Christmas at Colts Creek

by Delores Fossen

  Matt’s grin faded, and now she saw the first trace of cop in his eyes. There was concern, and she knew why. It wasn’t like Brody not to take a call.

  “It’s Darcia’s day off,” Matt explained, “and if she’s driving, she’ll let a call go to voice mail. I was going to try Rowan, but I didn’t want to worry him if there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Rowan’s here today for the ranch-hand breakfast,” Janessa said, motioning out the window. “I saw him earlier in the corral.”

  Matt nodded. “Then maybe I’ll just go out and speak to him. Brody’s phone battery probably died or something. Or he could be out looking at some horses where there’s no cell reception. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong.”

  There was some cop subtext in that assurance. Matt wanted to believe there was nothing wrong, but until he ruled it out, there was indeed something to worry about.

  “How long ago were you at Brody’s?” she asked Matt.

  He checked the time. “About a half hour ago, maybe a little more.” He paused. “Again, it was good to meet you,” Matt said. He smiled at the baby, slid on his hat and went to the door where he gave Margo another hug before heading out. No doubt to find Rowan who would in turn help him find Brody.

  “Margo, could you take the baby?” she asked, and once Margo had done that, Janessa texted Brody. Where are you?

  A few seconds crawled by. Is everything okay? he texted back.

  Janessa learned two things from that. Brody hadn’t answered her question, and he wanted to make sure there wasn’t something wrong with the baby.

  We’re all okay she messaged back. Are you? Matt was just here looking for you.

  More seconds ticked by. Then more. And finally he responded. I’ve got a lot on my plate today.

  Interesting because the plate didn’t include anything at the ranch. Or responding to phone calls from a foster brother.

  Gotta go, Brody added to his text. I’ll talk to you later.

  It was the sort of thing people said all the time, but Janessa got a bad feeling about it. Bad enough for her to grab her purse and her keys.

  “Is it all right if I drive over to Brody’s and see if he’s there?” she asked Margo.

  “Of course,” Margo readily agreed. “You’ll let us know if you find him?”

  Janessa assured the woman she would, then gave the baby a quick kiss and hurried out after bundling her coat. She got in her car and headed to Brody’s. Even though Matt had said he wasn’t there, it was a starting point. She could leave Brody an actual note, one that might let him know how concerned she was once he read it.

  When she reached his house, she saw that his truck wasn’t in the driveway so Janessa dug out a pen from her purse, then a piece of paper. Or rather a receipt.

  “I need to see you,” she wrote and then looked around for something to stick it to his door. The only thing she could find was some cinnamon gum.

  Chewing two pieces, she went to his porch, chewed some more, and when she thought she finally had the gum at the right consistency, she used the red blob to glue the note in place. She was about to go back to her car to start a drive around town, but she heard the sound of an engine. A couple of moments later, Brody pulled to a stop in his driveway.

  One look at his face and she knew he wasn’t happy to see her. She also knew that something was wrong.

  “I’m okay,” he said in such a way that in no way assured her that he was.

  With her gaze locked on his face, she waited on the porch as he walked toward her. “Matt came by the ranch house,” she told him. “He was worried about you.”

  Brody made a sound that could have meant anything, took out his phone and fired off a quick text. “I told him I’m fine,” Brody relayed to her. Then he repeated it to Janessa.

  She nearly mimicked that sound of his, the one that could have meant anything, but no way did she want to blow this up into an argument. Something was wrong, and Janessa wanted to know what.

  He plucked the note from the door, read it and then looked at the gum. She shrugged. “I wanted to make sure it didn’t blow away.”

  And to make sure Brody didn’t send her away, Janessa slid her hand around the back of his neck, pulled him down to her and kissed him. In what was a first in this kissing history, he didn’t slip right into it. No tongue, no heat. But Janessa didn’t give up. She kept kissing him while she eased her arms around him. She didn’t stop until they both had reached the level of serious oxygen deprivation.

  “Want to tell me what you don’t want to talk about?” she asked.

