The Pride Of Jared MacKade. Nora Roberts

skidded to a halt, a tall, skinny boy with his mother’s eyes and messy black hair crushed under a backward fielder’s cap. He studied Jared with a mix of distrust and curiosity. “Who’s he?”

      Manners ran in the family, Jared decided. Lousy ones. “I’m Jared MacKade, a neighbor.”

      “You’re Shane’s brother.” The boy walked over, picked up his mother’s lemonade and drank it down in several noisy gulps. “He’s cool. That’s where we were, me and Connor,” he told his mother. “Over at the MacKade farm. This big orange cat had kittens.”

      “Again?” Jared muttered. “This time I’m taking her to the vet personally and having her spayed. You were with Connor,” Jared added. “Connor Dolin.”

      “Yeah.” Suspicious, the boy watched him over the rim of his glass.

      “His mother’s a friend of mine,” Jared said simply.

      Savannah’s hand rested briefly, comfortably, on her son’s shoulder. “Bryan, go upstairs and scrape some of the dirt off. I’m going to start dinner.”

      “Okay.”

      “Nice to have met you, Bryan.”

      The boy looked surprised, then flashed a quick grin. “Yeah, cool. See you.”

      “He looks like you,” Jared commented.

      “Yes, he does.” Her mouth softened slightly at the sound of feet clumping up the stairs. “I’m thinking about putting in soundproofing.”

      “I’m trying to get a picture of him palling around with Connor.”

      The amusement in her eyes fired into temper so quickly it fascinated him. “And you have a problem with that?”

      “I’m trying to get a picture,” Jared repeated, “of the live wire that just headed upstairs and the quiet, painfully shy Connor Dolin. Kids as confident as your son don’t usually choose boys like Connor for friends.”

      Temper smoothed out. “They just clicked. Bryan hasn’t had a lot of opportunity to keep friends. We’ve moved around a great deal. That’s changing.”

      “What brought you here?”

      “I was—” She broke off, and her lips curved. “Now you’re trying to be neighborly so that I’ll soften up and take this little problem off your hands. Forget it.” She turned to take a package of chicken breasts out of the refrigerator.

      “Seven thousand dollars is a lot of money. If you put it in a college fund now, it would give your son a good start when he’s ready for it.”

      “When and if Bryan’s ready for college, I’ll put him through myself.”

      “I understand about pride, Ms. Morningstar. That’s why it’s easy for me to see when it’s misplaced.”

      She turned again and flipped her braid behind her shoulder. “You must be the patient, by-the-book, polite type, Mr. MacKade.”

      The grin that beamed out at her nearly made her blink. She was sure there were states where that kind of weapon was illegal.

      “Don’t get to town much, do you?” Jared murmured. “You’d hear different. Ask Connor’s mama about the MacKades sometime, Ms. Morningstar. I’ll leave the papers.” He slipped his sunglasses on again. “You think it over and get back to me. I’m in the book.”

      She stayed where she was, a frown on her face and a cold package of raw chicken in her hands. She was still there when his car’s engine roared to life and her son came darting back down the stairs.

      Quickly she snatched up the papers and pushed them into the closest drawer.

      “What was he here for?” Bryan wanted to know. “How come he was wearing a suit?”

      “A lot of men wear suits.” She would evade, but she wouldn’t lie, not to Bryan. “And stay out of the refrigerator. I’m starting dinner.”

      With his hand on the door of the fridge, Bryan rolled his eyes. “I’m starving. I can’t wait for dinner.”

      Savannah plucked an apple from a bowl and tossed it over her shoulder, smiling to herself when she heard the solid smack of Bryan’s catch.

      “Shane said it was okay if we went by after school tomorrow and looked at the kittens some more. The farm’s really cool, Mom. You should see.”

      “I’ve seen farms before.”

      “Yeah, but this one’s neat. He’s got two dogs. Fred and Ethel.”

      “Fred and—” She broke off into laughter. “Maybe I will have to see that.”

      “And from the hayloft you can see clear into town. Connor says part of the battle was fought right there on the fields. Probably dead guys everywhere.”

      “Now that sounds really enticing.”

      “And I was thinking—” Bryan crunched into his apple, tried to sound casual “—you’d maybe want to come over and look at the kittens.”

      “Oh, would I?”

      “Well, yeah. Connor said maybe Shane would give some away when they were weaned. You might want one.”

      She set a lid on the chicken she was sautéing. “I would?”

      “Sure, yeah, for, like, company when I’m in school.” He smiled winningly. “So you wouldn’t get lonely.”

      Savannah shifted her weight onto her hip and studied him owlishly. “That’s a good one, Bry. Really smooth.”

      That was what he’d been counting on. “So can I?”

      She would have given him the world, not just one small kitten. “Sure.” Her laughter rolled free when he launched himself into her arms.

      With the meal over, the dishes done, the homework that terrified her finished and the child who was her life tucked into bed with his ball cap, Savannah sat on the front-porch swing and watched the woods.

      She enjoyed the way night always deepened there first, as if it had a primary claim. Later there might be the hoot of an owl, or the rumbling low of Shane MacKade’s cattle. Sometimes, if it was very quiet, or there’d been rain, she could hear the bubble of creek over rocks.

      It was too early in the spring yet for the flash and shimmer of fireflies. She looked forward to them, and hoped Bryan wasn’t yet beyond the stage where he would chase them. She wanted to watch him run in his own yard in the starlight on a warm summer night when the flowers were blooming, the air was thick with their perfume, and the woods were a dense curtain closing them off from everyone and everything.

      She wanted him to have a kitten to play with, friends to call his own, a childhood filled with moments that lasted forever.

      A childhood that would be everything hers had never been.

      Setting the swing into motion, she leaned back and drank in the absolute quiet of a country night.

      It had taken her ten long, hard years to get here, on this swing, on this porch, in this house. There wasn’t a moment of it she regretted. Not the sacrifice, the pain, the worry, the risk. Because to regret one was to regret all. To regret one was to regret Bryan. And that was impossible.

      She had exactly what she had strived for now, and she had earned it herself, despite odds brutally stacked against her.

      She was exactly where she wanted to be, who she wanted to be, and no ghost from the past would spoil it for her.

      How dare he offer her money, when all she’d ever wanted was his love?

      So Jim Morningstar was dead. The hard-drinking, hard-living, hardheaded son of a bitch had ridden his last bronco, roped his last bull. Now she was supposed to grieve. Now she was supposed to be grateful that, at the