A Child Under His Tree Read online

  She quickly signed her name on the authorization. “Someone is still publishing The Weaver Weekly? Surprised that hasn’t died off by now.”

  Mary shook her head. “Quite the opposite. Comes out twice a week now.”

  “Any other changes around town I should know about?” She managed to keep her tone light.

  “Just drive on down Main Street and see for yourself,” Mary advised. “Weaver’s grown a lot since you left. There’s even a—” she cast a quick look at Tyler “—a particularly popular fast food place on the other side of town. Bekins Road, right before the highway on the way to Braden. Arches on the sign,” she added, raising her eyebrows for emphasis.

  “Never would have expected that.” Maybe in Braden. The town was a good thirty miles away and had always edged out Weaver in terms of available services. Kelly slid everything back into her purse and took Tyler’s hand again before pushing on the exit door. “Take care, Mary.”

  “You too, honey.”

  They stepped out into the weak October sunshine and Kelly hauled in a deep breath.

  “Mommy! You’re squeezing my hand too tight.”

  “Sorry, buddy.” Kelly quickly loosened her hold as they walked to the small parking lot that was full of vehicles. Hers was the only one sporting an out-of-state license plate. She let go of his hand and unlocked the car doors. He climbed into the rear onto his booster seat. He was particularly independent about fastening his own safety belt, and she waited while he worked at it, not closing the door until she tugged the strap to be sure it was secure.

  Then she straightened, glancing back at the building over the roof of her car.

  Six years had passed since that night she and Caleb had unintentionally conceived the brightest light in her life. Six years since they’d had any sort of contact. Intentional or otherwise.

  She’d gotten over Caleb a long time ago.

  He, of course, had never needed to get over her.

  Six years.

  That time had evidently brought a lot of changes to Weaver. But none of them mattered to her. She and Tyler had a life—a good life—in Idaho. One she’d worked darned hard to achieve. They had friends. They had a home where Tyler had never known anything but love. She’d returned to Weaver to do her last duty as Georgette Rasmussen’s daughter.

  She wasn’t going to let herself think about anything else.

  Caleb Buchanan included.

  Chapter Two

  “I heard Kelly Rasmussen and her little boy are in town.” Caleb’s sister, Lucy, leaned past his shoulder to set a bowl of salad on the kitchen table. “Staying out at her mother’s place. I should take them a meal or something. Can’t be easy for her.”

  “I’m sure she’d like that,” Caleb answered smoothly. He wasn’t sure if his sister was fishing or not, but knowing Lucy, she probably was. “Last time I saw Georgette’s house it was practically falling apart, and that was years ago.” He’d gone to see Kelly’s mother only once after he and Kelly had parted ways for good. Only because he could hardly believe the story around town: that she’d moved to Idaho and gotten married. There were even stories about a kid.

  Georgette had confirmed it, though. The woman had wallowed in her bitterness as she told him how Kelly had abandoned her in favor of her new life in the city. She then told him about Kelly’s new man and the baby they’d had together.

  Georgette’s attitude hadn’t been particularly surprising. She’d always given new meaning to the word ornery. But the fact that Kelly really was married? With a baby, no less?

  Even though there was nothing between them anymore, the confirmation had knocked him sideways.

  He eyed the platter of pork chops Lucy put on the table. His mouth had been watering for her cooking since that morning when she’d called to invite him for supper. But his thoughts kept straying to his encounter with Kelly.

  He’d seen Tyler Rasmussen’s name written in as a last-minute addition on the schedule but hadn’t thought twice about it. There were dozens of Rasmussens around Weaver. The family seemed to have more branches than his own.

  Then he’d opened the boy’s chart and Kelly’s signature had all but smacked him in the face.

  His only thoughts when he’d opened the examining room door after that were to keep his act together. He was a physician, for God’s sake. Not a stupid kid who hadn’t known what he had until he’d thoughtlessly tossed it aside in favor of someone else.

