Claire and he were entirely different. His relationships tended toward fun, casual, no-strings-attached sorts of encounters with women looking for the same thing. He knew it probably had to do with his father deserting them all when he was fourteen. As he had watched his mother’s stunned devastation in that first year after James McKnight decided he was being smothered by his family and needed to escape, Riley had decided he wasn’t going to ever be in that position, where one person could have that kind of power over him. Nor would he ever be the one doing the hurting.
He had almost married once, when he was seventeen years old and his girlfriend found out she was pregnant. The marriage would have been a disaster, he knew that now. The miscarriage she’d suffered at two months, while a tragedy at the time, had probably been one of those blessings-in-disguise things.
Riley wasn’t sure he was cut out for that life. Watching his sisters’ various marital misadventures had only reinforced that conviction. Casual and fun and flirty, that was him, where no one could end up with a broken heart.
Claire wasn’t like that. She needed a man who would stick around. Because that man wasn’t Riley—and because he couldn’t seem to spend a moment in her company without wanting to become whatever she needed—he decided he was better off staying away.
He was still telling himself that on his way home from the station that evening when he spied a kid trying to ride a bike with his arm in a cast and making no effort to dodge the puddles left by the steady rain of the day.
He smiled as he recognized Owen Bradford under the blue helmet and the Star Wars clone fighter backpack. Nice to see the kid’s broken arm wasn’t keeping him from the simple pleasures of puddle jumping. Riley had spent many a drippy day when he was a kid seeing just how high he could make the water splash.
He waved, tapping his horn as he passed, and saw Owen’s flash of a grin. The kid raised his casted arm to return the wave, but the movement shifted his weight just enough that he was slightly unbalanced when the front tire hit the edge of a puddle that turned out to be more like a pothole. The bike’s rear tire went up in the air and Owen, not holding on well, did a spectacular endo over the handlebars.
Crap on a stick. Riley slammed on his brakes and pulled his patrol vehicle to the side of the road—half on the grassy parking strip of grumpy old Mr. Maguire, who wouldn’t appreciate it, he knew—and shoved open the door.
When he reached the kid, Owen was sitting beside his bicycle wearing an expression of mingled pain and disgust.
He had mud from chest to knee where he’d fallen and Riley could see a rip in his jeans and a blood smear glimmering through the frayed threads of cotton. Despite the kid’s obvious war wounds, Riley could tell he was trying fiercely not to cry, his mouth pressed in a hard line.
He had been that same kind of kid, stubbornly determined to be tough, and seeing this mini-me version of himself was a little disconcerting.
“You okay, bud?”
“Yeah.” Owen’s voice sounded a little ragged but he cleared his throat. “I think so. Stupid puddle.”
“You’ve got to watch those. You never can tell how deep they are or what’s underneath the water.”
It struck him that while Claire probably wouldn’t appreciate being compared to a mud puddle, the argument could be made that she was much the same. He had a feeling there were hidden depths and pitfalls to her, just waiting to tangle a man up on his handlebars.
Or maybe he just needed to stop thinking about her every blasted minute.
“I do have to say, that was a truly spectacular dive. I’d give it 10 for form and a 9.5 for precision.”
Owen giggled, just as he’d hoped. The shock of the fall was probably beginning to wear off and in Riley’s experience, this was the trickiest point, when the adrenaline rush faded and the pain set in.
“How’s the cast?” he asked. “Did it get banged up?”
Owen lifted his arm and gave it an appraising look in the gathering twilight. “Muddy. My mom’s gonna be mad.”
“I doubt that. It was an accident and we should be able to wipe it down because it’s fiberglass. Can I help you up?”
“Thanks.”
Owen grabbed his hand and rose to his feet. Now that his initial bravado began to fade, he started to look more upset. “I think my bike’s messed up.”
Riley pulled the bike up so he could look. “Well, the forks are bent. That’s going to be a bit tricky to fix but not impossible.”
“I really need it. Now that the snow’s melted, I ride my bike to school a lot.”
“Then we’ll have to make sure we fix it right. Come on, let’s get you home before that rain starts up again. I can throw your bike in the back of my vehicle.”
Owen chewed his lip. “Yeah, only, I’m not supposed to get in a car with anyone else.”