by Lisa Bingham
Behind her, she sensed the Taggart males moving closer as well—first Bodey, crossing over from his truck, then Elam, stepping firmly in front of his fiancée—forming a none-too-subtle ring of support behind her.
Phillip must have sensed the rise in testosterone, because he lifted his hands and adopted a charming smile. “Easy, boys! I haven’t come to make trouble. I’ve come to visit my wife and kids, that’s all.”
“Ex-wife, Phillip.”
His eyes flashed with something akin to malice, but he paused, rested his hands on his hips, and regarded the dusty toes of his shoes for a second before echoing, “Ex-wife.”
“What are you doing here, Phillip?” Bronte demanded, hoping he didn’t hear the slight tremor in her voice.
“Can’t a man come see his daughters?”
Bronte folded her arms tightly under her breasts, ignoring the way her pounding heart seemed to vibrate through her whole torso.
“Actually, no. According to our divorce agreement, your visits need to be arranged in advance so that supervision can be provided.”
His cheeks flushed, but he didn’t back down. “I figured we could take care of all those details here.” He shrugged disarmingly, flashing another hearty smile.
There had been a time when that grin had been warm and genuine. Now there was an oily, used-car-salesman insincerity about it. Even more important, Bronte discovered that she was no longer swayed by his attempt at levity. Weeks ago, she would have felt obligated to smooth things over. Now, she merely wanted him to leave.
“That’s not the way it works, Phillip.”
“I suppose sneaking off in the middle of the night without even letting me know where you were going was by-the-book, eh, Bronte?” he snapped in return. But when Elam and Bodey took another step forward, he quickly altered his tone. “The least you could have done is let me know where you were headed so that I wouldn’t worry about my girls.”
Bronte bit her lip to keep herself from pointing out that he hadn’t shown any concern for their safety when he’d been high most of their childhoods or that night he’d broken into the brownstone with a loaded weapon. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that, in Phillip’s mind, he was a victim of circumstance and there was nothing she could do or say that would make him admit he held any responsibility in the current state of affairs.
“Damnit, Bronte, I called, I texted, I even emailed,” Phillip continued in an angry rush. “Then I get this message that your cell number is … discontinued.” He sneered to show what he thought of that, apparently unaware of the way Elam, Bodey, and Jace had begun to form a phalanx of angry Western males around her.
“You can’t do that, Bronte! I’ve got to be able to reach you!”
Although her body was shaking with a combination of anger and fear that had been building in her for years now, Bronte drew upon the strength that surrounded her.
“Any contact you think you might need to have should be arranged through my lawyer from now on, Phillip.”
“Bullshit! You’re my wife! Kari and Lily are my kids!” he shouted.
In that instant, her control snapped. “I’m not your wife, Phillip! I haven’t been your wife in years. Instead, I’ve been your mother, your counselor, your warden, your nurse, and your housekeeper!” Her voice rose with each word. “I don’t have to answer to you anymore. Even more important, I don’t have to answer your phone calls, your texts, your emails, or any other form of communication you might decide to use. As per the agreement in our divorce, I don’t even have to see you to drop the kids off for your scheduled visitations. All of those arrangements are to be made through my lawyer. So I would appreciate it if you would get back into your car and leave.” She took a deep breath in order to calm herself. “My grandmother has been ill and this is a family celebration. One to which you were not invited.”
She could see the anger building behind his eyes. But for the first time in as long as she could remember, she didn’t back down. She knew without a doubt that Jace and his brothers had her back—that they would have been there for her even if she wasn’t Jace’s girlfriend. But since she was, Phillip was going to have to go through them to get to her.
“You’re making a mistake, Bronte.” In an instant, his tone changed from anger to a cajoling murmur. “You need me. You’ve always needed me. You’ve never had to do things on your own.” He offered her a tilted smile, one which she was sure that he thought was disarming. But it only served to underscore the shocking changes he’d undergone in the scant weeks since she’d seen him last. His skin was gray, his eyes bloodshot. She could see that his hands were beginning to tremble. He was only forty-five years old, but he looked sixty.
