by Jayne Rylon
While the guy was writhing on the ground, Tom fought off Rick’s restraining hands to land a kick to the asshole’s ribs that sent him tumbling down the stairs and into the grass below. He would have kept going, past all sense and ethics if it hadn’t been for his kids, who never listened worth a damn.
Eli charged around the corner of the house with Kaige and Roman a couple steps behind. “Dad! What the fuck?”
It said something that the guys first made sure the man on the ground wasn’t going anywhere before they looked to Tom for direction.
“Who the hell is this?” Roman asked, unconcerned about the gash on the dude’s face or the ones on Tom’s hands. Barracuda was an infamous fighter himself, nothing here he hadn’t seen before.
“Not for you to worry about,” Tom barked at the same time the dumb fuck on the ground tried to speak around a cough.
“Steven—Help me.”
Begging for mercy wouldn’t do him any good. Not in Tom’s book. He reared up again, ready to swing. Kaige grabbed him in a bear hug and forced him back. “This isn’t you. Calm down. You’re freaking me out, Tom. In all the years that I struggled with my temper, I’ve never once seen you lose yours. Come on. Don’t make a liar out of yourself. You told me violence isn’t the answer. Did you mean that?”
He had. Until today.
“Settle down, Tom.” Rick joined Kaige while Eli and Roman stood guard over their visitor. “We’ve got to talk to him. Find out his story. We can’t do that if you knock his ass out.”
Tom swallowed his fury. It took a couple minutes, but eventually the haze cleared enough that he could read the confusion and fear in his sons’ faces. Even Roman was rubbing his hand on his coveralls repeatedly, about as expressive as he got.
He held his hands up, palms out, wincing at the sting in his fingers. “You’re right. I’m better now. Sorry.”
Steven acted like that apology had been aimed in his direction.
Rick nudged him with the toe of his shoe. “Keep quiet, we’re trying to save your hide. Though I’m not sure you deserve it.”
“What can we do?” Eli asked.
“Go home,” Tom said.
“I shouldn’t have left the first time!” His son threw his arms wide, palms up in disbelief. “Now you want me to do it again?”
“I’m here,” Rick reminded them. “I think your dad’s right. We need to talk to Steven alone before anyone else is involved. If things get out of control, I’ll call you. I promise.”
“And when this guy leaves, you’ll let me know everything is okay?” Eli asked Tom.
“Yeah. I can do that.” Though nothing would be all right. How could it be?
The three Hot Rods looked at each other, then backed away, toward their apartment.
“Kaige! Not one single word of this to your wife.” Tom didn’t flinch from Nova’s questioning stare. Nor did he dare to drop Nola’s distinct name in front of her father. “Actually, not to anyone. This stays between us.”
“We don’t keep secrets from each other, you know that.” Roman leapt to Kaige’s defense.
“This one time. It’s absolutely necessary.” Tom’s tone brooked no argument.
“Did Rick call that dude Steven?” Kaige asked Eli.
Cobra nodded slightly and Kaige turned an unhealthy shade of purple. He knew.
Eli cursed a streak. Roman, too. They must have figured it out, though Tom wasn’t sure how except those kids seemed to share one mind.
“This is not your fight. Go home. And say nothing,” Tom ordered.
Nova, Eli, and Roman looked hurt that Tom banished them. That betrayal was nothing compared to what Nola would feel if she knew her dad was right out back of her apartment, where she cradled this undeserving fuck’s grandbaby. Tom refused to allow the creep to realize how close his family was in case he decided to cause trouble for them.
It was a lie for the greater good. Necessary.
“Swear it. On Hot Rods.”
“Yeah. I swear.” Kaige nodded then spit in the direction of the guy in Tom and Rick’s clutches.
“Tomorrow, you’re going to come clean.” Eli glared at Tom, then at Willie’s dead-but-not-so-dead husband. “Hiding the truth has hurt enough people already. Don’t you do it too, Dad.”
