[Tulsa Thunderbirds 01.0] Bury the Hatchet

by Catherine Gayle

  I could still barely believe that Lance had done any of the things he’d done since the wedding. It was hard to reconcile this version of him with the man who had been in my life since I was a baby.

  He’d always been demanding and authoritative, but he’d never laid a hand on me before. The change in him made me think that maybe Hunter was right about something else. Maybe Lance had gone off the deep end. Stress could change a person, and not necessarily for the better. His whole career had been built around doing whatever it took for me to become Miss USA, and now that dream had been snatched out from under him. There was a part of me that pitied him, but that part was getting smaller by the day.

  Regardless of what I wanted to believe about him, the truth was that he’d bruised me on two separate occasions. Worse still, he’d shown up carrying a gun at a public event he knew I’d be attending, and his presence was in direct defiance of a court order. Maybe I hadn’t been seeing Lance clearly before, but I knew I was now. The events at the mall were more than enough to convince me Hunter was right and I needed a bodyguard.

  Daddy and Hunter decided I needed two of them so one would always be with me, particularly when Hunter wasn’t around. And the when Hunter wasn’t around part was going to be here sooner than I’d like. He was leaving for a road trip with the team on Saturday and wouldn’t be back for almost a week. With all the recent events, once again, Daddy decided to take Friday off work. He came over in the morning before Hunter left for practice and was still with us all afternoon while we interviewed the various security guards.

  When the last of the men headed out the front door, Daddy looked down at his cell phone. “Lance is out,” he said after scrolling through a few messages. “He took a deal. Two years of probation and court-mandated anger-management counseling. If he stays out of trouble for the probationary period, nothing goes on his record.”

  “That didn’t take long,” Hunter said.

  “It was just a misdemeanor and he didn’t have a prior record. The courts prefer to deal with those cases quickly and move on.” Daddy sipped from his coffee cup, setting his phone on the dining room table. “I don’t suppose either of you have seen the latest going around the news about all of this?”

  I shook my head, and Hunter let out a grunting sound. We’d both been actively avoiding the news lately.

  “Well, son, let’s just say they’re showing you in a slightly more sympathetic light after the events at the mall and Lance’s arrest, but that isn’t saying a lot. You two are still essentially a spectacle. A side show. I doubt you’ll be free from the gossip pages until something juicier comes along.”

  And there wasn’t anything juicier than the two of us right now.

  “So,” Daddy said, “let’s make a decision on these bodyguards. There’s not any time to waste.”

  I sifted through the stack of files we had from each of them, complete with background checks, resumes, and photographs. There were two men who’d made me uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to be alone with them. I found their files and started a new pile. “These two are definite nos.”

  “I liked Evan,” Daddy said, putting a hand on one of my discards. “He seemed really competent.”

  “And intimidating,” I replied.

  “Intimidating is good,” Hunter said.

  I shook my head. “Intimidating someone who might want to hurt me is good. Intimidating me is not.”

  “Good point,” he agreed. “What about this one? Dennis?” He brought forward a manila folder and flipped it open to the photo to refresh our memories.

  Dennis was massive, a bodybuilder type with a bald head and covered from head to toe in tattoos. He used to travel with a rock band as part of their security team. He’d been gruff and to the point with all of his answers, but he carried around a picture of his two-year-old niece and showed her off like a giddy uncle. That made him seem a lot less scary.

  “I liked him,” I said.

  Daddy picked up the file and pored over the resume again before giving his go-ahead. After that, we debated the pros and cons of three other applicants before finally settling on the one named Nathan. He was the smallest and the youngest of all the men we’d seen today, but he was strong, skilled in martial arts, and he’d spent about a decade as an Army Ranger.

  Hunter put in the call to the agency, and it was arranged that the two men would start work the next morning, arriving before Hunter went out of town with the team.

  By the time we’d settled everything, it was late enough we needed to do something about dinner. “Are we going out tonight?” I asked Hunter. We’d wordlessly agreed to stay home the night before, but he might want to continue with our efforts now, and if he did, I needed to go put myself together so I looked presentable.

  He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Honestly, I think we need to forget all about that bullshit while Lance is out there.”

  “Agreed,” Daddy said. “And your security guys aren’t starting until tomorrow. Play it safe for a while. Stay in, do your best to keep a low profile.”

  I let out a relieved sigh. I didn’t have it in me to put on a show tonight. Then I got up and headed into the kitchen to figure out what we could eat. “Are you going to stay for dinner, Daddy?” I asked. “If Mama hasn’t already started on something—”

  “Your mama and I already have plans tonight,” he said, but his voice sounded odd, like he was strangling on the words.

  I closed the fridge door so I could see him. Hunter was seated at the table, trying to act like he wasn’t interested, but I knew he was taking in every word.

  But it was Daddy who drew my eye. His posture was slightly hunched, and he pinched the bridge of his nose before meeting my gaze. “We split up last week. I’ve been living in a hotel, and I promised her I would come by to get the rest of my things this evening after I left work.”

