“You need to let me handle this,” Harmon said. “Let me just get all of this out there, and I’ll hang up so you can have some time to let it all sink in. Take twenty-four hours to consider everything I’m telling you, and you’ll see this is the right thing for all of us.” Another deep breath. “I’m going to Lavinia and will tell her I won’t file charges if she backs off and leaves me, you and the boys alone.”
“What?” Cleo snapped, but Harmon ignored her.
“The only thing you have to do in return is accept what I’m offering you,” Harmon insisted. “And what I’m offering you, Cleo, is me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“DICKHEAD,” JUDD MUTTERED as Cleo and he drove back to Coldwater. “Asshole.”
Judd had already used every relevant curse word in his vocabulary. He was pretty sure he’d already repeated “dickhead” and “asshole” several times, but they were fitting for someone like Harmon.
Cleo was not going to go back to that twit. Or at least Judd hoped like hell she wasn’t. Within seconds after Harmon had ended his call, she’d said his offer was out, that there was no way she would accept it. But Judd was worried that Cleo might cave if Lavinia continued to put on the pressure. After all, Cleo didn’t have a lot of fixes available if Kace’s temporary custody didn’t hold.
For now, though, they were in a holding pattern because Lavinia hadn’t even been at the police station when Cleo and Judd had gotten there. The cops had already released her when Harmon had told them he wouldn’t be filing assault charges. The dickhead had even paid for the window repair, but he had likely only done that because he thought it would set things right with Cleo.
It wouldn’t.
Even though she wasn’t cussing and swearing, that wasn’t a look of surrender on her face. Just the opposite. She was tired and pissed, not a good combination.
What they saw when they pulled into the driveway of the ranch likely wouldn’t improve things, either. The boys were there, all of them leaning in various poses against Kace’s cruiser. If there’d been a picture in the dictionary of unhappy kids, this would have been the shot. Even the kitten at Leo’s feet looked as if it was sulking.
Kace was on the porch, talking to Rosy and the sitter, Lissy, but when Kace saw Cleo’s car, he came toward them, reaching them before Cleo or Judd could even get out.
“Just a heads-up,” Kace said. “The therapy session didn’t go well when Donna brought up the possibility of them having to leave.”
Cleo’s shoulders dropped. “Leo didn’t punch her, did he?” she asked.
“No. Just the opposite.” Kace tipped his head to them. “They’ve been like this since then.”
Judd recognized the surly signs because he’d had practice with this when he’d been a kid. Put up big ornery shields and folks were likely to give you a wide berth while you sulked and stewed about whatever the hell was bothering you. In their case, it was likely fear and the uncertainty that was driving this.
“I need to get back to the office,” Kace said, checking the time. “But I can stay and try to handle this first.”
Cleo shook her head. “No, I’ll deal with it.” She got out and eyed the trio. “Probably best to do this separately, though. I’ll take Beckham first while Lissy’s inside with Isaac and Leo.”
Judd had a quick debate with himself. “I’ll talk to Beckham. You take the other two.”
Cleo opened her mouth, closed it and then repeated the process until he was about to joke that she looked like a landed fish. Judd understood her hesitation, too. She didn’t want to put this kind of pressure on him, but the pressure was there. And it would be worse if he didn’t do something to help.
“I’ll talk to Beckham,” Judd repeated, and he headed in the boys’ direction before Cleo could argue.
As Judd approached, Leo broke from the pack and came toward him. Popsicle was right on his heels. “How much longer we gotta be mad?” Leo asked.
Judd was glad he didn’t have a fast, easy smile because he wouldn’t have wanted Leo to think he was making fun or light of this. “How much longer do you want to be mad?”
Leo made an uneasy glance back at the house. “Not long enough to miss chocolate chip cookies. Miss Rosy said when we got back, we could have cookies.”
Judd couldn’t fault the kid’s priorities. Rosy’s chocolate chip cookies were worth curtailing a bad mood even when the mood was warranted. He ruffled the boy’s hair and shifted his attention to Beckham, hiking his thumb in the direction of the cabin.
