She made a sound as if that were a fine idea. “He also wants to do the junior bronco riding in the town festival this summer. Maybe you can work with him on that since you won it a couple of times?”
Seven times. Every year from when he was thirteen until he quit competing right after Tate was born. But this was the first Roman was hearing about his son’s interest in it.
“How’d you find out Tate wanted to ride broncos?” Roman asked.
“He emailed me and asked if I had any books about it. I had two so I dropped them off at school yesterday during his lunch period. He asked me to stay and eat with him so I did. The cafeteria food is still just as awful as it always was. I had the mystery meat with a side of limp fries,” she added, smiling.
The smile didn’t last long.
He hated that she was standing there so stiff. Formal, almost. Yes, he had messed up their friendship for twenty minutes of sex.
Great sex.
But still...
“You left me a note with a smiley face on it,” he said, and left it at that. Something to get the ball rolling on a conversation he’d been wanting to have with her.
And not wanting, too.
This could be a Pandora’s box kind of thing, but crap in a basket, he wanted to know if their time together had truly been as insignificant as a one-night stand.
Mila nodded. “I didn’t want you to think I’d just run off because I was upset. I wasn’t. Like I told you afterward, I’m glad it was you.”
She had indeed said that and then had gotten that life-planning look in her eyes. At least, Roman had thought that was what had been going on, but maybe he’d been wrong.
“No regrets,” she added with a quick smile. “I hope it’s the same for you.”
“No regrets,” he repeated. None about the actual sex, anyway. Roman wasn’t sure what he actually regretted about this, but something didn’t feel right. “What made you decide to start using the dating sites?”
She looked away before he could see what was in her eyes. Too bad. And he tried not to read anything into that. Maybe she was just uncomfortable talking about other men with him. He was certainly uncomfortable, but he wanted to know.
“You,” she answered.
All right. Roman hadn’t counted on her being quite that blunt.
“Look, I know you don’t do relationships,” she added. “You told me that right from the start. So, if I mope around, that’s only going to make you feel bad. It’ll make me feel bad, too, and I don’t like wallowing in misery.”
“Misery?” he repeated. “Are you really miserable?”
“I would be if I were just sitting around, and that’s why I’ll use the dating sites. I don’t expect to find love at first sight, but it’ll be nice if I could find someone for dinner dates, movies...that sort of thing.”
Sex would no doubt be part of that sort of thing. Which was good. Normal. And he didn’t want Mila to live like a nun. She’d already lived like that for too long, and it was obvious she enjoyed sex. Now, she would just be enjoying it with men who didn’t have three-fuck rules and a bias against relationships.
Roman would have maybe rethought that rule if it’d been the right thing for Mila. But it wasn’t. She really needed someone who had their shit together.
“Do you want me to be mad at you?” she asked.
The question threw Roman for a moment. The obvious answer was no, but she maybe should be mad at him. “I showed up at your door, practically barged my way in—”
“I’m not mad,” she interrupted. “And I’m not going to be mad at you for that night. I knew exactly what I was doing and wouldn’t have changed anything.”
He would have changed that stupid note, but he kept that to himself because it was starting to feel petty that he was hanging on to it.
She walked closer, her eyes never breaking contact with his, and she smiled another of those small smiles. Before she leaned in and brushed her mouth over his.
Man, it felt as if a mule had kicked him.
The kiss slammed through him, and Roman might have caught on to her and pulled her to his lap if she hadn’t backed away.
“There,” she said. “That proves I’m not angry.”
No, it only proved that this attraction between them had turned scalding hot. At least, it was scalding on his part.
“I did have a reason for coming here,” Mila continued a moment later.
She took a deep breath. The kind of breath a person would take if they were about to say something they didn’t want to say. He hoped like hell this wasn’t some kind of goodbye and that she never wanted to see him again.
Mila took out her phone and handed it to him. “One of the kids from school sent me that about an hour ago,” she explained.
Roman looked at the phone. Maybe this wouldn’t be a photo of Tate doing something bad.
It wasn’t.
It was a video. Not an especially clear one, but he could see the row of lockers in the school. The very ones that Tate had been accused of vandalizing. He could also see someone spraying paint on them. Not Tate, though. Roman didn’t know who it was until the sprayer started to run off.
“Chrissy,” Mila provided.
Roman stopped the video, enlarged the frame where he could best see the girl’s face. And yes, it was Chrissy, all right.
Shit.
“She probably won’t be out of school yet,” Mila explained, “but I heard from another student that she usually goes to the grocery store so her dad can drive her home.”
He got up from the desk, hoping that Mila wouldn’t try to stop him when he went to have a chat with this little witch. She didn’t.
In fact, Mila took out her keys. “Come on. I’ll drive.”
* * *
“WHO SENT YOU that video?” Roman asked as they drove toward town.
Mila figured Roman was feeling plenty of anger, just like that night with Lick. Unlike that night, he wouldn’t be able to punch Chrissy or curse at her, but he sure as heck could let the girl know that she was not going to get away with this.
