Guarded Passion

by Bonnie Dee

  But I knew his anger wasn’t directed at me. He just needed to vent. I was glad I could be there for him to spill his frustration to. Lord knew the man needed to talk to someone.

  I took a breath and considered my next words carefully. “What about your brothers? Have you told them? Even if you don’t want to see him, they might.”

  “No. I haven’t called them. How am I going to say something like that? ‘Guess what, Dad’s not dead after all.’”

  I nodded. “Pretty much just like that. They have a right to know.”

  “Then maybe he should track down their numbers and call them. Why does it have to be me?”

  “Because you’re here and they’re not.” I waited a beat, then tried again. “He came to you for help. Maybe you need to hear the man out, for your peace of mind as much as anything. Just to know what his story is and to be able to put him behind you once and for all.”

  Jonah snorted. “Wise advice. Have you ever talked to your grandma since you left home?”

  That stung, and I couldn’t keep some annoyance from my voice. “Because she threw me out. She didn’t want me there.”

  “Exactly.” He stabbed a finger at me. “Does time change what happened? Do you feel like calling up your sweet old granny now and asking if she wants to bake cookies together? Has she ever once reached out and tried to help you?”

  Sting, sting, and sting again. Obviously he was lashing out from his own frustration. I couldn’t let it get to me.

  “You’re right.” I amazed myself with how calm I sounded. “Maybe some people aren’t worth building a relationship with. Again, I’m not saying you and your dad should become fishing buddies or anything. I’m saying you need to clear the air with him. Express how you feel about all the crap he put you through.” I paused again, then pushed a little further. “And your brothers deserve the same opportunity.”

  Jonah shook his head and inhaled deeply. “I have to go. I have business to take care of in Lexington. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay. I get it. Not my business. I shouldn’t have put in my two cents. I just don’t want to see you regret this later. If I could talk to my mom again, or my dad—hell, if I even knew who my dad was—I wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity.”

  The momentary storm of emotions had passed over Jonah’s face, and it became a blank mask again. He pulled on an impenetrable suit of armor, and the heat in his voice went stone-cold. “You can go now. I’ll call you when I need your help cleaning the house. And don’t worry about the money. I’ll keep sending you checks.”

  I felt frost burned or like I’d been punched in the gut. Knowing the history that had formed Jonah into the man he was didn’t make my pain any less. I felt small and stupid and useless as I slunk away to my car. That quickly, he’d flipped a switch and become a stranger to me. Maybe he always had been. Maybe I’d only fooled myself into thinking I had a handle on Jonah Wyatt’s character.

  And maybe it was best I hadn’t gotten more invested in him than I already was. Walking away now would hurt. I’d come to love the time we spent together. But this would be easier today than next week, or next month, when our relationship would have grown even deeper. I could put on my suit of armor too. This wasn’t my first rodeo, the first time some guy had disappointed the hell out of me.

  I drove back home, and though a hard ball of pain was lodged in my stomach, making me feel sick, I hardly cried at all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jonah

  I’d felt sick all week, like a low-grade fever was burning through my system. I couldn’t eat or sleep or even think straight ever since Sunday night when my old man’s ghost showed up on my doorstep. I wanted to punch him in the face. I wanted to run away screaming. I wanted to throw my arms around him and beg his forgiveness for whatever I’d done that made him leave. Yeah, that was how messed up my head was. I might pretend I wasn’t feeling these things, but they were all there, snarled and tangled into a hard knot in my gut.

  I’d lost myself. I was a twelve-year-old kid again, freaking out and wondering what in the hell to do to keep me and my brothers safe. I didn’t want to tell J.D. and Micah about our dad. I needed to protect them from the hell I was going through. That was what Rianna didn’t understand.

  I hopped in the SUV and drove way too fast all the way to Lexington. Seeing my building and the construction going on inside went a long way toward calming me down. It was solid and concrete, a future I’d built for myself. I walked past the huge copper vats in their sterile environment. Then I went down to the cool cellar and inhaled the scent of fresh wood and old, the two-by-fours for building and the charred oak casks that would soon hold whiskey.

