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  Her words must have shocked him back to reality. He struggled to sit back, lifting his weight from her body. “I’m not a little boy.”

  But he pouted like one.

  Raylynn sat up. They were side-by-side on the hard floor. His knees were bent. He peered at her a moment, a sad gaze as if he had lost his way and didn’t know how to find it. Then he dropped his head to his knees, turning his face away from her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  The anger whooshed away and a feeling of pity washed over her. “Let me get you into bed.”

  She tugged off his shoes, and he lifted his head to look at her.

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He seemed to accept her answer and removed his vest. She leaned toward him and unbuttoned his flannel shirt. They were so close. It was an intimate thing she was doing for him, undressing him, but it seemed natural somehow. Uncertainty flared up. Raylynn tamped it down along with a maddening spiral of desire.

  She had no business being attracted to Hank. What did he have to offer besides trouble?

  Raylynn reached up and drew the shirt away from Hank’s shoulders. He shook off her hand and helped himself by removing his shirt. She climbed to her feet.

  He looked up from the floor, his dark hair falling away from his face. Then he reached up a hand. Raylynn grasped it and jerked him to his feet.

  “Thanks,” he said. He stepped out of his jeans, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and crawled into bed.

  They watched each other for several moments—Hank in the bed and Raylynn standing over it. It was as if a connecting thread tied them together. Sexual in quality, there was something more to it.

  “You are a special person, Raylynn Walker.”

  She didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what to say. She went to his bedside and pulled the covers up over him. Their gazes held. A myriad of emotions crossed his face. Then he turned on his side toward the wall.

  Raylynn stepped back. She licked her lips, took a deep breath, and picked up his jeans. She picked up all his clothes that were scattered around, folded some and stacked them on the papasan chair. She gathered up the odd papers and trash, organizing them into piles, or throwing pieces away. Then she washed his dishes in the tiny sink, leaving them on a dish towel to dry.

  What was the matter with this guy? Why was he so screwed up? So angry?

  She could have resented the hand life had dealt. Her mother had abandoned her and her dad when she was an infant. The lure of Music City had been too much for her talented mother. But that had ended badly in a cheap hotel room with a bottle of pills. Her dad, an Army sergeant, had left her for long stretches of time with her aunt and uncle who raised her and gave her the love and attention she lacked from her own parents.

  But abandonment was a wound hard to overcome. Raylynn succeeded only partially. She poured out her emotions in her singing, a talent she’d inherited from her mother, and her horseback riding, a skill she’d learned from Uncle Jimmy.

  Drying her hands, Raylynn turned from the sink. The sounds of deep breathing told her Hank was asleep. She should leave.

  But curiosity bested her good sense. Slowly, quietly, she removed the painter’s cloth that covered the stack of canvases against the wall.

  Her heart rocked with shock. These were nothing like the awful, half-finished painting still drying on the easel. These were beautiful—portraits and landscapes of horses and children, cats and dogs, older men and women in jeans holding manure forks that were used to clean horse stalls. She recognized the place and the people, having been with Aimee several times when she worked at The Hope Therapeutic Riding Center.

  Had Hank been to Hope? And what was he doing with these oil paintings? How had he captured so perfectly the essence of the Hope Center? Therapeutic riding helped students with disabilities build self-esteem and confidence, patience and discipline as well as body strength, balance and coordination. Hank had portrayed all that in the faces of his subjects. He’d depicted the joy in the students’ eyes, and the happiness in the volunteers’ smiles. He’d portrayed the passion and teamwork of the Hope Center perfectly.

  Hank’s talent overwhelmed her. It was so much more than the awkward shapes and colors of his current work-in-progress.

  Deep in thought, she covered up the canvases and retrieved her coat, scarf, and hat. She turned off the overhead lights and reached for the doorknob.

  Raylynn glanced once more at the bed. Was there more to Hank Brennan than anyone knew? That he let anyone know?

