Willow had watched that show in re-runs as a child so she knew what he’d referred to.
“And were you? Like ‘The Brady Bunch’, I mean? Were you close like that?”
“You mean did we have innocent adventures and form a pop singing group to buy our parents an anniversary gift? Hell, no. My brothers and I were little hellions and came home caked in dirt every day. After six kids, my mother only got upset if there was a lot of blood. A little didn’t even register on her radar anymore.”
“Was she a good mother?”
“Yeah…sure she was, although I’m not sure what your definition is. We were raised what they might call old-fashioned these days. We had to be home by dark. We hung out in the neighborhood with all the other kids. We ate what my mom cooked for dinner or we didn’t eat, period. With five brothers and sisters, you had to eat fast or you were shit out of luck when it came to seconds.”
That explained why he finished his food so quickly.
“Are you close to your brothers and sisters?”
“Yes, although I don’t see them much. We all have our own lives. Jobs, families, that sort of thing. But I see them on holidays which is more than a lot of people.”
She splayed out her hands on her thighs, studying each tiny freckle that marred her skin. “It sounds very nuclear family suburbia to me. Very ‘Leave it to Beaver’. You were lucky.”
“It wasn’t all perfect,” he protested, his brows pulled together. “With so many kids, we didn’t get much one on one time with our parents. There was never enough money to go around either. I knew if I wanted to go to college I had to pay for it myself. Mom and Dad couldn’t have swung tuition for six of us.”
College. Willow almost laughed.
“Did you ever go hungry? Did you have clothes?”
“Sure, we had the necessities.”
It was then that what she’d been tiptoeing around seemed to dawn on him and his shoulders slumped as he reached for her hand.
“What about you, honey? Did you have enough?”
Josh should have expected this. He’d known she was a dancer – a stripper – since the day he’d met her, but somehow he’d fooled himself into thinking she’d chosen it from a wide array of possible professions. He had to face the grim truth that she’d picked it because it was better than the few options she’d had.
“There was never enough food,” Willow said simply but with a smile that he was sure wasn’t real. “There was never enough of anything. My mother was an alcoholic. Not the kind that staggers out of a liquor store and turns tricks to make a buck. She was what they call a functional alcoholic. She held down a job, married and divorced soon after, had a child – that would be me. She appeared normal to her friends and the people of the community. It was at home that the cracks showed. She was pretty much drunk every night and when that happened, no one else mattered. The only thing she cared about was that next drink.”
He hated thinking about the little scared girl she must have been. He hated how vulnerable she was and how he wasn’t there to protect her. The shell she’d built up made sense now even more than it had before.
“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his chin and smiled sheepishly. “I guess it’s not a surprise. I kind of assumed you had a tough upbringing.”
“The cliché of junkie parents, foster care, and teenage promiscuity?” she taunted. “It wasn’t quite like that, although I suppose I could have gone that direction eventually. Lucky me, huh?”
That brittle force field was in full glory, keeping him at arm’s length even as she revealed what he doubted she’d told many people. Had Alex known? Josh sure as shit wasn’t going to ask. He didn’t want to talk about her late husband any more than necessary.
“You said there wasn’t any food,” he prompted gently. “But she had a job?”
Willow nodded. “She was an administrative assistant and she didn’t miss too many days of work, thanks to me getting her up every morning and pushing her into a shower. We had an apartment that was nice but she spent most of the money on booze. But even if she hadn’t, she often simply forgot to go shopping. I have no memory of her cooking a meal for me. When I was little she’d hand me a Pop-Tart. Eventually as I got older, I learned to go into her purse for money and go to the store myself. She never noticed it was gone and I learned to make microwave dinners. That explains why I can’t cook.”
“You took care of your mother.”
She rolled her eyes. “Someone had to. I’d wake her up in the morning and help her get ready before I went off to school. After work, she’d go have drinks with her friends. That would start the ball rolling for her evening. By midnight she didn’t know her own name, let alone mine most of the time.”
“How did you…you know, end up dancing?”
She smiled at that question. It probably wasn’t the first time she’d heard it.
“You mean stripping? Because that’s what I was. A stripper. A damn good one too.” She sighed and slumped against the cushions of the couch. “I never got really good grades in school. When you don’t eat or sleep well it’s hard to concentrate about algebra and the history of the Revolutionary War. So when I graduated I didn’t have much going for me. I had a high school diploma, which meant nothing when it came time to get a job. I worked as a waitress and did okay but I was going nowhere fast. Then a guy came in one night with his wife. They owned a dance nightclub in Tampa. He said I had the right look and that I could make a lot of money.”
“And you believed him? He could have been a human trafficker, honey.”
Willow laughed. “He could have been but I was already cynical for my age. I only even talked to him because he was with his wife. He gave me his card and the next day I went to see him with my biggest badass friend that worked the grill in the restaurant and two more friends out in the parking lot. The man’s name was Gary and he thought it was cute that I came with protectors because he took the safety of his girls seriously. I worked there until I married Alex, and I still think Gary is a good guy. He was the first person to really give a shit about me in my life.”