  I ran my hand over the rough wood of one of the kegs in their neat rows. Two years the bourbon would age in this keg before it was ready for distribution. Meanwhile, I could sell cheaper, marginally aged bourbon, labeled as such. Perfection took time. Success required striving, and I knew a little something about that.

  I stood in the cellar, my mind flipping back to my very first business endeavor. I was no more than eight or nine when my dad took me out to his weed patch up the hill behind our house and taught me how to tend the plants. That summer, I was his right hand. He explained everything about nurturing the cannabis from seed to harvest. I absorbed every farming lesson and pictured a day when my dad and I would turn his hobby into a business. Our family business with me right beside him. I dreamed that way even as a little kid.

  But then the bad times came again. Dad had been on a booze-free kick for a time, but he picked up the bottle again, and all my dreams exploded. I couldn’t do anything to please him. The more I failed, the more I doubted myself and started screwing up. Pot is a tough plant to kill once it has taken hold in a suitable environment, but I managed it. In an effort to make the plants grow even faster to impress my dad, I sprayed the patch with fertilizer—too much fertilizer and the wrong kind. It destroyed the crop. The leaves developed some sort of rash, then grew crunchy.

  I was too dumb to hide my crime, so I took a good beating for the loss, and I never worked with my dad on a project again. Things went from bad to worse in our house after that summer. But a couple of years later, I put all my dad’s lessons to good use when Bud Harringer and I started our own weed patch for profit. I never overfertilized again. So Dad had taught me something useful after all.

  It occurred to me I never had to return to Sawville if I didn’t want to. I had enough money to buy a place here and all new crap to put in it. I could sell my other property long distance without setting foot on it again. There was nothing I needed in that old house. I could escape and never look back, much like my father had done a long time ago.

  “Goddamned motherfucker.” I punched the side of the barrel, then shook the pain out. I sucked the blood from my torn knuckles, then pulled out my phone. No service on this level, so I went upstairs to make the call.

  “Micah. I need to talk to you.”

  “Hello to you too, bro. How’s it going? Fine, and you? Not too bad. J.D. and I are remodeling the new bar. What’s new back home? Oh, not much, just growing weed, ya know.”

  “Dad’s back,” I interrupted. “That’s what’s new.”

  A long pause, longer than I’d ever heard Micah manage in a conversation. “What?” he asked flatly.

  “You heard me. He’s not dead after all. When I called around about him, somebody must’ve thought I was asking about another James Wyatt. It doesn’t matter how. I got false information, and he’s not dead.”

  “Dad’s alive,” Micah repeated.

  “Yes, and he’s here wanting help.”

  “Help with what? Running a scam or something?” If a voice could sound like it had been hit by a truck, that was what Micah’s sounded like. I knew exactly how he felt.

  “No. Like with money. He looks half-dead and desperate.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with him?”

  “I don�
��t know. I didn’t ask.”

  “Waddya mean you didn’t ask? What’s he been doing? What’s he sick with? What exactly does he want from us?”

  “I told you, I didn’t ask. I sent him away.”

  “When was this? Today or…?”

  “No. Last Sunday, when he showed up at my house.”

  “You shut the door in his face?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Another long pause. “Good! But that was a week ago. You’re only now calling me. What the hell, Jonah?”

  “I had to process.”

  “Jesus. I need a few seconds to process too. I don’t even know how to…” He ran out of words, and that never happens to Micah.

  “Take all the time you need.”

  He inhaled a loud, shaky breath. “Are we telling J.D.?”

  “I don’t know… Yes.” I closed my eyes and felt a little dizzy in the darkness. “We’ve kept too many secrets from him for too long.”

  Like it or not, Rianna had made an impression on me. It was time to come clean.

  “Can you both come down here?” I asked. “I think we need to talk.”