“You’re with me,” Judd told the boy.
Beckham couldn’t have made it more obvious that talking to Judd was something he didn’t want to do, but with a huff, he pushed himself away from the cruiser and shuffled after Judd. At the rate he was moving, there wouldn’t be a cookie crumb left since Cleo had already gotten the other two boys in the house.
If Judd had thought a chocolate chip bribe would have worked on Beckham, he would have tried it, but baked goods weren’t going to fix what ailed this kid.
“Don’t tell me that everything’s going to be all right,” Beckham snarled when he finally made it to Judd on the front porch of the cabin. “You said it yourself. Sometimes, shit can’t be fixed.”
“Okay. Everything isn’t going to be all right. Your life is crappy, and it might continue to be that way for a while.”
Beckham scowled, but his eyes glinted with suspicion.
“Hey, I’m not here to coddle you,” Judd went on. “You should have figured that out by now.”
“Adults are supposed to fix shit like this,” Beckham growled. He jammed his hands into his jeans pockets.
“My motto in life is that sometimes shit can’t be fixed. Your mom couldn’t be and neither can Lavinia.”
“The piss witch,” Beckham amended.
Judd considered doing the adult thing and reminding Beckham not to use profanity, but in the grand scheme of things, that just didn’t seem important right now. What was important, especially to Beckham, was keeping his brothers with him in a safe place. Judd got that.
Man, did he.
But he couldn’t paint a rosy picture of how all this custody would play out. He couldn’t lie to this boy. Maybe, though, he could let him know that he would survive whatever future shit came his way.
“Lavinia was a lot like my own mother,” Judd said. “Except mine was a junkie, and instead of hitting me and my brothers, she just didn’t take care of us. That’s how we ended up in foster care.”
Now Judd needed to take a deep breath, and he silently cursed the memories that just wouldn’t go away. Hell, he was a grown man. Why couldn’t this just go away?
“Some bad stuff happened to you, didn’t it?” Beckham asked.
Judd nodded, not trusting his voice, and he cleared his throat. “Bad stuff,” he confirmed and then looked at Beckham. “But I promised you I wouldn’t let something that bad happen to you and your brothers. You probably don’t believe that.”
Beckham lifted his shoulder and leaned against the porch railing. “I figure you’ll try. You’re scary sometimes, but I think you’d try.”
“Scary, huh?” Judd said. “I’ll let you in on a secret. Sometimes, I scare myself.”
Beckham gave him another of those skeptical looks.
“I’m an alcoholic,” Judd went on. “That’s why I didn’t foster you and your brothers. I didn’t feel I was the right person to help take care of you.”
The boy stayed quiet a moment. “I’ve never seen you drink,” Beckham pointed out.
“Hopefully, you won’t. If I do, it means I’ve screwed up so bad that I might not come back from it. I’ve been sober a year. Not nearly enough time for me to start thinking it’s no longer a problem.”
“Why are you telling me this crap?” Beckham asked.
Good question, and Judd hoped thi
s wasn’t a bad answer. “Because you need to know that what’s happening to you now can stay with you. If you allow it to happen, it can make you mean and bitter and make you believe that nothing will ever be good again. Don’t do that. Don’t feel that way. I’m your cautionary tale about that. Understand?”
“Yeah, you don’t want me to turn out like you.” Beckham met his gaze for a second, then glanced away. “But you’re...okay.”
Judd thought that might be one of the biggest compliments he’d ever gotten.
“Aunt Cleo talked to Mom about you,” Beckham went on. He looked at Judd. “She never said anything about you being an alcoholic. It was all good stuff about how you looked after her when she was living here.”
“I beat up some guy at school who was giving her trouble,” Judd admitted. “I should probably tell you that was wrong, that I should have figured out a more peaceful way to resolve things, but the guy was a dick.”
Which made Judd think of another dick—Harmon. Soon, he’d need to deal with that clown, but it wouldn’t involve punching him.
