Hard loving man

by Lorraine Heath

  So then she took a chance on Jack. And what did he do? Called her late at night, told her she was the only one for him, convinced her of it if the way they’d celebrated graduation night was any indication—and yet he’d betrayed her as well, with Stephanie. Based upon what he knew about Kelley’s past now, based upon what he figured she’d faced, how else was she supposed to react when Stephanie had announced she was carrying Jack’s baby?

  The whole situation had been insane. They’d been too young, gullible, caught up with their own insecurities, to think things through clearly. But immaturity wasn’t an excuse. It was simply a detriment. And they’d all paid for it.

  In a way, Jack figured he’d come out ahead. He had Jason. And he did love the kid, would do anything to ensure his safety, keep him happy and healthy. The kid loved him, which he considered somewhat of a miracle. Before Jason, Jack’s life had lacked anyone who truly loved him just for being him. He even had doubts about Kelley, doubts that nagged at him and that he hated feeling. Had he simply been a project to her back in high school?

  What did it matter what he was then? What mattered was now. How he felt about her, how she felt about him. Once he’d calmed down and was looking at things rationally, he realized he loved her, heart and soul, for better or worse. He just needed an opportunity to tell her, to convince her that nothing from their past mattered. All that mattered was the future.

  The sharp rap on his door brought him out of his reverie. “Yeah?”

  The door opened, and Mike stuck his head into the room. “Chief, we just got a call that I thought you might want to deal with. It’s Gunther. He says he’s caught a shoplifter and has a gun trained on her.”

  “Shit!” Jack was up from behind his desk and out his office door before his expletive settled into silence. He didn’t want to think about the damage Gunther could accomplish with a gun in his hands.

  Feeling as if she were in some bad B movie, Madison stood in the tiny convenience store where people had no choice but to come in to pay for their gas. The pumps were ancient. They didn’t even take credit cards. Madison didn’t know why people bothered with them. Maybe to get a closer look at the giant inflated gorilla that guarded them. Or, more likely, they dropped by for the same reason she did—the convenience.

  She’d been in the store several times since she’d moved to Hopeful. It wasn’t that far from the house she and Kelley were renting. She liked the store, even though it had a funny odor, because the old guy behind the cash register always looked as though he were half asleep.

  So it had been easy to slip a few items into her purse, undetected. Or so she thought. She’d been heading for the door when he’d come out of his chair with a gun in his hand and told her to reach for the sky. His exact words.

  “As if,” had been her reply until she’d realized how badly his gnarled hands were shaking. So she’d raised her hands. Whenever she tried to explain, he ordered her to shut up.

  Not that there was really anything to explain. And she was grateful she’d gotten caught. She’d been good, so good, just as Kelley wanted, but they weren’t going to be moving back to Dallas. Madison was certain of it. Kelley and the sheriff were spending way too much time together.

  When Madison had been at Ronda’s, they’d talked about her concerns that she was going to be stuck in Podunk until she graduated. The shoplifting had been Ronda’s idea.

  If Kelley would just move back to Dallas, Madison would behave again. She’d be with her friends, where she belonged. She’d gotten lost and angry after her parents died, but she was over that now.

  She had to make Kelley understand that.

  She heard the sirens and wasn’t certain if she wanted them to be headed her way or not. If the cops were coming to save her, fine. Let them come. But if they were coming to arrest her, she’d prefer that they just keep driving on by.

  The old man grinned, and his hands started to shake more visibly. She remembered the sheriff talking about how easy it was to get shot. She so did not want to get shot.

  “Told you the cops would come,” he said. “You’re in big trouble now, little girl.”

  “I’m not a little girl.”

  “You will be in the big house.”

  The big house? Honestly, could the situation get any worse?

  It could. The hinges squeaked and groaned as Jack Morgan jerked open the screen door with the Pepper metal sign across it. And he did not look happy.

  Jack swiveled in his chair, then leaned back and tapped his fingers on his desk, all the while never taking his impatient glare from his culprit. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, but he could see the tears that kept popping into her eyes and vanishing.

  “We’ve been here before, haven’t we, kid?” he asked.

  Without looking at him, she lifted both shoulders into a rebellious shrug. “So, are you, like, arresting me or what?”

  “What.”

  She jerked her attention to him. “What’s that mean?”

  “You asked if I was arresting you or what. Since I’m not arresting you, then the answer is what.”

  “So you’re not arresting me?” she repeated incredulously.

  “Nope. But you’re not free to go until your sister gets here.”

  She gave him a fulminous glower. “You’re just holding me here so you can see her, and you damn well know it.”

  “Let’s watch the d word.”

  “Fuck you!”

  He stilled his fingers. It took more strength of will than he knew he possessed not to jump over the desk and shake her. “Who are you trying to hurt, Madison?”

  She shook her head. “You couldn’t possibly understand.”

  “You don’t think so? Kid, I did everything you did. Shoplifted, drank, acted tough. Anything I could think of to get my mother’s attention. Know what happened? She walked out, walked off. Never looked back.”

  “Yeah, well, Kelley’s not my mother.”

