“About me?” Link pointed to himself. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s right. You don’t. And Shayla and Portia are the ones who’ll suffer for it. It didn’t cross your mind that that yellow-haired genius might follow you out here? Might find out where Shayla lived so he could even the score?”
“Is . . . is that what happened?” Link felt sick to his stomach. Shayla’s father was right. It never crossed his mind there might be retaliation for what he’d done. He thought he’d sent a clear message that the guy had better not mess with Shayla. Or Portia. But if he was honest, he’d also been trying to be their hero. Trying to win Shayla over.
He swallowed hard. “No sir. I admit I never thought of that. But if he was going to come after anybody, it should have been me. I’m the one who egged him on. Besides, we didn’t see anyone following us.” He hadn’t been looking either. He’d been too busy patting himself on the back for defending the little ladies.
“And what if you had seen him? Would you have jumped out and given him what-for? You think that would have ended it? If you do, then you don’t have a clue what it takes to keep my babies safe in this wonderful modern world where apparently ‘things are better now.’ ” His imitation of Link’s voice made Link cringe.
He dipped his head. “I’m sorry. I should have let things be. Shayla tried to tell me, and I ignored her. She didn’t do anything wrong and—”
“Never said she did. I raised her to know how to handle herself in this world.”
“Sir, I was just trying to defend them. Protect them. My dad taught me to speak up if somebody was bothering my sisters and . . . any woman.”
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you, your paradigm done got shifted, son. I only wish it’d shifted before I lost my front window.”
“Are you saying the window is my fault?” That sent his blood into a slow simmer.
“I never said that. As Shay likes to say, it is what it is. But I’ll thank you to keep your heroics confined to your sisters in the future.”
Link clenched his fists and prayed he wouldn’t say anything he’d regret. He was surprised at the words that came to him next. “Sir, I am truly sorry if my actions caused that trouble”—he pointed toward the sparkling clean new window—“and I’ll be glad to help pay for it.” How he’d find the money, he didn’t have a clue. Unless he tapped into his savings and stayed in his dumpy apartment for another year.
Mike Michaels shoved his chair away from the table. “I don’t need your charity, but thank you all the same.”
Link rose with him. He saw clearly where Shayla got the chip on her shoulder. “I wasn’t offering charity, Mr. Michaels. I was offering restitution.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I think it might be best if I leave. Would you please tell Shayla good-bye for me. I’ll call and talk to her.”
“She has a busy week ahead.”
“I understand, but I told her I wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye, and I’d like to explain why I did.” Because her father is a hard-headed—
“Suit yourself. The door is unlocked.” Michaels pushed his chair in and went to fiddle with the lock on the back door, effectively dismissing Link.
Link shoved his own chair under the table and strode to the front door. He didn’t realize until he reached for the door handle that his fingers were still balled into fists. He hadn’t felt this frustrated since his boss had unfairly accused him of exaggerating his hours a couple years ago. But Shayla’s father may as well have had his own fists up. He’d been begging for a fight the whole time.
Hand on the door, he paused, hesitant to leave without speaking to Shayla. After all, he’d given her his word. But if he stayed, he feared he’d say something he’d regret. If not to her father, then to her.
What a tangled mess this entire night had turned into.
And why hadn’t Shay told him about the broken window, about that kid retaliating? He’d looked like an idiot to her father. And maybe he’d been one. He’d only meant to defend Shayla and Portia, like he’d said.
But if it was true that Mohawk had followed them to Langhorne, to the bakery, then his attempted heroics had put Shayla—and her whole family—in danger. It had cost them a small fortune. And it was starting to look like it might cost him the woman he was growing to love.
16
Hey, Dad, Mom said she thought you were tinkering in your shop. Um, can I talk to you?”
Grant looked up from under the hood of the car to see Link standing there. The expression on his son’s face caused him to straighten and lay aside the wrench. “Sure, bud. Shouldn’t you be at work? It’s Monday morning. Everything okay?”
“I might have . . . gotten myself into some trouble.”
Grant attempted to read the seriousness of his son’s tone, while also willing his pulse to return to normal. Did young men of a certain age have any clue what came to a father’s mind when a son said he might have gotten himself into trouble?
“How so?” Grant aimed for a casual tone, wiping his hands on a clean corner of a grease rag. Whatever it is, Lord, give me a cool head and wise words.
“What do you have going on under here?” Link peered beneath the hood and tinkered with the oil dipstick.
Grant took the hint and leaned back beneath the hood. “Just giving ’er a tune-up. Already changed the oil, but it seemed like maybe the spark plugs could use changing too.” He was no mechanic, but they were on a squeaky tight budget for a few months, and he figured he could save a small fortune if he figured out how to do some of the car maintenance himself.
“Have you changed them yet?”
Grant tried not to look too sheepish. “I can’t even find the stupid things. Why do they have to hide everything in these new vehicles?”
Link laughed. “I wouldn’t exactly call a 2005 Saturn Ion a new vehicle, Pops. But hey, hand me that screwdriver. Spark plugs happen to be one of the few things I do know.” He undid a few screws and popped a cover off to reveal a row of individual compartments.
