Bringing Home the Bachelor

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Billy grabbed the check off the printer and headed down the stairs, praying the whole time that he’d been fast enough.

  He hadn’t.

  Seventeen

  Ashley was standing where he’d left her. And there, on the other side of the room, were Jenny and Seth. Seth was sitting in a chair, his backpack at his feet. Jenny stood in front of him, her feet spread and arms crossed over that top that looked so good on her. The look on her face made it perfectly clear that she recognized Ashley for what she was—a threat. The two women were staring at each other with undisguised distrust.

  “Here.” Billy held the check out to Ashley. Before turning to take it, she raised an eyebrow at Jenny.

  He could tell by the small smile on her face that whatever honesty he’d gotten out of her a few minutes ago was gone. All the hard edges were back. “I see your taste in women hasn’t changed.”

  Then she stepped toward him and stood on her tiptoes, as if she was going to kiss him goodbye.

  “Don’t touch me,” he demanded, stepping away from her. “You got what you came for. Now go. That’s the deal.”

  “Indeed.” She made a show of inspecting the check. “Goodbye, Billy.”

  He didn’t answer her, and after an awkward second, she forced a wide smile and walked out of the shop, head held high.

  No one in the room moved. Jenny’s glare followed Ashley all the way out, then swung around and settled on Billy. Seth’s gaze darted between the two of them. Even Lance cowered.

  Jenny broke the silence. “Get your bag,” she said to Seth. “We’re leaving.”

  The kid opened his mouth to say something, but apparently thought better of it. He grabbed his backpack and stood.

  “Wait a minute.” Billy must have shouted it, because everyone—everyone but Jenny—shrank back. “Lance, you and Seth—outside. Now.”

  “We’re leaving,” Jenny repeated with more force. She didn’t back down.

  “The hell you are.” He wasn’t playing this battle. He told Lance, “Get,” over his shoulder as he advanced on Jenny.

  He was ready for Jenny to do something—bolt, take a swing at him—but he wasn’t ready for what happened next. Seth stepped in between them.

  “Don’t you hurt my mom,” he growled, sounding impressively dangerous for a kid who probably weighed a hundred pounds sopping wet. He dropped his bag and balled his hands into fists. “I’m warning you, Billy.”

  Behind him, Lance squeaked.

  “I just want to talk to you,” Billy said to Jenny over Seth’s head. Then he added, “If you think I’d hurt your mom, kid, then you don’t know me very well, do you?”

  Seth wavered. Billy could see him turning it over. Then he said, “Fine—but you watch yourself.”

  Hell, at the rate he was going, Billy half expected the boy to threaten to feed him to the coyotes.

  Jenny made a noise of displeasure as Seth hefted his bag and headed out with Lance, who looked relieved to be off the hook. Jenny made a move to follow them, but Billy stood in her way. “Wait, babe.”

  “Don’t you babe me.”

  “At least let me explain.” Although he wasn’t sure how explaining anything would actually help.

  “Explain what? I recognized her—she was the one who didn’t win you at the auction. Did she come back to make you a better offer?” At this last bit, her voice broke. But the vulnerability didn’t last. The fierceness was back in a heartbeat.

  There wasn’t a good way to say this. Unfortunately, she took his silence all wrong and tried to shove him away from the door.

  Of course, she didn’t make a lot of headway. He grabbed her hands and put them over his heart. Over the rose. “No, dammit, listen. That was Ashley.”

  “Oh, she has a name. How nice. I’m very happy for you.”

  “She was my high school girlfriend.”

  Suddenly, Jenny got very still. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. “The one…”

  “Yeah.” He knew it was a risk—she could still deck him—but he reached out and caressed her cheek. “She walked into the shop—” he glanced over the desk “—half an hour ago.”

  “What did she want?” This was quieter. Less angry.

  “Money.”

  “For what?”

  “Don’t know. Said she needed it, or she’d sell her story to the tabloids.”

  Jenny’s eyes shut, but that didn’t mask the look of sorrow on her face. “How much did you give her?”

