LITMIR.BIZ

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be shopping for a wedding gift anytime soon. Damn it.

       “I’ve been thinking, Dev,” he said, stepping carefully into a delicate subject. “How would you feel about coming to live with me on the ranch? Permanently, I mean?”

       “Mom won’t let me,” Devon answered, and out of the corner of his eye Keegan saw her shrink in on herself, shoulders stooped, chin lowered to rest in the pink fluff on top of the teddy bear’s head. She had a death grip on the stuffed animal, both arms locked around it. “She needs the child support.”

       Keegan’s stomach clenched like a fist. “She told you that?”

       “I heard her and Rory talking.”

       Silently Keegan cursed his ex-wife and her muscle-brained boyfriend. “She loves you, sweetheart. You know that.”

       Devon shrugged. “Whatever.” After a short silence, she added, “They fight a lot.”

       It was all Keegan could do not to pull a U-turn in the middle of the street, speed back to the house and confront Shelley, back-to-the-wall style. “Is that right?” he asked carefully. Moderately.

       Inside, he seethed.

       He’d talked to Travis Reid, who was his attorney as well as a friend, about suing Shelley for full custody. Travis figured things would get ugly if he did, and most of the fallout would come down on Devon.

       “About money,” Devon went on, mercifully oblivious to the turmoil going on inside the man she believed to be her father. “That’s mostly what they fight about. Rory wants to get married, but Mom says they’ll be broke if they do.”

       Keegan’s sinuses burned, and the backs of his eyes stung. He drew a deep breath. “You like this Rory yahoo?”

       Another shrug of shoulders too small to carry the burden of two parents who despised each other, plus a boyfriend. “He’s all right,” Devon said.

       “You aren’t going to any boarding school in Paris,” Keegan told her. It wasn’t much in the way of consolation, but it was all he had to give at the moment.

       “You promise?”

       “As God is my witness,” Keegan said.

       Devon quirked a grin. “Scarlett O’Hara said that in Gone with the Wind.”

       “Okay.” Honesty time—the kid had enough deception to deal with. “I didn’t see the movie.”

       “There’s a book, Dad.” She imparted this information gently.

       “I know that, shortstop.”

       “Did you read it?”

       He laughed. God, it felt good to laugh. How long had it been?

       “Is there a quiz?”

       Devon released her grasp on the bear long enough to slug him affectionately on the upper arm. “No, silly,” she said. Then, in that confounding way of females, heading full steam in one emotional direction and suddenly hairpinning into a one-eighty, her eyes filled with tears. “How come you don’t like Mom?”

       For the second time that day Keegan pulled off onto the side of the road. He laid both hands on the wheel, deliberately splayed his fingers to keep from making fists; any reference to Shelley had that effect on him, and it was time he got the hell over it. “We’ve discussed this before, Dev,” he said. “When people get divorced, they tend to be mad about it for a while.”

       “You and Mom were mad before you got divorced,” Devon pointed out.

       Keegan sighed. It was true. He’d been twenty-four when he married Shelley—stupid and horny, on the outs with Psyche. Out to prove God knew what.

       “I’m sorry, Dev,” he said. “I’m really sorry for everything we put you through.”

       “People shouldn’t get married if they don’t like each other.”

       For some strange reason, Molly Shields flashed into his mind. “You’re right,” Keegan replied. “They should like each other first. Be friends.”

       “Did Uncle Jesse like Cheyenne?”

       Keegan considered. “I think he did.”

       “Even when they first met?”

       “They had some rocky times, but, yeah, I think they were friends.”

       “Before they fell in love?”

       “Before they fell in love.”

       “Uncle Rance and Emma, too?”

       A bleak sensation passed through Keegan’s spirit, cold and hollow. “Them, too,” he said.

       Devon beamed. “So you just have to find some woman you like, and be sure you’re friends, and then you can get married.”

       “It’s not that simple, Dev.”

       “Sure it is,” she said.

       “You’d like that? If I got married again?”

       “If she was nice to me, like Emma is to Rianna and Maeve. They like her a lot. She lets them help in the bookstore, just like they were grown-ups. And they get to try on her shoes, too. She has lots of shoes.”

       “So does your mom,” Keegan suggested, at a loss.

       “She won’t let me try them on, though,” Devon said.

       “There’s something to be said for wearing your own,” Keegan reasoned, baffled. “Isn’t there?”

       “It’s not as much fun,” Devon explained. “How many ten-year-olds do you know with high heels?”

       “You’re too young for high heels.”

       Devon rolled her eyes. “Dad, you’re such a guy.”

       He grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “And you’re stuck with me for the duration, kid. Furthermore, I don’t own a single pair of high heels.”

       She laughed, and the sound rang in the confines of that car like the peal of a bell from some country church steeple.

       Keegan shifted the Jag back into gear, checked the rearview and pulled out onto the road again. “You hungry?”

       “Starved,” Devon said, sucking in her cheeks in a comical effort to look emaciated. “Mom’s a terrible cook, and Rory won’t eat anything but trail mix.”

       “I guess I saved you from a terrible fate—breakfasting at Casa de Idiot.”

       Devon giggled again, and Keegan wondered why it made his vision blur for a moment.

       They stopped at a pancake house, stuffed themselves with waffles. Keegan would have preferred to keep the conversation light, but he’d promised to explain why he hadn’t called Devon the night before, as agreed, and she pressed the issue.

       He told her about Psyche. How they’d been friends since they were little kids, and now she was really sick. He’d gone to visit Psyche, he told Devon, and he’d been so upset when he left her, he hadn’t been able to think of much else.

       Devon’s eyes rounded. “Is she going to die?”

       Keegan swallowed. “Yes,” he said.

       Devon slid out of the booth, rounded the end of the table and squeezed in beside Keegan. Laying her head against his arm, she murmured. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

       Keegan’s throat closed. He blinked a couple of times.

       “You want to cry, huh?” Devon asked softly.

       He didn’t dare answer.

       “Poor Daddy. It’s hard to be a man, isn’t it?”

       He swallowed. Nodded.

      

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