by Juanita Kees
He dropped his hands from her face and curled his fingers around hers. “Come into the office and we’ll deal with it.” He tugged her inside.
“I’m not sure you can help. I’m out of time and I’ve asked so much of you already.” He stayed close, his hands on hers, the cell phone a brick between them, a reminder of what she had yet to face.
“Tell me what’s going on. The least I can do is help you come up with a plan.”
“My father doesn’t care about any plans. The only thing he cares about is image and reputation and making sure everyone obeys his iron will.”
“What did he say to you?”
Charlie drew in a deep breath and let it out on a steady sigh. “He’s given me a week to change my mind on the adoption.”
“And then?”
“He’s coming for us. With my phone turned on, he’ll have had Ed pinpoint my location.”
“Then we need a plan.”
“He has enough cause to fight this. Enough people power on his side to follow through with his threat to have me declared an unfit parent. Damn it, Chase, he won’t care that I’ve changed or that I’m trying to make a new start on my own.” She hated the bitter taste on her tongue. She had to find a way around this fast. “I can’t be what he wants me to be. The perfect daughter, the trophy on his shelf.”
“You’re so much more than that, Charlie.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in for a hug.
Charlie let herself relax against him, absorb the heat and solid strength, her arms slipping around his waist to hug him back. She wanted to let him take control, fix this, make the problem go away. But if she did, she’d just be letting another man control her bid for independence.
“He won’t give up. My father doesn’t like to lose. But I can’t let him take my baby. She’s mine. Zoe is what made me take a good long, hard look at the path I was on. Without her, I know I’ll be right back there again, spiraling into self-destruction.”
“We’ll fight it together, honey. You’ll have the Calhoun clan right behind you.”
“He’ll use your support for me against you. It will touch everything your family has worked so hard to achieve. There is nothing he will stop at to get what he wants, and that could destroy your reputation and your business.” She pressed her face into his shirt, inhaled the spicy scent of man, cologne and reality. “I can’t let him destroy you too. It’ll be better if I take Zoe and move on.”
“And if you do that, you’ll leave Carter with an unfinished paint job, steal Molly’s joy …” He turned her around, so she could see out the office window where Molly’s smile was wide as she played with Zoe, happiness radiating from her as she made cheerful, cooing noises Zoe copied. Then his fingers touched her chin and drew her attention back to his face, and the blue eyes she could lose herself in. “You’re no quitter. Let me help you, Charlie. I can’t fight your battles for you, but I want you to know that you’ll have backup every step of the way.”
Confidence seeped back in to warm her. He understood she’d never be free until she stood up for herself and faced the monsters that had shaped her life. “I know my rights. He has no authority to adopt Zoe out without my permission.”
He smoothed the bangs from her forehead. “Then that’s where we’ll start. How long do we have?”
“A week.”
“Tight, but not impossible.”
“What if he comes after you and your family?”
A smile spread across his face, reaching his eyes and making the corners crinkle. “We happen to like a good fight. My father’s competed against yours before and won. It’ll give Dad something to look forward to.”
Unease skittered along her skin. “This isn’t a pissing contest, Chase. It’s my child’s future.”
Dismay stole his smile. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I don’t mean it that way at all. Dad had to fight to keep his six children, especially Trinity being a newborn. He knows loss more intimately than any of us. Knows what it’s like to lose a child. And a wife. You and Zoe have crept into our hearts, Charlotte Jackson, and we won’t want to lose either of you any time soon.”
She wanted to cling to the promise in his eyes and the hope in her heart, but the nagging voice of reason insisted on placing doubt in her mind.
*
Chase rubbed the tiredness from his eyes as the words on the screen of his laptop blurred in front of him. He looked at Charlie where she sat next to the fire, Zoe asleep in her arms.
The trip home from the garage earlier had been in silence. They’d cooked and eaten a meal without many words passing between them and while he’d searched the adoption agency rules for loopholes her father might try to wiggle through, she’d held on tight to everything she cared for in the world.
