LITMIR.BIZ

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pretty handy to have around.”

      Gavin felt the pull of attraction. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been more taken with a woman, not so quickly.

      “He’s a real pain in the, um, neck,” Eli said, choosing his words carefully in deference to the children. “Don’t let him fool you.”

      She leaned forward in an attempt to get a better look at Eli’s face. “I hope you don’t mind, but he signed you up to help me move a fridge.”

      Eli shrugged. “Might as well make myself useful.”

      “What about a stove?” Gavin asked. “You’ll need one of those, too.”

      “That’ll be tougher to find. I’m not even sure if I should get gas or electric. I thought you might know.”

      He nearly laughed. How she was going to go about remodeling the ranch house, he had no idea, but he sort of liked that she needed him. “Gas.”

      “Got it. I’ll grab a microwave so we can get by in the meantime and hope to come across a gas stove. I appreciate the help.” She put the transmission in Drive. “If all goes well, and the fridge looks as good in real life as it does in the pictures I saw, I’ll be back in an hour and a half.”

      “We’ll be here,” Gavin said.

      As soon as she drove off, Eli nudged him. “Wow!”

      Savanna’s smile had left Gavin a little dazed. “What?”

      “The color of her hair is sort of unusual, but she’s striking.”

      Gavin watched the moving van until it reached the highway. “Yeah. She’s pretty, all right.”

      “So what’s going on? She married?”

      “Divorced.” He thought of what her ex had done but chose not to reveal that information. Although he could trust Eli not to tell anyone else—except maybe Aiyana—opening his mouth felt disloyal somehow.

      “Then why haven’t you mentioned her?”

      “She’s just got here yesterday.”

      “The same day you learned that Heather is pregnant.”

      He let his breath seep out in a long, dejected sigh. “Yeah. Can you believe it?”

      * * *

      “Did you see all of Gavin’s tattoos?” Branson asked, his voice full of awe as they gathered as much speed as they could muster, given the limitations of the van.

      Since Gavin had come out of the house without a shirt, Savanna couldn’t have missed his tattoos—or his bare chest. But she didn’t mind having seen that. She liked the way he looked. A lot. His brother was probably more classically handsome. With such dark hair and blue eyes, he reminded her of Elvis Presley, but she found Gavin’s less conventional looks more attractive. “I saw them,” she said.

      “They went clear up to here!” Branson indicated his shoulder.

      Alia, who was busy playing a game on Savanna’s phone, made no comment.

      Curious to see what her son would say, Savanna glanced over at him. “Do you like tattoos?”

      He seemed stumped by the question. His father had railed about the kind of “trash” that would mark up his or her body, so she knew Branson had to be remembering that. He also had to be thinking that maybe he no longer cared what his father thought about something as benign as tattoos, that maybe he’d venture to form his own opinion. “Do you?” he asked uncertainly.

      Since she’d met Gavin, she did. He had to be the sexiest man she’d ever come across, tattoos and all, which was odd because if someone had asked her only a few days ago to describe the perfect man, she would not have described anyone who looked remotely like him. “I do,” she admitted. “Especially his. They suit him.” Gordon would’ve been shocked to hear those words come out of her mouth, but until now she’d never had strong enough feelings on the subject to contradict him when he criticized ink.

      Gordon’s cutting remarks suddenly seemed highly ironic, though, considering what he’d done.

      “So can I get one when I’m old enough?” Branson ventured.

      She veered to the right, hugging the shoulder so that a car that’d become impatient with following her could get past. “As long as you’re at least eighteen. Then you’ll be an adult and can decide for yourself. You can’t get one any sooner than that.”

      “Why not?” he asked. “You said you liked them.”

      “I do, depending on how they’re done and where they’re at on a person’s body. There’s an art to it. Anyway, tattoos are permanent. You need to know yourself well before you make that commitment, be certain of what you’re doing.”

      “Oh.”

      She could tell he was deep in thought. Was he considering easygoing Gavin as a new role model? And was he wondering if maybe he’d rather be like Gavin than the kind of large and in-charge person his father had always been?

      She’d been worried about Branson. She’d read enough online to know that bed-wetting wasn’t a good sign, but she hoped her son could recover from the blows they’d recently sustained. If not, she was going to do what she could to seek help.

      “I like Gavin’s tattoos,” Alia piped up, smiling in a way that let Savanna know she also found him appealing. Alia had been so engrossed in her game Savanna had thought she wasn’t paying attention. But this proved that the whole family was a little smitten with their neighbor.

      Was it only because he was new—something different? Even before Gordon had been accused of rape, Savanna had let her life fall to routine, had merely been going through the motions. She didn’t think that automatically happened in a marriage, but somehow it’d happened in hers. So what had come first? Had she neglected Gordon in some way—maybe while she was grieving the loss of her mother, father and older brother—so he’d turned to getting his thrills elsewhere? Or had he turned to getting his thrills elsewhere, thus showing less interest in her, and then she’d started focusing strictly on the kids to avoid feeling any dissatisfaction with her marriage?

      Someday, maybe she’d get him to tell her why he’d done what he’d done. What led up to that type of thing? What made him hurt people—people who had little chance of fighting back? After living with him and feeling as if she knew him better than anyone, she wanted to understand why above all else. But whenever she tried to get him to level with her, he did the exact opposite—swore up and down that he was wrongly accused. That he’d play the martyr when there were women who’d suffered serious injury at his hands made her as angry as anything.

      Even if she never got the answers she craved, she’d be better off if he’d just leave her alone, she decided.

      Too bad she had little hope of that happening. Now that he was in jail, she was about all he had. He wasn’t likely to let her go easily.

      Her phone rang. She didn’t have Bluetooth in the van, so she couldn’t have answered even if she wanted to—not while she was driving—but when she glanced down and spotted caller ID, she didn’t want to. It was Dorothy. She opened her mouth to tell Alia not to pick up, but Alia had the phone and pressed Talk before Savanna could even get the words out.

      “Hi, Grandma!”

      Tensing, Savanna pulled off the highway onto a side road and put the truck in Park. She was terrified that Dorothy might say something terrible to Alia, something that would come as too much of a shock to a child of six. Savanna hadn’t mentioned to her children that she and their father’s mother were still feuding, was trying to keep them from being caught in the middle.

      “What’d you say?” Alia’s smile slid from her face. “You have Daddy on the line?”

      “Let me talk to them,” Savanna whispered, but Alia wouldn’t relinquish

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