t even think.” Without egg money she’d have had no groceries. “I just grabbed the gun and marched outside—as if that black bear was going to see me as some kind of threat and head back the way he’d come.”

She’d been young then. And still sure that life had happily-ever-after in store for her.

“What did you do?” His eyes were wide, revealed by the light from the dash as he stole another glance.

“When I realized he wasn’t nearly as impressed by me as I’d expected him to be, I did the only thing I could do, cocked the gun and brought it to my shoulder.”

“You shot a bear?”

For a second there, hearing the incredulity in his voice, she wished she had.

“No, I aimed for the ground by his feet. And then on either side of him.”

“You scared him off.”

Well, yes, but… “It was stupid, really. He could just as easily have gotten angry and attacked.”

John shook his head, grinning, one hand on the wheel and the other resting casually over the armrest next to him. “Is there anything you’re afraid of, woman?” Somehow the admiration hadn’t disappeared from his tone.

Which was why she just shrugged and looked out into the night. She couldn’t bear to tell him that right now—with him, in Shelter Valley, at Montford—there was very little that didn’t scare her.

“HERE’S THE THING,” John said when he pulled up in front of her house.

Hand on the door handle, thankful that she’d made it through the evening without whatever horrible conversation she imagined he wanted, Caroline turned, every muscle tense and waiting.

“I loved my wife.”

She nodded. That much was obvious.

“Too much, probably.”

She turned away from the door handle, facing the car’s interior. “How can you love someone too much?”

He’d shut off the engine, leaving them in darkness except for the light coming from the streetlamp half a block away and the dim glow from the front window of Mrs. Howard’s house.

“I can’t love anyone else.”

Ironically, with those words, Caroline relaxed. “You’re trying to warn me not to get any crazy ideas.”

His head cocked slightly to the side, John shrugged. “It wasn’t so much a warning as an explanation. I don’t want you to think it’s you….”

“John.” She almost laid her hand on his arm, and restrained herself just in time. Grainville familiarities might not be recognized here. “You have nothing to worry about from me. I meant it when I said I wanted nothing from you. Nothing. I married once, for a lifetime. And found out that fate had other ideas in mind. There was nothing I could do—it was out of my hands. I can’t go through that again.”

“You warning me off?” he asked, with a wry grin.

“Just explaining.”

Leaning back against the corner of the door, he was quiet for a moment. “I’m not afraid of the commitment,” he said. “Not afraid of loving again. I just can’t get beyond her.”

“Have you tried?”

“I was engaged to the women’s softball coach at Montford until a week before I came to Kentucky.”

No wonder he’d seemed as emotionally raw as she’d been, so needy and yet willing to settle for nothing but escape.

“What happened?”

“I couldn’t let go of Meredith.”

“Do you have to?” she asked, frowning. Randy would always be part of her, no matter what. They’d spent nineteen years together.

“I…talk to her.”

She talked to Randy, too, but hadn’t thought the habit would last for years—just until she got used to living alone. “About what?”

“Everything,” he said, his voice soft. “I shot a hole-in-one over Thanksgiving, playing in a tournament with some of Shelter Valley’s best golfers. The only person I even considered telling was Meredith. Not Lauren.”

For one absurd second, Caroline was jealous of a dead woman.

PHYLLIS LANGFORD SHEFFIELD COULDN’T stop herself from taking one last backward glance as she accompanied her closest friend, Tory Sanders, down the walk of Tory’s small home. Their neighborhood was perfectly safe, featuring quiet stucco houses with desert landscaping in the yards.

“Let’s just do this block,” she said, her feet moving in place as she geared up for the jog Tory had planned for them.

Tory’s soft blue eyes glinted with an unusual confidence as she, too, glanced back at the house. “There are only eight houses on this street,” she said, grinning. “You gotta establish a rhythm and get into the groove if you’re going to tolerate jogging.” She’d taken both of them shopping the previous day for top-of-the-line running shoes, leggings and soft cotton zip-up jackets. Phyllis’s was black. Tory’s was pink, which complemented her short dark hair and expertly lined eyes.

Bouncing some more, Phyllis nodded. “A groove. Okay…” She didn’t move from her spot.

“They’re going to be fine,” Tory said gently, with the strange mixture of neediness and confidence that had first drawn Phyllis to the younger sister of her murdered best friend. “Alex is great with all the kids. You know that.”

Alex. The eleven-year-old adopted daughter of Tory’s husband, Ben. The little girl had been abused by her biological father and mother and come to live with Ben, her stepfather, at about the same time Tory—also an abused child and then abused wife—had found refuge in Shelter Valley. If all went well, Tory would soon be adopting Alex. “I know,” Phyllis said. She was ready to head up the street. Really. As soon as her feet felt warm. “But she’s never been left alone with my two,” she said, on the off chance Tory hadn’t already heard Phyllis’s worries on that score. The jogging was Tory’s idea—to help Phyllis keep off the weight she’d had trouble losing after having her twins two and a half years before.

“But she has been alone with Chrissie,” Tory reminded her. Chrissie—Phyllis Christine—was the four-year-old daughter Tory and Ben had together. “Calvin and Clarissa won’t be a problem for her,” she added. “They’re just like their mother, too analytical for their own good sometimes, but practically perfect in every way. They’ll have Alex reading to them the entire time we’re gone.”

“Unless Chrissie gets bored…” Tory’s daughter was at that age.

“As long as she’s sitting in her big sister’s lap, she’ll be completely content.” Tory started jogging slowly down the sidewalk. “Come on, we aren’t going to be away very long…”

“I HAD A LETTER from Brad.” Doing as she’d been told, Phyllis concentrated on the rhythm of her breathing in conjunction with the sound of her feet hitting the pavement. So far, jogging still felt like an endurance contest. Only Tory—the sister she’d never had—could’ve managed to get her to do this.

“Why would your jerk of an ex-husband be writing to you after all this time?” Tory, not even a little out of breath, glanced over. “When did it come?”

Phyllis moved aside to avoid a parked car as the two women jogged side by side along the road. “Yesterday.”