“Have you had contact with the baby’s father, Charlie? Has he given consent to adoption?”
With a sigh, she turned sad eyes to meet his. “Ricky signed an affidavit declaring he’d make no claims on Zoe. He was happy to take his two-hundred-thousand-dollar payoff and leave without a criminal charge against him.”
“Your father paid him off?” Chase disliked Tony Jackson more and more. He’d like to teach the man a lesson he’d never forget.
A sad smile twisted her lips. “Ricky was a player. The money would have been too good to refuse. He was never going to be in it for the long haul anyway. I made a mistake that night and I’m not proud of it. I was fired up by alcohol, rejection, and rebellion.”
“So, the only avenue your father has is to go the unfit parent route.” He couldn’t imagine a father doing that to his daughter. Would it matter at all that she was turning her life around? If the rumors were true, Tony Jackson’s heart was an unbreakable stone wall.
“In the months before Zoe was born, they never visited me or called. My marketing portfolio was taken away from me and I was placed on unpaid personal leave. I had a lot of time to think. They weren’t there to witness how feeling Zoe move, knowing I was growing a life inside my belly, made me change. I doubt it would have made a difference to their thinking even if they had.”
“They abandoned you.”
“No, they punished me.” A deep sigh left her throat. “But I was used to the silence. I preferred it to seeing the disappointment in their eyes that I’d failed to meet their expectations and requirements. I needed that time to find myself, see what I’d become. They did me a favor, except the outcome wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted me to become like them—ambitious, driven, cold robots not afraid to trample on anyone who got in the way of their success.”
“Why was your father so determined to have Zoe adopted out?”
“Because she would be a blemish on the family’s reputation, a constant reminder that their daughter had tainted their perfect family portrait and a lure for the media to keep regurgitating my mistakes to throw in their face with every victory my brother scored on the track.”
Chase felt each stab of her words. He couldn’t comprehend how cold and hard her family sounded. So different from his own father who had fought so hard to keep his children. A man they respected and adored. The man who would need his children now more than ever as his health declined. And they’d give him everything they could in return for never giving up on them, no matter how bad things got.
A solution to her problem simmered in his mind and took shape. The more he thought about it, the more the idea grew on him. He set aside his laptop, stood to walk across to where she sat, and knelt in front of her. In the firelight, her pale skin was smooth. Like polished marble and just as cold when he lifted a finger to stop the tear tracking down her cheek. Her eyelashes fluttered down to conceal the hurt in her eyes.
“Charlie, honey, look at me.” He cupped her face between his hands, rubbed his thumbs across her cheeks. Her eyes opened, and she looked at him, the sadness in them making a lump form in his throat. “I think I may have a solution.”
“Does it involve a good lawyer?”
He hated the desperate hope in
her question, knew he’d do anything to help her. Had known that very first day he’d met her in Molly’s store that this girl would be special, that she could be the one to make him whole. He’d lost his heart piece by piece when he hadn’t been looking for anyone to lose it to.
“It involves a minister.”
A frown formed on her brow, her eyes searching his. “A minister?”
Her emotions floundered from confusion to comprehension, flitting across her features. Her mouth formed an ‘oh’ and his stomach did a nerve-filled back flip. “Marry me, Charlie.”
“Chase …”
“It would make perfect sense. Together we have more power than you do alone. We can show them how you’ve fitted in with the community, with the family. They’ll see you have a job and a home and a family to support you. A real family. A father for Zoe and a secure future.”
“That’s a big leap, a huge commitment.” Disbelief strangled her words. “You’d do that for me? I’m a stranger. A messed up, high-risk stranger you met less than a week ago.”
“You’ve slept in my guest room, on my sofa, in my arms. You stopped being a stranger the day I brought you tea and a muffin under that tree near the dock.”