A bitter laugh slipped from her throat. “What do you think I’ve been doing for years now, Phillip? I’ve raised our children, paid our bills, managed our household, our finances and our taxes. I’ve handled medical crises, school projects, and your countless counseling and rehab appointments. Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything single life can throw at me that I haven’t already done.”
A muscle in Phillip’s jaw jumped. “You’ll come to regret it. You love me, Bronte.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “It’s time for you to leave, Phillip.”
His face seemed to crumple in contrition, but Bronte found herself curiously unmoved.
“Come on, Bronte,” he wheedled. “I’ve come all this way. At the very least, you should let me see the kids.”
“Not until you arrange it through my lawyer.”
“But it’s only a couple of weeks until summer vacation. Even you can’t deny the fact that I’ve got the right to a full month of visitation.”
“Supervised—”
“I could take them back to Massachusetts with me now. They don’t really need to attend the last couple of weeks of school, do they?”
“No! No, no, no!” Kari burst out of the side door, her face contorted in horror. “You can’t make me go back now! I’ve got friends here and we’ve made plans! I’m not missing the last few weeks of school when all the fun stuff is going to happen. There’s a dance and a carnival and … and a dance, Mom!”
As if summoned by her sister’s distress, Lily eased down the ladder from the tree house, seeming small and uncertain. Within seconds, Barry took his place by her side. In the past, she would have raced into Phillip’s arms, but that had changed over the past few weeks as well. Now she clung to Barry’s hand, studying her father, clearly trying to gauge his mood and his sobriety.
To his credit, Phillip’s face immediately brightened. “Kari. Baby,” he crooned. “And Lily. My Lilliput. Look how you’ve grown.”
Bronte felt a twinge at the evident love shining from Phillip’s eyes and realized that this honest fatherly affection was the reason why she’d stayed with him for so long. She hadn’t wanted to deny her children the love of their father. She’d thought she could “fix” him. That she could hang on long enough for him to get his act together. But judging by the tic under his eye, the sallowness of his skin and the gauntness of his mottled face, Phillip was still in the grips of his addiction. She wasn’t going to subject them to their father’s dependency any more than the custody agreement forced her to do.
Before she could speak, Phillip plunged on. “You’ll see, we’re going to have a great time. I’ve already arranged it with my partner, Jeremy. He and his wife have invited us to stay with them at their place in the country. You can swim in the ocean and—”
Without warning, Lily began to scream and scream and scream. A high-pitched cry filled with anger and torment, anguish and grief. The sound lifted the hair away from Bronte’s skull and severed the last of the regrets that had rooted her in place. As she ran to her younger daughter, sure that Lily had been stung or bitten or worse, Lily raced to meet her halfway, arms clawing, feet kicking, so that she seemed to scale Bronte’s form in her terror.
Lily clamped her arms around Bronte’s neck so tightly that Bronte could sca
rcely breathe. Immediately, she held Lily, absorbing the shudders that wracked through the little girl’s body as huge sobs threatened to tear her apart.
“Shh, Lily, shh. What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
Lily was crying so hard, she didn’t seem to hear Bronte’s voice. Bronte turned to Kari, wondering if she’d seen what had happened. But Kari was regarding her sister with wide, worried eyes.
“I didn’t do anything. Honest!”
Seeking help, Bronte turned back toward Jace, knowing he had medical training, but in doing so, she caught such a look of guilt and fear on Phillip’s features that she immediately zeroed in on him.
A montage of images raced through her head like old-fashioned popping flashbulbs. Lily’s change in behavior, her lack of appetite, her reticence, her timidity, her somber mood, the depression.
Her fear of men.
An icy sliver pierced through Bronte’s heart.
“What have you done, Phillip?” she rasped, barely able to form the words. When he didn’t speak, she repeated more sharply, “What have you done!”