  “Absolutely. We’ll be there by morning.” Micah’s tone was strong again, right there supporting me. “Christ, we’re really doing this, actually telling J.D. everything?”

  “I guess so.” I rubbed the ache between my eyes. “And we’re confronting Dad, assuming I can find him again. After I kicked him off my porch, I don’t know where he went.”

  “Try Huck’s. They ran together back in the day. The guy owes Dad from some shit or other they got into. He’d let him crash there.”

  Two old rummies in a stinking shack. Great. Just where I wanted to go.

  “I’ll find him and talk to him,” I said. “Maybe even bring him back to my house.”

  “I’ll call J.D. and explain everything. At least the Dad part of it,” Micah said.

  “Thanks.” And I meant a lot more than thanks for making the phone call. I’d spent years thinking of Micah as a screwup. I’d managed to forget all the times he’d had my back when we were growing up. Just like he did now. But how could I put all that into words?

  “Thanks,” I said again before I hung up.

  I talked to the construction foreman for a few minutes and then drove back to Sawville. With every mile that passed, my chest grew tighter, and it was harder to breathe. I didn’t want to do this. I never wanted to face my father or deal with him. But life rarely gives a man what he wants. And when it gives with one hand, it takes away with another.

  I’d nearly had something going with Rianna, the possibility for a little happiness. Now I’d screwed that up. Shut it down. Turned off the switch. All so I could focus on the person who’d made my life miserable. What sort of logic was that?

  But I couldn’t think of Rianna right then. I couldn’t expend that much emotion. I needed to clamp down and concentrate on getting through the next forty-eight hours or so without losing my shit. I’d learned a long time ago it was best to strip away all feelings when dealing with my dad, so that was what I’d do.

  Before driving all the way out to Huck’s place, I decided to check the bar that used to be their favorite hangout. It wasn’t in town or near the highway like Cock Teasers. This crappy dive hidden in the backwoods used to be a bootleg joint back in the day and was still owned by the same family. Jagger’s was more like a private club than a bar, and they definitely had no liquor license.

  I parked in the front yard, where angry dogs snapped and snarled at the ends of their chains, and walked around back to the shed. When I pushed open the door, it was like stepping back in time. Ma Jagger still stood behind the bar, and I swear she was wearing the same shirt she’d worn the last time I’d come in here. That was the day I had to hunt Dad down to tell him Mom was dead.

  And there he was again, same chair, same corner table, same drinking buddy, Clyde Huckaby, who looked nearly as grizzled and beat down by life as my father. For two men who were only in their early fifties, they looked ancient.

  I stalked across the room. More like floated, since my head felt disconnected from my body, and the sour stench in the air made it hard to breathe. The headache beating in back of my eyes had grown worse.

  My dad glanced up from his glass, then did a double take as he registered me. God, he looked like death, like a concentration camp survivor, like a man on his last legs.

  “Dad,” I greeted him.

  “So you’re talking to me now?”

  “You took me by surprise. When I asked around a while back, someone said you’d died.”

  He nodded. “Nearly did. Not surprised that’s what you heard.”

  “You never thought of checking in with us in…fifteen years?”

  He bothered to let go of his glass and sit up straight, gesturing me to join him at the table.

  Huck lifted a hand in greeting, then slid off his chair. “Gotta take a piss.” He left to give us some privacy.

  I didn’t want to sit. I was too restless and too full of rage to calmly take a seat, but I grabbed a chair and sat. “You’re back. What do you want?” I asked curtly.

  Eyes like mine but nested in wrinkles stared back at me. I tried to remember when they’d flashed with annoyance as he backhanded me, but all I could see was the blush of red veins. He looked like a pathetic old man, nothing more.

  He ran a tongue over cracked lips and spoke at last. “Family. When it comes down to the end, that’s all there is. I get that now.”

  “Convenient for you.” I bit the tip of my tongue until I tasted copper. “What else? Money? A place to stay?”