  On a heavy sigh and some muttered profanity, he unlocked the door so they could go inside. He went to the fridge and came back with two beers. Since it wasn’t even lunchtime yet, it was early for a drink, but Janessa took it, and when he dropped down onto the sofa, she sat on the stone-top coffee table across from him so they’d be face-to-face. Janessa didn’t say anything else, didn’t kiss him again. She just waited him out.

  “I talked to my mom about the visit from the PI that Abe hired,” Brody finally said. “I thought it had something to do with my sister’s death.”

  As serious of a subject as that was, and it was indeed as serious as it got, Janessa was relieved that she wasn’t the reason for his obviously dark mood.

  “There were some things about her death that my mother didn’t know, but I thought maybe Abe had found out about it and paid to have it investigated.” He paused, had a long pull of his beer. “My sister killed herself because she was pissed off at me.”

  Janessa tried to combine sympathy with a flat, level look. “There had to have been more to it than an argument with you.”

  “Many arguments,” he corrected. “But that night, her mood was the worst I’d ever seen. She’d been drinking, and after I yelled at her, she sneaked out and ended up driving her car right into a tree.” He paused again. “She didn’t even hit the brakes.”

  Janessa took a moment to let that sink in, and she had to bite off the holy hell she nearly muttered. He believed his sister had committed suicide. Janessa wanted to ask if it was possible that the girl had simply lost control of the vehicle, but she doubted that would make Brody’s guilt go away. Guilt that he didn’t deserve, but a lot of crappy things happened that people didn’t deserve.

  She set her beer aside and took hold of his hand. “I’m sorry.” It was a puny response, but it was heartfelt, and much to her surprise, it seemed to help.

  Brody cursed, groaned and dropped the back of his head against the sofa. His mood didn’t brighten, but at least now she could see more than just the guilt and grief. There was frustration and maybe something else.

  “So, did the PI visit Darcia to talk to her about Layla?” Janessa asked.

  Brody laughed, but there wasn’t a drop of humor in it. “No.” He lifted his head, drank more beer and met her gaze. “The visit was about Rowan.”

  At the mention of his brother’s name, Janessa instantly got a bad thought. “Was there something wrong with his adoption? Did Darcia cut any corners?”

  “Oh, there was something wrong with it all right,” Brody verified. “There wasn’t one because my mother gave birth to Rowan.”

  Janessa hadn’t instantly got that thought at all. And now she did say that “Holy hell.”

  “Yeah,” Brody verified, “and that’s not even the big surprise in all of this. Abe is Rowan’s father.”

  Janessa froze. Any other holy hell that was still trapped in her throat just stalled there. It took her a moment and chugging some beer before she could finally ask, “How the heck did that happen?”

  “Apparently, there was some residual lust left over from their younger years.” There was more than a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.

  Since Brody and she had that same residual lust, Janessa totally got it. But she couldn’t get Abe and Darcia being together
after they’d fought and feuded for years. Still, she could see how this might play out. One bad night, perhaps some alcohol, but instead of driving a car into a tree, Abe and Darcia had landed in bed. Darcia had gotten pregnant, and... Janessa had to stop.

  “Did Abe know?” she asked.

  “He found out. I don’t know how,” Brody quickly added. “It was probably when he was having the background checks done on Jimmy, Darcia and me. Rowan was the other matter that Abe hired the PI to investigate.”

  Her brain was too frazzled right now to consider how Abe would have handled news like that, but he would have absolutely wanted proof that Rowan was his son. Abe had done a DNA test on her after all. So, maybe the PI was supposed to get that proof.

  She thought of Abe’s letter that he’d sent to her right before he’d died. I need you to come to the ranch ASAP. There are some things I have to tell you, some things I have to fix. Had Abe been talking about Rowan?

  Possibly.

  Probably, she amended.

  Once Abe had found out that Rowan was his son, Abe would have wanted him. The child with him and his first love. Heck yes, Abe would have wanted him, but a custody battle wouldn’t have worked because Rowan was already old enough to nix such a fight. No way would Rowan choose Abe over Darcia. So, Abe had needed a strategy, a fix, for drawing his son into his life. Abe had needed her maybe to help him mend fences with Darcia so he could in turn build a relationship with his son.

