“Don’t look so stressed, bro. I was just joking. I would never take a minor to a bar.”
But then he dropped a wink in JT’s direction.
This family was definitely more complex than I ever imagined. I was suddenly looking forward to this little get-together if only to see how the tension between Harrison and Randy worked itself out.
Chapter 24
Harrison
I hadn’t wanted to come to this dinner in the first place. The only reason I agreed was because Libby insisted. Libby said that it was the best way to ease JT into the family, to let him get to know everyone. But I was still trying to find a way to forgive my mother for what she’d done all those years ago. And now Randy showed up.
No one had seen Randy or heard from him in five years. And he chose now to show up. The only thing I could figure was that he needed money.
But, again, he always needed money.
I sat across from Penelope and Randy, watching him fall all over himself to impress her. And she seemed to be eating it all up. I wanted to pull her aside and warn her about him, tell her what a fuck-up he really was. Couldn’t she see how his hands were shaking or the holes in the soles of his shoes? I don’t know where he got that suit—probably from my mother—but it clearly wasn’t his. It didn’t fit right. The sleeves were too short and the pants too long.
“Harry,” Libby said.
I glanced at her and realized it probably wasn’t the first time she’d said my name.
“Stop staring at your girlfriend and talk to mom.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
Libby snorted. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you look at a woman that way. If she’s not your girlfriend now, she will be soon.”
My eyes jumped back to Penelope, the memory of her kiss burning through my body. I’d so wanted to take her back into the bedroom the moment I laid eyes on her in that dress. It took more willpower than I ever knew I had to just kiss her and stop at that. But now I kind of wished I had taken her to the bedroom. Then we wouldn’t be here and Randy wouldn’t be falling all over her.
“Talk to mom,” Libby repeated.
I shook my head. “I’m not ready.”
“Yeah, well, if you wait too long you’ll never do it. But your son is falling in love with her, so if you want them to have a relationship that includes you, you need to do it.”
I looked over at JT where he was sitting beside my mother. His face was more animated than I think I’d ever seen it. Mother was saying something to him I couldn’t hear across the wide table, but it was obvious he was eating it all up.
Libby was right. As usual.
“I’ll talk to her,” I said. “But you need to keep Randy occupied.”
Libby’s normally easy going expression tightened. She looked over at Randy, something like anger snapping in her eyes.
“What’s he doing here, anyway?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He was here when I arrived. Mother said something about him just passing through town.”
“Yeah, passing through town to beg for money.”
“Probably. Last I heard, he was in Seattle living in an abandoned apartment building with a bunch of other addicts.”
That didn’t surprise me. Randy had spent the last twenty years in and out of drug rehab. Father fought with him for years, trying to clean him up. But his tactics only sent Randy deeper into the drugs. When Father died, Randy managed to clean himself up long enough to see what he got out of the will. But then he took what little Father left him and burned through it in less than a few months. After that, he disappeared off and on, only showing up when he had nowhere else to go. I tried, the first few times, to get him cleaned up. I put him in program after program, but he always fell off the wagon. When I gave up, Libby tried until she came home one day, nine months pregnant with her first child, and found Randy ransacking her house.
Once an addict, always an addict.
He looked okay now. He wasn’t as thin as he was the last time I saw him. He looked rested. Clean. But that could just be our mother’s generosity. It didn’t necessarily mean anything had changed. And I learned long ago not to trust Randy.
But Penelope didn’t know that.
As if on some sort of cue, she laughed.
The sound was like music. But at this moment, because I knew she was laughing at something Randy had said, it grated on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Suddenly my appetite disappeared.
I grabbed my glass of wine and walked out of the room, stepping out onto the lamay that overlooked the back garden. I was only there a moment when my mother spoke behind me.
“He’s got quite the personality. Reminds me a little of you at that age.”
I took a deep swallow of my wine, willing it to take the edge off of this night.
“I’m glad you were able to find him.”
“No thanks to you.”
She moved up beside me and lay a hand on my arm. “I know it’s difficult for you to understand why I did what I did.”
“You hid the fact that I had a child for sixteen years. You took my choices away from me.”
“I protected you from making a choice that would have sent you on a path that would not have made you happy.”
“And you think the path I ended up on was the one I wanted?”
“No. But I think it’s made you the man you are. The man who was able to locate his child and bring him home after all these years.”
“You don’t get it.” I pulled away from her, turning to confront her. “It was my life. My choice.”
