Chapter 43

43

What was he doing?

Rob had just acted, the minute he’d heard her beautiful laugh. Hell, in any other lifetime, he probably would have liked this man. He seemed calm, steady. Plainspoken and honest. Rob had noticed that about him before, when that girl had been found in the field that way. “No sense talking about her now. She’s dead.”

For not even a month now. The only real family Rob had had left and she was just gone. All he had left was those two punk sons of hers who were busy screwing up their lives in Oklahoma. He didn’t know them at all. He had no one left.

Yet Fields had a whole new family just starting. And that girl, that oldest, she’d marry and Fields would get grandkids, and everything would be so…perfect. While Rob had nothing.

“I’m sorry. Nothing scares me more than losing someone I love,” the girl said.

The man reached out and scooted his little redhead behind him more fully. Protectively.

Hell, what was Rob doing? He’d ruined his whole life now. For what?

For Candy? She was dead. And he had to face the truth—she wouldn’t have given a damn about him if she wasn’t. Candy had only loved Candy. He wasn’t even so certain she’d loved her boys, not there in the end. But he loved them. And always had. He had been more of a parent to those boys than Candy ever had been.

Was it for them he was doing this?

Rob just didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore.

What in the hell was he supposed to do now?

He looked at her. That girl. Saw the fear in extraordinary blue eyes. She looked so… young and beautiful. Happy, whole. Healthy. He’d heard she was diabetic, though. She had her entire life ahead of her.

Did he really have the right to take that from her?

Because of something she had had nothing to do with at all?

What kind of a man was he becoming?