“Well, I’ll be! I’ll call you first next time I overhaul an engine.” He smiled. “Where did you learn this stuff anyway? It sure wasn’t from your old man.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
For a split second, he felt miffed that his son had apparently had car trouble and hadn’t called his good ol’ dad to help him out.
“And,” Link piped up. “It probably doesn’t hurt that I have a mechanical buddy at work. You remember Izz? Isaiah?”
“Sure. Nice guy.” Eager to get to what was bothering his son, he knew better than to press.
Link pushed his way under the hood and started working the plugs out of their housings with a ratchet.
Grant let him take over, grateful for the assistance. “So how are things with you? What’s up? That girl still in the picture? Shayla?”
“Yeah, she is. At least I hope so. That’s why I need some advice.”
“Okay. Shoot.” He kept his head down, careful not to meet Link’s gaze. He and Audrey had both noticed how reticent their son had been recently and were, frankly, starting to get a little worried about him. Especially since they saw so much less of him these days, now that he was working extra shifts. They’d been thankful to hear he was dating but wished they could get to know Shayla better.
With the old spark plugs removed, Link worked to install one of the replacements. Grant was relegated to “mechanic’s assistant,” handing him various tools as he requested.
Link gave the ratchet a final twist and held a hand out for the next plug. “So how important do you think it is for a girl’s parents—her dad specifically—to approve of her boyfriend?”
Grant watched his son’s profile, trying to read him. “I take it this isn’t hypothetical?”
Link screwed up his mouth. “Not exactly.”
Grant didn’t have a clue how any girl’s father wouldn’t be thrilled beyond belief to have Link Whitman interested in his daughter. But then again, he was mor
e than a little prejudiced when it came to this handsome son of his. “So what’s not to like? She’s not seventeen or anything?” He spoke the thought as it flitted to mind, then wished he hadn’t.
“No.” Link laughed. “More like seventeen times two.”
Grant furrowed his brow, doing the math. “Shayla’s thirty-four? I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Well, thirty-three. Same difference.”
“If anything, I would have guessed she was much younger.” That information shocked him until he realized she was only older than Link by four or five years. When had their kids gotten to be not just adults, but old ones? “Is that a problem for you? Her age?”
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“But she still lives at home?”
Link nodded. “Otherwise I wouldn’t worry so much what her dad thought.”
“So what’s his objection? He think you’re too young?”
“More like too white.”
He straightened. “What? He doesn’t want her dating you because you’re white? He said that?”
“Not those words exactly. Shayla’s mom was white. I don’t know if you knew that.”
Grant nodded. “I don’t think I ever met her, but I remember when they bought the bakery.” It had caused a bit of a stir as Grant recalled, especially when the business began to draw people from the Michaelses’ church in Cape—black people. He shook his head. He would never understand the way some people thought. Busybodies and troublemakers. Always trying to stir up trouble where there was no reason for it. Thankfully things had settled down and stayed that way as far as he knew. “And I remember hearing when Mike’s wife died. That’s been a while now, I think.”
Link nodded. “Five years. And Shay said her dad was really broken up when her mom died. So I don’t know what his deal is. It just seems a little odd to me that her dad has a problem with a white guy dating his daughter.” Link sighed. “But there are a lot of other complications.”
“Like?” Grant studied his son’s expression, hoping for a clue.
“Like, Shayla’s mom’s parents disowned her when she married a black guy. And her brother got in some trouble with the law.”
A fluorescent light in the rafters overhead buzzed and flickered. “What kind of trouble?”
“Drugs. I don’t know the whole story.”
“Well, is he still . . . messed up?”
“I don’t know. Shayla doesn’t talk about him much. She doesn’t see him.”
A knot formed in Grant’s gut. He sensed Link was hedging, and wondered what he wasn’t saying. He and Audrey had always prayed their kids would marry into good families. Mike Michaels had seemed like a nice guy the few times Grant had talked to him at the bakery. But he hadn’t known about the son with drug problems.
Link cleared his throat. “I might as well tell you, Dad. Shayla’s brother is in jail. Prison.”
The knot in his gut tightened. Not exactly the kind of family he’d hoped for. Still . . . Best wait and hear the entire story. “So the brother—the one in prison—he’s the father of the little girl?”
“He is.”
“And where’s the mother?”
“She passed away. It’s too long a story . . . I’ll just leave it that they’ve had their problems.”
“Wow. I guess so.” He stepped back and stared at the concrete floor, processing everything he’d just heard. Praying for wisdom. “That’s a lot to bear. For the whole family, I mean. After all that, Shayla’s dad, Mike, is probably reluctant to lose his daughter too.”
Link frowned. “Lose her?”
“Whether it’s accurate or not, son, I think every father feels like he’s losing his daughter when another man steals her heart.”
“Oh.” He grimaced. “Hadn’t thought of that, I guess.”
“Yes, and he’s already lost a lot. That might be what’s going on here. You know how much I think of your brothers-in-law, and Mom and I feel blessed they haven’t dragged your sisters off to the far ends of the earth. But I’m here to tell you if any one of those guys ever dared to hurt my little girls—Bree included—I’d make them sorry they ever laid eyes on me.”