  “You split up?” My hands dropped to my sides, my muscles going numb. Not to mention my heart. Talk about having the rug pulled out from under my feet.

  He shrugged. “I left her. It wasn’t her idea.”

  “You left her a week ago, and neither of you thought to mention it to me? Not a word?”

  “You’ve had a lot going on, Tallie.”

  “Not too much to care about the fact that my parents are breaking up.” A hot tear spilled down my cheek and stained my blouse. “Why did you leave?”

  “Honey, the only reason I stayed all these years was because I wanted to raise you, and it was the only way I would be able to be with you. You’re the best thing your mama and I ever did with our lives, but she wouldn’t let me see you if I’d left her before now. She made sure I knew it, too.” Daddy got up and put his coffee cup in the sink, and then he drew me in for a hug. “I could have fought it in court, but you know how she is—she would have made it a fight. I didn’t want to put you through that.” He set me back from him and picked up a paper towel to dab at my eyes. “But now you’re an adult. She can’t keep you from me. Plus, you’ve got a life of your own.” Daddy angled his head over to Hunter, who was clearly still absorbing every single word between us. “I don’t have to worry about protecting you from her and Lance by myself anymore. I’ve got help with that.”

  I sniffled, trying to absorb everything he’d thrown at me. “But if she would have given you such a fight over me when I was a kid, why hasn’t she bothered with me at all lately?”

  Thinking back, I couldn’t recall having more than a few passing conversations with my mother since Hunter and I had gotten married. Every time we had talked, she’d sneered about Hunter and pointed out all the ways I was failing to repair my image according to her standards. I hadn’t wanted to talk to her about any of that, so I’d ended those conversations quickly, and it hadn’t been long before she’d stopped calling at all. Then I’d stopped attempting to talk to her because every conversation had devolved into her berating me over something or other, so we hadn’t spoken in weeks.

  Daddy sighed—a heavy, weight
ed sigh—and he half shrugged. “Tallie, I don’t want to speak badly about your mother to you, but you’re an adult, so you can recognize I’m not saying these things to make her look bad or anything like that. I’m only telling you because you deserve to know the truth.”

  That sounded ominous. I went back to the table and sat down beside Hunter, not trusting my legs to carry the weight of whatever my father had to say. Hunter took my hand and gave me a reassuring squeeze.

  “I’m ready,” I said. “I can take it.” Only I wasn’t sure I was ready, and I was almost positive I couldn’t handle whatever it was.

  Daddy sat down across from me. “You know your mama was in pageants before we got married, right?” After I nodded, he kept going. “Well, she’d been working her whole life toward becoming Miss USA just like you did. And, the same as you, she made a big mistake just before she finally got her shot. She got pregnant. With you.”

  I shook my head. “You got her pregnant before you two married? I thought she decided to quit pageants because she wanted to marry you.”

  “I didn’t get your mama pregnant. That was another man, one who your grandparents decided was nothing but trouble. He took off, anyway, as soon as he found out you were on the way. So your mama had lost her crown, and then she was pregnant and all alone in the world. Her parents insisted she had to get married to some respectable man in the community, and I was the chosen one.”

  “The chosen one? You mean you never loved her?”

  “It was a lot like what happened with you and Hunter, actually,” Daddy said, waving his hand between the two of us. “Only a lot different. Your granddaddy had done me a huge favor a few years before, one that gave me my career.”

  Gave him his career? I couldn’t imagine what sort of favor Granddaddy could have done for Daddy that would deserve that kind of praise.

  “I owed him one in return,” Daddy said, “and he called it in. The only thing was that no one told me in advance that Janice was pregnant. I didn’t find out until one day, a month into our marriage, when she asked me to take her to the hospital for an abortion.”

  “An abortion?” Hunter repeated. He tensed up, his hand tightening over mine.

  I couldn’t do anything but listen. My whole body had gone numb. Mama had wanted to abort me. Daddy wasn’t my father. Everything I thought I knew about the world was caving in on me, and it was all I could do to keep breathing. The sound of blood rushing through my head reminded me that the world hadn’t actually come to an end, that I was still very much alive.

  Daddy nodded, calm as could be. “And since we’d never consummated the marriage to that point, I knew you weren’t mine. At least not biologically. I didn’t care about that, though. We’d agreed to marry, that it was to be in name only, but we were going to be married. Unlike with the two of you, we’d never set an end date. I’d agreed to marry her thinking it would be forever, or at least until she decided to end it, so she was my one and only chance to have a baby, the way I saw it. I begged and pleaded with her not to have the abortion, to give birth to you so we could have a child and be a real family. She only agreed to it when I told her I’d buy her the house she wanted and promised she could keep it no matter what happened between us.”

  “That godawful house was more important to her than Tallie was?” Hunter roared.

  I patted the back of his hand, hoping to calm him down. “It doesn’t matter.” The truth was, I’d always known I wasn’t important to Mama, at least not on my own. My becoming Miss USA was important to Mama, but I never had been. Not truly.

  Only now it was starting to all come together, to really make sense. How odd that I was the one comforting Hunter when it was my own mother who had never loved me.