Josh wasn’t as convinced. This Gary might simply have wanted something from Willow so he’d pretended to be what she needed. A father figure.
“Did your mother find out?”
Her little chin lifted. “Hell, yeah. I didn’t try to hide it. I’ve never been ashamed of it. She slapped me and said I was a whore, but I didn’t care what she thought. I moved out a few weeks later and shared an apartment with one of the other dancers. I didn’t talk to my mother until I married Alex and had the money to get her a better life. Get her into rehab.”
“Is she…?”
“Still alive?” Willow finished for him. “No, she died about seven years ago. Her heart gave out. She’d abused herself too long. By then I had her in a nice place to live with the best doctors in the world but it was too late. She just couldn’t get sober and frankly, I don’t think she wanted to. She once admitted to me she liked to drink because it made her forget.”
“What did she want to forget?”
Shrugging, Willow shook her head. “I don’t know. She never said. Whatever demons drove my mother she took to the grave. Just like Alex.” Laughing, she took the highball glass from his hand and drank the last of the whiskey. “Isn’t that a kick in the ass? I picked a man exactly like my mother. Falling for Alex was no accident. I couldn’t save her so I tried to save him. I failed – spectacularly – both times.”
Josh wouldn’t allow her to think like that about herself. “You didn’t fail. None of this was your fault. They didn’t want to be helped, honey. Their failings had nothing to do with you.”
“I tell myself that all the time.”
“It’s the truth,” he urged, lifting her fingers to his lips, but expecting a rejection. But this time she didn’t pull her hand away. “Why are you punishing yourself? Because you didn’t save them? Is that why? You think you don’t deserve to be happy but you do. Shit, honey, it doesn’t have
to be with me but cut yourself some goddamn slack. You were just a little kid.”
She tapped her temple. “I know everything you say is true. Up here. But down here—” She moved her hand to her heart. “It says that I failed the two people who needed me most.”
He tried another argument. “What about what they owed you? They failed too. A hell of a lot more than you did. It was your mother’s job to take care of you and she failed to do even the most insignificant tasks like feeding you. Alex had a husband’s duty to love, honor, and cherish you. Did he do that? From what I can see the answer is no. If you failed them, they failed you first, and much worse.”
Fingers plucking at the hem of her tank top, she avoided his gaze, not addressing what he said. “You wanted me to trust you tonight but that wasn’t the problem.”
He swept back her hair from her face but she shied away from looking at him. “I trust you. I do. It’s me I don’t trust.”
“If it makes any difference, I trust you.”
She finally looked up at him, her eyes soft with the emotion she worked so hard to hide.
“It does.”
He held out his arms and for once she didn’t argue with him. She settled against his chest, her warm body cuddled up with his, her silky hair draped over his shoulder like a curtain. Tomorrow she’d be back to her prickly self but tonight she’d let her guard down.
It was a start.
Chapter Nineteen
The next morning Josh somehow found himself on the back of a horse that had been described by Archer Caldwell as “gentle and mild.”
That was an understatement.
Pixie, as she was called, didn’t even want to move down the riding path that had been carved out beneath the shade trees. Josh had only ridden a few times in his life so they’d wanted to give him a beginner mount – one that was used mostly by the children – but this was a tad too far. He was trailing the group of riders by at least twenty to twenty-five feet because Pixie didn’t like being in a crowd. She didn’t like turning left. Or right. Or going forward. Mostly she liked to stand still in the pasture and munch on grass. He was afraid to ask how old she was but it couldn’t be less than double digits.
If Archer knew Josh had been in The Clubhouse last night perhaps this was his way of killing him. Abandoning him out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a bottle of water and a horse who should have been retired to a petting zoo.
Urging Pixie to catch up, his attention was caught by Archer leaning down to speak with Willow. The older man’s expression had turned serious and Willow’s looked surprised for a moment but quickly schooled into something more neutral. Whatever it was he’d said, she hadn’t expected.
They meandered down the path and the quiet gave him a chance to review the eventful night before. He’d thought getting into The Clubhouse would have been the pinnacle of his day but Willow opening up to him had changed everything. He thought they’d be back at square one this morning but she’d been as open with him in the light of day as she’d been under the cover of darkness. This was a real turning point for their relationship. For the first time, he felt like they might have a chance.
His mind was far away, curled up with Willow on that couch last night when he heard it. At first he thought it was the backfiring of a car or truck but there were no vehicles allowed up there. By the time he realized it had been a gunshot, Willow’s horse had reared up, its front legs pawing wildly in the air as she held on for dear life. A scream had escaped her throat as it lifted from the ground once again, its massive body twisting to one side and dislodging her from the saddle. His heart and breath stopped in his chest as he helplessly watched her fall from the horse to the ground with a sickening thud. The horse, however, hadn’t registered his success at getting rid of his rider and he continued to rear and paw at the ground mere inches from Willow’s vulnerable body.
Archer lunged from his own horse and managed to grab the reins even as Josh jumped down and raced to where Willow lay unconscious, dragging her away from the spooked horse. Her lids fluttered open as he inspected the warm blood pooling on the back of her head.