“It’s from the youngest of the Busby boys, Arnie,” Mila answered. She had such a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel that her hands were starting to ache. “He didn’t want me to tell Chrissy, though, because he said she can be mean.”
The girl must have been especially “mean” to cause a Busby to say that because Arnie and his brothers were Wrangler’s Creek’s resident troublemakers.
“I figured we could show it to Waylon first,” Mila continued, “and once he calms down, we can deal with this rationally.”
She could hope, anyway.
Mercy, this was hard. And not just because she had to have a confrontation with the girl who might be her half sister, but it was hard because she was having to be with Roman and pretend that she wasn’t unraveling inside.
It was as if he’d caught on to a single thread and just kept pulling.
No way would she tell him that, though, because despite what he’d said about not having regrets, she figured he had plenty. They were still friendly, but things would never be the same between them. And it had come at a time when she truly needed a friend. She couldn’t go to Sophie because she had her hands full with the twins. Even her last-ditch sounding board, Vita, wasn’t around.
“Hell,” Roman grumbled, and he reached over from the passenger’s seat and loosened her fingers on her left hand from the steering wheel. She’d been gripping way too tight. “I didn’t think about Waylon being on your list. You don’t have to do this. I can handle it myself.”
Maybe. But since she could feel the anger coming off Roman, she didn’t want him punching Waylon if things turned ugly.
“This isn’t about me,” she assured him. “It’s about Tate. I’ll deal w
ith the list stuff later.”
Mila hoped that sounded believable so that Roman wouldn’t worry about her. She couldn’t just tuck those feelings away in a neat little box. They would always be there right at the surface until she learned the truth. She was only hoping that the truth would lead her to Billy Lee and not Chrissy’s father.
When Mila pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store, she immediately spotted someone she hadn’t expected to see.
Tate.
“What’s he doing here?” Roman mumbled as he got out.
“Arnie sent me a text, too,” Tate explained. “He got worried that Mila might not try to fix this. I knew he was wrong, though. Mila wouldn’t have just blown off something like this. She’d try to help.”
Mila wasn’t certain she could fix this, but she intended to do her best. She only wished that Arnie had held off on telling Tate because she would have preferred this initial confrontation to take place without him. Still, this situation had affected Tate more than anyone else so he deserved to be there. Roman must have felt the same way because he didn’t stop Tate when he followed them inside.
There was no sign of Chrissy, but they got the attention of the cashier and the handful of customers. Mila tried to smile, just to defuse some of the gossip, but there’d be speculation no matter what she did.
Roman went to the back of the store, to the narrow hall in between dairy and meats, and he knocked on the door to Waylon’s office. He didn’t wait for the man to invite them in, though. Roman opened the door and went inside.
Mila thought that maybe Chrissy would already be there, but she wasn’t. Waylon was alone, reading a magazine, and he scowled as he dropped it on his desk.
“I thought we said all there was to say when I visited you in San Antonio,” Waylon grumbled.
This was the first she was hearing of a visit, but Mila guessed it was about Tate leaving Arwen and maybe Chrissy alone. Unless Waylon had gone to talk to Roman about possibly being her father. But no. If Waylon had done that, Roman would have mentioned it.
“Is there a problem?” someone asked from behind them.
It was Waylon’s wife, Bernadette. Even though her age put her past the trophy wife stage, she was still an attractive woman with her auburn hair and green eyes.
“Is there a problem?” Waylon repeated to Roman. He didn’t even acknowledge Tate or Mila.
Mila handed Roman her phone, and he in turn passed it to Waylon. “Hit Play,” Roman instructed, “and you’ll see your daughter spray painting some lockers at school. After she did that, someone—probably her—gave the principal a fake tip that Tate had done it.”
“Arwen,” Waylon spat out. Bernadette hurried to his side to look at the video.
“Chrissy,” Roman corrected.
“No way in hell—” But Waylon stopped when he got to the point on the recording where he could see Chrissy’s face. The muscles in his jaw started stirring. “This has been Photoshopped.” Now, he looked at Tate. “Are you trying to get Chrissy in trouble?”
Tate shook his head. “I didn’t Photoshop anything. Chrissy did this.”
Waylon’s grunt sounded as if he wasn’t buying that, and he hit the delete key on the video. Smiling, he handed the phone back to Mila.
“Waylon!” Bernadette said on a gasp.
“It’s a hoax,” Waylon assured her. “And now there’s no proof of it.”
“No proof except Tate has a copy,” Mila informed him. “Oh, and I put it on a storage cloud. One that’s protected with a password. I thought that would be the easiest way to send copies to the principal and the school board.”
She added that last part only because she wasn’t sure if the principal and Waylon were friends. Mila didn’t want this swept under the rug.
Waylon’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you doing this?” Waylon asked Tate. “Is it because you want to get back at Chrissy after she rejected you?”
“Wait a sec,” Roman said, holding up his hand. His phone rang, but he didn’t even glance at the screen. He let the call go to voice mail. “When you came to my office in San Antonio, it was to warn me to keep Tate away from Arwen. You said she was messed up. You didn’t mention Tate showing a bit of interest in Chrissy.”
