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“It’s no big deal.” He shot a look at Kane, then rolled his eyes and swore under his breath. “Oh, hell, I got caught shoplifting.”
“Shoplifting.” She froze. Stealing? This was worse than anything he’d done in Colorado—well, worse than anything she knew about. She turned to Kane and hoped she’d get the straight story. “What happened?”
Sean shifted from one foot to the other and chewed on a thumbnail that hardly existed as it was.
Leaning against one of the rough-finished posts supporting the roof, Kane crossed his arms on his chest. With a nod to Sean, he said, “I think you’d better fill your mother in on all the details.”
“Who cares what you think?” Sean shot back, his words spiced with hate.
“Sean!” Claire pointed a finger at her son’s chest, and one of the horses nickered softly. “Don’t be rude. Let’s just get to the bottom of this.”
“I tried to jack a pack of smokes.”
“Cigarettes? You were shoplifting cigarettes?” Her heart sank. They’d been in town less than two weeks, and already Sean was looking for and finding trouble. Big trouble.
“Yeah and a bottle of Thunderbird.”
“Thunderbird?”
“Wine,” Kane supplied and received a “drop dead” stare from Sean.
“Oh, God, now what?”
Sean nodded toward Kane. “He caught me. Made me put everything back and apologize to the store owner.” Sean’s face was a deep shade of purple, his gaze still stonily rebellious, cast to the floorboards.
“Chinook’s a small town,” Kane explained. “Everybody’s got his nose in everybody else’s business. You don’t want to get yourself a reputation, ’cause it’s hell to live down. Trust me, I know.”
“What? You were some kind of crook or somethin’?” Sean asked.
“Or somethin’.” Kane’s eyes found Claire’s, and in the short span of a heartbeat she remembered him as he was, the roughneck of a boy with a crippled father. Always in trouble. Always outrunning the law. Smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and riding his motorcycle hell-bent for leather. And she’d loved him. With all her fickle heart. Now, as she looked into his golden eyes, she experienced the same rush of adrenaline that she’d always felt around him, the acceleration of her heartbeat, the sudden shortness of her breath. All the might-have-beens chased through her mind.
“I can’t believe you did this,” she said to her son.
“I didn’t take anything!”
“Because you got caught.”
“So?”
“So you’re grounded. For two weeks.”
“Big effin’ deal,” he muttered. “There’s nothin’ to do in this place anyway. Who gives a shit?”
“Don’t—”
Angry and embarrassed, he flung open the door and strode inside. Claire wanted to collapse on the front steps. At times like this one, she regretted not having a husband to count on, a man to back her up in her decisions.
“He’s angry,” Kane observed, his eyes finding hers.
She swallowed hard. “About a lot of things.”
“Including his father?”
She nearly stopped breathing. Seconds slipped by, counted by the rapid beat of her heart. Why hadn’t Kane seen the similarities—the resemblance to his own features? “Paul let us all down.”
“He was a shit.”
She wanted to argue, to tell him it was none of his business, but she couldn’t. “He’s . . . he’s still the kids’ father. I don’t think it’s necessary to put him down.”
