Elijah, the oldest of the eight ranch students adopted by Aiyana, woke Gavin the following morning by barging into his bedroom and letting the door bang against the inside wall. “Hey, you! It’s past noon. Are you ever getting out of bed?”
Gavin rolled over to gaze up at his brother. He never bothered to lock his house, not when he was home, so it wasn’t any wonder that Eli had been able to get in. It was much more of a surprise that he’d show up out of the blue—and alone. These days he was usually with Cora, his wife. “What’re you doing? You never drive all the way out here.”
“Why would I? We see each other all the time.”
They both worked at the ranch, and Eli lived there, too. It used to be that they also met in town quite a bit. But that didn’t happen much anymore. Since Eli had gotten married, Gavin was left at loose ends on the evenings they would’ve spent together. Fortunately, he’d started gigging, which helped to fill that hole. But the fact that he hadn’t yet found anyone he enjoyed hanging out with as much as his brother made him think that maybe it was time for him to settle down, too. He’d actually been feeling that way for a while.
Maybe having a baby with Heather would force his hand. She wasn’t a bad person. Surely, he could come to love her—now that he knew he might not have any choice. Then everything would end well.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Gavin said. “What are you doing here?”
“I came out because my calls kept going straight to your voice mail.”
Gavin covered a yawn. “Did it ever occur to you that I might’ve turned off my phone for a reason?”
“It did. That reason is why I skipped going to LA with Cora to visit her folks and came over here instead.”
He groaned. “Oh. I get it. You’re worried. Mom told you about Heather.”
“Was it a secret?”
“I’d rather not have the news spread all over town.” But Gavin had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t be able to avoid it, and he knew Aiyana and Elijah wouldn’t be the ones responsible for doing the talking. No doubt Scott would have plenty to say—every time he was asked why he and Heather had broken up, he’d probably blame Gavin, make it sound as though she’d been cheating with her ex while she was with him, which wasn’t true.
“Mom’s concerned about you. And let’s be honest. She assumed you’d tell me eventually,” Eli added with a grin.
“I’m sure I would have.” Although Gavin struggled to get along with a couple of his brothers—not too shocking given that they all came from such difficult backgrounds and some were more damaged than others—he was totally devoted to Elijah. They couldn’t be closer if they were related by blood.
“So?” Eli said. “How do you feel about the news?”
Gavin felt sick about the pregnancy—and then he felt guilty for reacting so negatively. Despair wasn’t what Heather needed, and it wasn’t fair to the baby, who wasn’t to blame for Gavin knocking up a woman he liked but couldn’t seem to love. “Do I need to spell it out for you?” he asked with a wince.
“There must be something about Heather. You keep going back to her.”
Gavin shot him a look. “You know it was finally over for me.”
Eli frowned as he sat on the foot of the bed. “Yeah. It did feel pretty permanent this time.”
“That’s what makes this so ironic.” He shoved a few pillows behind his back.
“She’s been with Scott Mullins for a while. Are you sure it’s not his baby?”
Gavin wanted to reach for the hope that possibility evoked but didn’t dare. “I’m not sure, but...she doesn’t think so.”
“She could be wrong.”
“She would know better than we would.”
Eli scratched his neck. “She’s always had a thing for you. Could saying the baby is yours be nothing more than wishful thinking?”
Gavin had considered that. He didn’t think she’d get pregnant on purpose. Or that she’d tell an outright lie. But he could see her using a bit of doubt to get him to reconsider their relationship. “I honestly don’t know.”
“What does that mean? Are you going to give her another chance, or wait until—”
“I’m going to support her through the pregnancy and then decide about anything more permanent. If the baby’s mine, I’ll marry her.”
“You will.”
“Yes.”
Resting his elbows on his knees, Eli stared at the rug covering the hardwood floor. “What if you two get close over the next several months and it turns out that the baby isn’t yours?” he asked when he spoke again.
Gavin immediately thought of his new neighbor and the opportunity that would provide but pushed Savanna from his mind. Even if he wasn’t facing this problem, she’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested in pursuing a romantic relationship. So he wasn’t losing anything, even though it felt like he was. “If I could fall in love with her, that would be a good thing.”