“It’s a beautiful, generous offer, Chase. But my father would see right through it for what it is. He’d know we’re faking it and all it would do is give him more ammunition to fire his gun.”
“What if we weren’t faking it? You can’t deny there is chemistry between us. We can make it work.” He let the words whisper between them, afraid that if he said them too loud, they’d shatter and break.
“And what happens when that chemistry is spent, and the fire burns out? The old Charlotte lived that way, the new one can’t afford to. I can’t let Zoe become collateral damage in a relationship born out of the wrong reasons.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his in a far too brief and fleeting kiss. “You’re a wonderful, generous, kindhearted soul with a mothering complex that makes you care too much. You’re a rare find, Chase Calhoun, and you make me very afraid.”
He held her face to his, not ready to let her go. He drew in a breath of the essence of Charlie. “You have nothing to be afraid of with me.”
“I’m afraid of falling in love with you. That if I do, I might break you. There is enough of the old Charlotte in me to do that, and it scares me.”
“I’m willing to take the risk,” he whispered against lips that still held the taste of hot cocoa and honey.
“And I won’t use you that way when you’ve done so much for us.” She pulled away, leaving nothing but cold air between them. “I have to find my own feet for this fight, but it helps knowing that I have your support. I’ve still got a lot of growing to do and part of that journey involves standing up to my father in a way that isn’t meant to antagonize him.”
Chase sat back on his haunches with a sigh. “Then we need a plan.” He pushed up to his feet and walked back to his chair, picking up his laptop again. “One that involves a doctor, a lawyer, and a few favors to be called in, and I know exactly who to call.”
She smiled at him from across the room and despite her rejection of his offer, she wasn’t unmoved by what flared between them.
Chapter Eleven
Charlie pushed down the feeling that something bad was about to happen and dragged the cover off Mason’s battered pickup. She rolled it into a ball as she assessed the damage. Very little of the bodywork had escaped unscathed, either from the accident or Mason’s attempts with the sledgehammer. She’d seen accident damage before, knew the work that went into fixing it, if it could be fixed at all. The hood had suffered most of Mason’s frustrations, the passenger side of the cab bore the imprint of a tree trunk, the roof panel was battered from the rollover and the sides of the cargo bed resembled a crushed aluminum can. Mason might have been better off buying a brand-new truck.
She grimaced at the thought that the truck bore an accurate resemblance to the tatters of her life. She wore almost as many scars as the mangled wreck in front of her. Out the corner of her eye, she saw Mason enter the garage, take one look at his pickup, and head back out the door again. Disappointment flooded her. This had been his suggestion after all. But perhaps, like her, he wasn’t quite ready to face his nemesis yet.
Marty stepped up beside her. “What do you think, Charlie girl?” He ran a hand along the battered side as if he were trying to erase the damage with a simple touch. “Do you think we can rebuild her?”
Charlie couldn’t begin to imagine what was in his thoughts as he faced the monster that had stolen his youngest son. “I’d like to try, but I’m afraid it might not be the right thing to do. Giving it new life won’t erase the bad memories for any of you.” Marty’s fingers trembled against the scarred paintwork, and Charlie wondered if it was Parkinson’s or the weight of the memories that made them unsteady.
“When does a ghoul become a ghost before it becomes a memory?” He peered into the cargo bed, lost in thought for a moment. “My boys have been haunted for long enough. They’ve been existing, not living. Mason for the last five years. Chase for too many years before that. I think I relied on him too much being the eldest. Nora wouldn’t want this for them. The sadness, the unhappy memories.”
Charlie picked up a screwdriver. Prying off the cover on the tailgate lock, she put her weight behind the tool to loosen the screws that held it in. “I think you’re right.” She removed the screws and jiggled them around in her palm, running her thumb across the thread. “Do you know, when I was up in the attic, I got this really safe, comfortable feeling. Like an embrace, a warm hug, as if she was still up there, watching over everyone. Sounds fanciful, doesn’t it?”
