Читать книгу Always a Hero - Justine Davis - Страница 8

Kai stared at the man standing on the other side of the counter. So many impressions were tumbling through her mind that she’d almost forgotten her first one, that those eyes, Jordy’s vivid green eyes, looked far too exhausted for a man in his line of work.

Jordy’s whine—because the long, wound-up complaint had indeed been that—echoed in her head. He’s a pill counter. He counts how many packages of cold pills they put in the boxes. How lame is that? And he wouldn’t even have that job if old man Hunt didn’t owe him a favor.

She had understood Jordy’s anger about his life, agreed he had a right to be upset, having been uprooted from the only home he knew and dragged a thousand miles away, away from his school, his friends. But this had hit a hot button with her, and it had been an effort to answer quietly.

“My dad worked in a canning plant once,” she’d told him. “Dead fish all day. He hated it. But he did it. Because he had a family to take care of, because he wanted me to have a roof over my head and food on the table. It’s called responsibility, Jordy. It’s called being an adult.”

Jordy had stared at her incredulously. “You standing up for him?”

“Nobody does everything wrong.”

Those words came back to her now as she stared at the pill counter. Of all the things this man might be in life, that was one she never would have guessed at if she didn’t already know. Because despite the weariness in his eyes, he was the most intense man she’d ever seen, and in her former life she’d seen some prime examples.

And she wasn’t sure she liked that intensity being turned on her.

Sexy girl rocker….

How could she be so flattered and so irritated at him at the same time? Perhaps it was the way he’d said it, so casually, as if it were self-evident. And he couldn’t know he was hitting a nerve.

A nerve that made her say, rather sharply, “Your wife has a kid and you never knew? How did that work?”

“She … wasn’t my wife. Then.”

Kai considered this, puzzled over it, and the only answer that fit was that he’d married her after he found out about Jordy. The boy hadn’t mentioned it, only that he’d never known his father, and wished his mother had never married him. She’d assumed he’d walked out on them, which had given her even more reason not to like the man.

Seven months, he’d said.

Jordy’s mother, he’d told her, died six months ago.

Which meant Wyatt Blake married her knowing she was dying.

Or perhaps because?

This put a whole new light on things for her. Whatever else his sins were, and according to Jordy they were many, Wyatt Blake was obviously trying to do the right thing by his son. The concern that had driven him here was apparently real, and somehow knowing that made his rude, accusatory questions easier to stomach. No less annoying, but slightly less temper-provoking.

“Look, Mr. Blake,” she began, “Jordy’s having a tough time. He misses the place he knew, his friends….”

“Those friends he misses are why we’re here. He was headed down a bad road.”

“At thirteen?”

“You think there’s an age limit? You of all people should know better.”

She bristled anew, her kinder thoughts about him forgotten. “Me, of all people?”

He jerked a thumb toward the photograph. “Half the kids in that audience were probably high.”

That hit a little too close to a nerve that would never heal, and she didn’t want to talk about it, especially not to this man who seemed intent on his interrogation and entirely oblivious of her efforts to be reasonable.

“What exactly do you want, Mr. Blake? I told you your son is here and what he’s doing. If you’re afraid of him falling under my evil sway, you can order him not to come back. But I’ll tell you up front that you’ll regret it.”

His brows lowered, and he looked even more intense. And, she admitted, intimidating. But she stood her ground, even when he said in a voice that sent a chill through her, “Is that a threat?”

“That,” she said determinedly, “is a simple fact. Playing is the one thing, the only thing, Jordy likes in his life right now. You take it away from him, give him no solace for what’s been done to him, and you’ll lose him completely.”

“Done to him? I brought him here to keep him out of some serious trouble. He was hanging with some kids who were headed that way fast.”

“Fine. But he’s in no danger here. Contrary to what you think.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Exasperation crowded out the wariness his voice had roused in her. “Why shouldn’t you? Or do you approach everyone you don’t even know with the assumption they’re lying?”

For an instant she saw something that looked like surprise cross his face. Then, in a voice she found, perhaps oddly, incredibly sad, he gave her an equally sad answer. “Yes.”

Again she got that impression of utter and total exhaustion. Not so much physical, he looked too fit and leanly muscled for that, but mentally. And emotionally, if she was willing to admit he might have any emotions other than anger, which she wasn’t. She—

Her thoughts broke off as Jordy emerged from the soundproof room. The boy stopped dead when he spotted his father.

“What are you doing here?”

The words held a barely suppressed anger tinged with a hurt it took a moment for Kai to figure out. Then she realized this had been Jordy’s safe place, the one place his father hadn’t known about and therefore didn’t intrude upon. And now that was gone, and, judging by his expression, he felt he had nothing left that was his.

“Looking for you. So you can explain why you lied about studying after school.”

Jordy flushed. “I lied to keep you off my back.”

“Yet here I am. Again. Go get in the car.”

Something in his words made Kai remember Jordy’s story about the times he’d run away after they’d first come here, and how his father always seemed to find him and drag him back, no matter how hard he tried to hide where he’d gone. That had to mean he cared, didn’t it? Or did it mean Jordy was right, that his father only wanted him so he could push him around?

When Jordy had first started coming here—after the third futile effort to run away—she’d wondered, enough that she kept a close eye on the boy for any sign of abuse. Finally she’d asked him, and Jordy’s surprise, then grudging admittance that his father had never struck him, told her it was the truth.

“He put a fist through a wall once, though,” Jordy had said, as if he felt he needed to prove to her that his father was as bad as he’d been saying.

