The Prodigal's Return

by Anna DeStefano

  “What the hell’s going on out here?”

  Another car screeched to a halt at the end of the drive.

  “Stop right there, Jeremy,” Jenn said as she set her daughter aside and stepped away from the group, taking the jerk on by herself.

  “Where’s Neal?” Jeremy demanded as he moved farther into the light shining down from the roof. “Is that his car?”

  “That’s none of your business. Nothing that happens here, to me or Traci Carpenter or Neal and Nathan Cain, none of it is any of your or your mother’s business. So stop butting in. Stop trying to protect me from something you don’t understand. Stop following me all over town, or I swear—”

  “Following you!” Nathan, his knees cracking, his head clearly aching, stepped between Jenn and a man more than twice her size. Neal, who should have been intervening, could only stare, mesmerized, at the sight of Jeremy Compton cowering away from Nathan’s imposing height. “Are you part of what’s had this girl spooked the last couple of days? Then let me tell you what’s going to happen the next time you get anywhere near her—”

  “Nathan, please. I’m fine.” Jenn gave the best imitation of “fine” Neal had ever seen, catching Mandy to her side as the little girl crept closer. “I can handle him.”

  “You think so?” Jeremy’s smile was all bully. “You and Neal, you gonna handle me together, is that it?”

  “I don’t need anyone’s help to handle your messed-up infatuation with me, just because we knew each other as kids.”

  “Knew each other?” The man’s laugh raised the hair on the back of Neal’s neck. Jenn stiffened, but she didn’t back down. Her courage was the only thing that kept him in the shadows. No way would he take away her chance to verbally kick Jeremy Compton’s ass to the curb. “Is that what we were doing your senior year in high school—getting to know each other? You ever tell your kid there just how well you knew half the boys in the county? How any number of them could be her daddy, even me? Is that what you’re going to be doing with Neal tonight—getting to know him all over again?”

  “Mommy?” Mandy asked, when Jenn couldn’t seem to form a comeback.

  Jenn lifted her hand to her throat as if she were about to vomit.

  “You better get that filthy mouth of yours back in your car and the hell out of my driveway.” Nathan shoved the kid’s shoulder, knocking Jeremy backward. “Go on, get!”

  Whether from shock at Nathan’s strength or satisfaction at finally blasting through Jenn’s defenses, Jeremy backed away. But he threw himself into his car with the air of a man who hadn’t had his last say.

  “Are you okay?” Traci slipped a supportive arm around the woman who’d just done the same for her at the church.

  “Mommy?”

  “I…I’m fine,” Jenn croaked, coming out of her trance. Nathan grunted as he stepped toward her, but before he could speak she crouched and pushed her daughter’s bangs from her eyes. “Really, sweetie, I’m fine.”

  Only her voice still sounded too far away. Too broken by the sickening idea of Bobby Compton’s brother possibly being her child’s father.

  “Jenn?” Nathan persisted. “What—”

  “Why don’t you take Traci and Mandy inside?” she asked. Her voice trembled only slightly. “I picked up some ice cream at the grocery this morning. Chocolate. Mandy’s favorite.”

  “Jenn.” His father hesitated, the compassion in the single word filling Neal with envy.

  “Please.” She was pleading now, where she’d been nothing but piss and vinegar with Jeremy. She glanced to where Neal still stood inside the garage, then back at his father. “I—I need to be alone for a few minutes.”

  Nathan eyed Neal’s car again, looked around the yard and then at the garage. Then he shook his head and started back toward the kitchen.

  “I suppose you’ll want ice cream, too,” he groused at Traci. “While you eat, you can damn well tell me what happened at the church.”

  Jenn started to say something to their retreating backs, but she let them go. Walking a few short steps, she eased onto one of the benches beside the picnic table that had been the first thing Neal and Nathan ever built together.

  His mom had always loved picnics.

  “How much did you hear?” she asked without turning in his direction.

