by Sophia Gray
Hell no. With some of the shock dissipating and his brain firing on all cylinders again, Ethan knew there was no way some jackass politician was going to keep him out of his own kid’s life. He shoved the picture into his back pocket and started for the door. Then he pulled up short.
There was no way in hell he was going to get back into Amelia’s house without a fleet of cops showing up. He chewed his thumbnail, thinking hard. Then he pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number from his call log.
“Hi, Ethan,” Marta said.
She sounded a little cooler than normal, but he couldn’t really blame her. He’d basically ignored her on their date and stared at other women half the night. He probably wouldn’t have even answered the phone if the roles had been reversed.
“Hey,” he said. “I wondered if I could ask a favor.”
“You can ask,” she said cautiously.
“It’s nothing crazy,” he assured her. “I just need Amelia Stratton’s cell phone number.”
“Are yousure it’s not crazy?” Marta asked. “You’re not thinking of ruining my investigation, are you, Ethan?”
He didn’t begrudge the question. “No. You said yourself that Amelia doesn’t seem to be a big part of the picture. What I need to talk to her about isn’t related to Stratton.”
“But she is.” Marta pointed out.
Ethan blew out his breath in frustration. “Okay, forget I asked.”
“Wait a second.” She sighed. “You really are impulsive, aren’t you? I’m not saying no.”
“Then what the hell are you saying?” Time was ticking away and he was getting impatient.
“I’msaying there’s a strong chance she knows the campaign inside and out. If you get any information out of her, I want you to remember who put you in touch, that’s all.”
“I’m not grilling her for you.”
Marta laughed ruefully. “You wouldn’t be very good at it anyway. Like I said, you’re impulsive. Too impulsive for the long game. What I’m getting at is simple. If she’s associating with you, I’m banking on the fact that she doesn’t exactly share her father’s ideals. She might tell you things freely. She might evenwant to help. If she does, come to me.”
Ethan pushed a hand through his hair and sighed. “Okay, I get it.”
“I’ll call you back when I have the number.”
Ethan paced the room, too wired to think of working on the bike to kill some time. He couldn’t even bring himself to sit down, let alone do anything that required any detail.
“What’re you doin’ here?” William asked in surprise.
Ethan jumped. He hadn’t heard the other man walk in. “Uh, nothing. I mean, I thought about working on the bike, but now I don’t know.”
“Okay,” William said slowly, walking over to the fridge and pulling out a Stratton of beer. “You look nervous.”
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Ethan defended himself. “And hell, with everything that’s going on...Stratton and his damn speech...why wouldn’t I be nervous?”
“Okay,” William said again. “Maybe have a beer or somethin’ while you try to figure out whether you wanna work on that bike. You’re wound awful tight, kid.”
“Sure,” Ethan said. “Yeah, I’ll probably do that.”
His phone buzzed and he turned away from William, reading the text quickly. Marta had sent Amelia’s number and a message wishing him luck. Ethan dialed rapidly, trying to get himself together. William was right. He was wound so tightly that his muscles ached. He could feel a headache beginning at his temples too.
“Hello?”
“Amelia?”
He heard a gasp on the other end of the line and he hoped to God that her father wasn’t in the room. Stratton would be all over that in a heartbeat.
“Ethan?” she whispered.
He guessed her father wasn’t there and held back a sigh of relief. “Yeah. I need...I need to talk to you.” He paused, but when she didn’t speak, he went on. “I can’t leave it like that, Amelia. You can’t expect me to.”
“Ethan, if you keep pushing this, it’ll damage your club even more. That’s part of the reason I’m doing what I’m doing. He said he’lldestroy you if I didn’t!”
Ethan snorted. “You think he won’t anyway? Amelia, I don’t give a damn about damaging The Angel’s Keepers right now. Not after what you told me. I just...I can’t leave things like this. Even if you want to marry this Anthony guy, I’m gonna be part of this. I’m not walking away.”
Amelia caught her breath again, and Ethan discovered he was holding his breath. What was he going to do if she said no?
“Okay,” she said finally, her voice unsteady but determined. “We do need to talk. But how....”
“You’ll have to find a way to meet me outside. I’ll be waiting down the road.”
“Okay. I’ll...I’ll figure it out. See you soon.”
Ethan disconnected and shoved the phone down into his pocket. In his haste to get out the door, he didn’t see William in the doorway. All he could focus on was getting to Amelia before she changed her mind.
Chapter 15
Amelia
Amelia wrapped her hands around the steaming cup of coffee Ethan had placed in front of her. Summer was dying, and the nights were cooling rapidly, the way they always did in the desert. That wasn’t the problem at the moment, though. It was nerves, pure and simple, that made her shiver now.
