Free Sierra's Homecoming by Linda Lael Miller

his pajamas. Blinking, he rubbed his eyes.
    â€œIs it morning?” he asked.
    â€œNo,” Sierra said gently. “Go back to bed.”
    â€œCan I have some tea?”
    â€œNo, again,” Sierra answered, but she didn’t protest when Liam took a seat on the bench, close to her chair. “But if there’s cocoa, I’ll make you some.”
    â€œThere is,” Liam said. He looked incredibly young, and so very vulnerable, without his glasses. “I saw it in the pantry. It’s the instant kind.”
    With a smile, Sierra got out of the chair, walked into the pantry and brought out the cocoa, along with a bag of semihard marshmallows. Thanks to Travis’s preparations for their arrival, there was milk in the refrigerator and, using the microwave, she had Liam’s hot chocolate ready in no time.
    â€œI like it here,” he told her. “It’s better than any place we’ve ever lived.”
    Sierra’s heart squeezed. “You really think so? Why?”
    Liam took a sip of hot chocolate and acquired a liquid mustache. One small shoulder rose and fell in a characteristic shrug. “It feels like a real home,” he said. “Lots of people have lived here. And they were all McKettricks, like us.”
    Sierra was stung, but she hid it behind another smile. “Wherever we live,” she said carefully, “is a real home, because we’re together.”
    Liam’s expression was benignly skeptical, even tolerant. “We never had so much room before. We never had a barn with horses in it. And we never had ghosts. ” He whispered the last word, and gave a little shiver of pure joy.
    Sierra was looking for a way to approach the ghost subject again when the faint, delicate sound of piano music reached her ears.

Chapter Five
    â€œD o you hear that?” she asked Liam.
    His brow furrowed as he shifted on the bench and took another sip of his cocoa. “Hear what?”
    The tune continued, flowing softly, forlornly, from the front room.
    â€œNothing,” Sierra lied.
    Liam peered at her, perplexed and suspicious.
    â€œFinish your chocolate,” she prompted. “It’s late.”
    The music stopped, and she felt relief and a paradoxical sorrow, reminiscent of the all-too-vivid dream she’d had earlier while dozing in the big chair in the study.
    â€œWhat was it, Mom?” Liam pressed.
    â€œI thought I heard a piano,” she admitted, because she knew her son wouldn’t let the subject drop until she told him the truth.
    Liam smiled, pleased. “This house is so cool,” he said. “I told the Geek—the kids—that it’s haunted. Aunt Allie, too.”
    Sierra, in the process of lifting her cup to her mouth, set it down again, shakily. “When did you talk to Allie?” she asked.
    â€œShe sent me an e-mail,” he replied, “and I answered.”
    â€œGreat,” Sierra said.
    â€œWould my dad really want me to grow up in San Diego?” Liam asked seriously. The idea had, of course, come from Allie. While Sierra wasn’t without sympathy for the woman, she felt violated. Allie had no business trying to entice Liam behind her back.
    â€œYour dad would want you to grow up with me,” Sierra said firmly, and she knew that was true, for all that Adam had betrayed her.
    â€œAunt Allie says my cousins would like me,” Liam confided.
    Liam’s “cousins” were actually half sisters, but Sierra wasn’t ready to spring that on him, and she hoped Allie wouldn’t do it, either. Although Adam had told Sierra he was divorced when they met, and she’d fallen immediately and helplessly in love with him, she’d learned six months later, when she was carrying his child, that he was still living with his wife when he wasn’t on the road. It had been Allie, earnest, meddling Allie, who traveled to San Miguel, found Sierra and told her the truth.
    Sierra