Redeeming Travis. Kate Welsh

was a special friend of hers.”

      Travis hated the shaft of jealousy that shot through him. How could he be jealous of a dead man or his relationship with an old girlfriend? He pushed the thought away because it didn’t bear thinking about.

      “Yeah, well, I’m out of here. There’s a shower waiting at home with my name on it. Let’s go, Cody,” he shouted, and gave a sharp whistle. Bounding out of the backyard came his best friend and almost constant companion. Three-year-old Amy followed, looking a bit forlorn.

      Amy was Sam’s stepdaughter. Travis and Sam’s wife, Jessica, had a lot in common. They’d both lost spouses in accidents, but she’d been luckier. Her daughter had lived. His hand went instinctively to the small gold initial ring he wore on a thick sturdy chain. The ring that lay at the base of his throat had been his third birthday gift to Natalie. He rarely took it off.

      It had been hard for Travis to even look at Amy Mathers at first, though the little blonde and his dark-haired daughter, Natalie, looked nothing alike. It was the shy but bright look in her eyes that sharpened his loss into such painful clarity whenever he came in contact with her. Yet like a moth to flame, he was drawn to her just the same.

      Amy ran up to him and he found himself instinctively squatting down to her level. “Cody left his ball,” she announced.

      Sure enough when Travis looked down, clutched in Amy’s hand was Cody’s slimy, muddy ball. Her dress was no better than the ball from a messy game of doggy catch. “Uh-oh, Mommy’s going to have my head for this one,” Travis said.

      Sam scooped Amy up and the little blonde hugged him around the neck. “You can get dirty all you want. Right, Amy?” he said, his tone so full of love it made Travis’s throat ache.

      Nodding vigorously Amy added, “Cody can stay?”

      Sam shook his head. “He has to go now, but he’ll be back.”

      Amy turned toward Travis, her bottom lip trembling. “Cody can’t stay?”

      Travis groaned. “Aw, Sam. Get the kid a dog, will you? Every time Cody and I come over I feel guilty leaving with him.”

      “You want a doggy?” Sam asked the apple of his eye.

      Amy’s big blue eyes went round as saucers. Her blond ponytail bobbled as she somehow managed to hop up and down while still in Sam’s arms. “Can I, Daddy? Can I?”

      Sam shot Travis a helpless look.

      Travis held up his hand. “Don’t even try to put this one on me. You asked the kid. And let’s face it. If she called you Daddy in the same sentence with ‘Can I have the moon?’ you’d start calling NASA to see if there was a way to get it for her. I’ll catch you later, bro. Have fun explaining a puppy to your busy wife,” he said, and turned, snapping his fingers for Cody to follow.

      “So, Cody, my boy, I’d say it looks as if you’re going to have another playmate soon.” He, of course, said this loud enough for his dumbfounded brother to hear. Sam was fast learning that fatherhood took practice, and with a three-year-old suddenly bursting into his life, he was going to have to speed up his learning curve…fast.

      “Go home,” Sam yelled.

      Travis turned and saluted his brother with a chuckle, then took off at a jog, dribbling his lucky boyhood basketball down Goldmine Lane. Cody ran ahead then doubled back to run alongside him until some woodland creature got his canine interest and he took off at an energetic run.

      Tricia climbed out of her car, tugged her uniform jacket into place and squared her hat. There, she thought, armor in place, she was ready to beard the lion in his den.

      Travis must be at home or Sam wouldn’t have given her the code when she called and asked for help getting past the gate at the entrance to the gated community. Besides, sitting in the drive were Travis’s two questionable vehicles—both she was sure he considered vintage. One of them brought back too many memories so she forced her gaze away to knock on the door to his pueblo-style house. No one answered, however. It looked as if all that mustering of courage would go to waste.

      Not one to waste anything, even energy—nervous or otherwise—she looked around. She was curious about how Travis lived these days, this man whose life she’d once thought was too far removed from the one she’d known. So Tricia stepped back to analyze what she saw, rather than just leave.

      She looked back to the driveway, her eyes drawn to the dark green 1969 Firebird, and the memories rolled over her. Glorious ones. The night he almost single-handedly took the college’s basketball team to the state championships. The day she’d aced the first final in her major. Then devastating ones. The morning on the way to school when they learned two friends had been killed in a car accident. And most especially the night he proposed, when she’d tried to put him off, ending their relationship almost by default.

      Tricia shook her head. The past was past. There was no shame in having made mistakes as long as you made up for them—or at least tried. She’d hurt Travis by turning him down so clumsily. He’d hurt her by turning to Allison. Now she was going to make sure he and his family were protected from his father’s folly even if not exactly on her terms. Thinking of the general’s terms, she turned her mind back to his house. She needed to size up her opponent.

      Travis’s deep terra-cotta-colored house looked a bit forlorn. There was a rock garden that artfully tumbled away from the walk to the lawn but both lawn and garden were sadly neglected. There were the craftily placed pots scattered on the steps and in the entranceway but those were as empty as the house.

      The hollow slapping sound of a bouncing ball and the deep woof of a large dog drew her attention. Tricia turned and looked down the hill in the direction of the noise. It was Travis jogging along the street while he dribbled a basketball. Her heart ached at the sight as she walked back down the drive to meet him. How many times had she seen him like this in her memory…in her dreams?

      Reality was different, though, because a huge German shepherd galloped happily along at his side. Travis laughed at the dog’s antics but a frown took over his expression the second his gaze fell upon her. He stopped in his tracks at the foot of the drive, the ball falling to the ground and rolling behind him into the street.

      The dog immediately trotted to her side and sat, smiling up at her, encouraging affection with his big brown eyes and a raised paw. “I wondered if we could talk,” Tricia said to Travis as she automatically stooped to shake the dog’s proffered paw. Rather than focus on Travis’s thunderous expression, Tricia gave the dog a chance to sniff her hand before petting his soft fur. He very nearly purred.

      The dog—not Travis.

      Travis was the one who growled, “This is a gated community. How’d you get in?”

      “Actually, I called your brother and he gave me the code to the gate.”

      “I’ll have to remember to thank him. I can’t imagine that he thought we’d have anything to talk about.”

      She shrugged, trying for nonchalance as she straightened, her hand resting on the big dog’s head. She didn’t want Travis to think she wanted this partnership General Fielding had outlined. Though she did indeed want it because it would mean she’d know he was safe. And if she refused to examine that particular reason, using instead the excuse that she liked his mother and worried that his father had put Lidia Vance in danger, then so be it. She could stay up nights worrying and thinking about only so many problems at once.

      “I thought you were interested in Diablo. The increase in Colorado Springs’s drug problems. La Mano Oscuro,” she challenged him.

      His eyes widened almost imperceptibly then his frown deepened. “Talk to Sam. They’re ultimately his problems,” he said, and turned away to retrieve the ball.

      The basketball continued to roll down the hill. It got quite a distance with Travis walking after it at a leisurely pace. It had to be a delaying tactic considering that Manitou Springs was built entirely on hills. He would be a year