  “All of it.” He stepped out of the shadows and sat beside her, propping his arms on his thighs and locking his fingers together. How else was he going to stop himself from pulling her into the hug he just might need more than she did? “Could Jeremy be your daughter’s father?”

  He hated the way she flinched. But if she didn’t want to talk about it, why had she stayed outside when she knew he was there? Once upon a time, they’d been able to talk about anything.

  “I suppose it’s possible, but…” She looked up at the stars. “He’s never said anything about it before. He’s always been a little too interested in hooking up, but nothing this aggressive….” She spread her hands in front of her, as if to ward him off again. “Nothing this possessive, not before…”

  “Before I came back?”

  And jumped right into the middle of her problems.

  “I should head over to the hotel,” he said. But before he could head inside for the bag he’d left, her hand clutched his arm.

  “You’re not leaving.” The same fierceness she’d shown Jeremy now flashed at him. “You need to work things out with Nathan. Traci and I will go. We should be getting back to my dad’s, anyway.”

  “I thought you wanted the council off Reverend Gardner’s back.” Turning toward her was a mistake. Their thighs brushed. Her sweet face was only inches away. He was worlds too hard for her, but when she was this close he felt like the boy she’d loved. Like the last eight years were gone and he still had a right to want everything they’d once had. “You and the Carpenter girl staying here will do that.”

  She nodded, then she shocked the daylights out of him by taking his hands in hers. Back at the church, she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

  “You’ve already done enough for me, Neal, just by saying what you did back at the meeting. Even if Traci and I don’t move in here, you got her parents thinking. Maybe closer to being ready to listen.” She let go of his hand with a hesitation he couldn’t be sure was real or imagined. “Besides if Traci and I stayed here, we’d be shining the community spotlight right on you and your father. Especially with Jeremy acting the fool like he did tonight. You two don’t need that kind of distraction. There’s so little…so little time left. You can’t afford to waste any of it.”

  He trailed his fingers up her arms until his hand cupped her beautiful face. She had it all figured out, what everyone else needed.

  What did she need? What did she want?

  Could it ever again be him?

  “Didn’t you see my dad a minute ago?” He feathered another kiss across her lips, just once, then twice, before he lost the nerve, and the chance, forever.

  “Your… Your dad?”

  She didn’t kiss him back, but she didn’t shy away this time. If that was all he had to live off of for the rest of his life, he’d die a lucky man.

  “He was a dad again tonight.” Neal forced himself to inch away. Forced himself to focus on what was important to Jenn. “Not my dad, but yours. He cares about you. Traci, too, if I don’t miss my guess. If anyone belongs here it’s you. Look at what you’ve done for him in just a couple of days. Let him help you. Let me help you by getting out of the way.”

  Lucky for her that’s what he did best of all.

  “What Nathan needs is you.”

  He made himself stand and tugged her hand until she was beside him. “I’ll just be a mile away at the hotel.”

  “You need to be in your room here,” she argued, making the need to see his old things, the things his father hadn’t been able to part with, burn even brighter.

  “Not an option.” Then he turned away from what he’d finally accepted he needed most of all
—her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “YOU MEAN TO TELL ME, you weren’t even going to ask me to take the girl in?” Nathan thundered at Jenn in the kitchen a few minutes later. He’d carefully avoided looking in his son’s direction since Neal brought up the subject of Traci moving in.

  Jenn glared at Neal for starting this. “I didn’t think you—”

  “What? That I wouldn’t help you after everything you’ve done around here? Not that the Carpenter girl’s likely to stay, even if I offered. We didn’t exactly have a pleasant visit while you were out today.”

  “I’ll stay if it makes things easier for Jenn,” Traci said from the doorway. She had Mandy with her, and it was anyone’s guess how long the two of them had been standing there.

