Chapter 1 #2
After spending the last nine years in Memphis, Clayton had come back home to the small town of Heartache for a reunion of his foster family planned by his foster brother, Samuel Reyes, who was now the town’s sheriff.
Since Clayton had a private investigations business, he had done Sam a favor by staying in the Chance household, which was now occupied by Zach, Gabriella’s older brother and also the mayor of Heartache.
Zach had needed some extra eyes on his fiancée, Heather Finley, after the woman was the target of an attempted kidnapping.
Clayton didn’t mind collecting a paycheck while he was in town, so he’d gladly taken the easy gig for a week.
But now, with the threat confirmed to be behind bars, Clayton would find somewhere else to stay until the Hasting family reunion later that week.
He packed his duffel at dawn to leave the Chance house, his eyes lingering on an old photo of Gabriella on the sleek, mission-style dresser in the bedroom where he’d slept these last six nights.
She stood in front of a big pink castle in a California theme park, her arm around a huge stuffed panda that must have been a game prize.
She wore a long dress too big for her, making her look sort of lost inside it.
Wisps of blond hair from her ponytail blew in a summer breeze as she smiled, but there was something off about the photo.
It wasn’t a real smile—not like the ones he remembered from the few times they’d ended up staying after school together.
She’d been a math genius, helping kids as a student tutor, and she’d been cool about it, too, even though Clayton had been taking algebra when everyone else in his grade had moved on to calculus or trig.
It wasn’t that he was totally clueless, he just switched homes and schools too fast to patch together the right credits.
He’d fallen behind trying to learn math from teachers who’d taught it with really different methods.
Gabriella never made him feel like the flunkie foster kid.
Far from it.
Too bad she hadn’t lived in Tennessee for the past decade, walking out of this very house one long-ago summer and never looking back, leaving Clayton to finish his senior year by himself.
Sam, the foster brother he’d roomed with at the Hastings’ house, had left town the same time as Gabriella and her older brother.
The only way Daniel and Lorelei Hasting, Clayton and Sam’s foster parents, had avoided a full-scale child protective services investigation was that Sam turned eighteen shortly afterward, making him an independent adult.
“Dude, don’t tell me you’re packing up?” Zach Chance appeared in the bedroom doorway, a cup of coffee in one hand and a phone in the other.
Besides being mayor, Zach ran his own digital security firm and was probably worth a small fortune, but Clayton wouldn’t have guessed it if he hadn’t seen the downstairs office full of high-tech equipment and dozens of computer screens.
Zach had opened his home to him like they were old friends, making it all the more awkward now that the guy had caught Clayton gawking at a photo of Zach’s sister.
“I am.” He tossed a pair of socks into the duffel and zipped it. “Freeloading isn’t one of my services, even though it’s tempting when the hospitality is this good.”
Leaning a shoulder on the doorjamb of the spacious suite, Zach shook his head, keeping his voice low.
“And that hospitality is all because of Heather. It’s been great having her live under the same roof as me.” He sipped from the steaming cup before continuing. “I hope she doesn’t get the idea she should move out, too, once she sees you’ve left.”
Zach had convinced Heather to stay with him while there were threats circulating around town against people who might testify against Jeremy Covington, the guy who’d tried to kidnap Heather.
“I think she digs you, Mayor,” Clayton assured him, shouldering the duffel while the scent of coffee filled the room. “You’ll think of something to keep her here.”
“I hope so. With the Covington trial starting tomorrow, we’ll be staying in Franklin for at least the first week to be closer to court.
” He sipped his coffee. “This house is going to be empty anyway and Sam said there have been some break-ins around town lately. Now that the Covington trial is set, he’s going to start looking into them more closely. ”
“I heard about the break-ins,” Clay said, ready to move on despite the offer. “But you’ve got the most kick-ass security system in town, I hear.”
Zach chuckled. “I’d better, right? It’ll put me out of business if my house gets robbed with a company name like Fortress.
Even if my business is more digital security than anything.
” He straightened a rumpled throw rug in the hallway with his toe.
“But what about you? Are you going to stay at your foster mother’s house? ”
“No. There’s a lot of activity over there and I don’t want to be underfoot.
” He remembered what it had been like at Lorelei Hastings’ foster home.
Fun and noisy with kids coming and going, the house had been a refuge for people like him for almost fifteen years.
He didn’t want to crowd the place this week with one more body.
“I’m thinking I’ll grab a nice little motel on the outskirts of town so I can play my guitar where no one will hear me. ”
“That good?” Zach grinned.
“I only play for the love of it.” And to keep his stress level down.
Strumming a tune—even if it wasn’t pitch-perfect—helped dial back his agitation faster than any of the meds they’d tried putting him on as a kid.
With his biological dad in and out of the hospital and asking to see him, Clayton was going to need all the self-help he could wrangle this week to face the old deadbeat who’d shit all over Clayton’s life.
“I think there are some places out on the interstate that should fill the bill.”
“For sure. If you don’t want to do the Heartache B & B, the motels on the highway are your only options. That is, if you’re really sure I can’t convince you to stay?”
“I’ve heard your fiancée play a guitar.” Clayton grabbed his own instrument, which he’d never even taken out of the soft-sided case since arriving in town. “No way am I going to start banging out tunes in front of the local music teacher.”
Zach backed out of the doorway, leaving Clayton a clear path.
