by Dana Mentink
Her father would go ballistic knowing she was in Driftwood trying to help Rocky. Worse yet, that she was working a case with Chad. His anger at Rocky Jaggert had a long history, stretching way back to his college days when both men wanted to date her mother, Sarah. Their bitterness had only worsened after her parents married.
Even after decades had passed, the tension flared again when Rocky’s wife had cheated on him with Chad’s track coach. She’d abandoned the family, forcing them to move. Sarah had greeted single-father Rocky warmly when they’d moved to town, unperturbed when Chad and Dory started dating.
They’re two nice kids. Why shouldn’t they date?
Her father had been furious. I don’t want that boy anywhere near Dory.
What he hadn’t said shouted just as loudly. And I don’t want my wife anywhere near Rocky Jaggert.
Why could her father not see that his wife was simply a woman with a warm heart and a soul brimming with compassion? She had no desire to resurrect a relationship with Rocky, but nothing would soften her father on the topic.
The kid is going nowhere. You can do better.
And later...the terrible weight of his anger when she’d revealed her pregnancy to her parents.
You’re barely twenty years old. No degree, no husband, no job. Chad ruined your life, and you let him. How could you be so stupid?
The rupture to her heart had been insurmountable and she’d run away, enduring horrors she still did not like to recall. But after years of gradual healing, her father had grown to adore Ivy and his anger had cooled. She knew it was still there, though, lingering under the surface like flammable vapors waiting for a spark.
“Honey?” Her mother tried again. “Come home and talk it over with your father.”
“I will, as soon as I finish up a few things. Please don’t worry him, okay? Everything’s under control.” They chatted for a few minutes more before Dory ended the call.
It would not be long, she feared, before her father got wind of their conversation and began calling her himself. If she so much as breathed a word about Blaze, he would use all his contacts at the district attorney’s office to aid in the search.
Blaze’s warning blared in her mind. Don’t talk to the police.
Maybe she should go to Danny anyway. But if Blaze thought she was trying to trap him, what would he do? She had no idea what kind of a man he was, aside from the investigation into his possible involvement in the ATM robbery, nor had she an inkling about why he’d come back. The smart thing would be to hand over the info to the police and get back to her daughter. But what if Blaze intended to hunt for Ivy?
She gritted her teeth. She remembered those long, hard days living in a cramped trailer in the middle of nowhere, the place she’d run to after the hateful scene with her father. Pregnant and scared, she’d worked three jobs to save up money so she and Ivy could live on their own. No handouts from her parents. No charity. She would take care of that little life. God allowed her to do that. She wouldn’t let anyone get near her daughter without her permission.
Not Blaze. Or Chad.
Jaw tight, she dialed the texter’s number.
The phone rang three times before someone picked up.
“Blaze?” she said. “Is that you?”
The voice was quieter than she’d expected, rough-edged, as if the speaker was a smoker. “Meet me like I told you.”
“I’m not going to meet you. Tell me why you came back to Driftwood.”
“Meet me,” he snarled, “or you’ll never know what happened.”
“Why have you been playing dead all these years?”
“You know what to do.” He paused. “That’s a real pretty girl in the photo I texted you.”
Rage hummed in her ears. “If you touch my daughter—”
The dial tone chirped in her ear at the same moment she realized she was not alone. Dread coiled in her stomach as she slowly turned around to find Chad standing in the doorway, staring at her. His wide-eyed shock told her he’d heard it all. Her secret was out now.
My daughter...
Slowly she pocketed the phone and braced herself to face what would come next.
* * *
The word bumped around his brain...daughter.
“You have a daughter?” he finally managed to ask.
Dory closed her mouth and wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s not your concern.”
“I...I didn’t mean to pry. Sure, your business. Right.” He hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “You were talking to Blaze. He texted you, didn’t he?”
A furrow appeared between her brows. He thought she wouldn’t answer for a moment.
“My cell phone number was on a business card in my vehicle. Also, there was a picture of my daughter. He’s trying to threaten me into meeting him.”
Chad reached for his phone. “I’ll call Danny...”
She held up a palm to stop him. “He said if the police are involved, we’ll never know what happened.”
“Danny will be discreet. He’ll...”
She shook her head. “No. I’m going to meet him, Chad. I want to see for myself what kind of person he is. If I feel unsafe, I won’t get out of the car.”
He tried not to outright gape. “That’s not gonna happen, Dory. Absolutely no way.”
Her chin went up. “I’m not going to look over my shoulder and worry about my daughter’s safety every day of my life. I’ll meet him. Assess the threat for myself. I have a friend I’m going to enlist to come with me as backup.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to decide for me.”
“Think about your daughter. Be smart about it.” It was the wrong thing to say, he realized. Inappropriate for him to offer parenting advice. Too late.
Rage kindled in her eyes and blazed across her face. “Chad Jaggert, you, above all people, don’t get to tell me how to be a parent.”
While he struggled with the dual urges to hug her and shake some sense back into her, a realization began to dawn in his consciousness.
You, above all people.
His mind flashed back to the picture in her silver locket.
