Page 20 of Craig

"He divorced my mother and brought me to live with hers. I resented her at first, my stepmother, but she was great, and when Regina was born, I felt this fierce love inside me that only grew. She means everything to me."

There was a warning note in his voice.

"She tried to get our father to love her, to see her. So she would be the best in school. She majored in athletics and was into every sport there was. She was on the cheerleading team. Gina can swim like a fish. She can do anything. Nothing worked.

"Then he left when she turned fifteen. Just left in the middle of the night. It destroyed her and her mother."

He shrugged and wondered why he was telling the man all this. His sister would skin him alive if she knew.

But he sensed something in the guy and was hoping fervently that there would be a change. She needed someone.

She pretended not to, but he knew better.

"He left me with them, of course. My own mother wasn't really a mother. Flighty and foolish. Rachel, my sister's mom, was the ultimate mother. Even when she was hurting, she took care of us. He would swing by every once in a while to hand out money and gifts and would take me out for ice cream or whatever. But never Gina. I watched as she slowly turned jaded and cynical."

He searched his pocket for another cigarette and decided against it.

"She's been hurt by the one man who was supposed to love her and guide her." He turned his head to look at Craig, sizing him up.

The guy needed a haircut, and he wasn't wearing designer threads. In fact, his jeans were worn, the shirt a little crushed.

He was approachable, not like some of those rich assholes he had to deal with.

"You're going to have a fight on your hands if you want anything more."

"Who says I do?" Craig was wishing for a cigarette himself.

The story he just heard had splintered his heart and allowed him to reverse his opinions of her. Christ!

No wonder she was the way she was.

Dylan laughed softly. "Man, I hope you don't play poker, you'd be lousy at it."

"I do play poker and have won a couple thousand at that." Craig shrugged.

"It's just business. She will not want anything more. Your sister is a pretty aggressive woman and an opinionated one. If she ever dreams that it's anything more, she will turn me down flat."

"True." Dylan nodded.

"But I believe you have the ability to change her mind."

* * * * *

Craig wasn't so sure about that. On the drive up the hill, one of his favorite haunts, he lowered the windows and just allowed the breeze to whip through his hair and slide over his skin.

He had drifted from the main road and into the rural part of town where the houses were few and far between. He could see cows and horses grazing.

He slowed down enough to watch a woman wearing a large straw hat tending to her vegetable garden.

He loved the country, the quiet, the solitude and the rutted roads. The scent of apples and oranges came at him swiftly.

Somewhere a dog barked and a horse neighed. He wanted peace, a home with children.

Shaking his head, he pressed on until he came to the abandoned building.

It belonged to his father, a faded cabin where they had gone fishing. He had turned his back on the place in his grief but was thinking of fixing it up.

It could be somewhere he escaped to, like now, when he had so much to think on.