“Then tell me this: if some girl came to you and told you that JT had gotten her pregnant, would you tell him? Would you allow it to alter the course of his life?”
“That’s different. JT’s fifteen.”
“It’s not different. He’s your son, just as you are mine.”
“But I was twenty years old.”
“You were still my child. And I’d do the same thing today.”
I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, to shake some sense into her. She was never going to see things from my point of view. And I was never going to see it from hers. I simply couldn’t understand how she could keep something as important as a child from me.
“I just wanted to protect you, Harrison. If your father had learned the truth, he would have cut you out of the family in a heartbeat and I never would have seen you again. I’d rather have you angry with me than to see that happen.”
“You were wrong.”
“Maybe. But it’s all worked out for the best. You have your son now, and you’ve met that charming young woman.” She smiled softly as she moved closer to me. She touched my cheek like she used to do when I was younger, stroking it lightly with the back of her fingers. “I want you to find happiness, Harrison. And I think maybe you’re on the right track now.”
I looked at her and felt like I was suddenly a teenager again, needing my mother’s love and acceptance. I don’t think men ever outgrow their desire to please their mothers. And, as angry as I was with her, I still wanted to know that she was pleased with the way I was living my life, that she approved of the person I was becoming.
“I guess we can agree to disagree,” I said softly.
She smiled. “I do love you, Harrison. You gave up so much for this family, for me and Libby. It’s your turn now.”
I kissed her forehead lightly.
“Thank you.”
Penelope and Libby were deep in conversation when my mother and I walked back into the house. Randy was nowhere to be seen, but JT was wheeling his chair slowly around the room, checking everything out as he had done when he first entered my house. I could see him scrutinizing a group of family photos that were displayed on a low table, pictures that ranged in time from my kindergarten class photo to the results of a photo shoot last year for corporate photos. I moved up behind him, amused to see he was cradling a photo of my father in his hands.
“That was taken about two years before he died.”
“This is my grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“You look like him.”
“So do you.”
JT’s eyes lit up. “I always wondered where I got some of my features. My adoptive parents…” He glanced over at Penelope as though afraid she’d hear what he was saying. “I didn’t look like them.”
I found myself studying Penelope for a moment, too, my eyes moving slowly over her mahogany hair and pale skin. No, I didn’t imagine JT’s dark looks would have fit in well with a family of redheads.
“I don’t know much about your adoptive parents,” I said in a low tone that wouldn’t carry, “but I can guess by how amazing you and Penelope are, they must have been very good people.”
JT nodded. “They were.”
“You know, it’s okay for you to talk about them around me. It doesn’t bother me.”
JT’s eyes fell to the picture he was still holding. “I just…they were always my parents. But now there’s you and I don’t even know how to think of you.”
“I’m just Harrison. I’m just a guy who wants to be a part of your life.” I knelt beside the chair so we were on eye level. “The people who raised you are your parents. Nothing will change that.”
“I always felt guilty, wondering where I came from. It felt disloyal.”
“It’s not disloyal. It’s natural.” I touched the edge of the picture frame. “I looked like him. I talked like him. We even had some of the same interests. But we fought almost constantly because we both wanted something different out of life. So I often found myself wondering how I could possibly be related to such a narrow minded, angry man.”
JT chuckled softly.
“I think everyone feels like an alien in their own family sometimes. It’s normal.”
JT lifted the picture and set back on the table. “Can ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Can we stop for ice cream on the way back to your house?”
I laughed as I stood. “Of course.”
Randy reappeared just as we were getting ready to go.
“Nice to meet you, kid,” he said, offering JT a fist bump. “I’ll be looking forward to that night out.”
JT laughed. “Me too.”
“And you, beautiful lady.” He bowed low in front of Penelope, making her blush. “It was an honor to meet you. Hopefully we can get together again very soon.”
“You never know,” she said with a smile that cut through my chest like a sharp knife.
The ride home was quiet. JT was exhausted, the pain medication he was still taking sapping his energy. Penelope stared out the window, watching the scenery as it flashed by.
“Is there an art store in town?” she asked suddenly.
“I’m sure there is. There are a lot of artists around here.”
“Maybe I’ll look for one tomorrow after Libby and I go to lunch.”
“You’re going out with Libby?”
“Yeah. She offered to take the afternoon off tomorrow to show me around town.”
“Nice of her to ask the boss.”
“I thought she was the boss.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but then I caught sight of her teasing grin. She really was in a good mood tonight. I suppose flirting with a good looking guy all night could do that for a woman.
