by Eve Gaddy
“Yeah. Her old man came over and tried to get her to help him with a lighting project. Tomorrow.” Stubborn woman that she was, Honey wouldn’t admit what was plain to see. Her father was a user. Maybe if he were sober he’d be a nice guy, but right now he seemed like a self-involved jerk.
But he was her father, and she obviously loved him. Otherwise why would she put up with his shit?
“He realizes she’s still got a broken arm, right?”
“He does now.” Sean still had trouble believing her dad had really been so oblivious to his daughter’s injuries. It was as if he hadn’t even looked at her.
Wyatt signaled again and got ignored again. “I think we were better off waiting for the waitress.”
Sean didn’t care. He wasn’t in a hurry to get back to Honey at this point. She was nursing her anger… And so was he, he realized.
“I thought you two weren’t serious. Isn’t that what you told me? Arguing about family is pretty serious in my book.”
The bartender, a new one, finally came to take their order.
Once he left, Sean said, “It’s not serious.” Temporary affair. “Just because I can see that she’s letting her father destroy her life and called her on it doesn’t mean we’re serious.”
Wyatt looked at him closely. “I’ll be damned. You’ve fallen for her.”
Sean made himself laugh. “No, I haven’t. It’s a fling, nothing more.” Keep telling yourself that, Sean. Maybe you can convince yourself if you say it enough. Honey is sure as shit convinced of it.
He glanced at the table again. “Both women are staring at us. Probably wondering what the hell we’re doing.”
“Here’s our drinks. Let’s get back to them. I’m not having an argument with my girl.”
“Lucky bastard,” Sean muttered, and followed him.
*
Since Honey’s ankle was still a bit gimpy, they’d taken his truck instead of walking as they normally did. Though they still didn’t talk much on the way home, Sean thought Honey had cooled off at least a little. And he’d taken a good hard look at his own reaction and had to own he hadn’t handled the situation as well as he could have. When they reached her door, she opened it and stood there with her hand on the doorknob, looking at him with a lift of her eyebrow.
Shit. “Can we talk about this?”
Honey stared at him, then knocked her hand against her ear. “Repeat that. I thought I just heard you say you wanted to talk.”
“Very funny. Can I come in?”
She opened the door and walked inside, leaving him to follow. She sat on the couch and stared at him with a puzzled expression. “You’re a guy. Guys never want to talk.”
“Sometimes it’s unavoidable.” Sean hated to swallow his pride and admit he was wrong, but now that he’d cooled off, he had to acknowledge she had a right to be pissed. “I’m not your adversary. I’m on your side. But I screwed up. I have no right to interfere in your relationship with your father.”
“No, you don’t.”
“But when someone hurts a person I care about, I want to defend them. And you can’t deny your father’s attitude hurts you.”
“He does it all the time. It’s nothing new.” She put her hand on his arm. “I appreciate you wanting to help, but you shouldn’t worry about me. I’m handling it.”
He bit his tongue so he wouldn’t voice his thoughts. What he wanted to say to her but he couldn’t. She would have to find her own way out of, what seemed to him, a toxic relationship with her father. Whether she would, he didn’t know. If her own brothers hadn’t been able to convince her to cut her father loose, what made him think he could?
Looking at the situation realistically, he thought the chances of that were between slim and none.
“I don’t want to fight with you, Sean.”
“I don’t want to fight either.”
She moved closer to him, slipping her arm around his neck. Whispered a sexy suggestion in his ear.
He could either continue to discuss something she clearly didn’t want to talk about or they could have sex.
Sex won, easily. He stood and picked her up, carrying her to the bedroom. Setting her down beside the bed, he unzipped her dress, then turned her to face him and helped her push it down to pool around her red and white cowboy boots.
She wore a low-cut, sexy, push-up bra and matching tiny red panties. “Something wrong?” she asked him.
“No. I’m just admiring beauty.”
She propped a booted foot on the bed. “Would you like to help me take these off?” she asked huskily.
“We could,” he said. “Then again . . .”
“Do you have a thing for boots, Sean?”
He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Not until recently.”
She laughed as they fell backward on the bed.
*
Honey woke early. Sean was still asleep, which was a bit unusual. But he wasn’t working that day, and they hadn’t slept a lot the night before. Try as she might, she couldn’t go back to sleep. Her thoughts kept returning to the night before. Sean had told her he cared about her. And she cared about him. Far more than she should. Care about him? You know you’re in love with him. But there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
Buster would see to that.
“Why the frown?” Sean asked.
“You’re awake.”
He smiled and put his arm around her. “I think I am. Are you?”
“I’ve been awake for a while now. Thinking about last night.”
“Which part?”
“The part where my father showed up and pulled his usual crap.”
“The part that came later, well, much later, was a lot more fun.”
“I’m serious, Sean.”
“I can see that you are.” He got up and went into the bathroom. Honey pulled on a T-shirt and sweats and sat down to wait.
When he came out, she tossed him his boxers.
“You want me to get dressed?”
