Always a Hero

by Justine Davis

  “Didn’t even argue,” he muttered.

  “You’re crushing him.”

  She regretted the words the moment they came out. She sensed his edgy watchfulness shift into the same mood he’d been under when he’d come into the store last week.

  “And you’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Meddling.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “My mother calls it meddling.”

  “She’s right,” he said, and she couldn’t miss the warning note in his voice.

  This is for Jordy, she reminded herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to start that way. It’s just that it breaks my heart to see him like that.”

  “He’s a good whiner.”

  She drew back slightly, the cold assessment surprising her, although she wasn’t sure why it should. “He has things to whine about, don’t you think?”

  The man pulled off the heavy gloves he’d been wearing and crossed his arms. The body language was clear, but the movement also shifted the sleeve of his shirt, and she caught a glimpse of a wicked, curving scar up the back of his left arm.

  “Whining doesn’t change anything,” he said flatly. “You just have to get on with it.”

  She tore her gaze from the scar, although the image of it lingered in her mind. She saw in his face that he knew perfectly well she’d seen it, but he wasn’t about to explain. No reason he should, she told herself, and spoke only about Jordy.

  “So, he’s not even allowed to acknowledge his grief, his pain, his fear?”

  That made him frown. “Fear?”

  “Of course he’s afraid. He’s just a boy, the one parent he knew and loved is dead, he’s never moved before but gets yanked out of the life he knew, away from his friends and anyone he trusted—”

  She stopped herself, realizing what she’d just said. But he didn’t react, either not taking offense or realizing it was true, Jordy didn’t trust him.

  “Six months ago,” he pointed out.

  “One twenty-sixth of his life,” she countered. “Not long enough, not when you’re so young you don’t have the resources to easily adapt. And no one to turn to for help.”

  “I’ve tried talking to him. Explaining.”

  It was the first even slightly conciliatory thing he’d said, and she seized on it.

  “He doesn’t want to hear it. You can’t give him the one thing he wants most. No one can.”

  “His mother back.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a long pause. “She knew I was going to do this. Bring him here. She approved.”

  “Did she talk to him about it?”

  He dropped his arms, slapped the gloves in his right hand against his leg. “She didn’t have time.”

  She studied him for a moment. “You told him she agreed to it?” He nodded. She read what he wasn’t saying in those weary eyes. “But he didn’t believe you.”

  “I could tell him the sky is blue and he wouldn’t believe me.”

  She doubted it was quite that bad, but he was talking now, almost reasonably, and she didn’t want to waste this chance.

  “I know you’re worried about him, what kind of trouble he might get into.”

  “That’s why we’re here in the first place.”

  “And he’s fighting you.”

  “Every step of the way.”

  Like father…

  She nearly bit her tongue, afraid the words that popped into her mind were going to pop out of her mouth. “He doesn’t want to do anything you say?”

  “I think he only listens so he can do the opposite,” he said wryly.

  “Then tell him to do the thing he wants most to do.”

  “Take that ax to me?” he suggested with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder and a glance toward the chopping block.

  It was a bitter, scathing sort of joke, but it was a joke—at least, she thought it was—and she should acknowledge that. But again the movement had tugged at the faded blue T-shirt, and she caught a glimpse of lean, flat stomach.

  And another scar on his left side, just above the low-slung waistband of his jeans. This one was tidier, and there were marks from stitches or staples, but also an odd rounded indentation in the middle.

  How on earth did a paper pusher—or a pill counter—end up with scars like that? she wondered.

  And, almost reluctantly, it occurred to her that perhaps Wyatt Blake had reason to be the way he was.

  It seemed he’d been through his own kind of hell.

  Chapter 7

  Wyatt saw her gaze snap back to his face as he looked back from the woodpile. She wore the oddest expression on her very expressive face. Not revulsion at his scars, he’d seen that often enough to recognize it. But she wasn’t much at hiding her emotions, this one. Did that mean she wasn’t much at hiding, period? Was she really what she seemed, just a kind woman who cared about a boy not her own?

  They did exist, people like that, he reminded himself. Just because he hadn’t run into many for a long time didn’t change that. They were the reason he’d chosen the path he’d walked, after all.

  “I meant,” she said, sounding as if she had been distracted and was trying to regain her focus, “what if you tell him he has to spend every spare minute doing something he actually desperately wants to do? Imagine his dilemma.”

  He studied her for a moment. “You mean practice playing the guitar.”

  He thought he saw it now, the motive behind bringing Jordy that instructional DVD.

  “Expecting me to buy him a guitar? From your store, of course?”

  “I don’t care if you build him one from that wood you’re chopping,” she snapped, startling him.

  He shifted uncomfortably as she went on, clearly angry all over again at him.

  “I’ve been loaning him my demo for weeks, and I’ll continue to let him use it all he wants. He can even bring it home to practice.” She gave him a disgusted look. “No effort at all on your part.”