“She’s a talent. There’s no denying that.” Zach followed him into the kitchen toward the back door where Clayton’s bike was parked.
Clayton waved off offers of coffee and breakfast, ready to move on.
The domestic bliss of the Chance household with new lovebirds Heather and Zach might have been charming if Clayton hadn’t been so decidedly single and in a dark place right now.
He looked forward to the Hasting fosters reunion, but he dreaded seeing his biological father as much as pulling out a sliver embedded under a fingernail.
He wouldn’t do it if not for the fact that his dad had another daughter—Clayton’s half sister—still living with him.
Clay hated that he hadn’t known about this sibling, Mia Benson, until two weeks ago when his father called with a request that Clay pay him a visit.
Clay had about blown a gasket—with his dad for failing to mention yet another kid he hadn’t taken care of.
But also with himself for not keeping better track of the old man’s offspring.
Then again, like most of Pete Yancy’s kids, the girl didn’t bear his name and hadn’t spent much time in his household.
Still, if Clay had known about the girl before his dad’s bid to win custody, he would have lobbied against the move.
His father was just trying to soak up an extra assistance check for housing a kid, and the girl would be better off out from under the Yancy influence.
Clayton credited any success he’d had in life to his foster family and their encouragement in settling him down.
Hunting for his missing half siblings had been the start of his PI career.
To this day, reuniting families was his specialty.
But he’d failed Mia Benson when he’d stopped looking for his own brothers and sisters, assuming his father was done sowing his seed.
Apparently failing eight times over at parenthood—with five different women—hadn’t been enough for the old man.
After shaking hands with his host, Clayton walked out of the huge Craftsman-style house and fired up his motorcycle in the damp November fog.
With his duffel strapped to the seat and his guitar on his back, he wasn’t the most aerodynamic of riders, but his old Harley wasn’t that kind of ride anyhow.
Roaring out of the driveway and heading toward the interstate, he planned to play his six-string for as many hours as it took to unkink the knot in his gut.
He didn’t want to see his father. But he damn well wanted to know his half sister, if only to see with his own eyes that she was okay.
The firstborn of Clayton’s parents had died of crib death while the two so-called adults drank themselves into a stupor.
Their next kid was Clayton, and it had taken him half his childhood to get into the foster system, a golden ticket out that he’d only learned about after his drunken, jobless, abusive parents had birthed kid number three, a boy Clayton loved with all his heart.
When Eddy was four years old, child protective services took him away after a neighbor called to complain about seeing him unattended on the playground.
Of course, Eddy hadn’t been unattended for any moment of the day when Clayton was around.
But the neighbor probably hadn’t considered a seven-year-old brother to be adequate supervision.
Why CPS claimed Eddy at that time and not Clayton remained the biggest injustice of Clayton’s life.
It had separated them for the next twelve years until Clayton figured out how to find people.
By the time he’d gotten himself taken out of his home—not that difficult to do, but still, there was a process—he’d bounced to a different foster home every year, finally winding up at the Hasting house, where he’d graduated school and aged out of the system.
His life had ended up better than Eddy’s. And on that sobering note, he ground his teeth together.
Now, with the wind plastering his jacket to his chest, he tried not to think about his brother’s fate, his long-dead older sister and the smattering of other kids his parents had brought into the world—some as a couple, others with equally crappy partners as parents.
It bothered Clayton to think he’d missed Mia, but she’d lived with her mother until a two-year stint in foster care, during which she’d lobbied her birth father to spring her from the system.
Somehow Pete had gotten clean and sober enough to fool the social worker into giving him one last chance to be a dad.
Mia was sixteen now, he’d heard, and had been living with their father for the last eight months, helping to care for the old man as he grew weak from cirrhosis and heart disease.
Clayton planned to make sure she knew she had a way out of her father’s house.
That alone was worth going to see Pete Yancy—aka the negligent jackass—one last time.
Clayton would have gone as soon as he’d arrived in Heartache, but he’d been tapped for bodyguard duty by his friend.
He would put in an appearance at his dad’s place after school that day and cross his fingers she’d show up, too, so he could fulfill his obligations in Heartache and head back to Memphis once the reunion was done.
Steering his vintage low rider along the road that ran parallel to the interstate, Clayton slowed down as the Owl’s Roost came into view, a diner he remembered from when he’d lived in town.
Nostalgia and hunger lured him off the road and into a parking spot to grab some breakfast since it was early to book a motel room anyhow.
The figure of a woman walking across the Roost’s front porch flagged his attention as he locked up the bike and his bag.
Keeping the guitar strapped to his back, he turned to watch the slender form half covered by a big, black hoodie that hid her profile.
He wasn’t sure what it was that caught his attention.
The quick, sharp walk. Long, elegant legs that a pair of loose pants couldn’t fully conceal in the late-autumn wind.
Something about her made him pay attention.
So it happened that he was staring right at her when she stopped and turned to look out into the parking lot, her pale blue eyes landing on him.
The delicate features hadn’t changed. A wisp of dark blond hair fluttered across her cheek in the breeze.
“Clay.” She said his name softly.
Or he imagined she did. Her mouth moved with some comment before she raised her hand to cover her lips. As if she could retrieve whatever she had murmured.
“Gabriella Chance.” His feet were already heading toward her, his gaze not able to let her go. “I wondered if I’d ever see you again.”