Well, hopefully not.
Beckham’s smile came and went fast. “I overheard Aunt Cleo tell Mom you were Judd the Stud.”
Well, that was something he wished Beckham hadn’t been privy to, but it made him wonder just how much Cleo had talked to Miranda about him. And why. Had it been just girl talk or had his name come up when they’d been discussing custody possibilities for the boys?
Beckham took out his hands from his pockets, but his right one wasn’t empty. He was holding a folded-up letter. “It’s the letter from my mom,” he said.
Judd nodded. “I remember. You read it yet?”
“No.” He flipped it over, studying it and running his thumb over the sealed flap on the back.
“You want me to read it to you?” Judd offered.
Beckham shook his head, dragged in a long breath and opened it. When the boy unfolded it, Judd could see that it was just one page with some handwriting and a picture.
“Mom was good at drawing,” Beckham mumbled, his voice cracking. He turned the page and showed Judd the picture of the dog that his mother had sketched.
“Yeah, she was good at it. Was that your dog?” Judd asked.
“No.” Beckham turned the letter back toward him. “We had one when I was a little kid, but it died. I wanted another one, but my dad died, too. Then Mom said we’d have to wait for things to settle down some before we could get one.” He paused. “Things didn’t settle down.”
No, and it was possible that wouldn’t happen for a long time.
“‘Dear son,’” Beckham began, reading aloud. “‘I’m not sure I can say anything to make this better so I drew you a picture instead.’” His hand was trembling now. “‘When you get down and sad, look at it and remember that one day you’ll have that dog you’ve always wanted. One day, you’ll be happy again. One day, you’ll forgive me for leaving you. Love and hugs, Mom.’”
Beckham stared at it, the moments dragging by. “She said goodbye.” Beckham’s voice was a broken sob. “My mom said goodbye.”
Judd hated that he’d been right. Sometimes, shit just couldn’t be fixed, so Judd pulled Beckham into his arms and let the boy cry his heart out.
* * *
CLEO GAVE ISAAC and Leo a quick hug and left them with Lissy so she could hurry across the yard to Judd’s cabin. She’d talked to the boys for a half hour and expected that Judd would still be neck-deep in “conversation” with Beckham.
Judd was there, sitting on the top step, but Beckham wasn’t.
One look at Judd’s tired eyes and weary expression, and she knew she’d made the wrong call about leaving him to talk to Beckham.
“How did it go?” she asked, bracing herself for the answer.
He looked up at her, shrugged. “Okay enough.”
Cleo frowned. “That’s not an ‘okay enough’ look on your face.”
Judd paused, stood. “Beckham read the letter from his mom. He cried.”
Well, crap. Yes, she’d definitely made the wrong call about which kids to talk to. “Where is he? I need to go to him.”
“He took one of the horses out for a ride. Said he wanted some time alone. He’s not suicidal or anything,” Judd quickly added. “After he finished crying, we talked some more, and he’s dealing. He’ll be okay.”
If this had been anyone else, she likely wouldn’t have taken that as gospel, but Judd had plenty of experience dealing with emotional and often bad family situations.
“How’d it go with Isaac and Leo?” he asked.
“We talked, but it wasn’t anything like what you went through with Beckham. Isaac and Leo are at the age where cookies and hugs cure plenty of ills.”
They stepped into the cabin, their attention first going to the ice-cream carton on the floor. A reminder that they’d dropped it there before kissing and groping their way to the bed. But the ice cream wasn’t the only sugary reminder of what had gone on earlier. Audrey’s peach pie was on the foyer table.
“It’s nookie pie,” Cleo commented.
Judd’s eyebrow came up. “Excuse me?”
“Audrey’s trying to lure you into bed.”
He certainly didn’t deny that, and since Judd was a smart man, it wasn’t a revelation to him. “She’d stand a better chance of doing that with ice cream. I’m not a pie kind of guy.”