  She’d always been pretty, with otter-brown hair, coffee-colored eyes and delicate features. But Kelly Rasmussen all grown up? She’d held herself with a confidence that she hadn’t possessed before. She was still beautiful. More...womanly.

  He pushed the disturbing image to the back of his mind and focused on his three-year-old niece bouncing on his knee. “What do you want more, Sunny? The salad? Or the pork chops?”

  “Gravy,” she said promptly. “And ’tatoes.”

  “You have to eat some carrots first,” Lucy said firmly. She moved the toddler from Caleb’s lap to her high chair and ruffled her daughter’s dark hair. “She’d eat mashed potatoes and gravy morning, noon and night if I let her,” Lucy said with a wry smile.

  “Girl knows what she likes.” He winked at the tot, who awarded him with a beaming smile. “Kelly’s boy is cute,” he commented casually. “Tall for his age.”

  Lucy stopped in her tracks and gave him a surprised look. “You’ve seen them?”

  He knew from long experience there was no point hiding anything from his family, especially his sister. It was better to head her off at the pass than to keep things secret. Then he’d never hear the end of it.

  “She brought him to the office today.” He got up and brought the mashed potatoes and gravy to the table himself, giving Sunny another wink that earned him a giggle from her and an eye roll from her mama.

  “You’re as bad as a three-year-old.” Lucy set a few carrot sticks on Sunny’s plastic plate then went to the kitchen doorway and called, “Shelby! Come and eat.”

  Only a matter of seconds passed before Lucy’s stepdaughter raced into the kitchen. “Uncle Caleb!” The girl’s light brown eyes were bright as she launched herself at him. Caleb caught her, wrinkling his nose when she smacked a kiss on his lips.

  “Kissing boys now, are you?”

  She giggled, shaking her head violently. “Boys are gross.”

  “Sometimes,” Lucy joked. She filled Shelby’s milk glass. “Caleb sure was for a long time.”

  “Spoken like a loving older sister.”

  She just grinned at him, forked a pork chop onto her plate and began cutting it into strips for Sunny.

  “Mommy, when’s Daddy coming home?”

  “He’ll be back from Cheyenne tomorrow night, sweetie.” She transferred some of the strips to Sunny’s plate.

  “Good.” Shelby sat up on her knees and attacked her own meal.

  Caleb followed suit. “How’s Nick doing?”

  “He’s twenty-five, as handsome as his daddy and spending the year in Europe, studying.”

  Like Lucy’s stepson, Caleb had been studying when he was twenty-five, too. But medicine in Colorado versus architecture in Europe. “In other words, he’s doing pretty fine. Is he going to go into business with Beck?”

  “Beck certainly hopes so. Father and son architects and all. So, how was it?”

  Caleb doused his plate with the creamy gravy. “How was what?”

  Lucy whisked the bowl out of his reach when he went in for another helping. “Don’t pretend ignorance. Seeing Kelly again, obviously.”

  With her mother otherwise occupied, Shelby slyly palmed some dreaded carrot sticks from her and Sunny’s plates. Beneath the table, Caleb reached out and Shelby dropped them into his hand.

  Lucy’s eyes narrowed suddenly, darting
from Caleb to her daughters. “What are you three grinning about?”

  “Nothing.” Caleb blithely folded his napkin over the carrots. He hated them, too.

  “Who’s Kelly?” Shelby was only nine, but she’d already developed the art of distraction.

  “Uncle Caleb’s old girlfriend,” Lucy said. She smiled devilishly at him. “One of them, anyway.”

  “I don’t rub in your old mistakes,” he argued in a mild tone.

  She blinked innocently. “Well, I wasn’t the one going around breaking girls’ hearts.”

  Not all that long ago, before an injury had sidelined her career, his sister had been a prima ballerina with a dance company in New York. Now she ran a dance school in Weaver, and despite her blessedly relaxed rules over her personal diet, she still drew admiring looks everywhere she went. “Pretty sure you broke a few hearts along the way, Luce.”