Tom nodded, message received though he had no idea if he could live up to his son’s standards. With them gone, he turned to Rick. “Bring him in, will you?”
“Sure.”
Steven groaned as Rick hauled him to his feet then steered him toward the busted door and into Tom’s sanctuary. As he took in the candles, flowers, and foolish date-night accessories lying around, Tom realized this couldn’t happen here.
Not now.
Willie could come home any second.
“Actually, we need to get out of here,” Tom told Rick. “Can we take this to your office instead?”
“Of course. I was going to suggest the same thing.”
Tom rushed outside once more, terrified they’d meet Willie in the parking lot. He didn’t even bother to blow out the candles before they left.
It was a tense ride into the heart of Newburgh, the nearest decent-sized city to Middletown, where Rick had a commercial space in a four-story building. They’d never done business here before, preferring to speak in the comfort of Tom’s home. He was impressed by the well-lit, modern space. “Huh.”
“What’d you expect? Some dump in a basement filled with cigarette smoke and bad sleuth novels?” Rick grunted as he shoved Steven out of the elevator and into a modest conference room.
Tom might have laughed if his entire existence wasn’t hanging in the balance of this solitary conversation.
“Okay, we’re here. Now spill.” Rick took charge, grilling Mr. Brown. “Tell us what happened the night you supposedly died or we’ll call the cops and have you arrested for fraud and anything else I can think of between now and when they arrive.”
Steven sighed. “Honestly, I don’t mind. It feels good to finally get it off my chest.”
“This isn’t some kind of confessional,” Tom snarled. He certainly wasn’t about to absolve the man of his sins.
Rick shook his head at Tom and he bit his tongue. Hard.
“Why’re you so bent out of shape, anyway, huh?” Steven leaned forward. “Do you know Wilhelmina? You got a thing for my wife? Is that why you came all the way up north to track me down?”
“Willie is not yours,” Tom snarled, nearly abandoning the shred of self-control Kaige had helped him recover. “Hasn’t been since you disappeared on her. What happened that night? What’d you do, survive the wreck and have amnesia for twenty-one fucking years? You sick fuck! Did you move up here to spy on her? To gloat at her pain, knowing she mourned you when you’d simply abandoned her? How fucking dare you even look at her?”
Steven seemed dazed by the volley of antagonistic questions. “I don’t even know what to say to that. Do you mean Wilhelmina lives near here? I… No, I had no idea.”
Rick intervened, steering them in the right direction. “Why don’t you start with the accident. Tell us what happened.”
“I faked it. All of it.” Steven put his head in his hands, which was when Tom noticed that they were shaking. Violently. “I didn’t know what the hell else to do.”
“What do you mean?” Rick asked in a kinder tone. Was he playing good cop, or did he actually feel bad for this dirtwad? He sank into one of the chairs at the head of the table. Though it wasn’t what he wanted, Tom lowered himself into one across the way from Steven, hoping they’d get more out of the man if they weren’t so adversarial.
Besides, as much as he hated to admit it, something about Steven was starting to make him feel kind of bad. With his chin lowered to his chest, he slumped there, unfolding his hands on the table limply, palms up. He clearly wasn’t happy about the situation.
His chin trembled as he looked at Rick. “People were threatening Willie and my kids. They didn’t approve of me marrying a black woman, never
mind ‘breeding’ with her, as they put it. I was young and scared for them. Myself, too.”
He sighed.
They waited for him to elaborate.
“It got so bad that I started finding dead animals around. Small stuff at first…one of those dark-brown mice, then a crow in my locker at work. A black and white spotted rabbit, stuffed into our mailbox. I hardly had time to slam the door closed on that one before my daughter Amber saw it with its eyeballs hanging out. Then a week later, someone skinned a black cat, glued its pelt to my windshield with its own blood then smeared the guts and bones and shit all over my car. I had to stop and wash it before I could go home.” He shook his head. “There were letters too, warnings. Saying next they’d go after my daughters. Do worse even to them. Called them an abomination when they were the best thing in my life.”