“Regardless.”
“Isn’t that what commitment’s all about?”
“You’re saying you’d love Scott’s baby. Help raise it.”
“Of course.”
Eli got up and began to pace. “Okay. Playing devil’s advocate here...what if you two can’t make it work, and she goes back to him?”
Gavin kicked off the covers. “I hope that doesn’t happen. Scott already resents me. No doubt this will make him hate me all the more.”
“No man likes living in the shadow of a former lover.”
“I get that. But I didn’t put him there. I’ve always been honest with Heather, told her my feelings aren’t as strong as hers.”
“You couldn’t tell by the way you treat her. Maybe that’s the problem.”
“I’m supposed to treat her badly?”
“I’m not suggesting that. It’s just... I don’t know. Frustrating for me to feel as though you’re being railroaded. If only she could love Scott half as much as she loves you, you’d be off the hook.”
“No. I don’t want her to go back to him now, don’t want my child to be raised by a stepparent. Not after what I went through. Especially when we’re talking about this particular situation. The last time I was at the Blue Suede Shoe, Scott and Heather were there, too. Heather couldn’t take her eyes off me. Every time I looked up, there she was, and Scott didn’t miss it. They got into an argument before the night was over. Then Scott insisted they leave.”
“I see your point. Given her history with you, he’d always be jealous.” Elijah scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, bro. She’s really got you cornered.”
“She didn’t do it on purpose.”
Eli stopped moving and propped his hands on his hips. “I hope not!”
“She didn’t! At least, I can’t imagine why she would. She’s got to be as panic-stricken as I am. A kid makes life real, you know? Anyway, we’ll figure it out.” Although, at this point, Gavin had no clue how. He’d never been able to force his heart, wasn’t sure anyone could.
A knock sounded at the front door.
“For living in a remote place, you’re getting a lot of visitors this morning,” Eli said.
Gavin barely refrained from grimacing. “That’s got to be her.” When he’d asked for some time to think, he’d been hoping for several days. But maybe she couldn’t give him that. She had to be upset and eager to reach a resolution...
“Should I get it?” Eli asked. “I could say you’re in the shower or something to buy you more time to come to terms with this.”
“No. I might as well reassure her that I won’t leave her holding the bag.” He got out of bed, pulled on his jeans without bothering to button them and went out to talk to her. But it wasn’t Heather. Branson stood at the door. Savanna was in the moving van with Alia, letting it idle in front of the house while her son ran up to the door.
Feeling a twinge of guilt for not getting up earlier and taking over some milk and cereal or eggs, Gavin quickly buttoned his pants. “Hey, little buddy. What’s going on?”
“We found a fridge for sale in Santa...Santa Something,” Branson said. “But not Claus.”
Gavin chuckled. “Santa Barbara?”
“That’s it. We’re going to pick it up while we have the truck. My mom was wondering if you’d help us unload when we get back.”
“Sure, I’ll be here. My brother’s visiting, too, so he can help.”
“I’ll tell her.” Branson spoke over his shoulder as he ran back and opened the truck door to convey the message.
“Who was that?” Eli asked, but before Gavin could respond, Savanna called out a thank-you.
Although Gavin felt slightly self-conscious that he hadn’t yet combed his hair, and he didn’t have on a shirt, he strode out to have a word with her. “You don’t need me to go with you and help you load it in the first place, do you?”
“No,” she replied. “The guy I’m buying it from said he has friends who can help. I was just worried about how I’d get it off the truck once I returned, wanted to make sure you’d still be home and wouldn’t mind lending a hand.”
“I don’t mind at all,” he assured her.
Her gaze lowered to his bare torso before shifting to a spot behind him, and he turned to see that Elijah had followed him out. “This is my brother Eli. Eli, Savanna, my new neighbor.”
“Did you say neighbor? Out here?” Eli gestured at the wide expanse of raw land.
“I’m currently moving into the ranch house—or what’s left of it—next door,” she said. “But I never would’ve made it across the creek yesterday if not for your brother.”