  “She’s trying to be.” And it occurred to him that maybe Kelley was trying so hard because she saw Madison as a second chance, an opportunity to be to her sister what she’d never had a chance to be to her own daughter.

  “You hurt her,” Madison accused.

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “A long time ago? When you were her student?”

  Damn. He’d been manipulated. There was a subtle increase of interest in her voice. He remembered now that Kelley had told him that she hadn’t told Madison about them. The little hellion was good. Suspicious but good.

  A rap on the door, and Mike stuck his head inside. “Chief, Spencer is here.”

  Taking a deep breath, Jack got to his feet. “Show her in.”

  There was a sadness in her eyes that he figured he’d put there. He was tired of the secrets, the things not said that needed to be said. And even though he knew she wasn’t going to like it, he was going to say plenty in the next few minutes.

  Her gaze lingered on him briefly before she crossed her arms beneath her chest, turned, and faced Madison. “What’d she do this time?”

  Good for her, he thought. She didn’t have the lost look about her this time. And she didn’t appear to be in a mood to take any crap.

  “She was imitating Winona Ryder,” Jack said.

  Disappointment seemed to wash through her. “You were shoplifting?”

  Madison shrugged.

  “Madison, answer me.”

  “I would have paid him.”

  “What did you take?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If you didn’t take anything, then why are you here?”

  “Because he doesn’t like me.”

  Kelley looked at Jack. He could see her shoring up her resolve.

  “What did she take, Jack?”

  “A pack of gum, a bag of candy, and a lighter.”

  “Is that what you took? Something you could have easily bought?”

  Madison stood. “It’s no big deal. I don’t know why everyone is going so ballistic. Jus
t pay him five bucks so we can go home.”

  “No, Madison, it’s not going to be that easy this time.” She held Jack’s gaze. “You mentioned before”—she swallowed—“about community service.”

  Jack propped his hip on the edge of his desk, to lower himself so he wasn’t the dominant one in the room. He doubted that anyone other than him would notice that he was recognizing Kelley’s authority. “She took the items from Gunther’s convenience store. Gunther has a problem with people writing graffiti on his public restroom walls, so we have a policy around here that the punishment for nonviolent crimes that take place in or around that establishment involves painting the bathrooms and cleaning them for a month.”

  “Bullshit! I’m not—”

  “Madison!”

  Madison looked as surprised by Kelley’s sharp interruption as Jack felt.

  Kelley took a deep breath and nodded. “That sounds like a fair punishment. When do you want her to do it?”

  “Tomorrow morning, eight o’clock.”

  “No way,” Madison said. “I sleep late on Saturday.”

  “Not tomorrow, kid. I’ll be by to pick you up at seven-thirty. Dress down.”

  “I’m not doing it. This is so totally not fair. Kelley, it was a pack of gum.”

  “What you took isn’t the point, and you know it. I honestly don’t know what gets into you sometimes. You stole, Madison. You broke the law.”

  “Why are you siding with him?”

  “I’m not siding with Jack.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re just trying to impress him.”

  “This has nothing to do with Jack and everything to do with you. I’m trying to do what’s best for you.”

  “You don’t know what’s best for me. You’re not my mother! I hate you! You’re ruining my life.”

  Madison tore out of the room, brushing past Kelley. Jack had seen that broadsided-by-a-hit-and-run-driver look on Kelley’s face before, the first night she’d been in his office, when Madison had said almost the same thing.

  “Shit,” he ground out, feeling as if he’d taken a kick to the midsection himself. All the varied bits of information that he’d been juggling around his mind suddenly came together with the force of an implosion. The age difference between Kelley and Madison. Kelley’s mother hadn’t had a baby at the same time Kelley did. Only Kelley had a baby. “Ah, damn, Kelley.”

  He came off his desk and drew Kelley against his chest. She was trembling as if someone had dunked her in ice water.

  “See?” she rasped. “If I try and stand firm, it just makes it worse.”

  “Sit down.”

  She shook her head and tried to break free of his hold. “No, I have to go after her.”

  “No, I’m going to have Mike go after her.” He led her to the chair. “I want you to sit.”

  As soon as she dropped into the chair, he went to the door. “Mike?”

  “Yeah, Chief?” Mike got up from his desk and started toward him.

  “Go after Gardner. Her car is at Gunther’s, so that’s probably where she’s headed. Pick her up. Handcuff her if you have to. Then take her home, see that she gets inside safely, and watch her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jack turned back into his office and closed the door.

  Kelley heard the click of the door and wrapped her arms around herself. She was cold. So cold. She was vaguely aware of Jack crouching in front of her.

  “Madison is your daughter, isn’t she?” he asked quietly. “The one you gave up for adoption?”

  Tears pooled in her eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks as she shook her head, denying out of habit what she’d denied for so long.

  Tenderly, with his thumb, he wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Don’t you see? It explains so much. You gave her up for adoption, but she was always within your sight. Always there. How hard it must have been to watch your parents raise her, to hear her call your mother Mommy, to have her believe you were her sister.”

  Oh, God, it hurt. It hurt to remember. It hurt to know he knew all her flaws. Knew how totally inadequate she was. Pressing her arms against her chest, she began rocking back and forth, back and forth, while little gasps escaped from between her lips. She tasted the salt of her tears, pooling at the corners of her mouth.