This time he broke, sobbing as he remembered the horrors he’d been subjected to.
“Why wasn’t there any record of this with the police?” Tom asked, since that’s the first place he’d looked. Scouring public files was one of the things he’d learned from Rick.
“They said not to tell.” Steven shrugged one shoulder. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Pack up your family and get the hell out of there!” Tom glared, though he realized it was easy to judge in hindsight.
“We didn’t have the money for that.” He groaned. “Hell, there were times I had to pawn things to put food on the table, not that I told Wilhelmina. I was embarrassed that I wasn’t better for her. That I couldn’t do anything about the trouble we were in or making a better life for us. It got so bad… I figured, they’d be better off without me.”
Rick cursed.
“So that they could fend for themselves against these ignorant assholes?” Tom tried not to shout.
“The way I saw it, if I was dead, they’d get our insurance money and my pension from my job. It wasn’t a lot, but it would be enough to move on. So I stole a vehicle out of a lot near work after everyone else had finished our shift, I snuck back to the factory and broke the lock. Used the equipment there to weld the bumpers of the two cars together, front to back. Who knew that shit job would come in handy one day? I drove the cars a little ways down the street to the bridge, and waited. When I saw those lights coming, I used the stolen car to push ours. I didn’t know if it would work at all, but damn, when it crashed into the side of that delivery truck, ripped the bumper right off the car I’d stolen, then flipped over the bridge, I knew I couldn’t go back. I took off right that minute. Drove myself straight to the bus terminal and hopped on the first one out of town.”
“You never bothered to check in on your family, to make sure they were all right when you left them undefended?” Tom felt his anger building again.
“I couldn’t risk it.” Steven put his face in his hands.
“Because let me tell you, after you died, Willie fell apart. Grief-stricken, terrified, and broke, she had nothing but her own smarts and determination on her side. Hell, for a while there, her and the girls were homeless. Anything could have happened to them.”
“What?” Steven’s head snapped up.
Rick nodded, his features locked in a grave expression. “There was no money. I checked. Not from insurance, because they ruled it a possible suicide. And not from the company, because they said you didn’t have enough service time in. Looks like they were paying your overtime off the books so the credits didn’t count.”
“No! That can’t be true!” Steven struggled to rise then. Rick kept him in place with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“It is. My wife died. You have no idea what I would have given to still have her by my side. I’d do anything to make it work. And you threw yours away.” Tom couldn’t possibly think less of this coward. Or maybe he could. “For that matter, you left your kids to survive, sometimes on the streets. How could you do that to your own flesh and blood?”
Rick reached over from where he sat between the two men in his office to splay his hand on Tom’s chest, just in case he got any more urges to resort to violence.
Tom had heard enough. All he could stand for one evening. “Will you keep an eye on him? Don’t let him disappear.”
“Sure, of course.” Rick nodded. “When we finish up here, I’ll drive Steven home. It’s the weekend. You don’t have to be at work until Monday, right?”
The guy nodded, looking like he might drown in his own misery before then.
“You’re going to stay in your house. No phone calls either.” Tom leaned across the table to get up in his face. “I need some time to make this right. There’s no way I can fix your mistakes, but I’m hoping to God I can keep them from causing any more damage than they already have.”
Steven nodded again. “Do whatever you can for Wilhelmina, please.”
For a moment, Tom pitied the bastard.
What a mess.
“You need a ride?” Rick asked.
“Nah. I’ll call a cab.” He scrubbed his face. “I owe you for this.”
“It’s not what I hoped we’d find.”
“I know, none of us did.” Tom swallowed hard then left the office, shutting the door so quietly, it should have scared them more than if he’d slammed the thing. What the fuck was he going to do now?
Tell Willie the truth and shatter the world she’d rebuilt for herself?