  “It’s not that I didn’t think you’d help.” Jenn kept her voice low and even, made all the harder by the nearly impossible-to-resist urge to scream. Jeremy’s explosion. Neal’s kiss. And now the Cain men were ganging up to help her? “It’s just—”

  “It’s just that taking on the world alone is a whole lot easier than letting anyone do anything for her,” Neal said, finally earning himself Nathan’s attention.

  “Well, that’s just too damn bad.” Nathan spun toward Jenn so fast he swayed, his balance becoming more of a problem by the day. Not that it had stopped him from putting his body between her and Jeremy. “You got me out of the bottle and sober enough to care about what’s going on around here. Now deal with it. If I want that girl to stay here, and she’s willing to do it for you, then it’s a done deal!”

  “If not, I’m leaving town like I planned all along,” Traci insisted. “I’ve caused you and Reverend Gardner enough trouble.”

  “I’d have to move in here with you,” Jenn reasoned. “And that’s not—”

  “Fine by me,” Nathan said. “Why not?”

  “What? No!” How could the drunken man she’d nearly run over a few weeks ago be offering to spend his last days on earth helping shelter someone else’s child? “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “You didn’t. I’m offering. Do you want to keep that kid in Rivermist or not?”

  “But you and Neal. You need—”

  “I need sleep.” Nathan headed for the hall stairs with a less-than-steady gait.

  Neal watched him in silence.

  “But…” She trailed after the old man.

  “Don’t you finish that sentence.” Nathan stiffened as Neal joined them in the hall. “Damn, girl. After everything you’ve done for me, don’t you dare think about not letting me do this for you. If I want to thumb my nose at the tight-ass people in this town to give you and your old man a break, humor me.”

  “Don’t do that, Nathan,” Jenn warned. “Don’t yank Traci around out of some personal need to annoy the church council.”

  “Well, I wondered what it would take to get you to call me Nathan.” The man had the nerve to laugh.

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “You’re encouraging a pregnant teenager to make even more trouble for herself by moving in here when it’s not necessary?”

  “It is necessary. For you. She’s not going to stay with Joshua anymore. Not after the scene she said played out at the church tonight. It’s either me or a bus out of town. If she wants to do this for you, let her!”

  “I’m not the point here.”

  “Well maybe you should be for a change.” Nathan pointed toward the kitchen. “You’ve busted your butt for that girl in there. Let me take a watch or two.”

  “You’re trying to tell me you care what happens to Traci Carpenter?”

  “I care what happens to you. And you look like hell. You keep going like you are, something’s going to break. And I’m not going to sit around while that happens.”

  “Neither am I,” Neal agreed.

  Nathan stared at his son, then gave him a nod of silent agreement. The first honest, nonhostile emotion she’d seen pass between the two of them.

  Jenn felt her smile all the way to her toes.

  Gotcha!

  “If I stay, you stay, too,” she said to Neal.

  “What!” the two men demanded in unison.

  “It’s the only way I’ll agree to this madness.” She cast a warning glance at Traci as the girl joined them in the hall, asking her to be still. “Neal thinks he’ll make trouble for me if we’re both here. But I’m not going to be the reason he spends another night away from this house. You two share the same roof, or Traci and I walk.”

  She’d never been very good at bluffing. She prayed that she could pull it off just this once. Nathan was right. She couldn’t let Traci leave Rivermist. But she couldn’t be the reason Nathan and Neal didn’t reconcile, either.

  “This isn’t about Neal,” Nathan responded mutinously, saying his son’s name for the first time. “I’m offering to take the heat from that girl’s hostile parents for a while, nothing more.”

  “Bob and Betty are worried sick,” Jenn corrected, glancing at Traci. “They’re not hostile.”

  “Oh, they will be, once you move their little princess in here. But—”

  “You want to see hostile? You put me in a position where I’m coming between you and your son again, then we’ll talk hostile!”

  “I’ll only add to your distractions around here,” Neal cautioned. “And I don’t just mean because of Jeremy.”

