Anything for Her - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,18

self-consciousness, but he kept noticing the nearly identical expressions of astonishment and even wonder on hers and Sean’s faces. Nolan kept pondering her reactions without arriving at a conclusion.

She sounded as though she was close to her mother. Maybe closer than usual, even, for a woman her age. And there had been a father. She’d said she was seventeen, Nolan thought, when her parents split up. That implied a sort of regular childhood, didn’t it?

But the fact that the father had evidently walked away without compunction bothered Nolan. And then there was the brother, who’d also disappeared from her life.

Yeah, that was strange enough to unsettle Nolan, coupled with today’s childish delight. It made him realize how little she’d really said about her background.

He had to shrug at that, though; he hadn’t exactly been chatty about his own. Their now was a lot more important than what their lives had been like when they were eight years old or ten or fourteen. There was an even more logical explanation, too, it occurred to him. Zoos tended to be in large cities. Her family might have lived far enough from one that they’d never gone.

Still...he was curious. And he knew himself. Curiosity and unease had eaten at him from the first time he set eyes on Sean and his then-foster father. Nolan hadn’t felt satisfied until that phone call this spring when the gruff boy/man voice on the other end said, “You gave me your card a while ago and said to call you if I ever needed anything.”

Mostly, Nolan wasn’t that interested in people. He went out of his way to be sure his curiosity wasn’t aroused. But once it was...he was a stubborn man.

And he liked Allie Wright. He liked her enough that it scared the shit out of him considering how little he knew about her.

* * *

AFTER A TRIP to the grocery store on Tuesday, Nolan was driving past the high school on the way home when he noticed the football team practicing. Some boys were sprinting between cones, others negotiating a row of tires lying on their sides. Half a dozen were taking turns plowing into the blocking tackle. A kicker was setting up for a field goal or extra point try.

Nolan saw that Sean, slumped in the passenger seat, was looking that way, too.

“You’ve got the size,” Nolan commented. “Too bad you didn’t try out for the team.”

Sean’s head snapped back around, as if he didn’t want to admit he had been interested. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it does.” Nolan mulled it over. With no experience raising a kid, it hadn’t occurred to him when Sean first came that they needed to be looking into things like that. Football practice had probably started in August, before school opened. “Won’t be too long until basketball starts.”

“I’m not that good.”

“I doubt many freshmen are that good.”

“I wouldn’t be able to ride the bus home.”

“You know I’d make time to pick you up,” Nolan said mildly.

The kid’s shrug was just this side of disagreeable.

“You interested at all?”

Obviously conflicted, Sean took his time answering. “Maybe.”

“I could put up a hoop above the garage door. You could practice shooting.”

“Really?” Something like hope shone in Sean’s gray eyes. “That would be cool. If they’re not too expensive.”

Nolan didn’t care how much basketball hoops cost. He wished he’d thought of putting one up sooner. Sean needed to get involved in some activities if he was to make friends. Sports made sense, given that he was tall for his age. He needed a physical outlet for his restlessness, too.

“The concrete pad in front of the garage is flat.” When he bought the house, the driveway had been gravel, but Nolan had had it paved leading both to the garage and the workshop. He wasn’t about to have a valuable slice of granite or—God forbid—a finished piece break when he hit a pothole in his truck. He nodded. “Should be ideal. We’ll do it.”

“Cool!” Sean declared.

Good thing, Nolan reflected, that he had an equable temperament himself. Could be the last foster parents hadn’t known teenagers’ emotions were all over the map, especially one who’d suffered as much loss as Sean had. Ebullience to angry sullenness could happen between one heartbeat and the next. The couple might have gone into it with good intentions but been battered by all the ups and downs.

If anything had tried Nolan’s patience, it was the bureaucracy of getting approved as a foster parent. The frustrating part was that everyone knew Sean