“Ouch,” she hissed when his fingers probed a particularly sensitive spot. “That fucking hurts.”
“Stay still,” he commanded as a crowd began to form around them. Everyone had dismounted from their horses now that Willow’s mount had been calmed. He looked up but didn’t address anyone in particular. “Call an ambulance.”
“I don’t need an ambulance,” Willow protested weakly, batting at his hands that were running up and down her arms and legs checking for injuries. “I think I’m okay. Just bruised.”
“You don’t mess with a head injury. You’ll get checked out.”
Archer was kneeling on Willow’s other side. “Jesus, are you okay? I don’t know what happened. Joker is usually better trained than that.”
“I’m fine. I just got the wind knocked out of me.”
“You’re bleeding,” Josh growled. “You need to get checked out.”
Archer had pulled his phone from his pocket and was now speaking urgently to someone on the other end. Josh stayed by Willow’s side and held her hand, keeping her still. He hadn’t wanted to move her in the first place but he’d had to get her away from a stomping horse.
“Is Joker okay? Is he hurt?” she asked.
“He’s fine,” Archer assured her. “Just scared.”
Josh smoothed back Willow’s damp hair from her face. “It sounded like a gunshot.”
Brows pulled together, Archer shook his head. “Couldn’t be. There’s no hunting allowed on Evandria property. It had to be a car backfiring.”
“Why would a car be up here? There are no roads.”
“Maybe a landscaping truck. Or a construction vehicle.”
Landscaping? In the middle of the trees? And the construction was at least four miles away. Plus it was Sunday. Archer’s explanation was flimsy at best but Josh didn’t press. The suspicion that this might not be an accident was beginning to take root inside of him.
“It will be faster if we can take her to the infirmary. Can you travel, Willow?” Archer asked, pausing his phone conversation. “You and Josh can ride together.”
Willow nodded and tried to sit up but struggled until Josh placed a steadying arm under her torso. As stubborn as she was, it would be a waste of breath to try and convince her to do anything else. “I can travel.”
As carefully as he could he lifted her to her feet, holding her steady until he was sure she wasn’t going to faint or keel over from dizziness. She did, however, lean against him as he walked her back over to the horse that Archer had been riding previously. He’d indicated that he would be riding Joker back, not Willow.
Both men helped her into the saddle and then Josh mounted up behind her, wrapping his arm around her waist to keep her steady. The ride back to the infirmary seemed like it took forever but it was probably less than half an hour. Some of the riding party and galloped ahead but the rest stayed with Willow at a more sedate pace. Her head couldn’t take much jarring or bouncing. He kept his arms tightly around her and talked to her about anything and everything in the most soothing voice he could muster. Whatever he could do to try and keep her mind off of the pain in her head and the myriad of bruises she was going to have head to toe. She didn’t seem to mind but she only responded back a few times. Once to tell him he was an idiot and another time telling him he was wrong about whatever it was he was saying.
It meant that she was awake and alert, so he’d take it.
When they reached the small clinic, he slid off the horse first and then lifted her down. She was stiff and wincing but this time she was steady on her feet and was able to walk inside with only his arm for support. He would have carried her but she might have kneed him in the balls.
“Do you want me to go back with you?” he asked and received the answer he’d expected. She scowled and shook her head as a nurse took her other arm and led them toward an exam room. He w
as being unceremoniously dismissed. She might have made herself a little vulnerable last night but she was going to tough this accident out without his help.
The door closed and Josh settled into a chair opposite it, pulling out his phone to tap out a text to Chase and Ellis about what had transpired. They were supposed to meet their friends back at Willow’s house early in the afternoon but this might make them late.
“Can I get you anything?”
Josh lifted his head to see Archer hovering nearby, shifting back and forth on his feet.
“I’m good but once we get back to the resort we’re going to need to pack and check out quickly.”
“I can have one of the maids go in and pack for you.”
I just bet you would. You want to see what we have. Go right ahead.
“That would be great. I’d appreciate that.”
If Archer was surprised that Josh had agreed, he didn’t let on. Instead he made a quick call, then came to sit down next to him.
“Listen, I said this to Willow on the ride but I’ll go ahead and tell you now. I think I’m getting very close to finding out who killed her husband. I’ve got a few suspects and it’s only a matter of time before I’m sure.”
Now this is interesting.
“That’s great, but I guess I’m confused. If it was this easy to find the killer, why wasn’t that done a long time ago?”
“That’s a good question.”
That’s why I asked it, asshole.
“It just seems like it shouldn’t be that easy. The men’s deaths were made to look like accidents, after all.”
“They were and I think that was intentional. As for what took so long, my predecessor five years ago buried their files and the circumstances. If three of our brothers had died on the same exact day, and they were well-known to be close friends, then their deaths should have been looked into. I don’t know why that didn’t happen but I’m hoping to right that wrong now. Evandria takes care of its own.”
Midnight Of No Return (Midnight Blue Beach Book 2) Page 13