“And I don’t have any interest in her,” Tate quickly added. “She’s not very nice. Or smart. The only thing she wants to talk about is makeup and music. She brags that she hasn’t ever read a book.”
Mila braced herself for Waylon to try to jump down Tate’s throat. But Bernadette spoke before her husband could say anything.
“You told him that Arwen was messed up?” she asked Waylon.
“Yeah. Because she is, and you know it. Chrissy’s the good girl, and that kid of yours somehow managed to put Chrissy up to this.”
“I thought you believed it was Photoshopped?” Roman snapped.
If looks could kill... “If it’s not, then Arwen’s behind this. I’ll tell Doug that, too, when and if you show him this piece of shit video.”
Doug as in Doug Morgan, the high school principal. Mila had been right about them being friends. Or at least that’s what Waylon wanted them to think, perhaps as a way of getting them to back down.
“Waylon,” Bernadette said again, but this time there were tears in her eyes. It gave Mila hope that there was at least one person in Arwen’s family who cared about her. “How could you do this?”
“How could I do it?” Waylon flung his hand in Mila’s direction. “Ask her why she’s really doing this, why she’s going after Chrissy.”
Bernadette looked at her as if expecting an answer. But Mila didn’t have one. Until it hit her.
Was this about her paternity list?
“What are you talking about?” Bernadette asked her husband.
“I’m talking about her making waves,” Waylon snapped. “Trying to find her daddy.”
It was about the list, and Mila was so shocked that she couldn’t speak. Roman took hold of her arm, moving her slightly behind him. Maybe trying to protect her, but Mila didn’t want protection. She wanted the truth, and since Waylon had brought it up, she wasn’t going to hold back.
“Are you my biological father?” she came out and asked. But the moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them. She shouldn’t have dug all of this up in front of Tate.
Judging from Bernadette’s gasp, she hadn’t heard the gossip that her husband obviously had. Though Mila had no idea anyone was gossiping about it until now.
“Are you?” Bernadette asked him.
Waylon leaned back in his chair, shrugged. However, it was an angry shrug. “Could be. But if you’re waiting for me to do a DNA test or welcome you with open arms, that’s not gonna happen. Ever. I won’t do a test because it doesn’t matter. Even if you are a product of that night, you’re not my daughter any more than Arwen is.”
Mila hadn’t expected Waylon to pull any punches. And he hadn’t. She also hadn’t expected him to admit possible paternity or say that it didn’t matter. Mila wasn’t the only one stunned in the room, though. Bernadette had serious tears in her eyes now, and shaking her head, she ran out.
Mila figured Waylon was waiting for her to do the same, but she actually had a functioning brain and spine. “I’m sorry,” Mila said first to Tate, then she repeated it to Roman while she downloaded the video from storage. “And I’m sorry that you’re a worthless human being,” she added to Waylon.
He got to his feet, but she ignored him for the time being so she could send it out to every one of her contacts. Then she loaded it on YouTube.
Tate smiled. “Guess you won’t have to bother sending it to the principal now. He’ll see it soon enough.”
“See what?” Waylon howled. “What did you do?”
Probably something she would regret later, but Mila didn’t re
gret it now. It felt damn good. “Google ‘Waylon Beaumont’s daughter doing her dad proud,’” she told him, and then walked out.
Waylon cursed her so Mila hurried. No way did she want Tate to hear that. But she soon realized Roman wasn’t following them.
Heck.
She didn’t want Roman punching this idiot, and that’s exactly what it looked as if he might do. She needed to do something drastic again, and this time she hoped it wasn’t something she would regret.
“Roman, I’m in love with you,” she said to him. “Now, please, let’s go.”
Roman stopped moving toward Waylon, and even Waylon froze. The only saving grace in this was that Tate was out of earshot. At least, she hoped he was. Thankfully, it stunned Roman enough that it gave Mila time to take hold of his arm and get him moving.
“I really hope you didn’t want to keep that video a secret,” she said, her voice shaking. Actually, she was shaking, too.
“To hell with the video. What did you just say?” Roman demanded.
“I said I was in love with you. Now, put it on the back burner, and let’s make sure Tate’s okay.” She didn’t wait for him to agree. Mila hurried toward the front door where Tate was walking out.
“I’m so sorry,” Tate said. He wasn’t crying, but it appeared that could happen at any second. Since she doubted he would want anyone to witness that, Mila took him to her car and had him get in the backseat. Roman was right behind them.
Roman looked at her the moment he got in. “Did you say that so I wouldn’t punch Waylon?”
She ignored his question and tipped her head to Tate. That got Roman turning around to have a harder look at his son.
“It’s all right,” he said to Tate. “None of this was your fault.”
“But it was. Mila was here because of me, and Mr. Butthead was mean to her.”
Roman probably considered telling Tate that it wasn’t a good thing to call someone a name like that, but since Waylon was clearly a butthead, he let it pass.
“Is he really your dad?” Tate asked her.
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