  “Why didn’t Darcia tell Rowan? Or you?” Janessa asked Brody.

  “I didn’t get into that with her, but I suspect she was ashamed of sleeping with her sworn enemy.”

  Janessa could understand his mother feeling that way, but something else occurred to her, too. Something that was going to take her a while to process. “Rowan’s my half brother. Yours, too.”

  “Yeah.” That was all Brody said for several long moments. “And now I have to tell our kid brother that his life has been pretty much a big-assed lie.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BRODY WAS QUICKLY learning that fixing big-assed lies wasn’t easy. Life got in the way. Specifically, life in the form of Rowan having a hot Christmas Eve date. One that Brody had decided not to shoot to hell and back by telling his brother the truth about his parents. Instead, Brody had delayed lie-fixing for the night.

  Now that it was morning, he wished he could keep delaying it.

  Darcia no doubt felt the same. After all, it was Christmas, but this wasn’t news they should sit on any longer. The odds were slim that Rowan would hear this from someone else, but it could be devastating if the boy had to hear it from anyone other than family. Heaven knew what the truth would do to him, but Brody was betting this wasn’t a case of the truth setting him or anyone else free. Still, it had to be done.

  They’d already opened presents and had their traditional family breakfast before Rowan went to his room for a shower and to no doubt test out the new video game Brody had gotten him. That left Darcia and Brody waiting in the living room.

  And waiting.

  Brody thought he was doing a decent job of holding back his frayed nerves, but his mother was failing big time. She was clutching and unclutching her cross necklace while running the fingers of her other hand over the silk scarf Rowan had given her for Christmas. Brody had gone big scale and given her the plans for the new pottery studio he was having built for her, and Darcia had her gaze fixed on those plans that she’d spread out on the coffee table.

  “I told Janessa,” Brody said, his voice cutting through the silence.

  He saw the muscle do a quick jump in her throat, saw the equally quick objection in her eyes. Then the resignation came. Janessa needed to know because Rowan was her brother. Their brother, Brody mentally corrected, which would make for a weird family reunion if they ever had one. His lover’s father and his mother had created a child together.

  “Janessa must think I’m the worst kind of parent,” Darcia muttered.

  “No, she doesn’t. She’s just trying to come to terms with this like I am. It’s not easy to come to terms when we have to deal with the image of her father having sex with my mother.” He shrugged. “But actually the whole idea of parental sex isn’t something we want to imagine.”

  Darcia managed a brief smile. One that came to a fast end, and her forehead bunched up. “I was a mess after Layla died. You remember,” she muttered in a whisper.

  He certainly did. He’d been a mess, too. Brody considered the timing of that and merged it with the timing of Rowan’s conception, his mother becoming a traveling nurse and Rowan’s birth.

  Brody cursed and, even though it was warranted, the language earned him a scolding glance from Darcia. Once a mother, always a mother. “Abe took advantage of you,” Brody concluded. “You were grieving, and he—”

  “Abe has plenty of sins, but that isn’t one of them,” Darcia interrupted. “As much as you don’t want to think about parental sex, I’m the one who went to Abe. At first, it was just to confront him again about that blasted car he’d lent Layla, but then I started crying. Abe pulled me into his arms, and one thing led to another.”

  It sure sounded like Abe taking advantage, but Brody remembered something else. Abe had grieved, too. Even as a teenager, Brody had seen that.

  “That was the first and only time I had sex with Abe,” Darcia went on. “When I realized I was pregnant, I left so I could have the baby in secret. I’m sorry about that,” she added to Brody. “Because I know I left you when you were only eighteen and in a very bad place about your sister.”

  He had indeed been in a bad place, what with Janessa leaving and Layla’s death. But he had to give his mother an out here. “Truth is, you weren’t really helping with the grief,” he confessed. “Don’t get me wrong, I love you and I missed you when you weren’t here, but we weren’t doing much to fix each other. What helped was when you came back with Rowan.”

