A Child Under His Tree. Allison Leigh

choked. She hefted the suitcase into the truck bed. It landed with a terrible bang, but at least the latches stayed closed. “I won’t be back.”

      Georgette wasn’t listening, though. “You’d be better off at least trying to pass off that kid as Buchanan’s baby! Least you’d get some money outta your mistake!”

      Kelly’s chest ached even more.

      She got behind the wheel, turned the key with a shaking hand until the engine cranked and drove away. When she dared a glance in the rearview mirror, all she saw was the plume of dust kicked up from her tires.

      She swiped a hand over her wet cheek. “I won’t be back,” she said through her teeth.

      She didn’t know where she was going.

      She just knew that anywhere was better than her mother’s house.

      But where could she go? She’d been working at Doc Cobb’s for a year now since leaving the grocery store and had saved up some money, but with a baby on the way, she would need to conserve every penny she could.

      She braked when she reached the highway and stared down the empty road toward Weaver.

      She could find a place to live in town. Keep working for Doc Cobb. He was a pediatrician. Nobody liked babies and children more than her genial boss. But whether Kelly wanted to admit it or not, her mother was right about one thing. Gossip was going to dog her every footstep when it became obvious that she was pregnant and there was no daddy standing by her side. More important than that, though, was the baby. And that same gossip was going to follow her child the same way it had always followed her.

      She was not going to repeat her mother’s mistakes.

      And she damn sure was not going to beg Caleb Buchanan for one single thing.

      She exhaled, wiped her cheeks again, looked down the empty highway one more time and hit the gas.

Chapter One

      “Dr. C shouldn’t be too long.” The nurse—a young blonde Kelly didn’t know—smiled as she ushered them into an empty examining room. She winked at Tyler. “Be thinking about what color cast you want this time.” She slid the medical chart she’d started for them into the metal sleeve on the door that she closed as she left them alone.

      The door had barely latched before Kelly’s son gave her a plaintive look. “How come I gotta get another cast?”

      She dumped her purse and their jackets on the chair wedged in one corner of the room. “Because your wrist still hasn’t healed all the way and you cracked the cast you already have.”

      “But—”

      “Be glad that you didn’t hurt yourself even more.” She’d seen the X-rays herself on the computer screen just a few minutes ago. Not only had Doc Cobb hired several new faces since Kelly’d last been there, but he’d gotten himself some state-of-the-art equipment, as well. She patted the top of the examining room table. The thin paper covering it crinkled. “Want me to lift you up here, or—”

      Tyler didn’t wait for her to finish before he scrambled up onto the high table by himself. Then he stuck out his tongue and stared at the cast circling his right forearm. “Stupid cast,” he grumbled.

      She brushed her fingers through his dark hair, pushing the thick strands away from his forehead. He needed a haircut, but there just hadn’t been time enough to fit one in before they’d left Idaho Falls. Not between arranging her vacation days, talking to his kindergarten teacher about his absence and packing up what she thought he’d need during the two weeks she’d allotted to get things settled. She had a day before the funeral, though. She’d get him to the barber before then. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice before climbing a tree,” she said calmly.

      “Had to climb it,” he argued. “Gunnar did.”

      “And you have to do everything that Gunnar does?” She didn’t really expect an answer. Her five-year-old son and his best friend, Gunnar Nielsen, were like two peas in a pod. What one did, the other had to do, as well. Fortunately for Gunnar, he had climbed down the tree, whereas her daredevil son had decided to jump.

      Thus, the broken wrist.

      “So think twice next time about the way you get out of the tree,” she added.

      Tyler was swinging one leg back and forth, looking from the closed door of the small examining room to the sink and counter on the opposite side. “What’s in all those drawers?”

      “Bandages for little boys who don’t listen to their mothers when they should.” She tapped her finger pointedly against the crack in his cast then pulled a fresh coloring book out of her oversize purse. If she knew Doc Cobb—and she did, even though it had been nearly six years since she’d last seen him—it would be a good while yet before he made his way to Tyler. Given the nature of the doctor’s pediatric practice, the later in the afternoon the appointments were, the farther behind he was likely to be. “Want to color?”

      Tyler scrunched his face and swung his leg a few more times before nodding. She set the thin coloring book on the table beside him and rummaged in her purse again until she found the plastic baggie full of the washable markers he preferred over crayons. “Which color first?”

      “Red.”

      She extracted the red marker and handed it to him. She knew from experience that if she gave him the entire pen collection, he’d have them scattered everywhere within seconds and she wasn’t particularly in the mood to scramble around the floor in her dress and high heels picking them up. She would have changed out of the outfit she’d worn to the lawyer’s office if there had been time before Tyler’s appointment. But they’d worked him into the schedule as a favor when they could have just as easily referred him to the hospital to have his cast repaired.

      “Was I born yet?”

      “Were you born yet when?”

      “When you used to work here.” He stretched out on his stomach and attacked the robot on the page with his red pen.

      “You were born in Idaho, remember?”

      He giggled. “I don’t remember being born.”

      “Smarty-pants.” She pushed the jackets over the back of the chair and sat. “I worked for Dr. Cobb before I moved to Idaho. Before you were born. Before I became a nurse.”

      “What was Grandma Gette?”

      “Grandma Georgette had the farm,” she reminded him calmly. Small as it had been. Her mother had grown vegetables and raised chickens, though the lawyer had told Kelly the chickens had gone by the wayside a few years earlier. Which explained the broken-down state of the coops now. “The bedroom you slept in last night was my bedroom when I was your age.” She hadn’t been able to make herself use her mother’s room. Instead, she’d slept on the couch. It was the same couch from her childhood, with the same lumps.

      “But then we went to Idaho.”

      “Yes.” It had been one of the best decisions she’d ever made in her life. She held up the baggie. “Want another color yet?”

      He stuck the tip of his tongue in the corner of his mouth, considering. “Green.”

      They exchanged the markers. “Your robot is going to look like a Christmas robot.”

      He grinned, clearly liking that idea. “Santa robot.” He held up his cracked cast. It, too, had started out a bright red. But in the weeks since he’d gotten it, the color and the various drawings and signatures on it had all faded considerably. “Santa’s gonna know where I am, right?”

      “Santa doesn’t come until Christmas. That’s almost two months away. We’ll be home long before then.”

      “Not before Halloween, though.”

      She