  He had the overwhelming urge to pull Jenny deep into his arms and kiss her hard enough that she forgot all about old girlfriends and lost babies and everything he couldn’t change about who he was.

  But it wasn’t going to happen.

  “How much?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars.”

  It was a hard thing to watch. Jenny curled into her self. It was harder to feel the weight of her hand push against his rose tattoo as she backed away from him. But the hardest part? Watching the tears slip past her closed eyes and cut a trail down her pale cheeks.

  “Every day,” she said, her voice quiet and shaky, “I get up and face my mistakes, Billy. I sit across from them at the table and drive them to school and nag them about homework and laundry. And every single day, I make peace with who I am, the choices I’ve made, what I’ve done.”

  When she opened her eyes, Billy knew he was screwed. He felt it deep in his gut—he’d messed up. He wasn’t sure what had her so upset—she didn’t want him in the tabloids, did she? But even the ink on his skin ached.

  “I know I’ve made mistakes. I know that,” he said.

  Her smile was weak—not a thing of happiness, but a thing of pain. It hurt like hell to see it.

  “Knowing what your mistakes are and taking responsibility for them are two different things.” Her voice caught. “I can’t be with a man who won’t face his mistakes, Billy. I can’t be with someone who’s ashamed of who he is, of what he’s done. I can’t be with someone who thinks he can throw money at a problem and it’ll magically make everything all better, because it won’t. It won’t change who you are or what you’ve done.” Then she leveled the final blow, the one that went straight through him. “And I won’t let my son be around someone like that, either. He has to come first. It was a mistake—my mistake—to forget that.”

  That was it. No “Goodbye, Billy,” no “call me when you grow up.” She wiped the tears from her face, stepped around him and walked out the door.

  Just like that, she was gone.

  Without shouting, without a fight, he’d lost Jenny. He’d signed the check himself.

  And just like that, he was lost.

  *

  Seth hadn’t said anything other than the heartbreaking, “Did he hurt you, Mom?” when Jenny had walked out of Crazy Horse Choppers crying.

  “No, sweetie,” she’d said. Not physically, anyway.

  She thought she’d been heartbroken when Ricky had abandoned her when she was seven months pregnant. But then, she thought she’d been in love with him, too. And what the heck had a fifteen-year-old girl known about love? Nothing.

  Now, though, she knew.

  She knew exactly what she was walking away from, exactly how big the hole in her heart was going to be.

  She walked anyway.

  How could she have let it get that far? How could she have thrown caution to the wind and followed another bad boy—another boy who wouldn’t take responsibility—off the edge of sanity? God, she’d wanted Billy to be different. She’d wanted to believe that underneath his bad-boy exterior, he was a good, decent, honorable man. A man she could be with. A man who would be a good example for her son.

  Not someone who paid off old girlfriends. Not someone who put his public image above everything else. Not someone who used money like a bandage. No matter how hard she’d fallen for him, she had to put her son first. And she would not teach him that it paid to treat people as commodities, their loyalties to be bought and sold.

  I
n the days that followed, Jenny was possessed with an almost manic energy. She cleaned her classroom from top to bottom. She did her laundry, her mom’s laundry and even some of her neighbors’ laundry. She scrubbed the floors in her house. She even considered painting the living room.

  When that wasn’t enough to keep her mind off the way Billy had looked—hollow—she hit the road. She visited every single girl who’d ever come to a TAPS meeting and a few who hadn’t. She had all this great funding now, after all. Time to rededicate herself to the group. Those girls needed her.

  Josey called, but Jenny didn’t feel like talking on the phone Billy had bought her, so she let it go to voice mail. Eventually, the battery died and Jenny stopped charging it. She put the phone in a drawer.

  Seth would go to college in four years. Until that time, she needed to focus on being a parent—to him, to the TAPS girls, to her students. That’s who she was. That’s what she did.

  Four years.

  That’s at least how long it would take her to get over Billy.