  He felt a bit like a man trapped in a burning car with the flames licking at the gas tank. Time to get the hell out or avert the ensuing explosion.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, without the grace he supposed was warranted. “I’m just… I don’t know what to do with him.”

  “Like a million other parents.”

  To her credit, she didn’t hang on to her mad. Apparently helping Jordan was more important. And that made him feel more than a little embarrassed at how he’d once again assumed she had base motives.

  He let out a compressed breath. “I guess I’m as confused as he is.”

  As if his admission made up for his accusations, her voice was gentle, encouraging when she said, “Maybe you should tell him that.”

  “Great way to undermine my authority with him.”

  “And that’s getting you so far, isn’t it?”

  There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in her voice, but the words stung as if she’d bitten them out in that snapping tone.

  “Look,” she said, sounding as exasperated with him as he felt with Jordan, “I know I’m not a parent. But I do remember what it was like to be that age. Don’t you remember? It was hard. And that was with both parents alive and together. I know yours were.”

  He stiffened. “You don’t know anything about them.”

  Her brow furrowed. “But Marilyn Ogilvie told me—”

  “I can imagine. Tim and Claire Blake, the perfect couple.”

  “She never said they were perfect. Just that they were good to you, worked hard to give you a good life, and—”

  She stopped abruptly, and he nearly laughed. Then he completed the sentence for her.

  “And I walked out on them without a word, thankless son that I was.”

  She was honest enough to admit it. And, he noted, nervy enough to meet his gaze levelly when she did. “Something along those lines, yes.”

  “I figured that was the line. My father was the proverbial pill
ar of the community.”

  He didn’t think he sounded anything other than neutral, observational, but her gaze sharpened.

  “But he wasn’t the pillar of your family?”

  She was, indeed, sharp, he thought.

  “More like the walls.”

  He couldn’t quite believe he’d said that; he didn’t indulge in esoteric analogies. They wasted time when you had to explain them, and he’d learned young and the hard way the cost of wasted time, a lesson that had been pounded home later.

  “Keeping the world at bay?” she asked.

  He let out a sigh; this was exactly why—

  “No,” she said, answering herself, “keeping you in.”

  He blinked, even after he’d acknowledged her cleverness, startled at how quickly she’d gotten there.

  She apparently didn’t need to hear him say it, either. “So what did it take to be allowed out?”

  “You had to be good enough. I never was. Ever.”

  He started yanking his work gloves back on, staring at his hands as if the task required the utmost concentration, not quite able to believe he’d said that. Or that he was standing here talking about things he never talked about to a woman he had met exactly once.

  That that meeting had stuck in his mind the way little else had in the last year was merely an annoyance.

  “So you’re going to treat Jordy the same way?”

  He stopped in the midst of settling the left glove on his hand. He looked up. She was simply standing there, waiting. And he was standing there, struggling not to admit she had a point. The battle put the sarcasm back in his voice.

  “So, Miss ‘I know I’m not a parent but,’ what do you suggest?”

  She didn’t respond to his tone, only his words. “That you spend as much time thinking about what to get Jordy involved in as you do about keeping him out of trouble. Because the one will accomplish the other.”

  For a long, silent moment he stared at her. His thoughts were tumbling, and he needed time to sort them out.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but I have work to finish.” And thinking to do, he added silently.

  “Does nothing else matter? Just work?”

  It’s all I have, he thought, and gritted his teeth against letting the whiny, pitiful words slip out.

  “Let Jordy play,” she urged. “A little music in the house can change everything.”

  “You’re saying he’s able to produce music?”

  Her mouth quirked. “Well, not yet, but he will.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  The quirk became a lopsided smile. “I’ve got a set of noise-canceling earphones I can loan you.”

  A short, genuine laugh burst from him, surprising him. She looked almost as surprised as he felt, which told him just how irascible he must seem to her. Yet she’d never given up, she’d confronted him, in essence fighting for what she thought would be good for his son.

  With a little shock he realized that for the first time, he felt as if he had some support in this lifetime’s work he’d taken on.

  The bigger shock was that he welcomed it. Even from a wild-child ex-rocker.

  Even though she was only open six hours on Saturday, a great deal of her income was generated on those days when school was out and people were off work. Malmsteen had been breaking the silence fairly steadily, every fifteen or twenty minutes or so, and she made a mental note to make sure she only had something she really, really liked in the rotation for Saturdays.

  The riff sounded again on the thought, making her smile as she looked up.

  Jordy, she thought in surprise. He was never here on Saturday. Because, he’d once told her, his father had a list of chores for him to do that was so long he wouldn’t have time to pee if he did them all. He had immediately blushed, and apologized.

  “Sorry, you’re a girl, I shouldn’t talk about that in front of you.”

  She’d leaned over and conspiratorially whispered to him, “Guess what? Girls do it, too.”

  He’d laughed, something rare enough with him that she’d appreciated it. Something, she guessed, that was even rarer with his father, which would explain why his short laugh earlier this morning had had such an effect on her.