Eli gave Gavin a playful shove. “I guess that means he’s good for something, huh?”
Her smile broadened. “He’s pretty handy to have around.”
Gavin felt the pull of attraction. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been more taken with a woman, not so quickly.
“He’s a real pain in the, um, neck,” Eli said, choosing his words carefully in deference to the children. “Don’t let him fool you.”
She leaned forward in an attempt to get a better look at Eli’s face. “I hope you don’t mind, but he signed you up to help me move a fridge.”
Eli shrugged. “Might as well make myself useful.”
“What about a stove?” Gavin asked. “You’ll need one of those, too.”
“That’ll be tougher to find. I’m not even sure if I should get gas or electric. I thought you might know.”
He nearly laughed. How she was going to go about remodeling the ranch house, he had no idea, but he sort of liked that she needed him. “Gas.”
“Got it. I’ll grab a microwave so we can get by in the meantime and hope to come across a gas stove. I appreciate the help.” She put the transmission in Drive. “If all goes well, and the fridge looks as good in real life as it does in the pictures I saw, I’ll be back in an hour and a half.”
“We’ll be here,” Gavin said.
As soon as she drove off, Eli nudged him. “Wow!”
Savanna’s smile had left Gavin a little dazed. “What?”
“The color of her hair is sort of unusual, but she’s striking.”
Gavin watched the moving van until it reached the highway. “Yeah. She’s pretty, all right.”
“So what’s going on? She married?”
“Divorced.” He thought of what her ex had done but chose not to reveal that information. Although he could trust Eli not to tell anyone else—except maybe Aiyana—opening his mouth felt disloyal somehow.
“Then why haven’t you mentioned her?”
“She’s just got here yesterday.”
“The same day you learned that Heather is pregnant.”
He let his breath seep out in a long, dejected sigh. “Yeah. Can you believe it?”
* * *
“Did you see all of Gavin’s tattoos?” Branson asked, his voice full of awe as they gathered as much speed as they could muster, given the limitations of the van.
Since Gavin had come out of the house without a shirt, Savanna couldn’t have missed his tattoos—or his bare chest. But she didn’t mind having seen that. She liked the way he looked. A lot. His brother was probably more classically handsome. With such dark hair and blue eyes, he reminded her of Elvis Presley, but she found Gavin’s less conventional looks more attractive. “I saw them,” she said.
“They went clear up to here!” Branson indicated his shoulder.
Alia, who was busy playing a game on Savanna’s phone, made no comment.
Curious to see what her son would say, Savanna glanced over at him. “Do you like tattoos?”
He seemed stumped by the question. His father had railed about the kind of “trash” that would mark up his or her body, so she knew Branson had to be remembering that. He also had to be thinking that maybe he no longer cared what his father thought about something as benign as tattoos, that maybe he’d venture to form his own opinion. “Do you?” he asked uncertainly.
Since she’d met Gavin, she did. He had to be the sexiest man she’d ever come across, tattoos and all, which was odd because if someone had asked her only a few days ago to describe the perfect man, she would not have described anyone who looked remotely like him. “I do,” she admitted. “Especially his. They suit him.” Gordon would’ve been shocked to hear those words come out of her mouth, but until now she’d never had strong enough feelings on the subject to contradict him when he criticized ink.
Gordon’s cutting remarks suddenly seemed highly ironic, though, considering what he’d done.
“So can I get one when I’m old enough?” Branson ventured.
She veered to the right, hugging the shoulder so that a car that’d become impatient with following her could get past. “As long as you’re at least eighteen. Then you’ll be an adult and can decide for yourself. You can’t get one any sooner than that.”
“Why not?” he asked. “You said you liked them.”
“I do, depending on how they’re done and where they’re at on a person’s body. There’s an art to it. Anyway, tattoos are permanent. You need to know yourself well before you make that commitment, be certain of what you’re doing.”
“Oh.”
She could tell he was deep in thought. Was he considering easygoing Gavin as a new role model? And was he wondering if maybe he’d rather be like Gavin than the kind of large and in-charge person his father had always been?
