of cool welcome she’d given him just before had disappeared to be replaced by something much more wary.
Damon allowed his smile to fade, since it was clear she wasn’t going to be moved by it.
A superstitious man might have said it was fate that the pretty blond he’d seen from the Moose’s balcony had turned out to be Astrid and that the kid who’d been following him around the past couple of days was her son, Connor.
But Damon was not a superstitious man. And there was a reason Connor might have been following him around.
He was Caleb West’s son after all.
Damon regarded the woman sitting on the other side of the desk steadily.
How to go about this? How to break it to her that he was here to fulfill Caleb’s last wish, to make sure that the son he’d sired fifteen years earlier, the son who no one else in the world knew about except the boy’s mother and Damon, was “looked after”?
There were so many things to consider. Did she mourn Caleb’s death? It had only happened a few weeks ago, and hell, he, Zeke, and Silas were still dealing with his loss, let alone the woman who’d had his kid. And things were made even more tricky by the fact that no one knew Cal even had a kid, or that said kid was living in Deep River. Not even Cal’s sister, Morgan, knew.
The easiest thing would have been to ignore the letter the lawyer had handed to him as the will reading had ended and Silas and Morgan had walked out. The letter was for Damon only, the lawyer had said. Mr. West was most clear that no one else should know about it.
Already Damon had had a suspicion about what was in that letter, and he’d been proved right. Look after my boy, Caleb had instructed him. See to his future.
Being responsible for another child was pretty much the last thing on earth Damon wanted, and walking away would have been a hell of a lot easier. But he’d never walk away from a friend, especially one who’d fought beside him.
He still wasn’t sure how he was going to “look out” for Connor, not when he had to be back in LA, but maybe he and Astrid could come to some kind of arrangement.
She was regarding him with that same cool look, yet a subtle tension had gathered around her. Those exquisitely carved features had hardened, her gray eyes solidifying from mist into solid steel. Her irises had a rim of dark charcoal and a dark charcoal center too, the color highlighted by the silver-gold of her lashes. She wore a plain white T-shirt, which somehow enhanced her snow-queen vibe.
“Okay,” Damon said at last. “Here’s the deal. Personally, I don’t want anything to do with your son. But you should know I have an obligation to fulfill.”
A whole host of emotions flickered over the mayor’s face, but they were gone so fast, Damon couldn’t tell what they were.
She leaned back in her old, creaky wooden chair. “A personal obligation,” she echoed. “Don’t tell me. You’re here on behalf of Caleb.”
Smart woman. But then it wasn’t all that difficult to work out. He was one of Cal’s buddies and now Cal was dead; it was logical for her to assume some provision had been made for his son.
“I didn’t do the right thing, Damon,” Cal had said that night when they were both on watch, the moonlight bright over the rocky desert that surrounded them. “When Astrid got pregnant, I told her I didn’t want anything to do with a kid.” His friend’s face had been shadowed, his voice quiet. “I know I was only seventeen, but it was a cowardly thing to do, and I regretted it. So when she called me out of the blue, wanting a place to stay, I couldn’t say no. She’s in Deep River with him now, and I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to make it up to them.”
The memory was an uncomfortable one, bringing with it other things that Damon didn’t want to remember, so he pushed it away, concentrating instead on the woman sitting behind the desk.
“I am,” he said simply, because in the end, simple was best. “I got a letter after Cal died. It went just to me, none of the other guys know about it. And all it said was that I had to make sure Connor was looked after and his future