LITMIR.BIZ

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every night. If I were a thief, I’d wait for Thursday when the receipts would be highest from the week before your deposit on Friday. I’d clean you out. Voice of experience.” His scowl had deepened. “I got robbed.”

      Shadow squeezed the envelope even tighter, as if the agency was, indeed, at risk. “Robbed?”

      “Rustlers cleaned out half a dozen head the other night. Took off before I could get a look at their faces—three of ’em.”

      She took another step. “I’m sorry to hear you’ve had more trouble—”

      “I need to talk to you, Shadow.” He looked around to make sure they were alone on the street. “Now. About...the baby.”

      She took a few more steps, her back to him, and sensed him following. “After I do my banking, I have to interview several new caregivers then drive out to the rehab center. Ned Sutherland had a stroke a few weeks ago and he’s there now. I want to assess his situation.” Since she’d stopped at her mother’s house earlier and come back to town after her run-in with Derek, she hadn’t gone to see Ned when she intended. She knew she was babbling now. “He may need our services.”

      “I see what you’re doing. In a way I don’t even blame you, but we’re going to talk. It can be wherever you like, but we will talk. I won’t be put off, Shadow.”

      “Then I guess you’ve done your thinking,” she said.

      She reached the main doors of the bank, leaving Grey to stand on the sidewalk, she assumed, but then he reached around from behind and caught the brass door pull, so close she could smell the soap he must have showered with that morning. “What happened after you went to Doc? And he gave you ‘options’?”

      “As I said, I spent the night at his house.”

      “Which option? You didn’t—” for a moment he couldn’t go on “—do something drastic?”

      Shadow felt the blood drain from her face. That next morning, when she’d wakened at Doc’s house, she’d known what to do. She’d already begun to love Ava. “No,” she murmured, barely able to push out the words. “That choice might be right for some people but it wasn’t for me.”

      She watched Grey relax. “Then, what option did you choose?”

      Shadow hesitated. “I decided to give her up for adoption.”

      Another look of alarm crossed his features. “So, she’s not...with you?”

      Her heart skipped a beat. “Let me tell you what I did after I left Doc’s then. You’re right, I was trying to stall because I don’t know how to say all this now, and you left my office before I could tell you.” She looked around. “Can we talk in your truck? I hate to stand here like this where anyone could see us.”

      Grey nodded. He waited while she made her deposit then guided her to his silver pickup with a light hand at her lower back. Shadow felt his warmth through her summer dress. In that instant, she remembered other days and nights when they’d been inseparable, when she and Grey were in love, when she’d loved everything about him: his voice, his hands, his laughter, even the way he’d loved Wilson Cattle...because that told Shadow there was at least a different kind of family there, a different kind of home.

      He sat against the driver’s door while she pressed against the passenger side. And tried to think how to begin. The direct way seemed best.

      “Doc and I discussed my choices that next day. He encouraged me to do what I thought best for her and for me, but he didn’t pressure. You know he wouldn’t.” She studied the stores along Main Street, the bank, people passing by. “Please try to understand—I had no means of support, Grey, I hadn’t finished high school, I didn’t know how I could possibly care for a helpless baby when I could barely care for myself—Doc called his lawyer. We arranged a private adoption and I went to stay with the Merritts.”

      “Where? I don’t recognize the name. Who were they?”

      “A middle-aged couple, lovely people, who lived in Farrier. They still do. They agreed to pay all my expenses, the doctor there, the hospital...”

      She told Grey about waking up there each morning, rolling over in bed in the sunny room she’d been given, feeling the baby kick against her palm. “When I saw a sonogram, I was able to make out fingers and toes and a snub nose. It was a little girl.” Shadow laid a hand over her stomach. “‘Good morning, Sunshine,’ I always told her.”

      Grey’s mouth tightened. “You should have called me.”

      “I still didn’t feel I could. I’d left home, my family, you...all my friends behind. My parents hadn’t changed their minds. The only people I saw were the Merritts and my obstetrician.”

      She kept her gaze on her lap. “I was so lonely, but for the first time in my life I didn’t have to share a bed—except with the life growing inside me. She was so precious, but for her sake I knew I had to give her up.” She paused. “Every morning Mrs. Merritt called up the stairs that breakfast was ready. She was a wonderful cook.”

      And every morning, still lying there for another few minutes, Shadow would cry softly into the blanket. Hormones, she’d thought. They were all over the place and she never knew which mood would come out next.

      “They had no other children?”

      “No, Mrs. Merritt was only forty but she couldn’t have her own babies. Neither can my sister Jenna, and I know how that hurts. If I couldn’t take care of my baby, I wanted to be happy that the Merritts would love and adore her.”

      “I’m glad they were kind to you,” Grey said.

      Shadow managed a smile. “Mrs. Merritt was so excited to have a baby. So was her husband. They couldn’t seem to do enough for me. After breakfast, Mrs. Merritt and I always took a walk around the neighborhood. They live in a nice area with old but well-kept houses and big green lawns for children to play on.”

      They had really wanted her baby. Ava would have a good life with them, she’d told herself.

      “What did they tell everyone else?”

      “That I was their niece from upstate New York who’d come west because my pregnancy had worsened my lifetime asthma.” Shadow lifted her gaze. “That was ten years ago and Kansas is pretty traditional, or was then. Now we could probably tell everyone the truth.”

      Shadow paused to steady her voice. She couldn’t tell Grey that every day she’d thought that if Jared hadn’t died, if she and Grey hadn’t broken up and her father hadn’t turned his back on her, maybe she and Grey would have woken each morning together, talked about their baby in low, happy tones. At times she’d yearned so much for that, she almost couldn’t breathe, as if she really did have asthma.

      But, instead, in the view of many, he had killed her brother, and Shadow still had her own doubts. Was Grey innocent, as he claimed? Or guilty? Certainly she’d resented the fact that Grey had gone back to finish college as if nothing had happened, that he would take over his father’s ranch...marry someone else. She was still surprised that he never had.

      “So, after the baby was born...” His gaze flickered. “Where is she now?”

      Shadow swallowed. “In school, staying at my sister Jenna’s.”

      “You didn’t give her up,” he said, looking more than surprised.

      “No,” she murmured.

      His mouth had that stubborn set she’d seen so many times before. “Then I want to see her,” he said in a tone that didn’t allow for her refusal.

      “Grey, I’ll need to talk to her first. We can’t just show up and say, ‘Hi, honey, this is your father.’”

      He frowned. “I didn’t exactly plan to do it that way.”

      She glanced at the darkening sky again. The thunderheads looked

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