Keep it from her and try to advance their relationship with some horrible secret wedged between them?
Fuck, there was no way he could sleep with her tonight, knowing this. It wouldn’t be right. Unlike Steven, Tom didn’t believe in taking the easy way out.
Willie deserved better than that.
He wanted nothing less than to be the person who wounded her, but he couldn’t see any way around it either. He needed time to think about how to handle this best.
Why? Why did shit like this have to happen to them? Weren’t they decent? Didn’t they deserve better?
Fuck. He hadn’t resorted to self-pity in years.
It just felt as if he’d been so damn close to claiming something amazing and rare.
Tom smacked his hand on a light post as he approached the street, wincing as the impact split open his knuckles again. The superficial wounds were nothing compared to the damage he was about to inflict on the woman he had come to love.
Fuck his life.
Chapter Six
Willie sang along with the radio as she drove into town. She arrived at the medical complex a couple minutes early, as usual. That gave her plenty of time to stop by the lab on her way in and have her blood drawn for the standard tests the doctor would order as a precaution.
Needles didn’t bother her. A quick pinch, some chatting with the cute young phlebotomist—whose nametag declared her Casey Lu—and she was on her way down the hallway to her doctor’s suite with some gummy candy the woman had shared from her stash to sweeten the deal.
Serene music drifted through the waiting room as she checked in at the front desk then skimmed the home decorating magazines. She wondered how Tom would feel about them giving his place a facelift. Would it be too presumptuous to suggest? Or would he welcome the change as they made his place their place?
Her toe tapped on the industrial carpeting as she grew impatient.
He was waiting for her.
Tonight was going to be their night.
Finally.
“Wilhelmina Brown?” The nurse opened the door to the patient rooms and called her inside. The woman ushered her toward the full scale. For the first time in years, Willie worried about what it would say. It’d been a while since she’d bothered to really watch her figure, though she tended to have a pretty decent metabolism. There’d been so many times when she’d been on a diet—enforced by her lack of cash, to ensure her kids had as much as she could give them to eat—that when things had finally picked up with her sewing clients and they got back on their feet, she’d splurged.
She never bought anything but whole milk or real butter. And sh
e baked often.
Tom hadn’t seemed to have any complaints, though he’d yet to see her entirely nude.
Willie decided that was all that mattered to her. She averted her gaze while the woman pushed weights up and down the horizontal bar then nodded as she noted the number in her file. Willie didn’t bother to look. She liked herself just fine no matter what.
After ushering her into a patient room, the nurse asked a bunch of questions about how she’d been feeling lately.
“Not terrible.” Willie shrugged. “There’s been a lot of stress. My younger daughter got married, had a baby, and her sister met a great man, who’s had some problems with drinking and drugs. Combined, that caused a lot of drama and I think it’s getting to me a bit. Headaches now and then, and a bunch of nightmares.”
“That sounds reasonable given the situation. I’ll make a note and you can discuss it with the doctor.” The lady smiled then talked some about her own kids and their antics. As they chatted, she took Willie’s blood pressure.
When the nurse went to add the data to Willie’s chart, she hummed then double-checked the readout on the wall.
“Something wrong?” Willie wondered.
“Not exactly. It’s in the normal range. Higher than your average though.”
“Figures.” She laughed. Getting her hands on Tom London would probably always have that effect on her. “I sort of met a guy. He’s my new son-in-law’s father. And we were…you know…not too long before I came here.”
“Way to go.” The nurse winked. “I’d say that’s a pretty great reason for the difference. Good for the heart, too.”
In more ways than one, Willie thought.
Her giant smile must have given her away.
“Well, congratulations.” The nurse gathered up her things. “Dr. Smith should be in shortly. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
“I will.” She tried not to purr at the thought of what awaited her at home.
It wasn’t much longer before her physician entered and they said their hellos while the woman reviewed the notes in her file. “So, tell me more about these headaches you’ve been having.”