Rogue's Reform. Marilyn Pappano

father for her baby.

      He wondered if she had a father just waiting for the chance to make the scoundrel who’d taken advantage of his little girl pay. If her family was helping out or if they’d been disappointed enough to turn their backs. He wondered if she even had a family, or if she was as alone in the world as he felt.

      Feeling Olivia’s gaze on him, he looked up to find her watching him. “Have you seen Grace?” she asked in a quiet, just-between-us sort of tone.

      “Grace?”

      “Grace Prescott.” Seeing the blankness in his expression, she impatiently added, “You remember—short, slim, brown hair, thick glasses. The mother of your child. The reason you’re here.”

      Melissa. So she’d lied about her name. And why shouldn’t she? New hair color, new style, new clothes and new behavior all deserved a new name, something prettier, less old-ladyish than Grace. Melissa was a hot redhead offering to fulfill wild fantasies in a bar. Grace was an old maid, waiting in vain for that first second look from a man on the prowl.

      Olivia’s expression bordered on scandalized. “You didn’t even know her name?”

      He didn’t offer a response. What could he say that wouldn’t reflect as badly on Melis—Grace as on him? “Grace Prescott…should I know that name, other than the obvious?”

      “She’s lived here forever. You must have gone to school with her. For years her father had owned the hardware store on Main.”

      The clues didn’t help him remember Grace, but Jed Prescott… Oh, hell, yeah, she had a father just waiting to make him pay, but there’d be no talk of a shotgun wedding or accepting responsibility. With a well-documented reputation of being the meanest bastard in the county, ol’ Jed would be more likely to take him out and shoot him than to allow him within a mile of his daughter again. Better to have an illegitimate grandchild than to have that worthless James boy for a son-in-law.

      But once the shock passed, Olivia’s words sank in. Jed had owned the hardware store, she’d said, as if he didn’t own it now. “So…” His voice was the slightest bit unsteady. “What does old Jed think of becoming a grandfather?”

      Olivia took her dishes to the sink and rinsed them before turning back. “I don’t imagine he thinks too highly of it, since he left town as soon as he found out and hasn’t been heard from since.” She folded her arms, resting her hands on her stomach. “Don’t you have any questions to ask about her?”

      Only about a thousand, but he’d rather get the answers to most of them from Grace herself. “Why did she ask you to tell me? Why didn’t you just give her my address and let her write?”

      She looked as if she wanted to fidget, but she didn’t. “She didn’t exactly ask me to tell you.”

      The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and his palms got sweaty again. “What exactly did she ask you to do?”

      “Exactly? Um…nothing. You see, she hasn’t told anyone who the father of her baby is, but—but she always gets this guilty little look whenever your name comes up, and Shay noticed it, too, and we got to counting, and…it seemed likely, so…”

      “So you brought me halfway across the country on the off chance that I could be the father of her baby.”

      “We figured if there wasn’t a chance, if that photograph of her meant nothing, then you wouldn’t come. But you did come, because it is possible, isn’t it?”

      Oh, it was more than possible. It was damn near guaranteed…for whatever it was worth. He’d come back thinking that Melissa wanted him here when the truth was that Grace didn’t have a clue that he was even in the state. She’d known for seven months that if she wanted to find him, Guthrie and Olivia were the place to start, but she’d never told them anything. She’d kept her involvement with him a deep, dark secret. Because she was ashamed of it? Because she didn’t want him around? Or because she didn’t want her child to bear the burden of having him for a father?

      Probably all of the above. And he couldn’t even blame her. If he had a bad reputation, he had no one to blame but himself. When his name was a burden that even he didn’t want, how could he blame her for not wanting it for her baby?

      It would be better all around if he just climbed back into his truck and left the state again. He could head out west, or maybe go south into Mexico, and this time he could stay gone long enough that no one would ever connect his name to Grace’s, not even remotely.

      But he knew without considering it that he couldn’t do it, not without seeing Grace first. If she didn’t want him around, if she truly thought that the best thing he could do for his kid was disappear, then he would do so. He would feel like a bastard, but he’d do it.

      And if she thought the best thing he could do was stay here, make a respectable name for himself and pass it on to the kid? He’d do that, too. At least, he would try.

      And he would ignore the fact that almost everything he tried failed. He’d give himself maybe thirty-seventy odds of succeeding.

      If he was a gambling man.

      Chapter 2

      Because she worked such long hours, Grace was under doctor’s orders to spend much of the day with her feet propped up, which was easier than a person would suspect, given the nature of folks in Heartbreak. Most of her customers had been customers so long that they knew their way around the shelves and were perfectly willing to help themselves. They would even make their own change from the antique cash register if she gave them the chance. Last week old Pete Davis had brought her a thermos of his granny’s famous chicken soup because he’d thought she looked a bit peaked, and Mavis over at the five-and-dime had brought her a puffy quilt to warm up under on dreary, gray days like this.

      But she rarely felt the need to stretch out with her feet up. In fact, she’d had more energy in the last few months than ever before. Doc Hanson said it was because she walked every day. Callie, the midwife who would deliver the baby when it was time, credited the primarily vegetarian diet she’d started Grace on.

      Personally, Grace believed it was her father’s absence. Living day in and day out with overwhelming bitterness and anger could suck the life force right out of a body. Life without Jed not only was different, but it felt different. Even the very air smelled different. And Callie swore her aura was totally changed, too.

      Life was darn near perfect.

      While the store was empty, she dragged a stepladder out so she could combine straightening the shelves with taking inventory. Jed had always insisted on doing inventory on the last day of the month, so Grace spread it out over several days at the beginning of the month. He’d made her sweep the floors first thing in the morning; now she did it last thing at night. He’d never extended a penny’s credit to anyone in his life. She offered it to everyone.

      The further her pregnancy progressed, the harder taking inventory got. Not because she had a problem, but because people fussed at her for climbing ladders, lifting boxes, being on her feet. She’d learned to do it in quick snatches when the store was empty and liked doing it that way. It gave her time to wonder over the fact that all this was hers—well, hers and the suppliers’. She, who’d grown up with constant reminders that she owned nothing, not even the clothes on her back, owned this store. She marveled over it every day.

      She was standing on the top step of the ladder when the bell over the door dinged. “I’ll be right with you,” she called as she quickly sorted and counted the boxes used to restock the shelves below.

      Footsteps crossed the store and came around the corner into her aisle as she made notations on her clipboard. “Take your time, Melissa,” a quiet voice said, then deliberately added, “Or should I call you Grace?”

      Ethan James. She froze in place. She hadn’t heard his voice in seven months, but she would have recognized it after seven years. A woman who’d lived her life without affection, without even a kind