A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the major’s wife probably had a job of her own. And kids of their own, judging by the size of the place. He’d guess four, maybe five bedrooms.
    His chest tightened, and he shifted the air-conditioning to high, turning the vents so they blew straight at his face. There had to be room in a house like that for Mariah. Her father might have ignored her existence until now, and his wife might not know a thing about her, but things were about to change. Things had changed, the day Sabrina dropped her off and kept going.
    Guilt settled in his gut, and he would have cursed his mother for putting it there if he hadn’t been afraid God would smack him down for it. He wasn’t Mariah’s father. He’d dated her mother for two years, lived with her for one before she confessed to her affair with the major. That didn’t make him responsible for her child. It wasn’t his job to find her real family. It was just something he needed to do.
    He was going to talk to her father, scope out the situation with his family, to make sure they would provide a good home for her. He wasn’t abandoning her, because she wasn’t his to abandon.
    Now, if he could just get those damned big, solemn brown eyes out of his mind…
    He’d sat there long enough to see everything and learn nothing. Shifting into drive again, he eased from the curb and headed back to Main Street. After a stop at a drive-in for a cheeseburger and onion rings, he drove a few more blocks to a motel on the west end of town. It was a genuine old-fashioned motor court, or at least made to look like one, with tiny individual structures for each room. A metal lawn chair in familiar faded green occupied each stoop, and neon buzzed and perfumed the air.
    The metal key to Room 9 was bent. Getting it into the lock required a little jiggling, but soon enough the tumblers fell and he opened the door. Nothing luxurious—he’d known that from seeing the outside. But the room wasn’t shabby. The vinyl floor was clean, the area rug showed marks from being recently vacuumed, and the bed was neatly made. Instead of stale-motel, it smelled like something baking—his mother’s sticky buns, maybe.
    The window air conditioner cooled with a hum instead of the deafening racket he’d expected, and the sofa was comfortable. With a tiny kitchenette—dorm fridge, two-burner cooktop, sink—he’d do fine for however long he had to be here. Best hope: a day. Realistic hope: a week or more.
    That was okay. He had forty-five days’ leave on the books. If it took every one of them to get Mariah settled elsewhere, so be it.
    After eating dinner, he brought in his bag, then pulled out the phone to call his mother. She’d already let him know, not long after he’d hit the interstate, that she and Mariah were back home in Natchitoches. Call me when you get to Tallgrass, she’d instructed him again. He grinned at the thought of all the times she’d told him that. Call me when you get to basic training. Call me when you get back from leave. Call me when you get to Iraq. Call me when you get to Afghanistan.
    He had four brothers and sisters to prove there’d been a father in his life, but not one that had mattered much. Ercella was twice the man Max Logan was, mother and father to her own kids, now to Mariah. Isn’t it possible she’s yours? she’d asked more than once. I think I see your eyes in hers.
    It wasn’t possible. Not unless Sabrina had had the longest pregnancy on record, or the shortest with a healthy, full-term baby.
    “I’m in Tallgrass,” he said when his mother answered the phone.
    The television sounded in the background, along with kids’ voices. It didn’t matter where Ercella went, she always attracted kids. With her own grown and her grandkids living an hour or more away, she entertained the neighborhood kids on Saturday nights and most any other time they wandered over. “Is it nice?” she asked over the noise.
    “Well, it’s no Natchitoches,” he said