  “Naw. I wouldn’t put you out. I got a place at Huck’s.”

  “Good to have friends.”

  He rested his hands on the table, and I noticed a tremor. “Mostly I just wanted to talk to you and your brothers. But I heard they aren’t around anymore.”

  “Actually, they’re on their way. Micah’s real anxious to say a few things to you too. As for J.D.…” I shrugged. “I doubt he even remembers you.”

  He nodded. “I know I wasn’t much of a father.”

  “Any,” I interrupted. “Not any kind of a father. And it’s a little late to ask for a relationship now.”

  He clenched his jaw, and it looked as if the bone would tear through his flesh. “I was selfish and messed up for a really long time. That’s not an excuse. Just the facts. After your mother died—”

  “Don’t! She didn’t wreck you. That started long before she died. And I don’t give a goddamn about alcoholism being a disease or any of that shit. You made your choices, and now you got nobody to blame but yourself when you die alone.”

  I got up from the chair fast, sending it flying. I couldn’t stand one more second of this bullshit or of seeing his wasted old face. Half-dead and still drinking a beer with his pal. Nothing had changed. He would be who he was until he drew his last breath.

  “You want to talk to the others, come by my house tomorrow at two. Give them your pitch and see what they say.”

  I turned and walked out on legs that barely held me up. When I got outside, I collapsed against the clapboard building and stared back at the two chained dogs barking at me. What a life, living on the end of a chain, unable to ever break free.

  I staggered around the corner of the building and threw up nothing. I hadn’t eaten all day. Then I drove back home and fell into bed. I passed out for I don’t know how many hours, and when I woke, there was movement in the house, voices talking downstairs.

  I dragged myself out of bed, still feeling groggy, and plodded to the kitchen.

  My youngest brother’s head was buried in the fridge. “Doesn’t he have any juice?”

  Micah stood at the stove, frying something. He caught sight of me and waved a spatula, spattering grease on the floor. “You sleep like the dead. Sort of look like one too. Are you sick?”

  J.D. shut the fridge door hard enough to make bottles rattle. “Hey. So I hear we’re not orphans after all
. Where’s the old man?”

  My brothers were home, and their sloppiness irritated me as much as ever, but damn, I was glad to see them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rianna

  Much as I hated to admit it, Jonah got to me. I spent the rest of the day thinking about what he’d said about me reaching out to my grandma. I’d hated her for so long, I’d forgotten there was anything at all to like about her. Very little, but it did exist.

  For one thing, she’d brought me into her house and provided for me when my own mother wouldn’t or couldn’t. For two… Well, I had a hard time thinking of anything to fill the spot. But she had taken care of me, even if she wasn’t very nice about it. And she was my only relative, aside from the father I’d never know.

  Maybe it was time to give her a chance to meet her great-grandson. Time may have softened her. And seeing his adorable cherub face certainly would melt the hardest heart. Maybe I needed to give her a call or just take a day and drive over there. That would be better. Easier for her to hang up a phone than slam the door in our faces. Right?

  I had my doubts, but I pushed them aside as I prepared for a day trip with Travis. I’d done all my cleaning jobs for the week, and Jonah had me on hiatus, so the day would be perfect for a long drive.

  I tried not to think about how awful it might turn out. I refused to be like Jonah, too chicken to face his own father or speak the truth to his brothers. So maybe this trip was a little bit of me proving to myself I was stronger and braver than him. But whatever my motivation, it was the right thing to at least introduce my grandmother to Travis.

  My boy was happy as a clam to be on the road, at least for the first half hour. Then he got bored and started to whine. I turned up his music and we sang along to “The Wheels on the Bus” and other kiddie tunes. Then I got bored so I turned on the radio and searched for a station without static. I stopped when a song caught my attention, the one with my name in it I’d heard at Jonah’s house. Every memory of him came flooding back to torment me. How could we be over just when we’d gotten started? I spun the dial until I reached heavy metal. No more crying.