  “It does matter,” he grumbled. “You matter.”

  “I bought the house,” Daddy said. “Tallie was born, and I fell in love. I fell so head-over-heels in love with you that I knew I would do whatever was necessary to be sure I could always be in your life. And it wasn’t long before that decision would come into play. Your mother decided you were the reason she hadn’t been able to compete for Miss USA—never mind the fact that she’d been an adult who’d made her own choices—and she got it in her head that if she couldn’t follow through with that, then you could in her stead. That became her life’s goal, and there was nothing I could do to change her mind. What I thought was best for you didn’t matter, she said, because I wasn’t your biological father. She could leave me, keep the house, keep you with her, and prevent me from being in your life. So I stayed. And I did everything I could to love you the way I knew she never could.”

  “You did,” I said, smiling through tears. “You’ve always loved me and taken care of me. You’ve always made sure I knew there were more important things in life than pageants.”

  “Well, I always hoped it would be enough but feared it wouldn’t be. But now, you’re out from under her control. You’ve got Hunter, and I hope I’m right about this, but it seems like maybe the two of you are hitting it off. Maybe it won’t have to be just the year you originally agreed to.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping, too, sir,” Hunter said, and my heart flipped.

  Daddy nodded. “Good. Good. And you’ve still got me, if you want me.”

  I didn’t answer him. Not with words, at least.

  I got up, walked around the table, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “I guess I can take that as a yes?” he said, brushing my tears away just like he’d done since I was a little girl. He’d always been the one to comfort me when I cried, to hold me when I was sick or hurt, and to make me laugh when I was sad.

  “You’re still my daddy,” I said. He would always be my daddy.

  A while later, he got up and left to remove the rest of his things from the house, like he’d promised Mama he would do. After I’d closed the front door behind him, Hunter slipped both his arms around my waist from behind, snuggling me close to him.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded, even though I was anything but okay. I was a wreck. But somehow, I was calm about it. Did it hurt to know that my mother had never wanted me, that she’d just been using me all along to get what she’d wanted? Yes, but not as much as it should. Maybe because there was some part of me that had always known that to be the case.

  “You’re a really bad liar, you know that?” Hunter said.

  I laughed. “Yeah, I know.” I turned around in his arms and hugged him, resting my head on his chest.

  “I meant what I said. I want this to be real between us. A real marriage, not just a show we’re putting on for the rest of the world to see for a year. Because I love you. Maybe your mother never did, and so maybe it’s hard for you to understand what love is, or what it should be. But I love you.”

  I tightened my arms around him, trying to draw myself inside him. “Hunter?”

  “Hmm?” He sounded nervous.

  “I need you to know something.”

  He tensed up, as if bracing himself for another big revelation like Daddy had just put us through. “What’s that?”

  And maybe, in a sense, what I needed to tell him was a big revelation. Just one of a different sort.

  “I need you to know that I love you, too. That I’ve been falling in love with you for a long time, but I was afraid you wouldn’t love me back because most people in my life haven’t loved me. Like Mama. She never loved me. I thought she did, but I realize now I was wrong. But you know what?”

  “What?” he murmured, his chin resting on the top of my head and some of the tension leaving his muscles.

  “I know you love me. I believe it. I know how to tell the difference because my parents showed me.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time. We just stood there in the hall, holding tightly to each other. But then he took a deep breath and kissed the top of my head. “Thank God for that.”

  I DOUBTED I would like leaving Tallie behind at this point even if Lance wasn’t out of jail and acting like
a lunatic. But considering that was exactly what was happening, I had a hard time getting my ass to the airport with the team the next day.

  But I went.

  Tallie had her father, and both Dennis and Nathan were now officially on the job. She wasn’t alone, and it didn’t hurt that she was now more willing to accept that Lance had officially gone off the deep end and was out to hurt her, so she was far more likely to be aware and cautious if and when she went out.

  So I left.

  And it was torture.

  I talked to her as often as possible while the Thunderbirds were on the road, usually multiple times a day, and definitely every night before I went to bed. I needed to hear her voice and reassure myself that she was all right or else I couldn’t get to sleep.

  I talked to her father on multiple occasions, and to her bodyguards at least twice a day, too. They filled me in on anything suspicious, even the tiniest things that neither she nor I were likely to notice, such as unusual cars prowling the neighborhood. Dennis and Nathan took it a lot further than simply telling me there’d been an unfamiliar vehicle around, too. They ran the plates and did whatever background checks they could on the registered owners. I rested a bit easier at night knowing they were keeping an eye on her.

  No matter how many times I talked to Tallie and her security team, though, I was a cranky bastard any time I was away from her. It was partially due to the simple fact that I missed her, but worrying about her safety was the far bigger factor in my moodiness. The guys complained about my PMS, said they hoped it was due to me being a newlywed and I’d eventually move past it because I was impossible to deal with. I told them I couldn’t make any promises about that and I might just stay a sullen bastard forever.

  Weeks went by without any other reminders of Lance and his vendetta against Tallie, though, and we almost forgot about him entirely.