Link gave a droll laugh. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Dad.”
“I don’t either. The girls chose well. I’m just saying.” He echoed Link’s laughter. “So Shayla’s thirty-three? An older woman, huh?” Things weren’t stacking up to his liking. “She’s not divorced, is she?” He knew it sounded judgmental, but thirty-three was getting up there to still be single. And Lord knew marriage was hard enough without throwing exes into the mix.
“Nope, never married,” Link said. “Shayla took care of her mom full-time while she was dying of cancer. Otherwise somebody would have snapped her up. You saw her. She’s gorgeous. And very sweet,” he added a little too quickly.
His son sounded smitten. “How did you two meet anyway?”
“At the homeless shelter last summer. She was delivering day-old stuff while I worked on their computers. And since then I’ve talked to her at the bakery.” He shrugged. “We just hit it off. So I finally got the nerve up to ask her out. We’ve been taking Portia on dates with us. But when I tried to get Shayla to go out, just the two of us, her dad got all bent out of shape. Shay’s brother apparently got his girlfriend—Portia’s mom—pregnant, and I guess Shay’s dad was pretty upset about that. He was a deacon in their church and it was pretty humiliating. So that might be part of it.”
“Understandable,” Grant said, working to hide his growing discomfort about this girl’s family.
“The thing is, Portia lives with them full-time, and Shay’s pretty much taking care of her. Her dad doesn’t seem willing to give her any time off. And she already works long hours at the bakery six days a week as it is.”
Link settled the last spark plug into its socket. “All set. You want to hand me that well cover?”
“I can take it from here, bud. Thanks. You likely saved me a trip into town. And more than a few dollars.”
Link straightened and stretched, giving Grant a lopsided grin. “No problem. You’ve done a favor or two for me over the years.”
Grant took the opportunity to give his son a frank look. “Are you sure you want to get caught up in all this, Link? It sounds like Shayla has a lot on her plate. A lot of responsibilities. And if her father isn’t on board with you, might not be something you’d want to get tangled up in.”
“I’m already tangled, Dad. I really like her. Believe me, I’ve thought about what I’m getting into. And that’s what kind of convinces me she might be the one. Because there was a time I would have run fast and far away from complications like that. But with Shay, it doesn’t scare me. Not really. This is what her life is like, and if I really love—or care about her, then I don’t have any choice but to accept her the way she is. Baggage and all.”
Baggage was a polite way of putting it. “Are you in love with her, bud?” He was almost afraid to ask the question.
Link nodded without speaking.
Grant couldn’t tell if his response was uncertain, or if he was too choked up to risk voicing his feelings. But judging by his glassy eyes, it was the latter.
“Then I think you’d better get things straightened out with her father. That needs to be your first priority. Sounds like there are enough complications without starting out with him against you. You’ll have to win him over somehow.”
He and Audrey had been praying so long for their son to find the right woman. Link’d had a few girlfriends throughout high school, and had dated a little since then, but it seemed the older he got, the fewer and farther between those dates were. His sisters had tried to set him up with young women they knew, and Audrey had a famously failed matchmaking attempt with the daughter of one of her friends. After that fiasco, they’d decided to let Link—and God—handle things.
Audrey had commented just the other night, when they were speculating about why Link had made himself so sca
rce lately, that at his age, they might need to be prepared for him to meet a divorcée or a single mom. Grant had thought she was being a little dramatic. Twenty-nine wasn’t that old . . . not for a man.
But now he wondered.
“There’s something else, Dad.”
Grant lowered the hood support rod and snapped it in place, then slammed the car hood shut with both hands. “What’s that?” He braced himself for what, he wasn’t sure.
“Shayla’s dad is blaming me for something that happened at the bakery. And”—he glanced away, his expression pensive—“it probably is my fault. But I’m not sure what to do to fix it.”
17
The bakery was quiet on a Monday morning. Too quiet. Shayla went to offer refills to three college students studying in the corner nook, then came back to start another pot. Even though she’d barely poured five cups from the last one. But people would complain if their morning java wasn’t fresh.
Already Thanksgiving week, yet they had barely half the orders they usually did for Daddy’s fluffy crescent rolls and his famous pumpkin pies. She hadn’t thought much of it at first, but now she was beginning to suspect word had gotten around about the broken window, and people were staying away because of it.
She felt sick to her stomach when she thought about the things her father had said to Link last night. She’d listened at the top of the stairs to their strident voices, unable to make out the words, but knowing her father’d had the upper hand. But she’d been too much of a coward to defend Link—to come down and make her father understand that Link’s intentions were only good where she and Portia were concerned.
Except Link could be clueless. Like egging on that jerk at the movies. Link might have thought he was being a hero, but he was showing off too, trying to get in her good graces by playing the tough guy. Except he didn’t understand how guys like that operated.
She couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t his fault he’d never had to deal with challenges she’d grown up taking for granted. She loved Link’s innocence. Loved that he was blind to the prejudice that was still all around them—at least in this part of the country—even if it was usually subtle. But if Link was going to be part of their lives, he had to learn.
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