A dark-eyed girl peeking out from under a fringe of lashes.
Dory used to tease him. You have the thickest lashes, Chad. Wasted on a man.
They’d been young and foolish, made some choices they shouldn’t have... His palms felt sweaty. He had to be wrong. But that instinct, the one that told him when a horse was about to kick, hummed low and insistent in his gut. He went hot all over then flushed with a trickling cold. “Dory,” he said slowly. “Your daughter. What’s her name?”
Her swallow was audible. “Ivy.”
The question spooled out as if it was someone else speaking. “How old is she?”
“Why is that—”
“How old?” he snapped.
“Almost five.”
Time slowed down, lapping between them like rolling waves. His own breathing sounded loud to his ears. Five years old. Dark hair. Long eyelashes. Ivy.
His voice failed the first time, so he tried again. “Am I her father?”
She stared at him then and it didn’t matter what she would say next. He read the truth in the tremble of her mouth. The lie evident, the one she’d kept for half a decade.
“Yes.”
Yes. And just like that, he became a father. The incredulity of it rendered him numb. He didn’t know what to do, what to say. Abruptly he turned around and stalked outside.
The spring air had a cold bite to it, yet he hardly felt it. Ivy was his daughter. The shock led him to another sizzling epiphany. All this time Dory had kept him in the dark. She’d stolen his fatherhood for years. Sucking in lungfuls of cool spring air did not stem his dizziness.
When she joined him on the porch, he was still mute.
She shoved her hands in the pockets of the barn jacket Ginny had loaned her. “I don’t expect anything from you, Chad. I don’t want it, in fact. She’s my responsibility, and I’m taking good care of her.”
He whirled to face her. “You kept my child from me.”
Dory jerked before her mouth set into a hard line. “She’s not your child.”
“Yes, she is.” Each word was a stone, flung hard at her. “I had the right to know.”
Now a flush stained Dory’s fair skin. “Your right? What were your rights exactly, Chad, after you told me you never wanted to see me again?”
He flinched.
Wind laced a strand of white-blond hair across her brow, but she didn’t move to brush it away. “You turned your back on me.”
“I wouldn’t have if I had known...”
Again, he knew he’d said the wrong thing, but now he didn’t care.
“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. If you had known,” she said slowly, “you’d have stuck around me out of guilt.” Tears spilled down her face. “You despised me, Chad. You blamed me for destroying your family. I wasn’t about to force myself and my baby on you.”
“Your baby? Don’t paint this as some kind of noble act to protect me. Doesn’t matter the reasons. You kept my kid from me.”
Tension tightened her mouth. “I don’t have to justify my decisions. You ordered me out of your life. I followed directions and left. It cost me everything, Chad, even my own family for a while.” She cocked her head. “But you’d have been happy about that, wouldn’t you? You would have been satisfied that I’d lost what you think I took from you.” Moisture glazed her cheeks.
His own sin struck at him then, the truth in her words. He had wanted her punished; hurt, like he had been. He had desperately needed to fix blame. It hadn’t been fair, but her bitter betrayal had swamped his momentary conviction.
“I want to meet my daughter,” he rasped.
Instead of answering, she shouldered past him and lurched toward her car. He got in front of her as she was about to wrench the driver’s door open.
She fired a tearstained challenge at him. “I’m leaving, Chad. I’m going to meet Blaze and then I’m leaving. In a matter of months we’re moving to Arizona with my parents, so we won’t even be in the same state anymore. It was a huge mistake to come here. I was trying to help your father, but...”
“You can’t just run away now. You have to stay until we get this sorted out.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
He was about to snap at her when a familiar gravelly voice jabbed at him. “Son? Please tell me you’re not speaking to a lady in that tone, huh?”
They both whipped a look at his father, who was standing near the hitching post, thick thatch of gray hair glinting under his battered fishing hat.
Chad looked at his fingers gripping the door handle and suddenly realized Rocky was right. He was lashing out for all he was worth at Dory. With every bit of strength he could muster, he stepped back and blew out a breath. “Sorry.”
She was breathing hard, looking from Chad to Rocky. “Mr. Jaggert...”
He cracked his trademark smile, the one that somehow remained in spite of his prison time, the loss of his business and his self-respect.
“Come on now, Dory. You always called me Rocky. Don’t be cluttering up the works with formalities now.”
He held out his arms and Chad watched in utter befuddlement as Dory tumbled into his father’s embrace.
“All right,” his dad said over the top of her head. “How about we sit down and hash this out?”
Chad could think of nothing else to do but watch his father and the mother of his child enjoy a fond embrace.
In the space of a couple of minutes, his whole life had changed.
What was he supposed to do now?
EIGHT
Dory clung to Rocky for a moment, letting the familiar smell of his aftershave wash over her. He was much thinner than she remembered. Furrows grooved his forehead, and he patted her back until she pulled away. Her head spun. The explosive revelation she’d just shared with Chad beat through her.
Chad knew about Ivy. He knew he was a father. His accusation pricked her.
You kept my kid from me.