  Chapter Five

  Pappy Smith’s Country Bar

  “I fall to pieces,” Raylynn sang in her deep, throaty voice. “Each time I see you again.”

  Hank faced the stage, his feet propped on the bar stool and his draft beer untouched on the bar. God, why did Raylynn speak to him so poignantly in her songs? Each time he saw her, he fell more in love with her. What had happened between them the other night? Because he’d been drunk, it remained unclear. Did they make love? Was she the one who cleaned up his pool house? Was she his guardian angel?

  Sitting there, unmoving, Hank let the music wash over him, cleansing him, making him whole. His heart expanded as he watched her making love to the microphone, through the microphone, her voice soulful and touching him with passion.

  He would paint her like this. The idea bloomed in his mind. He pulled a small pad from the pocket of his flannel shirt and sketched her like she was, up there on stage with the spotlights focused on her.

  When her set ended, he put the pad away and turned back to the bar. He lifted the tall glass to his lips and drank. He wasn’t getting wasted tonight. He needed his wits about him around Raylynn.

  “Back again, sugar.” Raylynn slipped onto the bar seat beside him and the bartender shoved a martini glass her way. She carefully peeled off a green olive from the little plastic spear and watched him out of the corner of an eye.

  “I need to thank you for the other night,” he said, feeling about as awkward as a kid on his first date.

  She shrugged and popped the olive into her mouth. “No problem.”

  He swiveled toward her. “But it was a problem. I was a problem. I don’t remember much about it, but I remember giving you grief.”

  “I suspect you gave yourself more grief than me,” she replied. “I bet you had a whopping headache in the morning.”

  It was his turn to shrug. “I was up at six as usual.”

  “A night-owl like you gets up at six?”

  He sipped his beer, buying time so he didn’t have to tell her where he went every morning. She continued eyeing him as she lifted a glass to her lips of what he knew to be ice water.

  “I volunteer,” he said.

  Her eyebrows reacted in surprise. “That’s great. I wish I had time to volunteer.” She looked away.

  When she didn’t press him, Hank relaxed, sitting back. He toyed with the napkin. “I wondered if we—” He stopped himself and then cleared his throat. “Did we kiss?”

  “What do you think?”

  Hank’s heart pumped wildly. He sat forward again, reaching for her hand. His fingers closed over her wrist. “I want to apologize, if I came on too strong.”

  She licked her lips, her eyes twinkling. “Oh, you were like a baby—putty in my hands.”

  What did she mean by that? Was she toying with him like he had toyed with the paper napkin? A rush of heat overcame him. He wanted her so badly he could hardly think of anything else.

  Raylynn rubbed a fingertip over his knuckles. He loosened his grip on her wrist, turned his palm up, and captured her fingers. The contact tingled all the way to his toes, adding fuel to his growing fire.

  “I want to do something for you,” he said leaning forward. “You don’t belong in a place like Pappy Smith’s. You belong in Nashville. More people should know about you.”

  Raylynn tugged her fingers free. “I’m never going to Nashville.”

  The
way she said it caused Hank to pull back. She hadn’t pressed him when he didn’t want to talk, and he knew by the finality in her voice not to continue down that path. “Okay, then. How about more gigs around town? I can help you with that.”

  She shrugged, giving him a noncommittal look. “Pappy Smith’s is fine. I really don’t have time for much more.”

  Hank wanted to ask her what she did with her days, but she seemed such a private person. And he had his secrets too. Who was he to probe?

  They sat quietly a moment. She glanced back to the stage where the band had come back for the next set.

  “I’ve got to go in a minute.”

  “I know.” He covered her hand again with his.

  She didn’t pull away, but let him squeeze her hand. There was a bond between them, a strange, unexplainable bond that gave him a comfort he had not felt in years, not since his mother had died.

  “Why don’t you exhibit your work?” she asked turning toward him to search his face. “You’re really good, you know.”

  He returned a questioning look. “Not many people think so.”