  “Then she met Daddy and I got to wear a beautiful dress.” Shelby’s expression turned dreamy. “When you get married can I be in your wedding, too, Uncle Caleb?”

  He nearly choked on his food, and Lucy laughed merrily. “Sounds like a reasonable question, Uncle Caleb.”

  He ignored his sister and answered his far more agreeable niece. “Maybe I’ll just wait until you’re grown-up and marry you.”

  That elicited peals of laughter. “You’re my uncle. I can’t marry you!”

  Far be it for him to explain the finer aspects of blood relations. “Then I’ll just have to stay single,” he drawled.

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “Sure. Blame your loneliness on an innocent child.”

  Shelby’s brow knit with sudden concern. “Are you lonely, Uncle Caleb?”

  “No,” he assured her calmly. “Your mom’s just teasing. How could I be lonely when I have all of you around?”

  To his satisfaction, everyone seemed happy to let the matter go at that.

  He was wrong to think the reprieve would last, though.

  Two hours later, after he’d told Sunny two bedtime stories and played two games of checkers with Shelby, Caleb was ready to leave. But Lucy trailed after him as he headed to his truck. “You never answered the question.”

  He set the container of leftovers she’d packed for him inside the cab before climbing behind the wheel. “What question?”

  Coatless, she hugged her arms around herself, dancing a little in the cold. “What it was like seeing Kelly again.”

  “It wasn’t like anything,” he lied. “We broke up nearly ten years ago. She even married someone else, remember?”

  “One of my students’ moms works for Tom Hook, and she says there doesn’t seem to be a husband in the picture. If Kelly’s little boy were a few years older, he could’ve been yours.”

  “For God’s sake, Luce!” If he hadn’t known better, he’d have wondered himself about that boy. But even as impetuous as that night had been, they hadn’t been irresponsible. He’d used a condom. They’d always used condoms. From the first time until the last.

  “Hey!” His sister had lifted her hands innocently. “Don’t blame me for what other people find interesting topics of conversation. So...no sparks between old flames?”

  “It was just another appointment, Luce,” he said smoothly. “Thanks for supper. Tell Beck I’ll be in touch about the house plans.”

  “Have you decided where you want to build?”

  “Not yet.” He nudged her out of the way so he could grab the truck door. “It’s freezing. You’ll catch a cold.”

  “You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to know that being cold and catching a cold aren’t related.”

  “Tell that to Mom. She still thinks wearing a scarf during winter keeps a cold away.”

  Lucy smiled and lifted her hand, heading back to the house while he drove away.

  Lucy and Beck lived on the outskirts of Weaver, on the opposite side of town from the condo he’d been renting since he’d moved back home. Since he had nothing and no one waiting for him at home once he got there, he pulled into the hospital parking lot on his way. He didn’t have to be there, but he also didn’t have to be anywhere else. Might as well look in on the newborn he’d examined first thing that morning.

  His presence didn’t raise many eyebrows as he made his way to the nursery. The staff there were pretty used to him by now, ever since he’d joined Howard Cobb’s practice. When Caleb entered the nursery, he washed up and pulled on gloves.

  “Come to rock the babies, Dr. C?” Lisa Pope, one of the swing nurses, gave him a friendly smile over the minuscule diaper she was changing.

  “Any who need it?” He glanced at the clear-sided bassinets. The majority of them were empty. It was a slow night in the nursery.

  “Babies always need rocking.” As if to prove her point, she cradled her freshly diapered charge and sat in one of the wooden rocking chairs lined up against one of the walls. “But none of them tonight are missing a mommy or a daddy.”

  “So a slow night and a good night.”

  Lisa smiled over the tiny head cradled against her pink-and-blue scrubs. “Pretty much.”