He offered a weak laugh. “I haven’t done anything. How could I? I was over here when she started screaming.”
Lily grabbed Bronte’s cheeks, forcing her to meet her daughter’s wild gaze. “Don’t make me go, Mommy,” she sobbed, the words barely distinguishable in her pain. “Don’t make me see that man again.”
“What man, Lily? Tell mommy who hurt you.”
When Lily hesitated, Bronte soothed her hair, knowing that the next few minutes could be crucial to her daughter’s well-being.
“Mommy won’t be mad. Not at you, sweetie. I could never be mad at you. If someone hurt you, Mommy needs to help you so you don’t have to be sad anymore.”
Lily’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“That’s what Barry told me.”
“He’s right, Lily. He wants to help you, too. We’ve all been so worried about you. Let us help you, sweetie.”
Lily’s chin trembled, but then she finally whispered, “D-daddy’s man.”
Bronte’s brow creased as she scrambled to make sense of it. “Which man, sweetie?”
“Th-the one at his … office.”
“You mean Jeremy? Mr. Montero?”
There had been a time when Jeremy and his wife had been in and out of their home so much that the kids had called them Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Noreen, so Bronte took note of the way her daughter refused to use his name.
“Wh-when Daddy took me to him to check my hurt arm … H-he made me come into his office …”
Bronte barely dared to breathe, needing to know the truth, but fearing the words nonetheless.
“It’s okay, Lily. Tell Mommy what happened so I can help to make it better.”
“He made me …” She stopped, then continued in a mere whisper, “He made me pull my pants down.”
Oh, sweet heaven, no.
“What else, Lily?” Bronte prompted through a voice thick with her own tears.
“He … he took pictures of me. Then he took his pants down, too.”
The bile rose in Bronte’s throat, but she forced herself to ask, “Did he touch you, Lily?”
Lily shook her head. “I-I wouldn’t let him. He got mad at me, but I wouldn’t let him.”
Bronte nodded, her own tears falling. “You did the right thing, baby doll.” Bronte swallowed hard, forcing herself to ask. “D-did he make you touch him?”
Lily began crying again. “I ran away from him, Mommy. I ran away.”
She whipped her arms around Bronte’s neck again and Bronte held her as tightly as she dared. “You did the right thing, Lily. You were a brave, brave girl. I’m so proud of you. I’m so, so proud.”
Still clutching Lily, Bronte turned toward Phillip, but before she could even think of a way to put her whirling thoughts into words, he threw out a hand, offering a nervous laugh.
“Now, Bronte,” he said in a tone far too light for Lily’s revelation. “I didn’t know anything about this. Honest, I—”
Lily reared, her face becoming mottled as she screamed, “I told you, Daddy! I told you and you laughed! You said it was something girls did to help their daddies make points.”
Bronte watched as the blood drained from Phillip’s face, and she didn’t need Lily to clarify her remarks.
Phillip had bartered his daughter’s innocence in order to score drugs.
Apparently, Jace must have reached the same conclusion because he leaped toward Phillip, throwing him to the ground. Before his brothers could react, his arm came back and his fist connected with the center of Phillip’s face. There was a sharp crack, then blood began to flow from his nose. But even as he drew back to hit him again, Elam and Bodey were there, pulling him backward.
“No, Jace! Not in front of the girls!” Elam shouted while Bodey added, “Wait ’til we’ve got him alone.”
Phillip’s eyes widened in terror and he scrambled backward, hurrying toward his car.
“This isn’t over, Bronte.”
“Yes. Yes, it is, Phillip. And my first call won’t be to my lawyer, but to law enforcement.”
The threat was enough to cause him to dodge into the car. The engine had barely turned over before he stomped on the accelerator and veered violently to the side. The car fishtailed, then rocketed down the lane.
“Bodey?” Jace called out as he ran toward his truck.
“Already on it, Jace!”
Before Elam could catch him, Jace was in his vehicle and speeding after Phillip.
