he spent his college career riding the bench—except for one magical fourth-quarter comeback he’d engineered his junior year—backup to a kid who’d gone on to be drafted by the NFL and was enjoying the professional career Ryder had only dreamed about.
Still, he’d made the most of his college years, taking part-time construction jobs to pay for all his scholarship didn’t cover and earning a degree in architecture. He’d gone on to work at one of the most prestigious firms in San Francisco. A firm owned by his wife’s—now ex-wife’s—family. A job more than a few people around Clearville seemed to think he’d gotten on nepotism alone since the end of his marriage had also signaled the end of his career.
So, yeah, he’d had to grin and bear it when people jabbed him with the glory days of high school—“Peaked too soon, didn’t you, Kincaid?”—and when they rubbed in the loss of his career—“You know what they say, never a good idea to work for family”—even though he really didn’t think he deserved all that.
He’d had big dreams in high school—all centered on a game and a girl he loved. How did he end up the bad guy, the failure, when they had been the ones to betray him?
Ryder pushed aside the bitterness as he climbed the front steps to his brother’s house. His family, at least, had welcomed him back with open arms, though they, too—or his mother at least—still looked at him with the question in her eyes. Where had it all gone wrong?
Marriage in the Kincaid family was supposed to be forever. His and Brittany’s had barely made it to the six-year mark.
He balanced the pizzas in one hand, the hot crust warm even through a layer of cardboard, as he gave a quick knock and opened the front door. The sounds of kids playing—his nephews and whatever friends they might have invited over—rang out from the back of the house, and for an instant, Ryder thought of the boy at the pizza parlor. The one who’d barreled into him on his way out.
He’d gotten a quick glimpse of blond hair, glasses too big for a narrow face and a skinny body. After that, Ryder’s attention had been claimed by the woman trailing behind.
After his marriage to Brittany and their turbulent on-again, off-again relationship spanning back to high school, Ryder had learned to keep his awareness when it came to the opposite sex well under wraps.
That didn’t mean he didn’t notice beautiful women. Hell, he was still a guy. And the woman who’d been standing on the sideway was definitely a beautiful woman. Her dark blond hair had been pulled back from her delicate features and wide blue-green gaze. At first glimpse, her eyes had widened with concern, then surprise as her warning to the boy died on her lips. Pale pink lips that had glistened with a hint of expertly applied makeup.
She hadn’t had the look of a local picking up pizza for the family. Jeans and T-shirts were the typical dress code for almost every eating establishment in town, and her beige linen slacks and pale green blouse guaranteed she’d stand out—as if her beauty alone wasn’t enough to set her apart from the crowd.
His instant attraction had caught him off guard. The ink on his divorce papers was barely dry, so even looking at another woman felt as smart as hitting himself in the head with a hammer. For the second time.
Only as he’d walked away did he realize that the woman looked familiar. Something in the not quite blue, not quite green of her eyes. In the expressive eyebrows a shade darker than her hair. In the heart-shaped contours of her face.
If the woman had indeed been Lindsay Brookes and if she’d ignored him as he’d called out her name, well, that was one smackdown he definitely deserved.
When he thought of the way he’d treated her after that one night their senior year, Ryder cringed. He tried hard not to think about the way he’d so pointedly dismissed her. He’d had his reasons at the time, good reasons, though Lindsay couldn’t have known that. She couldn’t have thought anything other than the obvious—that he’d slept with her on the rebound during another breakup with Brittany, used her and tossed her aside.
“Hey, why the frown?” his older brother, Bryce, asked as Ryder stepped into the kitchen. “Don’t you know pizza’s happy food?”
“It’s...nothing really.” He set the boxes on the granite island as he accepted the bottle of beer Bryce handed him with a nod of thanks. He couldn’t help smiling as his brother moved around the kitchen with an ease that caught him a bit off guard.
Sure, all Bryce was doing was chopping a quick salad to add some veggies to their “guy night” dinner, but it was still strange to see him in his role as a dad. At times, when one of the boys called out “Dad,” Ryder still expected his own father to be the one to answer, not his brother.
Though Ryder had tried to visit once or twice a year, getting together with Bryce’s family over the holidays or taking a trip over summer break to Disneyland hadn’t clued him in to how hands-on his brother was in his day-to-day dad duties. Since moving back the previous fall, Ryder had gotten a real chance to see Bryce, and his wife, Nina, in action.
The couple worked well together, their conversation filled with lighthearted teasing, respect and a love that had stabbed him with a sense of envy—even before his divorce.
“Do you remember Lindsay Brookes?” he asked. “She was in my grade in school.”
“Think so. Real bookworm, right? Kind of a know-it-all?” Bryce asked as he made quick work chopping a green pepper.
“Yeah, but she wasn’t like that. Not really.”
“I don’t recall the two of you being friends back then.”
“She helped me out our senior year.” He’d always prided himself on getting decent grades, despite his jock status, but that year he’d done more partying than studying and his test scores had started to reflect that. “She tutored me in calculus.”
“Sounds like a brain to me.”
“Oh, yeah, she was supersmart.” Ryder gave a short laugh. “And she couldn’t seem to stop herself from pointing out when someone made a mistake. She thought she was being helpful. She never seemed to get that the other kids didn’t see it that way.”
“Right after graduation...she surprised everybody when she started hanging out with that Pirelli cousin, right?” Bryce asked over his shoulder as he opened the fridge and pulled out a small carton of tomatoes.
“Yeah, I guess they’d gotten to be friends over the years when he came to town to visit his family, but then that summer...” Everyone else might have been surprised to see the shy, quiet girl hook up with the brooding Tony Pirelli, but all Ryder had felt was relief. He couldn’t have broken her heart too badly if she’d immediately fallen for another guy. Lindsay and Tony had been inseparable that summer.
“I don’t know what a hunk like that sees in a book-brain like her,” Brittany had scoffed when the two couples ran into each other at the Fourth of July picnic in the town square.
Ryder had made some sound of agreement, but he’d known then that he’d done the best thing—if not the right thing—in breaking things off with Lindsay. Though he and Brittany had broken up during that brief period when he slept with Lindsay, his girlfriend would have made Lindsay’s life a living hell had she found out about the two of them.
“That’s right. And then—” Bryce cut off, and he made a face as he put down the knife. “When did we turn into a couple of women gossiping in the kitchen?”
“Probably about the same time you put on that apron,” Ryder said with a tip of his beer bottle in his brother’s direction.
Bryce looked down before defensively saying, “Hey, these tomatoes are juicy.”
Ryder’s grin faded away as he thought of what his brother hadn’t said.
And then Lindsay got pregnant.
He and Brittany had already moved into their dorms by then, but the Clearville