can I get you to warm yourself?”
He caught sight of Mallory crossing the hallway again and squelched the wholly inappropriate answer he could have given. “Nothing, ma’am. I’m fine, thank you.”
He could see the argument forming in her eyes even before he finished speaking, and pushed to his feet. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be nosy, but do you need help?”
He scooted around Kathleen to intercept Mallory. She was carrying a bucket and a mop, with another towel, dry this time, tossed over her shoulder. “Do you have a water leak or something?” Chloe had said something about water getting worse—he hadn’t paid any attention because he’d been too busy cataloguing her mother’s soft lips, and his unwelcome and very physical reaction to her appeal.
Mallory shook her head. “No worries. Everything’s fine.”
It wasn’t exactly an answer and he gave a pointed look at the items in her hands and her cheeks went pinker than her lips.
“Just some cleanup,” she added hurriedly, and fairly dashed around him to pound up the stairs. “Gram, fix him some of your famous hot chocolate,” she called over her shoulder.
“It’s a fine mix,” Kathleen said, behind him. “I add a little kick when it’s a strapping young man like yourself drinking it.”
He didn’t want hot chocolate. Even if it were spiked. He didn’t want to be here in this house that smelled like lemon furniture polish and lilacs. He didn’t want to be reminded of things that were good and clean and worthy.
He wanted to be away from Weaver, away from everything that he’d once known and cared about.
He closed his hand over the newel post at the base of the staircase and looked back at Kathleen. “How bad’s the leak?”
She was still holding his coat, folded at her waist. “Pretty bad,” she said. Her eyes—a color she’d passed on to Mallory—twinkled a little. “My granddaughter won’t admit it, but I’m afraid she might be making it worse.”
“Hold the kick,” he told Kathleen.
“Can I have some hot chocolate, too, Grammy?” Chloe piped as he headed up the stairs.
Finding the bathroom wasn’t difficult. All he had to do was follow the trail of wet footprints down the hardwood hall.
She was on her hands and knees, derriere to the door, furiously wielding the fresh towel over the floor. The source of the problem was obvious thanks to the opened cabinet that had been emptied of everything except a pitiful collection of wrenches and a bucket that was near to full beneath the steady trickle of water coming from one of the pipes.
“Galvanized pipe,” he said, and her head jerked around to peer at him over her shoulder.
He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb and forced himself to look at the plumbing and not the very feminine shape before him.
He mostly failed, though.
“Old houses like this often still have galvanized instead of copper or PVC,” he continued. “Unfortunately, it corrodes from the inside out and you sometimes don’t even know you’ve got a problem until—” he waved his hand toward the cabinet and sink “—Niagara Falls.”
Her lips compressed and she turned back to drying the floor. “I’ve tightened again and again. It just won’t stop.”
He crouched down next to her, realizing too late just how close that would put them. “You need a repair clamp.”
She twisted around until she was sitting on her rear. Her shoulder brushed his. “A repair clamp?”
She had a tiny mole above her lip.
He shifted slightly. Put a few inches between them.
He didn’t need hot chocolate.
He needed a cold shower.
“Tightens around the pipe with a rubber gasket,” he said abruptly.
She looked back at the pipe. Her waving hair slid over her shoulder. Brushed her cheek. “And it stops the leak?”
“Yeah.” He shoved to his feet, edging back out of the doorway. Into the hall. Where breathing in didn’t mean breathing in the scent of her. “Hardware store’ll have them. Doesn’t solve the corrosion, though. You’ll want a plumber to look into that soon or you might end up with a few more waterfalls before you’re through.”
She tossed the towel over the leak, pulled the large bucket out to empty into the bathtub, replaced it beneath the leak again and spread the towel out on top of the sink to dry. “I should have rented an apartment in that complex on the other side of town,” she muttered, turning to face him. She dusted her hands down her thighs. “I’m used to apartments. I like apartments. They come with building superintendents to deal with all of this sort of stuff.”
“Then why choose this old place?” She’d have been across town, instead of practically around the block from the Sleep Tite, if she’d have gone the apartment route. “I grew up in this town. The houses in this neighborhood were old when I was a kid.”
She tilted her head back a little, looking up at the ceiling. “Because I’m a sucker for my family. And both Chloe and Gram loved it on sight. Gram because of the enamel doorknobs and crystal chandelier and Chloe because of the park down the street.” She sighed a little and looked back at him. “It seemed the least I could do since it was my decision to uproot them from New York.” Her eyes narrowed a little. “I’m sorry. You’re not interested in all that. Why did Chloe give you a dollar?”
Like it or not—and he pretty much was squarely in the not camp—he was interested in “all that.”
Maybe because there was that nagging familiarity about her. Or maybe it was just because every time he looked at her, his blood stirred in a way that it hadn’t in a very long time. Or maybe it was because his own existence was so freaking pathetic that he was dreaming up excuses to prove otherwise.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. Above her head, he could see his reflection in the ancient mirror above the sink. Lines around his eyes. More gray in his unkempt hair than had been there a year ago. A jaw that hadn’t seen a razor in too many days.
“She didn’t so much as give it to me as pretend it was mine,” he said. “She seemed to think I was more in need of her dusting money than she was.” He couldn’t think of an earthly reason why he was telling her the details. Knowing he’d looked derelict enough to elicit pity from her daughter wasn’t exactly something for him to feel proud of.
She was looking at him again. Her amber-colored eyes measured. “Mr. Clay—Ryan—there’s something about Chloe you need to know.”
He knew enough. She had a tender little heart that he hoped she never had reason to toughen. But, of course, she was only six years old. Life would add calluses sooner or later. “A dollar’s not much, I know—”
“It is to her.” Mallory moistened her lips again. “And it was very kind of you to return it. I already put it back in her piggy bank. The gift certificate wasn’t necessary, though.”
He shrugged it off. “She talked about the game at the diner. My uncle owns CeeVid.”
She looked blank.
“The company that produces the video game.”
“That’s here?” Her eyebrows shot up. “In Weaver?”
“You really haven’t been here long at all, have you?” She couldn’t have been if she didn’t know about the company. Aside from the hospital, it was basically the major employer in the area that, until Tristan established it, had been more traditionally comprised of primarily ranchers and farmers.
“We still have boxes to unpack in the bedrooms,” she admitted. “But still, regardless of your family connection,