  The muscles in her face relaxed, and some relief practically washed over her. She tensed, though, when his phone dinged with a text. Brody glanced at it and, even though it was something he’d want to share with her eventually, for now he sent a quick reply and put his phone away.

  Just as they heard Rowan come out of his room.

  They stayed put, waiting, and a few seconds later, Rowan came in. “Hope there are more of those cinnamon rolls,” his brother immediately said.

  Then he stopped, looked at their faces. Rowan didn’t curse, not out loud anyway, but Brody was positive there were some choice words and some WTFs going through the boy’s head.

  “Are you sick?” Rowan asked, the question directed at his mother before he shifted to Brody. “Did you get Janessa pregnant?”

  “Wrong on both counts,” Brody assured him, and he added a scowl for the second question.

  Darcia stood and faced Rowan. “I have something to tell you, but before I do, I want you to know that I love you so very much.”

  “Crap,” Rowan blurted out. “This is bad. Real bad. What happened?”

  His mother swallowed hard. “Rowan, you’re my son. My son,” she emphasized, pressing her hand to her stomach. “And Abe Parkman was your father.”

  Brody had to hand it to his mother. She’d gotten it all out there without so much as a stutter or a crack in her voice, and she’d kept her eyes on Rowan the whole time.

  Rowan stood there, volleying confused glances between Brody and Darcia. Since it seemed Rowan was looking for some confirmation, Brody gave him a nod. He stood as well in case Rowan fell apart or tried to do a deny-and-bolt. Brody didn’t want to give another sibling the chance to run off in a rage.

  But Rowan didn’t rage, bolt or deny. Groaning softly, he went to the sofa and plopped down. “Well, this explains a lot,” the boy grumbled.

  Now, it was Darcia and Brody who exchanged surprised glances. “What do you mean?” Brody asked.

&n
bsp; “Well, when I applied for an after-school job at the ranch, Mr. Parkman called me into his office to talk to me. This was just a couple of weeks before he died. He kept looking at me funny. You know, the way you’d study a painting or something.”

  Or something. In this case, Abe was looking for any resemblance. There wasn’t one. Well, in hindsight, Brody could see that Rowan and Abe had the same shaped eyes, but the Parkman DNA wasn’t as obvious in Rowan as it was in Janessa and plenty of others.

  “Mr. Parkman didn’t really say anything about the job,” Rowan added. “He just asked me questions about how I was doing in school, what I wanted to be, that sort of thing.”

  Since Abe rarely had anything to do with the hiring and firing of ranch hands, calling Rowan into his office would have definitely clanged some bells for Brody if he’d known about it. Still, he wouldn’t have made the stretch to Rowan being Abe’s son. Brody would have just figured that Abe was trying to wheedle info as to how Darcia felt about Rowan working at the ranch. Of course, Abe could have also been trying to figure out if Rowan knew the truth.

  “Then I was at O’Riley’s later that day and was having my usual nachos and a Coke,” Rowan went on. “When I finished, I tossed my cup and plate in the trash and left, but one of my friends said after I was gone, this guy went through the trash and took out the cup. He was trying to be all stealthy like, but my friend saw him. I just figured the guy wanted the cup because it was one of those that O’Riley’s had printed up for the holiday gala. Some people collect junk like that.”

  Brody was about 100 percent sure this wasn’t about adding to a junk collection. “The man who took it must have been the PI Abe hired,” he explained to Rowan. “And he likely used the cup to get your DNA so Abe could prove his paternity.”

  “Crap,” Rowan muttered again. He repeated it a couple more times and scrubbed his hands over his face before he fastened his gaze to Darcia. “It’s true? You really gave birth to me?”

  Darcia nodded. “I didn’t tell you because then I would have had to also explain that Abe was your father. I didn’t want him to know because he would have tried to get custody of you. I figured I’d tell you when you were old enough.” She paused. “But then when you got old enough, I convinced myself that you were better off with a lie than the truth. I’m truly sorry about that,” she insisted.