She’d been worried about Branson. She’d read enough online to know that bed-wetting wasn’t a good sign, but she hoped her son could recover from the blows they’d recently sustained. If not, she was going to do what she could to seek help.
“I like Gavin’s tattoos,” Alia piped up, smiling in a way that let Savanna know she also found him appealing. Alia had been so engrossed in her game Savanna had thought she wasn’t paying attention. But this proved that the whole family was a little smitten with their neighbor.
Was it only because he was new—something different? Even before Gordon had been accused of rape, Savanna had let her life fall to routine, had merely been going through the motions. She didn’t think that automatically happened in a marriage, but somehow it’d happened in hers. So what had come first? Had she neglected Gordon in some way—maybe while she was grieving the loss of her mother, father and older brother—so he’d turned to getting his thrills elsewhere? Or had he turned to getting his thrills elsewhere, thus showing less interest in her, and then she’d started focusing strictly on the kids to avoid feeling any dissatisfaction with her marriage?
Someday, maybe she’d get him to tell her why he’d done what he’d done. What led up to that type of thing? What made him hurt people—people who had little chance of fighting back? After living with him and feeling as if she knew him better than anyone, she wanted to understand why above all else. But whenever she tried to get him to level with her, he did the exact opposite—swore up and down that he was wrongly accused. That he’d play the martyr when there were women who’d suffered serious injury at his hands made her as angry as anything.
Even if she never got the answers she craved, she’d be better off if he’d just leave her alone, she decided.
Too bad she had little hope of that happening. Now that he was in jail, she was about all he had. He wasn’t likely to let her go easily.
Her phone rang. She didn’t have Bluetooth in the van, so she couldn’t have answered even if she wanted to—not while she was driving—but when she glanced down and spotted caller ID, she didn’t want to. It was Dorothy. She opened her mouth to tell Alia not to pick up, but Alia had the phone and pressed Talk before Savanna could even get the words out.
“Hi, Grandma!”
Tensing, Savanna pulled off the highway onto a side road and put the truck in Park. She was terrified that Dorothy might say something terrible to Alia, something that would come as too much of a shock to a child of six. Savanna hadn’t mentioned to her children that she and their father’s mother were still feuding, was trying to keep them from being caught in the middle.
“What’d you say?” Alia’s smile slid from her face. “You have Daddy on the line?”
“Let me talk to them,” Savanna whispered, but Alia wouldn’t relinquish the phone.
“Daddy wants to talk to me,” she said.
Apparently, Dorothy had Gordon on a three-way. Damn it! If not for Alia, this call would’ve transferred to voice mail like all the others.
Savanna curled her fingernails into her palms as she tried to decide whether to insist on taking the phone. Would it be better for her daughter to hear from Gordon—or not?
She supposed that would depend on what he had to say, whether he’d be angry and use Alia to pass whatever accusations he might launch along to Savanna, or try to comfort Alia after all she’d been through.
Alia deserved some reassurance.
Please let him give her that...
Savanna held her breath and waited.
“Hi, Daddy...Okay...I love you, too...Because we don’t live there anymore...Far, far away...Yeah, in a big truck! And someone stole our fridge!...No, this morning we had to eat the peanut butter sandwiches Mom brought for the drive, and they were all smashed...” She wrinkled her nose to show how unappealing they’d been. “Miss you, too...I don’t know...” She glanced up when she said that so Savanna knew Gordon’s question had something to do with her. “Do you want to talk to her?”
Branson, who was also watching Alia, had a dark expression on his face. As long as Gordon was being nice, Savanna hoped he’d ask to speak to his son—in case it might soothe Branson’s hurt to some degree.
“Just a minute...” Alia held the phone out to her brother. “Daddy wants to say hi.”
Savanna breathed a sigh of relief. But Branson didn’t move.
Alia tugged on his shirt. “Branson, it’s Daddy!”
Branson looked up at Savanna. “Did he really hurt those women?”
He knew the answer to that question; he just needed confirmation. It wasn’t easy to shake a child’s faith, not when that child had once believed his father to be totally reliable.
Savanna nodded. She couldn’t lie. The kids had a right to know the truth.