  He was talking about their kiss outside, and the ones back at the church, and the instant connection that sparked every time they were together, just like old times. Distance would be less distracting, less confusing, but his relationship with his father was more important.

  “We’ll stay out of each other’s way,” she insisted. She could do this. “This is a huge house. When I’m not with Traci or Mandy, there’s tons to be done around here. And I’m sure you can find something to occupy your time.” She made a point of including Nathan in her stare. “It’s the best solution for everybody.”

  It would be impossible. But she’d managed the impossible before. Just look at how amazing her daughter had turned out. A child with no father, raised by the child Jenn had been when she had her. It would be impossible, not falling back in love with Neal, even though he’d be leaving again once Nathan no longer needed him. But she’d handle it.

  “Whatever!” More color had leaked from Nathan’s complexion in just the last five minutes. “Everybody can stay. Hell—” he headed for the stairs “—why not rent out the extra rooms while you’re at it? The more the merrier here at Shangri-La.”

  THE BLUES. Nathan was lost in the blues as he listened to album after album in the tomblike quietness that had temporarily returned to his house. His boy had stayed the night. Had spent most of the morning on his cell phone and laptop working on some case with a lawyer calling from Atlanta. But he was out jogging now. Had been gone for over an hour. And Jenn and the girls hadn’t made it back yet with their things from her father’s.

  As hard as it was to believe, by tonight there would be four other people living in this house. The thought was nearly as shocking as the thick layer of dust and grime he’d found coating the turntable and album covers. Alone had been his life for so long, the fact that silence felt strange after the last few days wasn’t sitting well. Neither was the neglect of what had once been one of the greatest pleasures in his life.

  He fingered the age-worn corner of Wanda’s favorite Billie Holiday album. Slow and smooth, the magic of the singer’s voice had filled nights of slow dancing in this very room. Beautiful, priceless nights with his wife. The memories and the music intertwined now, bringing with them the beginnings of an honest-to-God smile he was glad no one was there to see. Warm summer Saturdays, long after his wife’s death, had been spent listening to Billy and Miles and the countless other artists they’d collected over the years. He’d even brainwashed Neal into liking the ancient music, as the kid had called it. Same as he’d passed on his love for broken-down vintage cars and the backbreaking work i
t took to restore them. Traditions and memories were the center of family, he’d once preached.

  Of course, that had been before he’d set his sights on abandoning everyone and everything that had centered him.

  “You were going to let me borrow that album, remember?” a quiet voice asked from the den’s doorway.

  Nathan ripped the needle off the LP, removed it from the turntable and thrust it and the dusty jacket cover at Joshua Gardner.

  “Take it.” He squared off against his former best friend. “Got no use for it anymore.”

  Got no use for any of it.

  Jenn’s father hesitated, then took the album. It was strangely normal to see him standing there, as he had so many times before. Only the last eight years were reflected in his sad frown and the pity clouding his expression. Exactly the kind of look Nathan had started locking his doors to keep out. Speaking of which—

  “How the hell did you get in here?” He’d locked up behind Jenn when she left, shutting the world out just once more.

  The good preacher winced as he held up the spare key they’d exchanged before their kids were born.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t throw that thing away years ago,” Nathan grumbled, more surprised than annoyed.

  “I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to use it.”

  Nathan couldn’t deal with Joshua Gardner’s sigh of guilt, any more than he’d been able to stomach waking that morning with his son sleeping under his roof for the first time in eight years.

  “What, your girl had the balls to come over here first, get the goods on me, so now it’s time to barge in at the bitter end to save my soul?”

  “No.” Jenn got that same knock it off look on her face when he went out of his way to be disagreeable. Joshua set the record aside and sat on the sofa. “Your soul was saved a long time before Olivia and I moved to town. I don’t figure running everyone off and making a general ass of yourself is going to change whether God wants you or not.”

  Nathan couldn’t help but chuckle. “If you’ve come here to put me in my place, trust me, your little girl already beat you to it.”