  *

  In the weeks since his life had spun out of control, Billy had done nothing but think about Jenny. Didn’t matter what he was doing—explaining to his family why he’d cut a check that big to a woman no one else remembered, drinking in a bar or getting speeding tickets for driving nowhere way too fast—Jenny was with him. Her tear-streaked face haunted him, awake or asleep.

  The fallout could have been worse, he guessed. His father had cussed him out and demanded he pay the company back. Because Ben had his money so locked up, Billy had been forced to ask Bobby to sell off a few bikes from his private collection to make up the difference. To the twerp’s credit, he’d not only done it, but he’d done it without a camera crew present.

  Worse, though, was that Ben had told Josey. Billy was sure that Jenny had told her cousin that she and Billy were done, but he didn’t know if Jenny had told Josey everything. Either way, Josey knew and wasn’t exactly looking at Billy anymore. It was as if he didn’t exist.

  Billy couldn’t go home. The whole place made him think of Jenny and how much he’d wanted her to be there with him. He couldn’t go to Ben’s and have Josey not look at him. Bobby was in New York taking meetings, and Billy wasn’t about to go to Dad’s place. And, as much as he wanted to get drunker than he’d ever been before, he didn’t. That’s not who he was anymore.

  So he worked. Building bikes was the only thing that had saved him before. It was his only hope now. Fourteen-hour days became sixteen-hour days became eighteen-hour days. Cass brought him in food or someone ordered a pizza. He slept in his office, when he slept at all. He got a ton of work done, but he didn’t feel any better. Maybe he never would.

  Maybe that’s what he deserved. Part of him thought that she was wrong—Ashley had deserved something after what he’d put her through. And he needed Ashley to keep quiet or it might affect business. But that part, however logical it was, was buried by the realization that Jenny was right. He’d tried to work around a problem by paying Ashley off when the only way to eliminate the problem was to face up to it. The only way to be a better man, the man he wanted to be, was to finally accept the mistakes he’d made. And so what if he’d gotten some bad press and lost a little business? He already had more money than he knew what to do with. It’s not like he’d be penniless.

  Damn it all.

  The days ran together. He was sure weekends happened, but he didn’t know when. Someone was always in the shop with him—Ben, Jack Roy, even Bobby rolled in his crotch rocket and tuned it up. Billy got the feeling they were babysitting him, but didn’t care. He just needed to not think about her.

  Which meant she was all he thought about.

  He didn’t know what day it was, didn’t care. He’d screwed up the cut on a tailpipe and, instead of cussing like he used to, he realized he was staring at it, dumbfounded. Maybe I should take a break, he realized. But he didn’t want to. It was entirely possible he was afraid to, except he wasn’t afraid of anything.

  Then someone tapped him on the shoulder. Actually, it was more of a punch. Billy turned, expecting to see Cass with food she was going to insist he eat. But it wasn’t Cass.

  Seth stood before him, looking as mad as he’d ever looked. “Take off your mask,” he demanded so loudly that Billy heard him through the earplugs.

  “Seth? What are you doing here? How did you get here?” Billy pulled out the plugs and took off his welding mask. “Tell me you didn’t steal—”

  But that was as far as he got. Seth reared back and punched him with everything he had. It wasn’t enough to break Billy’s jaw, but it hurt.

  The shop came to a screeching halt. Half the guys made a move to grab the kid, but with one look, Billy called them off.

  Ben came flying down the stairs. Cass must have called him when Seth rolled in. She now stood in the shop, looking more worried than he’d ever seen her. To make matters worse, his dad had come out of his office and was watching the whole thing from the top of the stairs.

  “She said you didn’t hurt her, but she lied,” Seth spat out, his fists still balled up. “You made her happier than I’d ever seen her. I didn’t even know she could be happy like that. Then you hurt her.”

  “Seth—” But he didn’t get very far.

  “And I thought you liked me. I thought I made you proud.” The kid’s voice broke and his eyes started to water. But he didn’t stop. “I thought you were so cool. I wanted to be just like you. I wanted you to be my dad.”

  “Seth—” he tried again, although he didn’t know if he wanted the kid to stop talking so he wouldn’t cry in the middle of the shop—or so that he’d stop making Billy feel like crap.