“Better than backhanding you in the face,” she’d pointed out, and Jordy had subsided. She wasn’t so far removed from her own teenage years that she didn’t remember what a pain she herself had been, and sometimes she wondered why her own father hadn’t slapped her silly a time or two.

So she empathized with Jordy, tremendously. But now that Wyatt Blake was standing here, looking at the boy who looked so much like him with such frustration, she found herself empathizing with him as well. Not because of the frustration, but because beneath it she thought she saw something else.

Fear.

Whether it was fear of failing at the job he thought he sucked at, or of what would happen to Jordy if he did fail, she didn’t know. But either way, she knew that deep down this man did care.

“My mom was so wrong,” Jordy said. “She always told me you were a hero. But you’re not and I hate you.”

His father just took it. He never even reacted, and Kai guessed he’d heard it all before. His flat “I know” tugged at something deep inside her. Moved by that unexpected emotion, and remembering what Marilyn had said earlier, she spoke as if Jordy hadn’t said any of it.

“So, were you glad to come back home?” she asked.

The man frowned as he looked at her.

“Me?” he finally asked, with such an undertone of puzzlement that she wondered if he’d spent any time at all dealing with his own feelings since he’d apparently taken Jordy on.

“You,” she said, keeping an eye on Jordy, who was still glaring at his father. “You moved from wherever you were living, too.”

“No,” his father said. “I wasn’t glad. I never wanted to come back here.”

She saw a flicker of surprise cross the boy’s face. He’d obviously never thought of this. Perhaps never thought about his father having feelings at all. But he quickly recovered, the sullen expression taking over again.

“And you never wanted me, either.”

Again his father didn’t react to the fierce declaration.

“Get in the car, Jordan,” he said. “You’ve got homework to do.”

Jordan opened his mouth, and for an instant Kai held her breath, thinking Jordy might earn that backhand with the words she could almost feel rising to his lips. But the boy conquered the urge, and after a long glare at his father he stalked toward the door. She saw Blake pull a set of keys out of his jeans pocket, aim one toward the glass door and hit the unlock button. The lights on a black SUV parked just to the right of the shop entrance flashed. He watched the boy open the door and climb into the passenger seat.

“He walks here from school, you know. He could walk home,” she said.

“Not safe,” he said, almost absently, still focused on the car.

“In Deer Creek?”

“Any where.”

He muttered it, so low she could barely hear it. And then he turned back to look at her. The key was still in his hand, and she saw his fingers move over it.

“Wishing you could lock him in it?” she asked. “Maybe until he’s eighteen?”

His head snapped around. She felt that assessing gaze once more, as if he were gauging if she’d been joking or seriously accusing.

“Thirty,” he said after a moment, apparently going with the former.

That was progress, she supposed. And she couldn’t help smiling widely at the so normal, parental answer. “Now you sound like my father.”

He seemed to pull back a little. His gaze flicked once more to the photograph of her on the wall. “He probably still wishes he had kept you locked up until you were thirty.”

So much for progress, she thought. “You get scorned by a girl in a band once, or what?”

“Can’t imagine any father wanting that life for his daughter.”

Her father had, in fact, expressed his concerns. On occasion, strongly. But he’d done it gently, out of love, not out of … whatever it was driving Wyatt Blake to snipe at her.

Which drove her to say, very, very sweetly, “Oh, no. Much better that she live a nice, normal life, maybe fall for some guy who takes what he wants then walks blithely away, not even bothering to find out if she might be pregnant.”

The hit scored, and by his expression it was a good one. Which, she supposed, told her a little more about this man; if he was a complete jerk he wouldn’t be feeling anything.

But then, if he were that jerk, he wouldn’t have bothered to take Jordy, would he? She fought back a growing curiosity about how it had all happened. Why she was feeling that at all was beyond her, after the way he’d talked to her. His concern for his son excused a lot, but to come in here, into her own place, and talk to her like that, was beyond infuriating.

“So are we done?” she asked, letting her feelings show completely this time, now that Jordy was safely out of earshot.

“No.”

Startled, she drew back slightly.

“You’re going to forbid him to come here? Take that away from him, too?”

He ignored that. “I hear there are some guys who hang out here, guys I don’t want my son around.”

“Bands practice in my sound room. A lot of guys—and girls, thank you—hang out. Would you rather have them maybe going somewhere they could find some real trouble?”

What you’ll drive Jordy to if you’re not careful, she added inwardly.

Again, he ignored her point. “These aren’t musicians of any stripe. Where this kind hangs out, there’s trouble, eventually.”

Although she admitted silently that there were a couple of customers she could do without, exasperation prodded her to say, “Even the cops have to wait until somebody does something to convict them.”

Something flashed through his eyes then, something dark and grim, and her breath caught. “Thankfully I’m not a cop. I don’t have to wait.”

Still unsettled by that look, Kai changed her tactics. “There’s no one who causes trouble in my store,” she said, then added pointedly, “so I keep my nose out of their business.”

“Watch they don’t get their hands—or worse—in yours,” he said. His tone was as grim as that expression had been, and she of the usually quick comeback couldn’t think of a thing to say.

And then he was gone, turning on his heel and heading for the vehicle where his son sat waiting in a full-blown sulk.

If it wasn’t for the fact that everything she’d said about Jordy coming here was true, she almost wished he really would forbid the boy’s visits. At least then she’d be a lot more likely to never have to speak to his father again. And that was a win on her scale.