Fireside by Susan Wiggs (pdf e book reader txt) 📗

roar of L.A. traffic. The current view of the quaint, beautiful mountain town made her feel as though she had entered a different dimension. The old-fashioned brick buildings of Avalon’s main square stood shoulder to shoulder, and shops and establishments were rolling out their awnings and salting their sidewalks as the day got started.

Kim felt like a virtual stranger here in this obscure, storybook-pretty town, especially in winter, when everything was draped in a pristine veil of new snow. While she sat, gazing out the window, the tall man and the boy she’d spotted earlier walked diagonally across the square toward the bakery. The man moved purposefully, the boy following a few paces behind. He was bundled into a navy blue ski parka and gloves. He flexed and unflexed his hands as though unaccustomed to the feel of the gloves.

A few minutes later, they entered the bakery, the bell over the door jangling brightly. Kim didn’t want to be obvious about checking them out, so she studied their reflection in the glass. The man still looked familiar to her, but she couldn’t place him. Then he brushed back the hood of his jacket, freeing his long hair.

Oh, God. Now she realized why he’d caught her eye—that lion’s mane of hair. Kim stiffened, hunching up her shoulders as the guy helped himself to coffee at the side counter. The boy stood next to him, eating a kolache. A few minutes later, the guy paid at the register, chatting quietly with the counter girl. Kim saw him pick up a bakery box tied with string.

“Come on, AJ,” the guy said. “We’d better get going.”

Kim kept her eyes down. As he passed behind her, she heard him murmur a quick greeting: “Ma’am.”

The two of them left the bakery.

Ma’am.

Alarmed, Kim swiveled around on the bar stool and craned her neck to get another look at him. No way. There was no possible way it could be…

They got into the little sports car and were gone before she could make up her mind about whether or not she recognized the stranger.

She did know, of course. A part of her had known who he was the instant she’d spotted him clear across the town square. He was the jerk from the airport. Of all the little backwater towns in upstate New York, he had to pick her backwater town.

Eight

“You’re going to like Sophie and Noah’s place,” Bo said. With a new jacket, boots and gloves for AJ, and a box of warm kolaches as an offering, they were headed to their meeting with Sophie. She had an office in town, but was adamant about staying home with her family on the weekends. “I guarantee it. They live on a farm, and he’s a veterinarian. You like dogs?”

“I got bit last year when I tried to pet one.” AJ touched the side of his mouth, where a subtle white line formed a scar.

So that was where the scar had come from. “No dog’s going to bite you,” Bo assured him. Privately, he thought, strike one. “How about cats?” he ventured. “You like cats?”

AJ shrugged.

Strike two. “Horses, then. Everybody likes horses, right?”

“They make me sneeze.”

Strike three. He’s outta there.

“I have a confession to make,” Bo said. “I’m not all that keen on horses myself. When I first moved up here from Texas, everybody thought I was a cowboy.”

AJ didn’t say anything.

“Geez, AJ. How about pygmy hamsters? You got anything against pygmy hamsters?”

“Never saw one. So they got pygmy hamsters at this place?”

“Dunno,” Bo admitted, navigating the road that curved along the lakeshore. “Look, I know it’s weird for you, being here. And I know you’re worried about your mom. We’re going to do everything we can to help her. Okay?” He glanced over at the boy.

AJ sank his chin into the downy pile of the jacket, nodding his head.

“Sophie will know what to do,” Bo assured him, “and I’m not just saying that. She used to work at an international court in The Hague. That’s somewhere over in Europe.”

“In Holland,” AJ said. “Seat of the Dutch government.”

“You’re pretty smart,” Bo said, impressed. “Most people have never heard of The Hague. I don’t know much about it myself, just that you have to be a hell of a lawyer in order to work there.”

He had total confidence in Sophie, who had married his best friend, Noah Shepherd, the previous spring. She’d been involved in some kind of violent incident over in The Hague, and the experience had brought her back home to Avalon. She had two kids from her previous marriage, and she and Noah had recently adopted two young children, a brother and sister from a small country in southern Africa. Bo was a little in awe of Noah and Sophie for taking a leap of faith like that, getting married and having kids all at once. He couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t imagine being so sure of himself, so sure of loving a woman and so confident about being a father, to do such a thing.

He could barely make his own life work. Marriage, a family—all that stuff felt far from his grasp, as distant as the moon.

AJ’s unexpected arrival was a fly ball out of left field. Through the years, Bo had given this boy plenty of thought, as well as a monthly check. Yet this was the first time he’d considered AJ as a flesh-and-blood person with needs and feelings and eyes so full of pain and fear that Bo felt it like a knife wound. He hurt for this kid; having his mother ripped away from him and being shipped to a strange, cold place was the stuff of nightmares or dark fairy tales. Having a loser stepfather, who wouldn’t give him the time of day, much less his phone number, only made matters worse. And now the boy had Bo Crutcher for a father. He must be wondering what he’d done to deserve this.

Once a