Marty turned to drag an empty cardboard carton closer for her to toss the parts into. “It sounds exactly like Nora. She loved to hug the children. Every day. Even though they were a boisterous bunch and always up to some kind of mischief.” He smiled softly. “She would have liked you, Charlie. She would have liked the change you’ve brought to Chase. He smiles more, talks more, walks taller.”
She wanted to say she’d noticed, but it was better his father didn’t know how much she liked to watch Chase walk, the sway of his hips and width of his shoulders, the strength in his spine and the muscles on his back. How he’d felt under her when she’d slept at his side on the cramped confines of his marshmallow sofa. How much she really wanted to say yes to his proposal.
“She would be proud of the job you’ve done raising him. You helped him grow into a responsible adult with a conscience. He’s a rare breed, Marty.” And because thinking of him made her want to seek him out, to absorb everything he encompassed, feel his arms around her again, she focused on the cold steel under her hands instead. “Pop those clips on the bed liner, would you? Once I get the tailgate off, we’ll drag it out and see what’s under it.” She picked up a punch and a mallet, hesitating as Marty continued to stare into the empty shell of the cargo bed. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“Yeah. I will be. Didn’t move it in here for nothing. Talk me through it, girl. Has Chase talked to the lawyer yet?”
She looked over at the office as Chase appeared in the doorway. “This morning. And I have an appointment with Doctor Ponti for an assessment on Thursday that will include blood, alcohol, and drug testing for her health report.”
“I think it’s ridiculous that you have to jump through hoops to prove anything to your father,” Marty grumbled.
“It’s preparation more than proof. I want to be able to field anything he throws at me.” Chase headed to the back of the garage and hesitated in the alcove at the base of the attic stairs. She nodded in his direction and aimed her question at his father. “Is Chase okay?”
Marty followed her gaze. “Ah.” He frowned. “It still catches him unawares sometimes. The memories of what happened to Nora. Catches me too. It’s why we moved out to the ranch. Took a long time and the help of friends to strip out the home we’d made upstairs and turn it in
to storage. It was the best move for all of us. What Nora would have wanted.”
Chase gripped the railing hard, squared his shoulders, and raised his head. Charlie placed the punch and mallet on the lowered tailgate of the pickup. She remembered the day the sunlight reflected off the window, how she’d felt drawn to the attic, led by an invisible tug that had drawn her up those stairs, leaving uncertainty and disquiet behind. Nora wouldn’t want Chase to be afraid either. “I’ll be right back, Marty.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Sure thing. Take all the time you need.”
She pressed a kiss to his cheek and patted his shoulder. “Thanks.” Then she made her way across the garage to Chase.
He stood with one booted foot planted on the first metal stair, his hand gripping the railing, knuckles white, gaze pinned to the top landing, mouth drawn in a tight line. She stopped next to him inside his line of vision.
“Need me to go up and get something for you?”
He shook his head, his eyes staying glued on his destination. “Last time I went up there a sandwich and a can of beans short and I came down with a girl and a baby. I hope there aren’t any more surprises up there.”
“Hmm, I see your point.” She crossed her arms and leaned on the railing. “If you’re afraid, I can go up ahead. Fight off a few rabid dust bunnies, hack a path through the metal shelving.” She slipped in under his arm to face him and trailed a finger down his shirt buttons. “Dust off the old Charger back seat. So, you can … you know …” She shrugged one shoulder and drew his gaze to hers. “Take a seat. An old man like you would get puffed out climbing those stairs.”
The hand not gripping the railing like a lifeline came around to anchor her against him. “You sure know how to distract a guy, Charlie. And does this feel like an old man’s body to you?” He hauled her closer against every defined ridge.
She ran her hands up the front of his shirt, across his shoulders, and down his arms. “A pretty fit old guy.” She pried his fingers loose from the railing. “Let me hold your hand in case you fall, Grandad,” she teased.