  “Not many people have seen those portraits you keep hidden under that canvass in your room.”

  Hank stiffened and stepped back. “You looked at those?”

  “Yes, out of curiosity. Forgive me, but I don’t regret snooping.” Her tone was unapologetic. “You’re a great painter. You capture your subjects perfectly. And from the little I know about you, you’ve kept that talent hidden.”

  Years of frustration and anger filled Hank’s heart. “My family doesn’t appreciate what I do.”

  “Maybe you don’t give them a chance to appreciate it.”

  “You don’t know anything about it,” he said roughly. “Or me.”

  She stood up. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have let my curiosity get the best of me.”

  He didn’t want her to go. He caught her arm. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to be so rude.” Raylynn tried to shake off his grip. He held on tight. “When can I see you again? Away from here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He was desperate. “But I want to.” How could he convince her he liked her? Wanted to be with her? This bar wasn’t conducive to getting to know a woman.

  Covering his hand with hers, Raylynn shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a wise thing for either one of us.”

  He let her go then, and she walked back to the stage, her yellow cowboy boots clumping on the wooden floor. Before she sang another song, Hank paid his tab and left the bar.

  * * * *

  Hank slept late the next morning. He had stayed up until three o’clock working on his new portrait of Raylynn. Satisfied he had made a good start, he’d fallen into a deep sleep where the singer came to him, naked, in a halo of light.

  Lucky for him he didn’t have to be at the Hope Center until noon, so he had the luxury of awakening slowly, enveloped in a hazy afterglow where his dream was better than reality.

  Sort of summed up his whole life.

  Then Ginny called inviting him to breakfast at the big house, and he had gotten out of bed, showered, failed to shave, and dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans and boots, ready for his work at the Hope Center.

  * * * *

  “Where do you go every day?” his stepmother asked him. She served him a plump, steaming, fresh-out-of-the-oven cinnamon roll.

  Hank shoveled a bite of scrambled eggs into his mouth so he didn’t have to answer.

  “I won’t tell your father.”

  Hank swallowed the bite and looked up at the gray-haired, aging woman who made his father so happy. She had always been good to him. It wasn’t her fault she’d given birth to a superhero who was his perfect foil and his father’s go-to guy at work.

  “You don’t have a job, do you?” Ginny pressed him.

  Hank sighed, and reached for the homemade cinnamon roll, breaking it in two. “Did I ever tell you that you’re a great cook, Ginny?”

  “But I should mind my own business?” She poured more coffee into his mug.

  “I didn’t say that.” He bit into the to-die-for cinnamon roll.

  Ginny set the coffee pot down and leaned across the table. “It’s just that I worry about you, Hank. You lack a sense of direction.”

  Hank slowly chewed the cinnamon roll. “Did you win my father’s heart because you’re a good cook?”

  She scowled. “Your father worries about you too, but it’s hard for him to show it.”

  “Or do you have other qualities?” His temper suddenly erupted. He couldn’t stop his mouth. “Maybe you’re good in bed,” he said sarcastically.

  Ginny straightened, her eyes showing her aggravation. “Okay. Be that way. If your behavior didn’t also hurt your father, I wouldn’t care what you did with your life.”

  She turned her back to him, picked up a dirty plate, rinsed it and put it into the dishwasher.

  He wasn’t really a bad guy. He was just different, and he liked to magnify that difference especially when his whole family was straight as an arrow. But that didn’t give him cause to insult Ginny.

  “Hey, I’m sorry.” She glanced back at him. “My mouth gets me into trouble,” he said with a shrug.

  “And your attitude.”

  He tipped his head, conceding her point. “If you promise not to tell.”

  “I said I wouldn’t. Hal doesn’t know all of my secrets.”

  “I go to the Hope Center.” Hank slowly sipped his coffee, gauging Ginny’s reaction.

  “Where Aimee used to work?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s wonderful, Hank!”