  His father, who, she belatedly realized, was now coming through the door. Jordy must have run ahead, she thought.

  “Hey, green eyes,” she said to the boy as he skidded to a halt at the counter. “What are you doing here on a Saturday?”

  “He said I can play! In fact, he said I have to.”

  Excitement warred with suspicion in his expression, as if he wasn’t certain his father wasn’t up to something, or wouldn’t change his mind, but right now the excitement was winning.

  “Excellent,” she said, not glancing up at the man she knew perfectly well had come to a halt a few feet away.

  “I watched the DVD, even before he said I could come,” Jordy said, as if trying to prove his genuine eagerness. “So I already know some stuff to try.”

  “Next time bring it with you. I’ll set up a player in the sound room so you can watch and work with it.”

  “Cool!” Then, with a sideways look at her he asked, “But you’ll still help me if I get stuck, right?”

  “You bet. I’m no teacher, but I can usually see what’s going wrong.” She gestured toward the back room. “The Strat’s already in there. Time’s wasting. But only an hour, or you’ll make your fingers too sore for next time.”

  Jordy grinned and wheeled around to head toward the back room.

  “Rules.”

  Jordy stopped in his tracks. It was the first thing Wyatt Blake had said, and Kai couldn’t help thinking it seemed typical that it would be that.

  “I remember,” Jordy said without looking at his father, and darted into the room and closed the door quickly, as if he was afraid the next words from his father would be a retraction of the fragile agreement.

  She finally looked at him; he’d showered and changed, his hair was still damp, the jeans less worn out, and the long-sleeved pullover shirt a bit less casual. His jaw also looked freshly shaven, which gave her an odd sort of feeling. Had he done all that just to come here, or just to leave the house in the first place?

  “Rules?” she asked.

  “He needs them.”

  Tim was strict, Marilyn Ogilvie had said. “Funny, that’s the same thing I heard about you.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “That you needed rules, reckless as you were.”

  “Maybe I was reckless,” he said, his voice holding an unexpected note of wry humor, “because of all the rules.”

  She smiled, liking the twist. It was yet another flash of a different man, a man with humor and thoughtfulness, hidden behind the rigid facade.

  If it was a facade, she thought, and not the real man through and through, with just a few nicks of real feeling here and there.

  “Keep that in mind with your son,” she said.

  He let out a compressed breath, and looked away. Had just that mere suggestion shut him down again?

  “Anything I need to know? I wouldn’t want to be party to him breaking any rules and getting in trouble.”

  She thought she’d kept any sarcasm out of her words, but when he still didn’t look at her, she wondered if some had crept through.

  “Just that he’s only allowed to come here after school, and only to practice. No hanging out, no wasting homework time.”

  “Is he allowed to breathe?” she asked, too sweetly. His jaw tightened and she wished she hadn’t said it; he had, after all, given in, and she should be nicer to him after that. “Sorry. You’re letting him play, that’s the big thing.”

  “I had to do something,” he said. Then, rubbing a hand over his eyes as if they felt as tired as they looked, he muttered, “I told you I suck at this.”

  She chose her next words carefully. “I’m not saying let him do whatever he wants, just…remember how you felt.”

  He looked up then
, and again she had the sense of an incredible weariness dulling the eyes that were alive and vibrant in his son. A sudden rush of compassion filled her.

  “It must seem overwhelming,” she said softly.

  His mouth twisted. “Becoming a father of a teenager at thirty-eight was not on my agenda. I’m trying, but I have no idea how to relate to him, and he won’t listen to me anyway.”

  She couldn’t stop herself from doing the math; that meant he’d been twenty-five when Jordy had been born. She stifled the urge to ask him if being a father at all had been on his agenda, not liking that she wanted to know. And liking even less that her first thought had been that he was almost a decade older than she. Chronologically anyway; she had the feeling he was a century older in other ways.

  “But he obeys you, mostly, doesn’t he?”

  “Mostly, yes. Grudgingly.”

  “So, does any kid do it graciously?” She tried a smile. “Unless it’s the month before Christmas or their birthday or something, I mean?”

  That earned her a quick, answering smile. And she indeed felt like she’d earned it.

  “I just don’t want him heading into serious trouble, like he was down in L.A.”

  “So you keep him so busy he doesn’t have time?”

  His mouth twisted again, but with that humor this time. “Something like that.”

  “Works, up to a point. As you know from your own experience, I’m guessing.”

  “I’m trying to keep him from thinking about his mother too much, too.”

  “I’m not sure that can be done. I can’t imagine losing my mother. I’d be devastated, never the same.” Then, curiosity overcoming the need to tread carefully with this man, she added, “You must miss her too.”

  “I barely knew her.”

  “Well enough,” she said, a bit drily.

  To her amazement, he flushed. “Look, it was one time, under…difficult circumstances. We both had our eyes open, we knew what it…wasn’t. After, we agreed it would be best to leave it there, and we each went our own way.”