LITMIR.BIZ

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declined to sit, but descended and put one foot on the lower step as he had earlier. He was tall, and sitting, she did feel at a disadvantage. Maybe that was good. Let him think he had the upper hand.

      “Do you know where in Utah he went hiking?”

      “There are several parks—Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and more—but he didn’t name one specifically.”

      “Do you know if he went hiking alone?”

      “He usually did. He said it gave him the space to think.”

      “Was there anyone else in town Jesse was friends with?”

      “Maybe, but he didn’t confide in me. Like I said, he and Lena were friends. She lived in the house with me for a little while.”

      He nodded toward the house. “Is that little boy Angelina’s child?”

      Abby turned to see Kyle peering out the window beside the door.

      CHAPTER TWO

      ABBY FOUGHT BACK THE sudden sensation of panic, an immobilizing dread that had first started when she had been trapped on a dark night by reporters. She had thought she’d banished the feeling forever. She swallowed and quickly stuffed it into the bad memory file where it belonged.

      Kyle waved at her. The boy had to move the plant and stand on his tiptoes to see out the lowest window in the column beside the door, his nose pressed on the glass probably leaving a mark. She motioned him away and he disappeared from view.

      When she turned back, the thoughtful look on the man’s face appalled her. There were no reasons for him to be interested in her sister’s child—none she could possibly acknowledge anyway.

      Abby suddenly didn’t want to talk to Reed Maxwell anymore. She didn’t want to talk to anyone about her sister’s child, except her sister. Her mission in life right now was to protect that little boy. She’d been doing it since before he was born and she’d do it as long as necessary, forever if she had to. The best way to do that was to send Jesse’s brother back to Chicago.

      The sooner he left the better, because there were questions she had asked her sister about Kyle and hadn’t gotten any satisfactory answers, answers about Kyle and Jesse. It hadn’t seemed very important before, but with Lena so far away and this man here asking questions, she recognized how little control she might actually have over what happened to Kyle.

      Reed Maxwell had to go. Now. Because he was be ginning to make the safe town of St. Adelbert not seem so snug anymore.

      “If you leave me a contact number, I’ll email my sister again about Jesse, and I’ll call you and let you know what she says, and if I hear anything from Jesse, I’ll call.” She sounded flustered. She knew she did. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.

      He half turned away and then turned back. “I thought, until I can be sure I’ve found out everything I can from the people here about where Jesse might be, I’d stay in Jesse’s apartment for a few days.”

      “Stay in Jesse’s apartment? You want to stay here in St. Adelbert?” A wrenching, gut-level protest flashed through Abby. This man could not stay in town. There could be no good reason for him to stay. There was nothing for him here.

      He stared steadily, silently. Unsure she could say any more without sounding like a crazed shrew, she did the same.

      The adrenaline rush and the late-afternoon’s cool breeze made her skin prickle. She couldn’t have him digging into Kyle’s past, her past, and if he stayed, he might do just that—until he discovered things he did not need to know.

      “If there’s a chance I can find something out about Jesse by staying here for a couple of days, I’m going to stay.”

      She watched his face for some kind of hope that he was kidding, pulling her leg. City Man Invades Small Montana Town a Hoax. Ha ha! We always gotta have hope, her mother would say. But there had been no give in his words, and now no relenting in the expression on his face.

      The bottom of her world gave way a bit.

      Okay, then. She made herself relax and smile. “If I can do anything to help, let me know.” She had to keep him from discovering for himself the things about her sister and Kyle that Lena would never clarify, but that could no longer be ignored or treated lightly.

      Was Jesse Kyle’s father? If he was, did Jesse know or even suspect?

      Pudgy-cheeked and blond, Kyle was nothing like the dark and lanky Jesse and if Lena had not wanted to tell anyone, Abby had known it wasn’t any of her business. It wasn’t until her sister went into the army leaving Kyle in her care that she had admitted she should have insisted on concrete, believable answers, but pinning down her younger sister was like holding fog in the palm of her hand.

      Jesse’s brother climbed the steps and sat down beside her. She stayed where she was, refusing to give an inch.

      With the tip of her fingernail she flicked off a chip of the peeling gray paint. The flake landed with a tiny click on the sidewalk below.

      Maybe Reed thought she was being friendly. The niggling of dread threading through her thoughts told her it was more likely he could see through her facade.

      He knew she wanted to send him over the mountains never to come back again, and in protest, he was staking a claim.

      She held her ground.

      “I have this mother, you see,” he said quietly and then fell silent. He didn’t seem to be expecting her to comment. Instead, he gazed intently out over the neighborhood.

      Abby sat silently. Let him ponder. It was a dirty trick to bring his mother into this. She didn’t want to hear about his mother. She didn’t want to think of Jesse’s family, have them become human beings and not just the miserable caricatures Jesse had sketched and then dismissed.

      What did a man from the flatlands see when he looked out over the neighborhood? Did he see the houses, the white clapboard, the stone and the log-cabin wannabees, all stout enough to withstand heavy snows and each sheltering a family with their own story? Did he see the trees, some as old or older than the town and each planted by the wind, the squirrels, or human hands?

      Surely he had to see the mountains in the distance, hazy and ancient, and some would say full of mystery and lore. Always mountains. Beautiful mountains that kept the rest of the world at bay—most of the time.

      How had this day gone from playing Candy Land to feeling as if she had been hurled off the top of the Gumdrop Mountains?

      Instead of pressing her for information she did not really have, Jesse’s brother’s broad shoulders drooped.

      She wanted to reach out and comfort him.

      She scrunched her hands into fists. Always the nurse. She could not comfort the whole world and especially not this man—the one who could be the enemy. Kyle came first. She needed to protect him. I’d be scared… If I had to go and live with strangers. Kyle’s words chilled her.

      What if it came to that? What if Reed Maxwell came for his brother and settled for a boy who might be his nephew? What if he knew for sure about Kyle’s heritage and had come for his nephew in the first place?

      No matter what, he couldn’t just take Kyle away without cause.

      What if he had cause? What if he knew why she had fled back to St. Adelbert?

      Abby cringed, but then she put the thought away. She had to. She was getting ahead of herself. It could be Jesse was not Kyle’s father at all, and her sister just kept the man close because she liked having a fan club. That was not at all beyond her sister, but if Abby believed that, maybe she believed the moon was made of green cheese, too.

      Reed had a missing brother and he had a mother, who probably missed her son. Nursing had taught Abby almost everyone had feelings for one of their own.

      Whatever Jesse and Lena did was not this

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