A Child Under His Tree. Allison Leigh

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СКАЧАТЬ It bumped hard against her knee. “You did your duty, that’s for sure.” Tears glazed her eyes. “But I’m not going to raise my baby like that.” She shuffled toward the door with her heavy load precariously balanced.

      Georgette followed, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Go ahead and think you’re not just like your mama. Was a time I thought I wasn’t just like my mama, too. But here you are. Knocked up by some walk-away joe. Just who do you think is going to take you in when they learn you got yourself pregnant?”

      Kelly blinked hard and kept going, carefully navigating the creaking steps that she’d pounded up and down all of her life. “I can take care of myself.” She wasn’t going to allow herself to think otherwise. If she did, she’d want to curl up and disappear. And she wouldn’t do that now, not when she had a fledgling life inside her.

      Behind her, Georgette gave that I-told-you-so huff of hers. “Guess you proved that, all right.” She followed Kelly right out to the front porch of the small two-story house Georgette had inherited from her mother.

      There was a deep ache inside Kelly’s chest. She blamed it on the weight of carrying all of her belongings in one single trip and quickened her pace down the porch steps. The suitcase banged against her leg, and a few hangers slid out of her grasp. “I guess that’s my problem, isn’t it?”

      She stepped over the dresses lying in the dirt, aiming blindly for the pickup truck that had been old even when she’d bought it five years earlier with the money she’d earned working at the grocery store. She set down the suitcase long enough to open the door and shove her hangers and beach bag across the threadbare bench seat.

      “When you learn you can’t handle your problem, don’t come crawling back to me,” Georgette yelled.

      “Don’t worry, Mama.” Her voice was choked. She hefted the suitcase into the truck bed. It landed with a terrible bang, but at least the latches stayed closed. “I won’t be back.”

      Georgette wasn’t listening, though. “You’d be better off at least trying to pass off that kid as Buchanan’s baby! Least you’d get some money outta your mistake!”

      Kelly’s chest ached even more.

      She got behind the wheel, turned the key with a shaking hand until the engine cranked and drove away. When she dared a glance in the rearview mirror, all she saw was the plume of dust kicked up from her tires.

      She swiped a hand over her wet cheek. “I won’t be back,” she said through her teeth.

      She didn’t know where she was going.

      She just knew that anywhere was better than her mother’s house.

      But where could she go? She’d been working at Doc Cobb’s for a year now since leaving the grocery store and had saved up some money, but with a baby on the way, she would need to conserve every penny she could.

      She braked when she reached the highway and stared down the empty road toward Weaver.

      She could find a place to live in town. Keep working for Doc Cobb. He was a pediatrician. Nobody liked babies and children more than her genial boss. But whether Kelly wanted to admit it or not, her mother was right about one thing. Gossip was going to dog her every footstep when it became obvious that she was pregnant and there was no daddy standing by her side. More important than that, though, was the baby. And that same gossip was going to follow her child the same way it had always followed her.

      She was not going to repeat her mother’s mistakes.

      And she damn sure was not going to beg Caleb Buchanan for one single thing.

      She exhaled, wiped her cheeks again, looked down the empty highway one more time and hit the gas.

Chapter One

      “Dr. C shouldn’t be too long.” The nurse—a young blonde Kelly didn’t know—smiled as she ushered them into an empty examining room. She winked at Tyler. “Be thinking about what color cast you want this time.” She slid the medical chart she’d started for them into the metal sleeve on the door that she closed as she left them alone.

      The door had barely latched before Kelly’s son gave her a plaintive look. “How come I gotta get another cast?”

      She dumped her purse and their jackets on the chair wedged in one corner of the room. “Because your wrist still hasn’t healed all the way and you cracked the cast you already have.”

      “But—”

      “Be glad that you didn’t hurt yourself even more.” She’d seen the X-rays herself on the computer screen just a few minutes ago. Not only had Doc Cobb hired several new faces since Kelly’d last been there, but he’d gotten himself some state-of-the-art equipment, as well. She patted the top of the examining room table. The thin paper covering it crinkled. “Want me to lift you up here, or—”

      Tyler didn’t wait for her to finish before he scrambled up onto the high table by himself. Then he stuck out his tongue and stared at the cast circling his right forearm. “Stupid cast,” he grumbled.

      She brushed her fingers through his dark hair, pushing the thick strands away from his forehead. He needed a haircut, but there just hadn’t been time enough to fit one in before they’d left Idaho Falls. Not between arranging her vacation days, talking to his kindergarten teacher about his absence and packing up what she thought he’d need during the two weeks she’d allotted to get things settled. She had a day before the funeral, though. She’d get him to the barber before then. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice before climbing a tree,” she said calmly.

      “Had to climb it,” he argued. “Gunnar did.”

      “And you have to do everything that Gunnar does?” She didn’t really expect an answer. Her five-year-old son and his best friend, Gunnar Nielsen, were like two peas in a pod. What one did, the other had to do, as well. Fortunately for Gunnar, he had climbed down the tree, whereas her daredevil son had decided to jump.

      Thus, the broken wrist.

      “So think twice next time about the way you get out of the tree,” she added.

      Tyler was swinging one leg back and forth, looking from the closed door of the small examining room to the sink and counter on the opposite side. “What’s in all those drawers?”

      “Bandages for little boys who don’t listen to their mothers when they should.” She tapped her finger pointedly against the crack in his cast then pulled a fresh coloring book out of her oversize purse. If she knew Doc Cobb—and she did, even though it had been nearly six years since she’d last seen him—it would be a good while yet before he made his way to Tyler. Given the nature of the doctor’s pediatric practice, the later in the afternoon the appointments were, the farther behind he was likely to be. “Want to color?”

      Tyler scrunched his face and swung his leg a few more times before nodding. She set the thin coloring book on the table beside him and rummaged in her purse again until she found the plastic baggie full of the washable markers he preferred over crayons. “Which color first?”

      “Red.”

      She extracted the red marker and handed it to him. She knew from experience СКАЧАТЬ