He sat down across the table from her with his own mug. He took his coffee black. Hers was practically blonde. She wondered what that meant. If it even meant anything. She’d heard that smokers drank black coffee more often than nonsmokers. It was supposedly something about how smoking killed their taste buds. Did Ethan smoke? He hadn’t been smoking that night at the bar and she hadn’t smelled it on him on the ride back to his house. He’d just smelled like fresh air and leather.
She shook her head slightly. Why was she wasting her time thinking about that? Probably because she had no idea how to begin a conversation about what they actually needed to talk about.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked once he’d taken a sip of his coffee.
Apparently, he had no problem diving right in. She took a breath, rubbed her suddenly sweaty palms down the sides of her pants and gathered her thoughts. She wanted to be upfront and honest because it looked like they were going to be in each other’s lives for the long haul now. She was tired of tiptoeing around things with her father and Anthony. She wanted at least one person who knew her inside and out.
“Because you were already mad,” she said. “You walk in looking like a thunderstorm and expect me to say what? Glad you dropped by, I’m having your baby?”
A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth and he shook his head. “No. But tell me honestly, were you going to get around to it if your father hadn’t come home?”
Amelia ran her fingertip around the rim of her cup. “I can’t tell you honestly, because I don’t know. I...wantedto. But I can’t promise I would have had the courage to do it tonight.” Ethan frowned, but she went on before he could ask more questions. “I can tell you why and it doesn’t have anything to do with you as a person. It’s just that no one has had a good reaction to this news, Ethan. Anthony is annoyed because it speeds up the wedding. My father is humiliated. I’m terrified. I couldn’t handle it if you’d walked out on me, or told me to get rid of it. Out of all the outcomes I’ve already dealt with, I was expecting a good one from you. I never in a million years expected you towantto be a part of this.”
Ethan shifted in his seat and, for a second, she thought that was almost as if he’d planned to reach for her. In the end, he stayed where he was. Was he already distancing himself from her? Amelia pressed her lips together so they wouldn’t tremble. There was no time to deal with the voice in her head right now. She needed to focus on the issue at hand and worry about where they stood as a couple later. If they stood anywhere at all.
“I was kind of ticked of
f about that,” Ethan said. “But then I figured it out. You don’t know much about me. Hell, we don’t know that much about each other. But I can tell you why I feel the way I feel. If you’re interested.”
“Of course I’m interested!” Amelia said eagerly, leaning forward. She’d been dying to find out more about Ethan since the minute she’d left him.
Ethan looked flattered and a little flustered by her enthusiasm. He pushed one hand through his hair and put the coffee cup down on the table. “Okay. Well...” He shifted in his seat again and cleared his throat. “My parents were only nineteen when I was born. They weren’t...the most stable couple. My dad, Marcus, drank. He drank a lot, actually. My mom did, too, but she cleaned it up when she found out she was pregnant. My dad didn’t. When I was about six months old, she finally got tired of him drinking their paychecks away and she packed up. She left with this other guy she knew who was headed out to a job in the south.”
“So that’s where your accent comes from,” she mused.
He made a face. “Yeah. I’ve tried to get rid of it, but--”
“Don’t!” she said emphatically. “It’s hot.”
This time he did grin. The accent broadened as he said, “Why thank you, ma’am.”
Amelia laughed. He made that move again, as if he wanted to touch her, but he held himself back. She wished he wouldn’t, but she couldn’t say she didn’t understand why he did.
“So is that why you want to be a part of this baby’s life?” she asked. “Because your dad wasn’t part of yours?”
Ethan looked surprised. “He was. I mean, later.”
She blinked in confusion. “Oh. I thought...”
“It’s not really a complicated story,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s not really normal either.”
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“We lived in North Carolina until right before I turned sixteen,” Ethan went on. “My mom wouldn’t let me talk to my dad. She didn’t even like to talk about him. All I ever heard was that he’d rather drink and mess around with other women than take care of his family. I thought he must be a real jerk. A loser. A drunk.” Ethan looked down at the table for a long moment and then he took a sip of his coffee before he went on. “Then my mom died.”
Amelia’s lips parted. “Oh, Ethan.”
“Yeah,” he said, acknowledging her sympathy roughly. “It happened really fast. One day she was fine and the next...she was just gone. Meningitis. It’s apparently a pretty rare thing to die from when you’re her age, but that’s what happened. Anyway, the state didn’t know what to do with me because she didn’t really have any other family. It was either foster care or Marcus and he said he’d take me. So, they bought me a plane ticket and sent me to live with my dad.”
“That must have been rough,” she said, knowing “rough” was probably inadequate.
Ethan shrugged and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess it was,” he agreed. “I didn’t know what the hell was gonna happen. You know, was he gonna drink himself stupid every night? Was he going to try to hit me? Maybe he’d just disappear for days at a time and I wouldn’t know what the hell to do.”
“You were scared,” Amelia said softly.
