“Don’t!” Her intensity stopped him. “You saw the way she was looking at you. It’s easy to see what she wants. Stay away, Dean. It’s cruel to raise her hopes. Blue and I’ll handle this. Don’t do anything to let her get attached to you unless you’re going to see it through.”

He couldn’t hide his bitterness. “The April Robillard school of child rearing. How could I have forgotten?”

His mother could be a real hard-ass when she wanted to, and her chin shot up. “You turned out all right.”

He threw her a disgusted look and left by the side door. But halfway across the yard he slowed. She was right. Riley’s needy eyes said she wanted everything from him that she knew she wouldn’t get from her father. The fact that Jack had abandoned the kid so soon after her mother’s funeral spelled out her future in big capital letters—an expensive boarding school and vacations spent with a series of glorified babysitters.

She’d still have it better than him. His vacations had taken place in luxury villas, fleabag hotels, or seedy apartments, depending on where April had been with her men and her addictions. Over time he’d been offered everything from marijuana to booze to hookers and generally had accepted it all. In fairness, April hadn’t known about most of it, but she should have. She should have known about a lot of things.

Now Riley had come after him, and unless he grossly misread the yearning on her face, she wanted him to be her family. But he couldn’t do that. He’d kept his connection with Jack Patriot secret for too long to have it blown now. Yes, he felt sorry for her, and he hoped like hell things got better, but that was as far as it went. She was Jack’s problem, not his.

He ducked inside the gypsy caravan. Blue and Riley sat on the unmade bed in the back. Blue was her customary fashion disaster, her pointy nursery rhyme face at odds with a pair of tie-dyed purple pants that had to be somebody’s idea of a joke, and an orange T-shirt big enough to house a circus. The kid gazed up at him, a world of misery inscribed on her round little face. Her clothes were too tight, too fussy, and the script FOXY on her T-shirt looked obscene over the innocent buds of her breasts. She wouldn’t believe him if he tried to convince her she was wrong about his connection to Jack.

Seeing so much desperate need in Riley’s expression brought back too many bad memories, and he spoke more harshly than he meant to. “How did you find out about me?”

She glanced at Blue, afraid to reveal more than she already had. Blue patted Riley’s knee. “It’s okay.”