“Then I don’t want to talk to him,” he muttered, and turned to the window.
Alia didn’t seem to know how to react.
Steeling herself for what would likely be another emotional episode, Savanna took the phone. “Hello?”
“Branson won’t talk to me?” Gordon said. “You’ve turned him against me already?”
“I haven’t turned anyone against you. You did this.”
“My mother told me she went to the house to see the kids, and it’s empty.”
Savanna knew Dorothy hadn’t traveled to Nephi to “see the kids.” She’d come to “talk some sense” into Savanna, was still hoping to get Savanna to use the last of her money to pay for a fancy lawyer. “We’ve moved,” she admitted.
“Where?” he demanded.
“Stay right here,” she told the kids, and got out of the truck so she could talk without an audience. She had no doubt that this conversation would be unpleasant—all of her conversations with Gordon had been unpleasant since he’d been arrested—and she preferred their children not hear another argument. “I’d rather not say.”
“You won’t tell me where you’ve gone? When have I ever been any threat to you?”
“Until the police came knocking on our door, I never realized you were a threat to anyone. Since then I’ve decided that I never really knew you, or I knew only a small part of you, the part you were willing to show me. So you tell me, Gordon. Was it freak luck that I turned out to be your cover while those other women turned out to be your victims?”
“That’s crazy! Listen to yourself! You’re overreacting, babe. I’m still the same man you married. The same man you said you loved.” He lowered his voice. “The same man you slept with at night.”
He meant that to sound alluring; she could tell. But she couldn’t help wincing. She didn’t care to remember their more intimate moments. “What you did changes everything, Gordon.”
“I didn’t do it!”
Balling her free hand into a fist in an attempt to control her own simmering rage, she hissed, “Stop lying! They have proof!”
“Doesn’t matter what they have. I’m innocent!”
She wished she could believe him. Or maybe it was better if she didn’t. Wouldn’t it be worse to think her children’s father had been wrongly imprisoned, especially when she could do so little to help? “Please, stop. Things are difficult enough. There’s no point in fighting. It won’t change anything.”
He seemed to make an effort to speak calmly. “I’m not trying to upset you.”
“Just hearing from you upsets me!” She turned her back on the truck because both children had their noses pressed to the glass.
“So what am I supposed to do? Give up my family as well as my freedom when I haven’t done anything wrong?”
She squeezed her eyes closed. It was so hard to hear that over and over. His protestations tempted her to scream at him, to make him take responsibility and quit lying. She had let loose once, but doing so hadn’t made her feel any better. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t do it again, wouldn’t be reduced to that. “Please, let me forget you and move on. Let us go. After hurting those women, the least you can do is take the punishment you deserve without dragging us all down with you.”
“Easy for you to say,” he cried. “You’re not the one who’ll be rotting in prison for fifteen or more years!”
“You’re to blame for where you’re at, not us.”
“I can’t believe this,” he muttered to himself. “You don’t care if I ever see my kids again.”
Dorothy cut into the conversation, which came as a bit of a shock. She’d remained silent for so long Savanna had almost forgotten she was there. “Told you,” she said to her son. “What kind of wife abandons her husband at the first sign of trouble? She’s not the person we thought she was!”
Savanna had had enough of her mother-in-law. “This isn’t just trouble, Dorothy. It’s serial rape, one of the most heinous crimes there is.”
“Except he didn’t do it!” Dorothy responded.
“Mom, I got this,” Gordon broke in. “Let me talk to her, okay?”
A brief silence ensued during which Dorothy restrained her desire to take over the conversation. When Gordon spoke again, he did so with a renewed attempt at being cordial. “I haven’t hurt anyone, Savanna. Somehow, I need you to believe that.”
“How?” she said. “They found Theresa Spinnaker’s blood in our van!”
“Because I gave her a ride once!”
“What?” This was the first Savanna had ever heard of that. “When?”
“Just after Christmas. That’s why I’ve been so desperate to reach you. She’s admitted it. You can call my defense lawyer if you don’t believe me. He’ll tell you it’s true.”
