These Ties That Bind. Mary Sullivan

that had carried him this far gave out, his knees buckled. He grasped the counter of the nurses’ station.

      If he’d slept through the crash…

      Or what if he’d already been out working, taking care of animals on someone else’s ranch…

      Those two might be dead now, one on the road and the other burned to death in the backseat of their car. Sara would have helped them when she came along. Could she have climbed into a burning vehicle, though? He didn’t know. Her shock after her brother had been burned had been profound. He just didn’t know how much of that she’d got over.

      Nausea rose into his throat along with memories he’d grown damn good at repressing, but here they were now, vivid and too real, brought on by the scent of roasted flesh—a ball of fire, Timm Franck’s screams, the other children running away, parents scrambling to put out the fire. Sara frozen in place and staring at her injured brother.

      The stinking horror of it rang in Rem’s conscience—your fault. Your fault. Those words—your fault, Rem—had dogged him for twenty years. Far too many years.

      He’d put his worst memories behind him, but today’s crash, that burning girl, played havoc with his equilibrium. Maybe he felt this connection to her because he’d saved her from getting burned as badly as Timm had.

      Sara ran past him. On her way through the examination room doors, she said, “Sit down before you fall on your face.”

      Rem stumbled to a blue plastic chair, one of a row, and sagged into it.

      That poor kid.

      He slumped against the chair and his back burst into flame. Howling, he shot forward. What the hell? He stood and tried to see his reflection over his shoulder in the side of a chrome vending machine, but the finish was too dull.

      “Where’s your shirt?”

      Rem turned. Finn Franck stood in front of the machine with a fistful of change, staring at Rem’s back and his hands.

      He’d combed masses of jet hair across his forehead like a modern-day Beatle look-alike. With silver-gray eyes he’d inherited from Sara, the kid promised to be a heartbreaker one day soon.

      He’d grown a lot since the last time Rem had seen him. Must be taller than Sara by now.

      He was turning twelve in a couple of weeks. Rem knew his birth date. He knew a lot about him.

      “When I heard the car crash I jumped out of bed.” Rem finally answered the boy’s question. “Didn’t have time to get fully dressed.”

      “There’s a long scratch on your back. It’s bleeding.”

      Must’ve happened when he pulled the girl out of the car.

      Finn stared at him, unnerving him. “Does it hurt?”

      “It didn’t until a minute ago.” Rem had driven all the way out here with his back against his car seat and, in those adrenaline-fueled moments, hadn’t felt a thing.

      “I saw you go into the burning car,” the boy said. “That was cool. Really sick. You were great.”

      Finn’s eyes gleamed with hero worship.

      Lord no. Anything but that. Rem was no hero. Never had been. Never would be.

      “Don’t try it at home,” he muttered. “Fire is dangerous business.”

      Rem slowly turned away from the boy and sat back down.

      He couldn’t handle this right now.

      He’d just rescued a girl from a burning vehicle, but to have a conversation with his son scared the bejesus out of him. Over the years, during Sara’s visits home from school, he’d seen Finn around town. He’d admired the fine job Sara was doing raising him, but Rem didn’t know what to say, what to talk about, and that helplessness frustrated him.

      He wanted to connect. To claim the boy. Badly.

      Sara had finished her nursing degree a few years ago and had been working in Bozeman; but she’d returned to Ordinary with Finn last week, this time to stay for good.

      Rem wanted to know why.

      He stretched his neck to ease the tightness there, where his resentment of Sara had settled since last summer.

      Finn poured coins into the pop machine. When a ginger ale fell into the bottom, he pulled it out and sat on a chair in the same row as Rem, holding the can level on his thigh.

      Rem stared at the boy’s smooth profile, at his straight nose and square jaw, as nonplussed as if Finn were a strange kind of animal Rem had never encountered before.

      He wanted to touch the boy, to acknowledge him as his son. He was ready. Did Finn ever ask about his father?

      With the utmost care, Finn popped the tab, then took a long gulp, all while Rem stared at Sara’s reflection in his young face.

      Rem pointed to the cast on Finn’s left wrist. “What happened?”

      “Skateboarding.”

      Rem nodded. “Shit happens.”

      Finn nodded, too. “Yeah, shit happens.”

      SARA STEPPED OUT OF THE emergency hallway and what she saw brought her up short. Rem sat beside her son. They were talking. Get away from him, she wanted to yell but didn’t. She had more self-control than that. Instead, she brushed a quick hand down her torso to ease her panic.

      When Rem bent toward Finn, motioning to his cast, Sara noticed what she’d spent most of the past eleven years ignoring—how her son often tilted his head the same way when he was curious about something, and how their lush dark hair curled in the same direction. If Finn didn’t use product to keep his bangs straight across his forehead, they would flop forward like Rem’s did.

      It made Rem look like a rebel, like James Dean, but less sulky, more dangerous.

      When Finn took a pencil out of his sketchbook and handed it to Rem to sign his cast, she called, “Remington Caldwell,” too sharply.

      Rem looked up at her and frowned at her tone, then deliberately took his time with his autograph. He knew what this was doing to her, how it unnerved her, but he did it anyway.

      He’s mine, not yours. Only mine.

      Rem smiled at her son, stood and then walked toward her.

      Sara didn’t want to stare, but couldn’t help it.

      As a teenager, she’d worked hard to ignore Rem’s charms. As a grown woman, she tried not to drool.

      Why was it so hard to turn off her attraction to him?

      He wasn’t the only man on earth.

      He’s the only one who makes you feel alive.

      That had been brought home to her too clearly with the recent situation with Peter, yet another man who couldn’t measure up to Rem. She’d broken up with Peter simply because he wasn’t Rem, and wasn’t that ridiculous considering how unsentimental she was supposed to be. No-nonsense, dependable Sara.

      Wasn’t it serendipitous that shortly after, she’d moved home with Finn to get him away from that gang’s influence? She no longer had to see Peter at the hospital every day and be reminded of her own foolishness. She didn’t have to see that bewildered look on his face whenever they met. He had no clue why she’d ended their relationship after his proposal. She hadn’t been able to explain fully to either him or herself exactly what her problems were.

      She continued to stare. Rem was the handsomest man in Ordinary, Montana, and she was only human. Usually, she coped. It was just that she hadn’t seen him since Christmas and now without a shirt. That was all.

      Her stomach rebelled when she noticed the scar on his abdomen and remembered the terror of the night last summer when he’d been stabbed in a bar, and