“The rehab center called and said we could fly up and do the paperwork whenever we want. Maybe I’ll take JT up there for the day.”
“Then I guess we all have plans.”
“I guess so.”
I pulled into the parking lot of a small convenience store and glanced back into the backseat. JT was sound asleep, his head resting against the window.
“He wanted ice cream.”
Penelope looked back at him, a touch of sadness coming into her eyes.
“He seems so innocent when he sleeps.”
“He is innocent. He just doesn’t want anyone to know that.”
She reached back and touched JT’s arm lightly. He didn’t even move.
“Do you want to come in with me? Help me pick something out for him?”
She nodded, turning to climb out of the car before I even had a chance to get my seat belt off. We walked into the store side by side, both of us overdressed for the store’s normal clientele. There was a guy in torn jeans buying cigarettes at the front counter who whistled under his breath as she walked by. Penelope blushed, ducking into one of the aisles to avoid having to make eye contact with him.
“You should be used to that sort of thing,” I said, moving up close enough behind her to kiss the back of her neck. “I bet it happens a lot.”
“Not recently.”
“Then you’ve been going to all the wrong places.”
She turned suddenly, her nose just a breath from my chest. But I didn’t move back. I liked being this close to her, liked to be enveloped in her smell. She pressed a hand to my chest, a little unsteady on her feet. But when she looked up at me, she didn’t seem unhappy about our proximity.
“How do you know he wasn’t whistling at you?”
That caught me off guard. I almost stammered when I asked, “Would you be jealous?”
“Are you jealous?”
“Should I be?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. It depends on whether you think you have any claim over me.”
“I’m not the jealous type.”
And that was clearly not the right thing to say. She ducked around me and walked off, headed toward the back of the store. I rushed after her, sliding a hand around her waist when I caught up.
“Where are you going?”
“JT likes rocky road,” she said, her voice low and controlled.
I didn’t know what she was talking about at first. But then she opened the freezer door and pulled out a quart of ice cream and shoved it into my hand.
“I’m going to wait outside.”
I didn’t see Penelope after we got back to the house. She went inside without waiting to help with JT. And she wasn’t up when we were ready to leave the next morning.
I went over the conversation we had in the convenience store again and again, trying to figure out what it was I should have said. I thought we were teasing each other. I thought it was funny, what I’d said. But apparently she took it a little more seriously. After everything that had happened these last few weeks, after everything we’d gone through, I thought it was refreshing that we could finally joke with each other. But maybe it was too much, too soon.
“How did you meet her?”
I looked up, so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t realize JT had been talking to me until just that second.
“Meet who?”
“My biological mother.”
“Julia.” I dragged my fingers through my hair, glancing out the window of the jet to watch the clouds rush by. “We met in New York.”
“When? Why were you there?”
I looked over at JT, at Julia’s eyes staring at me from a face that was so much like my own. I’d only recently begun to wonder what it would be like to have a child of my own, of what that child might look like. The company was running smoothly these days, requiring less and less of the attention it once needed, so I had more and more time on my hands. And it just seemed time for me to settle down, think about a family of my own. I was tired of watching my friends and colleagues—my sister—settled down to their own families while I remained the bachelor, the odd one out at dinner parties and get-togethers. I had just begun to think that I might like to get married and have a few children when I ran into Julia and learned about JT. To look at him was still so surreal.
“I was in college,” I said slowly, the memory so distant it almost felt like another person’s life all of a sudden. “It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. A group of friends thought it would be fun to spend our free time in New York, and I was up for anything t
hat meant I wouldn’t have to come home and work in my father’s furniture factory.
“New York was an adventure. We spent the first couple of weeks just walking the streets like a bunch of idiots. And then we wandered into this deli one night while we were senselessly drunk. She was our waitress.”
“And it was love at first sight, right?”
I smiled. “It was definitely lust at first sight. I think love came a few weeks later when she came to stay with us at the little fleabag hotel where we were holed up.”
JT smiled even as this faraway look came into his eyes. “Then you loved her?”
“Very much.” I leaned forward a little, resting my elbows on my knees. “Julia was smart and beautiful and everything a stupid nineteen year old kid could want in a mate. We were together constantly—annoying the shit out of my friends. I didn’t want to go home. I tried to convince her to come to California with us, but she was set to start at NYU that fall and her parents weren’t about to let her lose that opportunity.”
“So you just left her.”
“I left her. But she promised to call daily.”
“Did she?”
KIRKLAND: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) Page 93