LITMIR.BIZ

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asking what he knew about mayhem, she instead said sweetly, too sweetly he thought, “Mine.”

      Now that she’d been diverted, he backed off. “I mean, where did it come from?”

      “My parents.”

      She wasn’t obtuse, he already knew that, so she was paying him back for his attitude, he supposed. He also figured he had it coming.

      “And what,” he said evenly, “was their inspiration?”

      She studied him for a moment before saying, “It’s Kauai without the u a.”

      He blinked. “What?”

      “Island in Hawaii? Fourth-largest? The Garden Isle?”

      She was talking to him, he realized, as if he were the obtuse one. And he somewhat belatedly realized he would do well not to underestimate this woman.

      “Were you born there?” That seemed a reasonable question, he thought.

      “No. The fun part happened there.”

      His mouth quirked. And she smiled, a bright, beautiful smile, and much more than the tiny alteration in his own expression deserved.

      “Mom shortened it to the one syllable, to avoid me having to remember what order all the vowels came in when I was little, a thoughtfulness I still thank her for.”

      The quirk became a smile of his own, he couldn’t seem to help it. And when he asked this time, the attitude was missing.

      “What’s Jordan really doing?”

      “Playing.”

      He blinked. “Playing. Video games? Poker? Bingo?”

      She didn’t take offense this time. Instead, the smile became a grin, and it hit him somewhere near the solar plexus and nearly took his breath away.

      “A Gibson SG.”

      “A guitar?”

      “That one, to be exact,” she said, gesturing at the photograph he’d seen near the guitar display.

      He didn’t have to turn to look; the image seemed to have been seared into his mind. But he only vaguely remembered the blue guitar. What he remembered was the flash and lighting pouring down over the stage, creating a sort of halo around the woman—a girl, really—in a sleek, black outfit that looked painted over long legs, sweet curves, and a tossed mane of red hair. Brighter, longer, and wilder than her hair now, it gleamed like wildfire with the backlighting.

      “He’s playing a guitar,” he repeated, to be sure he’d heard right. “Your guitar.”

      “Seemed like he’d had a bad day. Thought it might cheer him up.”

      “I didn’t … He’s really playing?”

      “Well, he’s trying. Practicing. Hard. He really wants to learn.”

      Since he hadn’t seen Jordan try hard at a damn thing, Wyatt was more than a little taken aback. “Since when?”

      She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’d say he started coming in about six months ago.”

      About a month after he’d returned to Deer Creek, Jordan in tow.

      “You didn’t know he was interested?”

      He shook his head. “His mother never said.”

      She looked at him consideringly, no doubt wondering why he hadn’t known himself, without being told. But all she said was, “I’m sorry, it must have been awful, her dying like that.”

      “Yes.” It had been awful. Painful and hard, and those last days when Melissa had been in such an anxious rush to tell him all he needed to know were days he would never forget.

      “He misses her.”

      “I know.”

      “You don’t,” she said, eyeing him with that assessing look again.

      “I barely knew her.”

      “Well enough to have a child with her.”

      He wasn’t about to explain that complicated story to this woman he’d just met.

      “My mistake,” he said.

      He saw the abruptness of his answer register. But when she spoke it wasn’t in response to that.

      “Do you know your son any better?”

      “No,” he admitted, his earlier frustration rising anew.

      “Maybe if you’d ever had anything to do with him, you’d be in a better place with him now.”

      She didn’t say it accusingly, but it bit deep just the same. He didn’t make excuses, ever. He’d been determined not to discuss this with anyone, for Jordan’s sake if nothing else, and he certainly didn’t want to do it here and now and with this woman. But the pressure of not being able to handle one thirteen-year-old boy, he who had handled far worse, was wearing him down. And for the second time since he’d walked in here, words he’d never intended to say surged out.

      “Hard to do when until seven months ago I never even knew he existed.”

       Chapter 3

      Kai stared at the man standing on the other side of the counter. So many impressions were tumbling through her mind that she’d almost forgotten her first one, that those eyes, Jordy’s vivid green eyes, looked far too exhausted for a man in his line of work.

      Jordy’s whine—because the long, wound-up complaint had indeed been that—echoed in her head. He’s a pill counter. He counts how many packages of cold pills they put in the boxes. How lame is that? And he wouldn’t even have that job if old man Hunt didn’t owe him a favor.

      She had understood Jordy’s anger about his life, agreed he had a right to be upset, having been uprooted from the only home he knew and dragged a thousand miles away, away from his school, his friends. But this had hit a hot button with her, and it had been an effort to answer quietly.

      “My dad worked in a canning plant once,” she’d told him. “Dead fish all day. He hated it. But he did it. Because he had a family to take care of, because he wanted me to have a roof over my head and food on the table. It’s called responsibility, Jordy. It’s called being an adult.”

      Jordy had stared at her incredulously. “You standing up for him?”

      “Nobody does everything wrong.”

      Those words came back to her now as she stared at the pill counter. Of all the things this man might be in life, that was one she never would have guessed at if she didn’t already know. Because despite the weariness in his eyes, he was the most intense man she’d ever seen, and in her former life she’d seen some prime examples.

      And she wasn’t sure she liked that intensity being turned on her.

       Sexy girl rocker….

      How could she be so flattered and so irritated at him at the same time? Perhaps it was the way he’d said it, so casually, as if it were self-evident. And he couldn’t know he was hitting a nerve.

      A nerve that made her say, rather sharply, “Your wife has a kid and you never knew? How did that work?”

      “She … wasn’t my wife. Then.”

      Kai considered this, puzzled over it, and the only answer that fit was that he’d married her after he found out about Jordy. The boy hadn’t mentioned it, only that he’d never known his father, and wished his mother had never married him. She’d assumed he’d walked out on them, which had given her even more reason not to like the man.

      Seven months, he’d said.

      Jordy’s

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