Bodey began punching numbers into his phone and running toward his pickup. “This is Bodey Taggart. I need to report that a man named Phillip Cupacek is heading toward the old highway in a green late-model sedan, license plate …”
The rest of his words were drowned by the roar of his engine.
Elam was already jogging backward to join Bodey. “P.D., I’ve got to—”
“Go, go!”
Soon, Bodey’s truck disappeared into a cloud of dust as well, leaving a trembling, unsettled silence fractured only by Lily’s sobbing. Bronte buried her face in her daughter’s hair, crooning to her in the same way that she’d done when her daughter had skinned her knees. But this was worse, so much worse.
How? How could this have happened?
And why hadn’t she known? What kind of mother was she that she hadn’t pieced together the clues before now?
She started when a pair of arms slid around her.
“Don’t blame yourself, Bronte. You couldn’t have guessed. Not without more information,” P.D. murmured.
“But …”
“It’s what happens now that matters.”
Stricken, Bronte met P.D.’s gaze, drawing strength from the mix of emotions she saw there.
“I-I don’t know what to do. I need to … to …”
P.D. squeezed her shoulders. “You simply need to hold her, love her. Helen is contacting the crisis center to find out who can help you and Lily, and I’ll take care of Kari and Barry. You’re not alone in this. We’re here for you.”
Bronte nodded, hugging Lily even tighter.
“Jace—”
“Elam and Bodey will catch up with him.”
“I don’t want him to get hurt chasing Phillip.”
P.D.’s lips twitched. “Trust me. If he manages to force Phillip to pull over, it won’t be Jace that you need to worry about.”
TWENTY
JACE wasn’t sure what had prompted him to jump into his truck and follow the bastard. He only knew that after what he’d heard—after what Lily must have experienced—he had to do something. Since Lily needed her mother and the soothing influences of the female members of her family, he figured it was his job to make sure that the worthless piece of shit who dared to call himself a father didn’t get away scot-free.
He drove without conscious thought, catching sight of the sedan as it headed south and away from town, thank goodness. Phillip Cupacek had to be going sixty on a road with a limit of
forty. Punching his own accelerator, Jace eased closer. He’d love nothing more than to ram straight into the car’s back bumper and force the prick off the road before he left another innocent bystander in his wake. But Jace was pretty sure that his brothers would have called the authorities, and Jace wasn’t about to do anything that could cause Bronte any more distress.
He was washed with another wave of fury when he realized what Bronte must have been dealing with for years—the lies, the selfishness, and the hurt. He could see now why she’d seemed so small and fragile when she’d first come to Bliss. Escaping the wild manipulations of an addict must have been like abandoning a war zone. Jace was proud of her—so damned proud of the way she’d become so independent and strong. It humbled him to think that after everything Bronte had experienced, she was willing to trust Jace at all.
But he wondered if her girls would ever be able to do the same. Especially Lily. She’d been betrayed by her own father and his business partner. A man considered to be a trusted family friend. Jace prayed that, somehow, she could learn to understand that she didn’t need to fear Jace or his brothers.
Shit.
He forced his attention back to the car ahead. Phillip was weaving erratically over the center line. There was a sharp curve ahead as the road followed the bend of the creek. Beyond it was a narrow bridge. If another car came from the opposite direction, Phillip could hit someone head-on.
Too late, Jace saw a semi with a cattle trailer turning onto the highway from a side road. There was no way that the Peterbilt and Phillip would be able to make it across the bridge at the same time. Rather than slowing down, Phillip moved even faster into the turn, clearly wanting to outrun the larger vehicle, but he wasn’t going to make it. The semi was already crawling onto the bridge, beginning to gain speed as the driver worked his way through the gears. With a trailer filled with livestock, the unknown driver wasn’t going to make any sudden stops.
Too late, Phillip must have realized the same thing. He slammed on the brakes, swerving to avoid the bridge supports and the blocked lane. His tires caught the gravel on the side of the road and he was skidding out of control, flipping once, twice, before heading down the embankment into the creek.