Cleo smiled because she knew that. The smile went south in a hurry, though, when her attention landed on his bed and the rumpled covers. She’d never felt so guilty over an orgasm. The guilt went up another notch when she glanced at her suitcases that were tucked on the side of the sofa. Talk about upending Judd’s life, and now she’d invaded his meager space. She really had to do something to fix the problems she’d caused by trying to fix the problem of fostering the boys.
Cleo turned toward him. “Look, I’m really sorry about what I’ve put you through.”
His eyebrow rose again, and this time it was coupled with a puzzled look. “Does this have to do with sex, Harmon or the boys?”
Cleo was sure that now she was the puzzled one. She got the references to sex and the boys. But not the other one. “No. Why would it have anything to do with Harmon?”
Judd shrugged and went to the kitchen. He was gathering up cleaning supplies, she realized, and she went to help him. “Well, because you might be regretting that you didn’t go to Harmon first with the foster plan,” he said. “Less complicated.”
“No,” she repeated, and she couldn’t say that fast enough. “There’s no way I’d consider Harmon as a foster father. I’m done with him, and I won’t let him blackmail me into getting back together with him.”
Sheez. Hadn’t Judd been able to tell that from her reaction? Maybe not. She had been putting off a lot of gloomy vibes, and maybe he thought she’d considered Harmon an option instead of a pain in the butt.
Joining Judd on the floor, she got down on her knees, took some paper towels and started cleaning. The Rocky Road no longer looked appetizing with its marshmallow blobs floating on the chocolate puddle-goo.
“And as for the boys,” Cleo went on, “I shouldn’t have put that kind of pressure on you.”
“What about the sex?” he asked.
Cleo knew what he meant. She hadn’t forgotten his thread of conversation when he’d asked her if her apology had been for the sex. Like the other two topics—Harmon and the boys—this one wasn’t so easy to explain.
“That probably put a different kind of pressure on you,” she muttered.
She would have groaned at her own namby-pamby response if Judd hadn’t kissed her. It wasn’t just a peck, either. It was a full-blown kiss, with his tongue crossing her lips and going in for something long, deep and incredibly arousing.
Cleo lost track of time. It could have lasted thirty seconds or days, but when he p
ulled back from her, she had no doubts that she’d been thoroughly kissed by someone who knew exactly how to do it.
“Answer the question again now,” he said. “Did you apologize for having sex with me?”
Somewhere in the back of her mind—yes, the very mind that’d just lost track of time and space—Cleo thought that maybe the kiss had been a dirty tactic to get her to start babbling. If so, it worked.
“No. I’m not sorry about that,” she admitted. She huffed. “But then you finished me off. I didn’t do the same for you.”
He lifted his shoulder, and as if he hadn’t just caused her hormones to fire on all cylinders, he went back to cleaning. “This is probably my dick talking, but I say we don’t lump sex together with anything else that’s going on, that we have sex just for fun—rec sex—and to heck with the consequences.”
Judd paused, frowned. “Yeah, that’s my dick talking.”
Cleo laughed before she could stop herself. “Well, it sounded sensible to me. Of course, with the brain cells you just melted with that kiss, I’m probably not the voice of reason right now. Rec sex, huh?”
“It’s the wiser way to go when it comes to me,” he assured her.
He was close enough for her to dive right in and kiss him again, and he smelled great. The man scents mixed with the Rocky Road. Cleo thought that maybe this was how fetishes started. But kissing would lead to sex, and while her body was all for that, it wasn’t a good idea.
“Beckham should be back soon, and I’ll need to talk to him,” she reminded Judd.
Other reminders came, too, and these weren’t of hot kisses, sex with Judd or Rocky Road. It was that this was her life now. Trying to patch up three kids who’d had life dumped on them, and while she wanted to help them—desperately wanted that—she was beginning to have her doubts.
“I’ve been toying with the idea of selling the bar,” she said.
Judd had just rested his head against the back of the sofa, but that got him shifting toward her again. He didn’t tell her that was unnecessary or that she was jumping the gun. He just sat there, waiting her out. His silence was as effective as his kiss at pushing her babble button.
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