“Yes.” She tossed his shirt and jeans to him. “You’re too distracting otherwise.”
He grinned at that. “Can we have coffee?”
“Good idea. I’ll go make it.”
Honey had cleaned her apartment the last time Sean was on call. It still looked strange to her, but she decided she liked it. All the purse-making supplies were neatly piled on the dining room table or on the chairs that went with it. Her sewing machine sat on the table, with the new partially made tote beside it, and the costume jewelry on the table. She’d had a hard time using the machine until a week or so ago, but she’d gotten pretty adept with it since then. Except her hand still hurt if she used it for too long at a time.
Once they had their coffee and sat on the couch, she didn’t really know how to begin. She took a breath and launched into it. “I know you don’t understand why I can’t just cut my father out of my life—”
“I understand that. He’s your dad and you love him. What I don’t understand is how you can put yourself out there for him to sh—take advantage of you.”
“For him to shit on, you mean.” He started to protest, but she held up a hand. “No, that’s okay. That’s what he does. It’s why I’m gone so much. If I’m here, I feel guilty if I don’t help him.”
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t go on these binges unless one of his kids is here to bail him out. Unless I’m here to bail him out.”
“That’s the only time he drinks?” he asked skeptically.
“No. But I think it’s the only time he gets really bad and blows off jobs. Or he would blow them off if I didn’t cover for him.”
“You think, but you don’t know.”
“No, I don’t. ‘Has my dad blown off a job for you?’ is not the sort of thing I want to go around asking people. Besides, I’d have to ask everyone in town because I have no idea what jobs he’s taken on.”
“You’re not responsible for your father or his jobs. And you’re sure as hell n
ot responsible for his drinking.”
“But I am. At least for the drinking.” She wished she could pace. “Every time I’m here, he goes on a binge. If I was around all the time he’d never be sober.”
Sean frowned. “So your solution is to stay away?”
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“You could say no.”
She’d thought about it. So many times. She’d tried, but the only times she’d ever actually done it had ended badly. Except this last time. She honestly didn’t know what had happened that time. “It’s not that easy.”
“I’m not saying it is. But your brothers have done it.”
“Yes, I know. And they try to get me to stop every time they see me. But they don’t have the same relationship or the same… memories as I do.”
“What memories, Honey?”
God, did she want to dredge up all that? The memories, the sorrow. Grief and pain. Maybe if she could make Sean understand it, then it might become clearer to her as well. She got up and refilled their coffee cups, giving herself time to decide how to tell him the story.
“My mother died when I was fifteen. My brothers are older than me. They had both left home and were attending Community College in Billings. They wanted to be builders. They’d had it planned for years, what courses they’d take, what jobs they’d look for. They decided to start their business in Billings for a lot of reasons. For one thing, there was more building going on at the time. So they weren’t around much.
“After my mother died it was just me and my dad. I called him Buster. Still do, because he was more like a friend than a dad.” She closed her eyes, seeing her father as he used to be. Before he lost himself in the bottle and the self-pity. “He wasn’t like he is now. Back then he was there for me. Every sporting event, every rodeo, every school function that I was involved with, he was there too.” She fell silent, not wanting to get to the current reality.
“What happened then, Honey?”
“I grew up. I still lived at home, but I ran barrels, seriously, so I was gone a lot. He started making excuses for why he couldn’t come to the events. I didn’t think that much about it. At first. Then he started pulling the crap about needing help whenever I was around. He drank more often, got drunk more often. He and Mick and Kevin had it out. They got him into rehab, more than once. One of those times was when Dylan and I were dating. He stayed sober for a couple of months, but it didn’t last.”
She clenched her fists on her knees. Drank some of her coffee, now lukewarm. Sean didn’t say anything, but he covered one of her hands with his. Comforting. He was good at that. Which didn’t surprise her. After all, he was a doctor and a horse whisperer, two professions that required compassion.
“Every time I tried to say no, I’d remember how he was there for me after my mother died. You know from personal experience how hard it is to lose your mother. When you’re a teenage girl it can blow your whole world apart.”
“I remember. Glenna was still young when our mother died, nowhere near a teenager, but I know how hard it was for her.”
“It was awful,” she said flatly. “I’m not sure I’d have made it through without my dad to turn to. But I did, and when he felt I didn’t need him anymore, he started drinking more and more. After his third stint in rehab, Kevin and Mick said they wouldn’t enable him anymore. But it wasn’t the same for me. I couldn’t say no, but if I left town, then he couldn’t ask me. Couldn’t guilt trip me.”
“Did he guilt trip you? Or did you do it to yourself?”
“I don’t know. Both, probably.”
“What do you want to happen? What’s your goal?”
“My goal with my father?” She hadn’t thought about it in quite that way. “I want him to quit drinking.”
“Do you think cleaning up his messes will help him quit?”
Honey didn’t answer. The obvious answer was no. But she couldn’t just abandon him. Not after what he’d done, what he’d been for her.