  Hank set down his mug and picked up a piece of the cinnamon roll. “Don’t get excited. Aimee had a paying job there. I’m just a volunteer.”

  Ginny dried her hands with a towel. “I still think it’s wonderful. Your dad would be proud.”

  Hank frowned, his lips tightening into a straight line for a brief moment. “If it isn’t a money-making proposition, my father is not impressed.”

  Ginny shook her head. “You don’t give Hal credit.”

  Hank made eye contact, and then looked away. “I know I’m a disappointment to him, but it’s the way things are.”

  He left it at that and so did Ginny. She bustled around the kitchen cheerily chatting about babysitting little Alec today. Aimee was going back out to the stables where she used to work before quitting and going to the Hope Center. She and Cam still owned an American Saddlebred show horse, and Aimee was going to show the big gelding this year. Ginny just loved spending time with Alec, her first grandchild.

  Hank made no comment. What could he say? His brother’s life was so normal and set—he managed a big company and was happily married and a new father. His stepbrother’s life was everything Hank’s wasn’t. Or wasn’t even about to be.

  Rising to his feet, Hank carried his plate and mug to the kitchen sink. “Thanks for the meal, Ginny. It really hit the spot.”

  She reached for his arm, patting his sleeve as she would a pet dog. “I raised you too, Hank. Don’t forget that. You’re my son too.”

  Hank looked down at the petite woman with sincerity burning in her eyes and was surprised by the twinge in his gut and the warmth in his heart. “There was nothing wrong with your raising, Ginny. It just didn’t take with me.”

  “I’d say the verdict is still out on that.”

  Her words were said with such certainty that Hank almost believed her. He kissed her cheek, but she caught him to her and gave him a hug.

  “Not enough of that going on around here,” she said, turning away as if suddenly shy.

  Hank smiled at her words. Ginny was a force to be reckoned with in this household. For once, he could see why his father married her.

  He picked up his down vest and put it on. As he started out of the kitchen, Ginny turned back and said in a low voice, “Your father is working in his office.”

  Hank wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do wi
th that information. He stuck a hand into his vest pocket and fingered his keys. In the hallway by the front door he paused.

  Raylynn.

  Had Ginny read his mind? He needed to talk to Hal about Raylynn’s band and the idea that had formed in his mind last night as he sketched her portrait and then applied the first touch of oil to the background.

  Hank didn’t want to go into the office, but for Raylynn he would do anything. Gathering up the little courage he could muster, he knocked on the door. “May I come in?”

  Hal looked up from behind his huge mahogany desk. “You don’t have to knock, son.”

  Right. If he hadn’t knocked, he would have been reprimanded for that.

  His father’s office was like a luxurious library—wood paneled walls, crowded bookshelves, plush tan carpeting, and a floor-to-ceiling window that faced the pool outside and was covered by a sheer drapery. Hank avoided the office like the plague, associating it, as he did, with lectures and punishment. The punishment had stopped when he was eighteen, but the lectures and hard looks continued. They were the penalty he paid for the way he led his life and his inability to grasp the technicalities of the business world.

  Hank walked into the inner sanctum, his shoes sinking into the thick carpet. He lifted his chin, trying to put on his normal swagger as if he cared for nothing. But this time he did care, and he felt as small as a child going to see the principal.

  “Have a seat.” Hal nodded to the leather chair facing the desk.

  The big and imposing desk gave his father an advantage. Hank would rather have remained standing, but he sat anyway, resting uneasily on the edge of the chair.

  His father glanced up and laid his pen down. Hal was wearing a long sleeve shirt with a collar and a gray cashmere sweater, almost as if it was a normal day at the office. Hank, on the other hand, was out of place in his jeans and boots.

  Hank swallowed. “I have something to ask,” he said in a terrified, little-boy-lost voice.

  “What is it?” There was a rush of anger in his father’s eyes, as if he thought Hank was going to ask for money. Hal picked up his pen and began writing again, dismissing Hank.