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CHAPTER ONE
So this was the place.
With a jaundiced eye, J.D. Santini studied the immense house with its apron of drying lawn and Apartment for Rent sign posted near the street where he’d parked. Gray clapboard accented with bay windows, black trim and a smattering of white gingerbread, this was where Tiffany had run.
Wonderful. Just damned great.
His gut twisted, and he told himself that he wasn’t throwing her out of her home. Not really. And certainly not right away. What he was doing was for her own good. In her kids’ best interests.
Then why did he feel like Benedict Arnold?
“Hell.”
Pocketing his keys, he climbed out of his Jeep. The dry heat of southern Oregon in mid-July hit him square in the face.
Bittersweet. A fitting name for the town, he thought; as good a destination as any if a person wanted to turn tail and run. Which is what she’d done.
His jaw tightened when he thought of her. Tiffany Nesbitt Santini. Sister-in-law. Gold digger. Lover.
Damn, he hated this.
Get over it, Santini. What did you expect when you took the job with the old man? You dove headfirst into this mess, and your eyes were wide open.
He reached into the back seat of his Jeep Cherokee for his beat-up duffel bag and briefcase.
It was now or never.
Damn, but “never” sounded appealing.
His leg still pained him when he walked, but he hitched the strap of his bag over his shoulder and made his way up a brick walk that needed more than its share of new mortar.
He tried not to notice the crumbling caulking around the windows and the trickle of rust that colored the downspouts as he climbed the two steps to the front door.
This house and its sad need of repair are not your problem.
Right, and the Pope wasn’t Catholic.
Everything Tiffany did affected him. Whether he wanted it to or not. She was the widow of his brother, mother of his niece and nephew, and the only woman whom he’d never been able to forget.
And trouble. Don’t forget the kind of trouble she is.
He jabbed on the bell, heard the chimes peel softly from the interior and waited impatiently. What could he say to her? That, unbeknown to her, he owned part of this old house, because her dead husband, his older brother, had been an inveterate gambler? That he thought it would be better if she sold the place, bought something newer and more modern, that it would be best if the kids were…what? Moved again? Uprooted to live close to the Santini enclave? He snorted at that thought. For years he’d avoided being roped into the tight-knit-to-the-point-of-strangulation clan, but then he was a man. It was different for him, wasn’t it? He didn’t have kids.
A black cat darted through the shadows of overgrown rhododendrons and azaleas. Footsteps dragged through the house, and the door was opened just a crack.
“Yeah?” Suspicious thirteen-year-old eyes peered out at him through the slit.
“Stephen?”
The eyes narrowed. “Who’re you?”
J.D. felt a shaft of guilt. The kid didn’t even recognize him. That wasn’t Stephen’s fault so much as it was his. “I’m your uncle.”
“Uncle? You mean—?”
“J.D.”
“Oh.” Stephen’s voice cracked, and his skin, olive in tone, was instantly suffused with color. A flicker of recognition flashed in his eyes. He opened the door farther, standing aside as J.D. hitched his way into the foyer.
“What happened to your leg?”
“An accident. Motorcycle. The bike won.”
“Yeah?” Stephen’s eyes gleamed, and the hint of a smile slid over his lips. He would be a good-looking kid in a few years, but right now he was a little rough around the edges. Soon his jaw would become more defined, and his face would catch up with his nose. The boy reminded J.D. of himself and his own misdirected youth. “You’ve got a motorcycle?” Stephen asked, obviously awed.
“I did. It’s in the shop.”
“What kind?”
“A Harley.”
“Cool.”
He couldn’t have impressed the kid more if he’d claimed to be a millionaire. “It doesn’t look so cool now. Funny what plowing into a tree does to a bike.”
Stephen managed the ghost of a smile. J.D. noted that Stephen’s black hair was shaggy, his brown eyes filled with distrust, and his muscles so tense that J.D. half expected him to make a run for it at any moment.
“Is your mother here?”
The kid’s gaze fell to the floor, and he seemed to be studying the intricate floral patterns of a throw rug at the foot of the stairs. “She’s...she’s not around right now.”
“She’s in jail!” a little voice chirped from the landing. A pixieish face, pink-cheeked and surrounded with black curls, was stuck through two balusters.
“What?”
Stephen shot his sister a killing look. “Hush, Chrissie.”
Jail? J.D. eyed the boy. “What’s she talking about?”
“Nothin’. Chrissie doesn’t know what she’s talkin’ about.”
“Do, too!”
the imp retorted indignantly.
