ONE
HE DIDN’T HAVE to know.
Alex Ryan sat outside the pretty white house on the quiet street in Bonne Terre, Missouri. It was an older home with a wide front porch and ivy growing up the two posts on either side of the three steps leading to the front door. It had a peaked roof with gingerbread trim. It wasn’t a true Victorian but someone along the way had added a few Victorian touches to the two-story home. He could see the tops of a wicker couch and rocker on the porch. Pots overflowing with red snapdragons and bleeding hearts hung from the ceiling and wound their way over the steps. In a few more days those plants would begin to die off, but for now they were pretty in the October afternoon sunlight.
There was a hopscotch course painted in sunny yellow on the front walk.
It looked like a happy house. A peaceful house. The kind of place he’d have liked to have grown up.
He didn’t have to knock on the pink front door. Didn’t need to introduce himself. He could turn the key, put the gearshift in first, make a right at the corner and be back at his own house within twenty minutes.
He could forget about the phone call that led him here. Go on with his life. A gauzy curtain in the front window flicked but he couldn’t make out more than a shadow inside. There was a late-model Honda parked in the drive, and the woman who lived here would probably like him to start up the truck and leave.
Alex looked down at his knuckles, white from gripping the steering wheel. He’d been fine before that damned phone call. His job as a park ranger at St. Francois State Park and St. Joe State Park was demanding and required all his focus. When he went home to his big, rambling house in Park Hills he was so tired that all he needed was a TV dinner, a sitcom laugh track and his bed. But the phone call came and now all he could think about was the tricycle he hadn’t been able to resist buying four years ago. The trike that was gathering dust in his attic, and was an almost exact replica of the pretty pink model that sat in this front yard now.
The trike he bought had been green, a compromise because Deanna insisted that, when they finally became pregnant, she wanted to be surprised at the birth.
But Deanna had gotten sick, so there hadn’t been a baby at all.
What could he gain from pushing himself into the lives of a strange woman and her daughter?
A four-year-old you didn’t know about until a week ago, he reminded himself. A four-year-old who lives in a pretty house on a quiet street in a town with an almost invisible crime rate.
She and her mother had been doing fine for four years.
You have a daughter. The soothing voice of the lawyer tasked with telling him about the mix-up at the fertility clinic echoed around the truck cab as if she sat beside him on the leather seat.
He had done the love thing. Married his college sweetheart and had a good life, but all that changed when Dee died. What could he give a four-year-old kid? He didn’t know how to act around adults anymore, much less children. It was one of the reasons he turned down every promotion in favor of hiking the park trails alone as a ranger.
Late-afternoon sun peeked from behind a cloud, caught on the chrome handlebar of the pink trike and winked at him.
He had to know.
The front door opened slowly and a slim woman stepped out onto the porch. Watched the truck for a moment as if she needed to think about something. Like whether or not to call the cops because a strange man was loitering on her curb. She started down the steps toward his truck and Alex swallowed hard. Too late. No chance for a clean getaway now. Sweat rolled down his neck, and he switched the air conditioning on. It didn’t work. The air conditioner pumped out enough cold air to make an elephant hypothermic but the nervous sweats continued. The woman shot a glance back into the house.
She was pretty, in a girl-next-door sort of way. Faded denim outlined her slim hips and red flip-flops protected her feet from the warm concrete. The old tee she wore with “Navy” emblazoned on the chest was splattered with paint. She tucked a long strand of honey-colored hair behind her ear as she opened the front gate and let it slide closed behind her.
Then she stepped onto the pavement and tapped on his window.
Alex hit the button to lower the glass and inhaled a slow breath filled with the smell of fall leaves and something tropical. Like mangos and bananas. Her. Sea-green eyes met his gaze. A splash of freckles played over her pert nose. He’d always been a sucker for freckles. Freckles and laughs. Deanna had both, along with white-blonde hair, short legs and an infuriating habit of finishing his sentences. Physically the women couldn’t be more different. Where Dee was short, this woman was tall. Willowy. Alex shifted in his seat.
He would not be attracted to her. Not, not, not.
You’re not here to be attracted to the mother. Definitely not. He had nothing to offer her, but the little girl, maybe he could give her...something.
Still, he was mesmerized by the light tan dots over the woman’s nose and those long, long legs covered in tattered denim.
“I’ve had four neighbors call to let me know a strange man is casing my house. And Mrs. Purcell—” she pointed toward a green-shuttered home with a cracked sidewalk and an old Chevy Impala in the drive “—has probably also called 9-1-1. So, unless you just like being interrogated for sitting in your truck you might want to come in.” She offered him a kind smile but her hands trembled against the door. Her voice had a light twang to it that a lot of Southern Missouri residents had. Not so twangy that single-syllable words became multisyllabic, more of a slow, I’m-not-in-a-hurry twang. “Unless you’ve decided against it?” The words were semihopeful and Alex couldn’t blame the woman for that.
He tapped his booted foot against the floorboard and flipped the key. “I haven’t really decided anything but maybe we could talk?”
She blew out a breath, nodded, and the strand of hair she’d tucked behind her ear slipped forward, hiding her face for a moment. “They told me you’d like to meet. I kind of hoped we could talk over the phone first.”
Alex shrugged and his shoulder pushed against his seat belt. He pulled the key from the ignition and then released the belt. “It’s easier to hang up a phone than not answer a doorbell.” He got out of the truck and shut the door. Paige, the lawyer told him her name was Paige, watched him, arms folded over her chest and an annoyed slant to her full lips. “I didn’t— Not that you wouldn’t answer.” This was going wrong. So wrong. This situation was completely out of his grasp. “I’m not sure where to begin.”
Her voice was quiet, resigned. Like she knew she couldn’t stop what was coming, but wanted to all the same. “I’d rather not have this conversation on the street.” She stepped away from him. “I’m Paige Kenner, by the way. And you’re Alex Ryan.”
“I know.” She raised her eyebrows at him. Alex ran a hand over his face as if that might wipe away the discomfort he felt now that he was face-to-face with Paige. It didn’t. Paige seemed...normal. Nice. She hadn’t run screaming for the cops when a strange man sat outside her home, anyway. And he’d just swung from arrogant to meek and back to arrogant in about two seconds. He held out his hand and waited a long moment before Paige reached out. Her skin was soft against his and he told himself the little shock he felt was from his smooth-soled boots rubbing against the carpet on the floor of his truck and not because he was attracted to her.
“Sorry, yeah, I’m Alex. I’m your daughter’s father.”
* * *
PAIGE WANTED TO do anything except lead Alex Ryan into her home. But there were at least four pairs of eyes on them right now and one of those pairs—Mrs. Purcell—would be right back on the phone with the Bonne Terre police department if Paige ran screaming down the street.
Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing.
The police would come, and crazy teenage reputation or not, the officers would take her seriously.