Callie had pushed to ferret out his secret, destroying the camaraderie they’d shared. Before she learned the truth, he’d finish his search for his mother and get out of town. With a grunt, he shoved the wooden handles of the hedge shears together, cutting off the branches of the overgrown evergreens blocking Mrs. Uland’s windows. A chore he’d offered to do, hoping to question her about the gossip she’d heard about the Squier family. But the search for his mother didn’t preoccupy his thoughts. All he could think about was Callie. Better to sever the relationship, as he did these branches, than to let her become involved with him, a man who’d rubbed elbows with depravity and ugliness in jail and smelled the stench of it in his nostrils still. A man who had no idea how a proper husband behaved. Or, for that matter, what it took to be a good father. Callie deserved better than him. Not that he could take the risk of getting close, even if he hadn’t spent time in jail. He’d been burned by an indifferent foster family, a woman he’d thought loved him and an unscrupulous best friend.