“Hell yeah, I was,” he admitted. “My mom was a good person, and she did the best she could for me, but she never had a kind word for Marcus Billings. And I’d...never really been away from her. Never been out of North Carolina. At least, not that I could remember. The idea of getting on a plane really freaked me out. And I was leaving every single friend I’d ever made on the other side of the damn country.” He rubbed his hand over his chin. “By the time I got off the plane and got smacked in the face with all the dry, desert air, I was ready for a fight.”
He got up and poured Amelia another cup of coffee, putting in sugar and creamer, turning the drink golden brown before putting it down in front of her. This time, he didn’t sit across the table from her. He leaned against the counter instead, holding his own fresh coffee and looking pensive.
“He was waiting for me at the gate. Grease all over his hands and his clothes. See, he meant to change before he came to get me, but he always got distracted when he was working on something new. And he’d just gotten his hands on a 1960 Royal Enfield Interceptor.” Seeing Amelia’s blank expression, Ethan said. “British bike. They’re hard to find and 1960 was the first year they made ‘em. Anyway, he’d been working on it when he remembered me--”
“He forgot his son was coming back for the first time since he was six months old?” Amelia asked, completely incredulous.
“He didn’t forget,” Ethan said, just a touch defensive. “He just lost track of time and couldn’t clean up. So he’s waiting at the gate, covered in grease and looking like a bum. Ripped jeans, black tee shirt, black leather vest. He hadn’t shaved in a few days...what?”
Amelia smiled. “Nothing.” Ethan stood before her, grease under his nails and in the creases of his palms. He was wearing ripped jeans, a black tee shirt, and a black leather vest. And he hadn’t shaved in a few days. It was a really good look for him, no doubt, but it was more than a little funny given the way he’d just described his father. “Go on,” she encouraged when he continued to look a little quizzically at her.
“I walked over,” Ethan went on. “And he said hello. That was it. Just...hello. He didn’t ask how my flight was or anything else. It pissed me off, so I blew him off and went and got my suitcase. He just kind of stared at it when I brought it back and then he said it wouldn’t fit on the bike.” Ethan shook his head, a half smile playing around his lips. “I asked him what the hell I was supposed to do with all my stuff, shove it up my ass? My mom would have smacked me right across the back of the head for talking to her like that. Dad just shrugged and said if I thought it would fit, I could try. But otherwise, he could call me a cab. So, that’s what he did. I rode to his house by myself and he followed on the bike.”
“And then what?” she asked.
“Then we kinda settled in. He was gone most of the day, working. He was gone a lot at night with the club. So I kinda thought I was right; he was just gonna be out all the time, doing whatever he wanted. It would have been okay if it weren’t summer. I didn’t know anybody in the town yet, so it wasn’t like I could throw any parties while he was gone. And then I noticed there wasn’t a drop of beer in the house. No liquor either. Now, my mom had said that this was a guy who couldn’t go twelve hours without a drink, so I figured he was drinking at the club. One day, he got tired of me just lying around the house and dragged me over to The Angel’s Keepers HQ.” Ethan pulled the picture out of his back pocket and tossed it on the table in front of Amelia. “This was taken that day. It’s pretty much the only picture of us there is.”
Amelia picked it up carefully. The camera had obviously been a cheap one and the color was a little off, the edges a little fuzzy. Sixteen-year-old Ethan looked out at her slightly defiantly. He’d been pretty tall by then, only a few inches shorter than he was now. His shoulders had been beginning to broaden and his hair had been longer, falling into his eyes.
“You were grunge,” she said with a smile, looking at his red and black flannel and baggy jeans. “I never would have pictured that.”
He shrugged, looking away. “Well...it was a big deal back in North Carolina.”
Amelia chuckled at the tone. “I think it’s cute.”
Ethan reached over and twitched the picture out of her light hold. “I think you’ve seen enough.”
“Wait just a second!” she protested. “Give it back. I wanted to look at your dad!”
“You had your shot,” he said.
Amelia pushed her chair back and dove for the picture he was starting to push back into his pocket. He grabbed her wrist and spun her neatly, putting her chest to his back. She squirmed, trying to break free of his grip.
“If you promise to be good, I’ll give it back,” Ethan said, his voice rough in her ear.
Amelia caught her breath. “I’m never completel
y good,” she answered, bolder when she wasn’t facing him.
“That much I know for sure.”
Ethan let her go slowly and she turned around, too shy suddenly to look up at him. She held out her hand and he reluctantly returned the photograph. This time she focused on the other man in the frame.
Marcus Billings was tall, too. In fact, Ethan bore a very strong resemblance to his father now that he was grown up. They had the same firm jawline and dark eyes. They both had the same expression in the picture too. She would describe it as manly terror.
“He looks like a pretty nice guy,” she offered.