  He took his time looking over his newest patient—an eight-pound little guy who sported a head full of brown hair and a serenely sleeping face. Caleb didn’t mind the nurses knowing that he came in sometimes just to rock the babies. Some didn’t have mothers in good enough condition to rock their restless infants. Some didn’t have any parents at all. Others had been born to perfectly normal moms and dads but were feeling outraged at finding themselves abruptly in a cold, bright world and didn’t like it one bit.

  He’d never particularly felt a need to let the nursery staff in on the real secret—that rocking those babies soothed something inside him, too. Truth was, most of the nursery staff probably felt that way themselves.

  But he wasn’t going to disturb the little guy’s slumber just because he was feeling restless. He wasn’t that selfish.

  He said good-night to Lisa, disposed of the gloves and headed back out of the hospital.

  What had it been like for Kelly when she’d given birth to Tyler?

  Had she been alone? Or had the man she’d found—the husband Georgette had told Caleb about all those years ago—been by her side?

  He walked briskly toward his truck, shaking off the pointless wondering. Whatever had happened between Kelly and Tyler’s father—was still happening, for all he knew—it was none of his business. Just because she wasn’t wearing a ring and she and her boy went by the name of Rasmussen didn’t mean she was single again.

  Available.

  And even if she were, chances were she still wanted nothing to do with him.

  Why would she?

  They’d been high school sweethearts. They’d been each other’s first. Even though they’d been just kids, it was a history. A history that had ended badly.

  His doing entirely, and one he took full responsibility for.

  But the last time they’d seen each other? When she’d told him flat out that she’d wanted to rock his world once more, simply for the pleasure of walking away from him afterward?

  That had been all her.

  He’d broken her heart once, and she’d proven just how well she’d recovered.

  He could even understand it. Some. After Melissa had dumped him, he’d gone out of his way proving to her that he was over her, too. Last he’d heard, she’d married a thoracic surgeon out in California. Caleb wished them well. Was glad, even, that she’d been smart enough not to marry Caleb when he’d proposed. They’d been all of twenty-one at the time. She’d known what he hadn’t, though—that they weren’t going to last.

  In the busy years since, he’d thought more about the girl back home whom he’d pushed aside in favor of Melissa than he had about Melissa herself.

  “Which makes you sound about as lone
ly as Lucy thinks you are,” he muttered as he got into his truck. He pulled out his cell phone and checked the signal. Near the hospital, it was pretty strong. Around Weaver, a steady cell phone signal was never a foregone conclusion. But whom to call?

  His cousin Justin Clay and Tabby Taggart had gotten married six months earlier. When his cousin wasn’t working at the hospital lab, he was practically glued to Tabby’s side.

  It would be revolting if it weren’t so annoyingly...cute, seeing his two oldest friends so stinking happy.

  He tossed his phone on the dashboard and drove out of the parking lot. He didn’t need company. For one simple reason.

  He wasn’t lonely.

  If he wanted a date, he got a date. There was never a dearth of willing women when you were single and had the initials M and D following your name. They usually didn’t even mind all that much when they came a distant third behind his studies and his patients. And if they did mind, they soon parted ways. No harm. No foul.

  Definitely no broken hearts.

  He’d learned his lesson well enough not to repeat it.

  He drove down Main Street. Even on a weeknight, the lights were shining brightly at Colbys Bar and Grill. He abruptly pulled into the lot and went inside. “Hey, Merilee.” He greeted the bartender as he slid onto an empty bar stool. Considering the crowded parking lot, the bar was pretty calm. Only two pool games going and nobody dancing on the small dance floor. “Grill must be busy tonight,” he commented when she stopped in front of him.

  “Have a school fund-raiser going on in there,” she told him. “What’re you having tonight?”

  Restlessness in a bottle.

  “Just a beer,” he told her. “Whatever’s on tap tonight.”

  She set a round coaster on the bar in front of him and a moment later topped that with a frosty mug of beer.

  “Jane not working tonight?” Jane was the owner. Married to another one of Caleb’s cousins.

  “Thursdays?” Merilee shook her head. “Do you want a menu?”