“You gave her a ride,” she said skeptically.
“Yes. To that restaurant where she worked.”
Savanna covered her left ear so she could hear above the engine of a semi that rumbled past. “Because...”
“It was snowing out! I saw a woman trudging through the storm in her little waitressing uniform with barely a sweater on and felt sorry for her. So I pulled over and gave her a lift.”
“Then why didn’t you say that from the beginning? You told me the police planted the evidence. Now you’re saying she was in our van but for something completely innocent?”
“It took me a while to remember that I had seen her before. She was so bruised in the pictures the cops showed me I didn’t recognize her. We’d only crossed paths once, and for such a brief time. I couldn’t place where. You know I’ve picked up a lot of hitchhikers over the years. Doing so helped relieve the boredom of all the driving I had to do.”
She was aware of that. They’d talked about it before. Savanna remembered warning him of the danger involved in picking up strangers.
“But once my confusion and panic subsided, and I could think clearly, I realized she was the same woman,” he went on. “So I told my attorney, and after he reminded her, she remembered it, too.”
“Was she bleeding when you did that?”
“Not that I could tell, but I didn’t check her for injuries. The drops of blood the police found were so small, who knows how they got there? You could barely see them with the naked eye. For all I know, they were planted, like I said before.”
She pivoted to check on the kids, who were still peering out at her. “That’s not the only evidence tying you to these crimes, Gordon.”
“It’s the most compelling. DNA evidence always is.”
“The things you kept in our storage shed tell their own story.”
“What are you talking about? Those things were part of a Halloween costume! I thought it would be cool to dress up as a murderer, in a scary sort of way. You know I like the macabre. But then I realized it would be going too far and never did anything with it.”
“Since when were you ever interested in dressing up for Halloween, Gordon?”
“It’s been a while. I don’t even remember when I assembled that. I mean, come on, babe. Have some faith. I miss my family. I miss you.”
Babe. The endearment made Savanna feel...odd, sad, guilty (of what, she didn’t know), repulsed and confused, all at once. Now that she could look back on their marriage from the vantage point of a new perspective, she was beginning to believe it had been like a piece of fruit left to rot on a tree. It’d hung on for a long time, had looked fine on the outside, but once it fell to the ground and broke open, it was easy to see it’d been rotting for quite a while.
Branson opened the van door and leaned out. “Mom, it’s getting hot in here. You coming?”
She lifted a hand to signal that she’d only be another moment. “I can’t talk anymore,” she told Gordon—and Dorothy, who was, of course, listening in.
“Wait! Before you go, promise me that you’ll at least accept my calls from now on, let me talk to you and the kids once in a while. I’m going crazy in here. I think about you all the time.”
Did she have to remain in contact? Did she owe it to him by virtue of the fact that they’d once meant so much to each other? And what was fair when it came to their children?
Turning, Savanna saw her kids staring back at her. God, this was difficult. She had no idea how best to protect them—except to make a clean break from their father. “I hope I’m not misjudging you, Gordon. I really do. And I’m sorry if that’s the case. But...I don’t want any contact.”
“Wait. What? Why not? I’ve been nice, haven’t I? I didn’t say anything to upset Alia when I had her on the phone. You can trust me.”
“No, I can’t. It’s all smoke and mirrors, and I don’t like the feeling that you’re constantly trying to prey on my humanity.” She hit the end button. She couldn’t allow him to mess with her head, couldn’t allow him to undermine her confidence in the decisions she’d made.
Branson and Alia both watched her solemnly as she climbed back behind the wheel.
“What’d he say?” Branson asked.
“Nothing that changes anything,” she replied.
“Are we going to see him?” Alia asked. “He says we can visit him if we want.”
Savanna gazed into her little girl’s earnest face. “No, we’re not going to see him.”
Alia’s eyes filled with tears. “Maybe later?”
With a sad smile, Savanna pushed her daughter’s hair back and started the truck. “Yeah, maybe later,” she mumbled. It was a lie, and she felt bad for telling it. But she was hanging on by such a thin thread she couldn’t withstand Alia’s tears right now. She was too busy choking back her own.