She had lied, in a sense, telling herself all the reasons why it had been the right thing to do. But now, face-to-face with Chad, she grappled with paralyzing doubt. Worse yet, she was facing another man who didn’t know the truth.
Knock it off, Dory. You’ve done everything for Ivy. Don’t second-guess yourself now.
Rocky settled into the weathered chair. Dory followed suit, taking the one next to him, catching Chad’s warning look. He didn’t want his father to know about Blaze until they were certain. Was it the right thing to do to tell him about his granddaughter? She had no idea. It felt as though a trap was snapping closed around her. Why hadn’t she escaped the ranch a few moments earlier?
Tom Rourke ambled up the walkway, hat in his hands. “Oh, hey. Sorry, Chad. I was just coming to warn you—” He broke off as he caught sight of Rocky.
“Come on up, Tom,” Rocky said. “You’re too late to warn them that I heard the big news.”
With a sigh, Tom leaned against a weathered beam and eyeballed Chad. “Rocky called me this morning with some gossip he’d heard in town. Made me tell him the rest.”
“I was out this morning on the water.” Rocky looked at Dory. “Still allowed to take out a personal craft, just not to carry any passengers.”
She felt her cheeks heat for him, but Rocky, a former Marine, would never mince words, even to protect his own dignity. “Saw the police cordoning off the cave-in at the canyon. Asked around and heard a few details. Then I called Tom.” He grinned. “We go back way too far for him to lie to me. Isn’t that right, Tom?”
Chagrined, Tom squashed the brim of his hat against his thigh. “One of the volunteers at the cave-in was talking about... Aww, I might have misheard.”
Rocky executed a massive eye roll. “The Driftwood gossip mill is turning at full speed. Tom told me someone spotted Blaze Turner.”
Chad sighed. “I guess it’s out now.”
Tom scratched his stubbled chin. “How exactly is that possible? The Coast Guard dragged the cove for days. I tried to find him after the capsizing. We all did.”
“I don’t know,” Chad said, “but we’re going to find out.”
Tom quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah? Well, that might be a good thing, right? Maybe it will help Rocky somehow.”
Rocky shook his head. “One death or two, I’ll always be seen as guilty.”
Tom grimaced, but Rocky stared straight at Dory and Chad. “That what you two were fussing about just now?”
Chad didn’t speak, so Dory chimed in. “I’m a private investigator. I am tracking Blaze.”
Rocky shrugged. “No sense in you doing that. Past is past, honey. I’m wrecked whether Blaze is alive or not.”
“But if you weren’t guilty, Dad,” Chad said, “if someone made it look like you’d been drinking...”
Rocky’s animation died in a moment and she caught the despair that cloaked him. “No one will ever believe that, son.”
Chad was on his feet. “If Blaze had a hand in framing you, I’m going to prove it.”
Rocky gestured to Dory. “And you’re here to help restore my reputation? Because you feel guilty, right? Because you told the press I was an alcoholic? Been drinking the day before?”
Dory struggled for calm. “I didn’t realize I was speaking to the press. Please believe me. I never would have...”
“Aww, I know. Your daddy drove the nails into my coffin with gusto. You were just the hammer he used to do it.”
She opened her mouth to let her regret spill out, but he waved a weathered palm.
&nbs
p; “I’m just here to tell you both to let it go. Wrecked is wrecked, but you two have lives to live. I’ll get answers in due time. Leave that to me.”
Alarm bells jangled in her stomach.
As Rocky struggled from his chair, Chad put an arm on his knee. “Dad, you aren’t going to try to find Blaze yourself, are you?”
Rocky’s gaze drifted over his son’s face. “Could be I’m going to seek him out and hear what he has to say.”
“Dad...”
Rocky squeezed his son’s shoulder. “And I’ve got something to say to him, too. No matter what kind of a man he is, I let his stepmother drown.” The blue of his eyes clouded and Dory noticed the trembling of his fingers. “Seems like a man owes another an apology for that kind of thing.”
What could she say to dissuade him? To lift the burden that stooped his proud shoulders?
Tom lingered a moment after Rocky had cleared the door. “The guilt has eaten him up for years. He’s not going to let it go. I’ll watch him as best I can. Do you think Blaze has left town?”
Dory watched the indecision drift across Chad’s face. Should he tell Tom of the arranged meeting? The police? There was no choice of letting the matter go now, not since it was clear that Rocky intended to do some sleuthing on his own.
Go home to Ivy, her instincts shouted. Let the whole matter drop, just like the boulder that almost killed you.
But there was one thing she could not deny, one more facet that she’d not allowed herself to consider before.
Rocky was Ivy’s grandfather, even though he still didn’t know it.
One more reason why she could not allow Blaze to vanish with answers that might provide some peace for Rocky’s soul. He’d lost so much. Like he said, she’d been the hammer for her father’s nails.
Chad stood with his back to her, watching Tom and Rocky walk away along the path that skirted the property. What was he thinking? What was he planning?
He crammed his cowboy hat onto his head. “I’m going to that meet tonight as your backup. If you don’t want to be with me, I’ll go alone. But I’m going to be there one way or another. When it’s all over, we’ll tell my dad what he needs to know.”