  “No!” Seth yelled. He was crying now, but he kept going. And Billy had no choice but to let him. “I’m not done. I don’t want to be anything like you. Mom was right. We were better off without my dad, and we’re better off without you.” He dug into his pocket and slammed two cell phones down onto the workbench. “If you ever hurt her again, you’ll have to answer to me.”

  Now sobbing, he turned and ran out of the shop, pushing Cass aside.

  The shop was silent. No men cursed, no tools whined. The kid hadn’t hit him that hard, but Billy had never hurt more. The new guys shuffled their feet, unsure about what was happening. But the older guys, guys like Jack Roy? Billy could see the wary look in their eyes. They were judging him. It was nothing compared to the look of contempt his own father was leveling at him, though. Even at this distance, he could see the disappointment on Dad’s face. The same look he’d had all those years ago when he left Billy to rot in a jail cell until he got his head back on straight.

  Was this what Jenny had meant—facing his mistakes? She was right. She’d always been right.

  And now was the time to start facing them.

  Billy dropped his mask and ran after the boy. Sure enough, Seth was climbing back into Jenny’s rust bucket of a car. When he saw Billy, he fired up the engine and tried to drive off.

  Except he didn’t get out of neutral. The engine revved, but the wheels didn’t turn. Billy got the driver’s side door opened before Seth got it in gear. “Get out of there,” he yelled, grabbing Seth’s arm and hauling him out.

  “No. No! You stay away from us!” He tried to jerk out of Billy’s hold, and when that didn’t work, he started kicking. Billy took his lumps, but he wasn’t about to let a hysterical kid go roaring down the highway. No one needed to die today. “You messed everything up! I hate you—hate you!”

  Billy gritted his teeth as his shins took the worst of it. The kid pounded on his chest for good measure, repeating, “I hate you,” over and over until finally he wore down into racking sobs.

  Billy did the only thing he could think of—he hugged the boy. “I am proud of you, Seth,” he said, his own voice choking up on him. “You’re a good kid, and I wanted to be your dad, too.” The funny thing was, it was the truth—even if he hadn’t realized it until now.

  Seth wa
s so worked up he couldn’t do anything but shake his head no. He didn’t believe Billy.

  “Does your mom know where you are?” Seth shook his head no again. That settled it. “I’m taking you home.”

  Eighteen

  “What are we going to do tonight?” Jenny asked the girls. She was up to twenty girls now. Only six of them were pregnant. She took this as a victory. It was the only victory she had these days.

  “No drinking, no drugs,” they chanted in unison.

  “And?” she prompted. There was comfort in the familiar, in the routine.

  “Do our homework, go to school tomorrow.”

  Cyndy didn’t say this part, but she smiled. She was still recovering from the delivery of a healthy baby girl that had gone home with a loving family only two hours away. Cyndy was due back at school next week.

  “Good job, girls. Remember—call me if you need to. Otherwise—” The sound of boots clomping down the hallway stopped her midsentence. She knew the sound of those boots.

  Her stomach plummeted. No—no. What on God’s green earth was Billy Bolton doing here? He couldn’t be here! He couldn’t walk in here like he owned the place!

  But that was as far as she got before Billy opened the door to her classroom—and shoved Seth in. Her son’s whole face was red and he had an ice pack taped to his hand.

  “Seth! What—”

  Billy cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Tell her,” he said, putting his hand on Seth’s shoulder.

  Seth didn’t say a thing.

  “What’s going on?” Jenny demanded.

  “He’s the one who screwed up. He’s the one who’s got to face the music,” Billy said, meeting her gaze.

  “Fine thing coming from you,” she muttered so quietly that only Billy and Seth could hear her.

  Billy grunted, but he kept his hand on Seth’s shoulder. “Go on, kid.”

  “I, uh…” Seth sniffed. Billy gave him a little shove without letting him go. “I took your car and went to Billy’s shop and punched him.”

  She gaped at Seth, looking from his iced hand to Billy’s face. She could see where one side was redder than the other. “You did what? You told me you were going to be helping Don outside!”