  “It’s all right, Kelley.”

  “No, it’s not, Jack. It’ll never be all right. I wanted to keep her,” she rasped, the pain almost unbearable.

  “I know,” he said in a low, comforting voice as he pulled her from the chair and cradled her on his lap.

  She clutched his shirt. “I was only fifteen. I hadn’t finished school. I didn’t have a job. My mom convinced me that letting her adopt Madison was the best thing for Madison. But she made me swear that I could never tell Madison that I was her mother. She said it would destroy my baby.”

  She buried her face in the nook of his shoulder. He held her close, his large hand rubbing her back. “She was born in Austin. My stepfather got a job transfer to Dallas, so we could move and no one would know the baby wasn’t theirs. It was so hard watching her with my parents, being her sister. Knowing how much I’d disappointed them. I thought if I could just be really, really good, they’d love me again. Love me the way they loved her. But it was too hard. That’s why I wanted to teach here, in a small town, away from Dallas.”

  “Kelley—”

  She shook her head. “When you married Stephanie, I moved back home because I wanted to be near my little girl. I wanted to raise her; I wanted her back. But she was almost eight. How could I explain to her what I’d done? How can I tell her now?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart.”

  She leaned back until she was able to see his face, to see the understanding and the love reflected in his eyes. He kissed her sweetly, tenderly, his hand cupping the back of her head.

  She pulled back. “I need to get home to Madison.”

  “You need to get yourself together first. You can’t go home looking like this,” he said. “Mike will take care of her. Let me get you some coffee.”

  Shivering, she nodded. She closed her eyes, wondering how she could stuff her secrets back into the darkened corner where they belonged.

  Leaning his hips against his desk, Jack studied Kelley as she drank the coffee he’d handed her.

  No wonder she guarded Madison so diligently. No wonder she seemed so irrationally possessive. She was trying to spare Madison from making the mistakes she had, spare her without ever letting her realize she’d made mistakes. Madison saw her sister as a Goody Two-shoes who didn’t know what it was to be a teenager. She didn’t realize she was looking at a mother who had sacrificed everything for the welfare of her child. She couldn’t appreciate what her mother had done because she had no idea she was adopted.

  He couldn’t imagine anything more unfair—to Kelley or to Madison. And yet he supposed Kelley’s parents had been trying to protect both of them—their daughter and their granddaughter. After all, Madison eventually would have noticed that she looked a hell of a lot like her sister. And that would have aroused her suspicions.

  He couldn’t even begin to imagine how difficult it would be to explain Jason’s parentage to him, watching the hurt and confusion take hold. So Jack understood Kelley’s fears. How could she tell a sixteen-year-old girl that everything she knew about her past had been a lie?

  “So, how’d you find yourself pregnant at fifteen?” he asked quietly.

  She rolled one shoulder into a shrug. “More loneliness than rebellion. When my mother remarried, I didn’t take well to having a stepfather. I’d had my mother’s undivided attention, even when she was married to my dad, and then suddenly, here was another man in the house, and she was always fussing over him. I felt left out. I wanted to feel special, I wanted to be touched, hugged, loved. Having sex with Randy seemed like an easy way to obtain all three.”

  A corner of her mouth tipped up in a sad imitation of a smile. “I think he thought foreplay was a golfing term
. He certainly didn’t give me the attention you did. The act itself hurt, but thank goodness he was quick. I’ve always callously thought of him as the minute man. Afterward, I was embarrassed and just wanted to wash him off. We just had that one time, but that’s all it took.”

  He desperately wanted to put his arms around her, but she was barely holding herself together and looked as if a touch might shatter her.

  “And when you discovered you were pregnant?”

  She released a deep sigh. “I thought I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I knew my mom and stepfather would be disappointed, angry. I thought they might even kick me out of the house. Some parents still do that, anger and shame blocking out reason.

  “They surprised me, though. They were hurt, they were upset. But they were willing to do what they could to make things easier for me, if I was willing to follow their rules. My mother was young when she had a hysterectomy, so she couldn’t have any more children. She was my stepfather’s first marriage, and he’d gone into it knowing they’d never have children. Mom was in her early forties, my stepfather in his late forties, but they decided that raising a baby together was what they wanted to do. But it had to be their baby. They wanted to raise the baby as theirs. They wanted to be a mother and a father.

  “Their solution seemed perfect. I was terrified, overwhelmed by the responsibility of bringing a child into this world. So I could give birth to the baby and turn it over to them without guilt. I knew the baby would be in good hands. I could get on with my life.”

  “But it wasn’t easy.”

  “No, it wasn’t easy. Not at all.” She sipped her coffee.

  He could see the faraway look come into her eyes, as though she were watching the past, reliving the moments.

  “My mother was in the delivery room,” she said softly. “She held Madison before I did. I hadn’t expected to want to hold her so badly. I’d convinced myself that letting her go would be easy. And it was so far from being easy that I thought I’d die. I told myself that it was good that the first person who held her was the woman who would be her mother. My eyes were so full of tears that I probably wouldn’t have been able to see her clearly anyway.”