“Someone told me a long time ago that you can’t change other people,” Sean said. “You can only change your reaction to them.”
“That sounds like something a shrink would say.”
He smiled. “Close. She was a psychologist I dated for a while. But she was right. You can’t change your dad, Honey. He has to want to change. You can’t do it for him.”
“I know that in my head. But when push comes to shove, I can’t turn him down.”
“God knows, I’m no shrink, but until you believe that your life—your wants and needs and desires—are every bit as important as his, then nothing will change. Least of all your father.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sean needed to take his own advice. Honey wouldn’t cut her father loose until she was ready, if she ever was. He couldn’t make her change, but maybe if he offered her another alternative, she’d decide she wanted it enough to try. Wanted him enough to try.
And if she doesn’t? What will you do then? God, you really are a masochist. You’re going to put yourself out there for another woman to kick you in the balls?
Honey wouldn’t do that. Or at least, she wouldn’t pull a Theresa. She wouldn’t cheat on him, lie to him or string him along. But while Theresa had bruised his ego and made him feel like a fool for trusting her in the first place, she hadn’t broken his heart.
But Honey could.
That afternoon Honey came by the ER while he was working. He had just finished up with a patient when a nurse told him she was waiting for him. “Is everything okay?” he asked when he saw her.
“Everything is great,” she said.
“Let’s go to the doctor’s lounge. We can talk there.” Once inside, he said, “What’s up? You look excited.”
“I had an appointment with Wyatt and the physical therapist. Wyatt says I’m healing remarkably well. Remarkably well,” she repeated smugly.
“That’s great, Honey.”
“I know! He even said if I continue like this I might be healed closer to eight weeks than twelve.” She sighed, then added, “Of course, even at eight weeks, I’ll be too late for the NFR finals, not that it really matters. I’d have had to make them before I got hurt. But Martha has a good shot, at least. If she makes it, I’ll definitely go to help her.”
“Will it bother you to go but not be able to ride?”
She shrugged. “A little. But there’s no guarantee I’d have made the finals anyway. Martha’s one of my best friends. I’m one hundred percent behind her.”
“You said you’d been to the physical therapist. How did that go today?”
“Me being obsessive about doing the exercises is paying off. She said my range of motion is improving rapidly.”
“Good news all around.”
“And there’s one other thing.” She walked across the room.
He knew he was supposed to watch her walk, but he got distracted.
“Look, hardly any limp.” She turned around in time to catch his expression. Her eyes narrowed. “Watch my walk, Sean, not my ass.”
“I can watch both,” he said.
“You are such a guy.”
“Guilty.”
She walked back to him and slid her arms around his neck. “I like that about you,” she said, then kissed him.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let’s go to the Graff for dinner to celebrate all your good news.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“I’ll make reservations. Have fun with Halo today.”
“I will. I’m going out to the Triple T right now.”
Be careful, he thought. But he didn’t say it since it made him feel like a mother hen.
*
Honey had found another little-worn dress in her closet. This one was a simple black flirty cocktail dress with a low-cut neckline. Not obscenely low-cut, but tastefully sexy. She looked longingly at her strappy, sexy sandals, but she didn’t think her ankle was quite up to that yet. Instead she chose her fanciest pair of cowboy bo
ots, black leather studded with rhinestones.
Honey decided she should wear skirts and dresses more often while she wasn’t running barrels. Once she started again, her legs would be as banged up as ever.
After she saw Sean that afternoon, she’d had a nice, long ride on Halo. It was going to be a long time before she took riding for granted again. Even more than running barrels, she’d missed a simple ride with her horse.
Guiltily aware that she hadn’t missed competition nearly as much as she’d thought she would, she wondered what it would be like to only enter the ones she really wanted to go to. But that was a pipe dream, so she did her best to put it out of her mind.
Honey was excited about going out to dinner—especially to the fanciest place in town. The Graff Hotel had a story behind it. It had been abandoned and boarded up for years, a relic of bygone days. Then Troy Sheenan had restored it in a massive two-and-a-half year project. Today the Graff Hotel was a beautiful, gleaming reproduction of its past glory. Honey hadn’t ever eaten there, since it was way too expensive for her budget. In fact, she hadn’t been in it since it had been restored.
When they entered the luxurious lobby, she gawked, feeling a bit like the country mouse, though she tried to hide it. With high ceilings, gleaming marble floors with thick rugs spread under artfully arranged groupings of furniture, and a stunning chandelier hanging from the dark wood rafters, it was gorgeous.
They entered the dining room, which, while slightly less imposing, spoke of old money, just as the lobby had. Dark wood furniture, honey-colored ceiling beams, gleaming crystal chandeliers, tables adorned with pristine white tablecloths, candles and vases of flowers gave the Graff dining room a sumptuous and expensive feeling.
“I hear the chef is excellent,” Sean said once they were seated. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving. Riding usually gives me an appetite.” She looked around at the fancy surroundings and the equally upscale clientele, then leaned forward and said softly, “I feel like I should whisper.”
Sean laughed. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”