by Anna Sugden
Alex’s little sister had made Morgan uncomfortable, staring at her with rabid curiosity.
“You don’t look like your dad,” she finally said.
Yeah, as if I don’t already know that.
Wishing she could stop thinking about it, Morgan unbuckled her seat belt and followed the others from the RV. DeeDee immediately took off running. Alex had said she was a runner, same as their mom, only she didn’t want to get up early in the morning to do it.
When she looked at Alex’s mother, Morgan decided there were worse things than being a runner. Cripes, even though she was a mom, the guys at school would think Kayla was really hot. So maybe running was a good idea.
“Come on,” she said to Alex, “let’s go, too.”
He went, though he didn’t seem thrilled about it.
After fifteen minutes Morgan was breathless, but it felt good in a way. Mrs. Anderson had been nice, keeping pace with her and the others.
“Do you want to ride in the Chevy for a while?” her dad asked once they’d stopped and were drinking water.
“Nah,” she said, “I like the RV.”
“Do you kids want to play a game?” Mr. Garrison asked when they got in again. “We have a nice selection in the compartment over the table.”
DeeDee nodded eagerly. “How about Monopoly?”
Morgan thought Monopoly was lame, but Alex seemed willing to play, so they got the box out and unfolded the board.
“I always enjoyed Monotony,” Mrs. Garrison told them.
“It’s Monopoly,” DeeDee reminded her. “Not Monotony.”
Mrs. Garrison looked back, her eyes twinkling. “Really?”
Monopoly might be lame, but it was okay playing with DeeDee and Alex. They made crazy deals and called the properties names like Farpoint and DS9 and the Klingon Home World—that one had the cheapest rents because the neighbors were so loud. With the Garrisons throwing in jokes from the front seat, it was pretty fun.
* * *
THE DRIVE SEEMED painfully long to Kayla, though it was broken by various sightseeing stops her grandparents wanted to make. The biggest delay was their idea to drop down and go through the east entrance of the park in order to tour the cowboy museum in Cody, Wyoming.
It had to be making Jackson crazy with impatience. He was goal oriented: meet Alex. Get to Yellowstone. Set up camp. Do manly stuff. Become a father-and-son team.
But Kayla had news for him—it would be the little things that built a relationship with Alex, such as goofing off at a rest stop and spraying water at each other, or speculating whether ghosts ever haunted a museum instead of somebody’s creepy old house.
Luckily, her grandmother had taken a stint in the Chevy Suburban, giving Kayla a break. And in the RV it had been heartening to see the kids getting along, comfortable enough with each other’s company that all three fell asleep.
Back in the SUV it was silent part of the time, but the quiet would slowly become more uncomfortable than conversation and one of them would start talking. It worked best when they got onto books or movies and stayed away from personal subjects. To Kayla’s surprise, they had more in common that she’d expected.
They pulled into their campsite in late afternoon and quickly hit a snag.
“I brought two large tents,” Jackson explained. “One for guys, the other for the ladies.”
Alex took a step backward. “I don’t want to sleep in a tent,” he announced. “Mom, can I just throw my sleeping bag on the ground and watch the stars the way we did at Crater Lake and Yosemite?”
“Me, too,” DeeDee exclaimed.
“Same here,” Morgan added. “It’s almost time for the Pleiades meteor showers. Hey, Alex, are those the same thing as the Perseids?”
The two debated the subject as disappointment crossed Jackson’s face. Kayla barely kept from grinning. If he’d asked, she could have told him that Alex wouldn’t agree to a guys’ tent. But he’d only said he was bringing enough for everyone, and it hadn’t occurred to her that enough meant two with a gender division.
“Morgan got a D in science this year,” Jackson muttered. “How in hell did she come up with Pleiades and Perseids?”
“It’s one of life’s great mysteries. So I’ll take one tent, and you’ll take the other,” she said. “They can use them for changing clothes and storing gear.”
Jackson gave her a dark look.
“We’ll put down tarps and pitch the tents on either side to shield you from any wind,” he announced, interrupting Morgan and Alex’s debate. It had shifted from meteor showers to whether or not they’d spot wolves in the park. “But if there’s rain, you’ll need to come inside.”
As they set up the tents, Kayla insisted hers face the kids’ sleeping area, saying, “That way they won’t trip over lines or poles.”
It was mostly an excuse...she planned to leave the front open at night to keep an eye on her son and daughter. Jackson’s half smile suggested he knew what she had in mind, but she didn’t care if he thought she was being too protective. And she noticed he faced his own tent the same way.
Jackson had agreed to leave the food arrangements to Elizabeth, and soon after everything was squared away, she announced supper was ready. On the campsite picnic table was an enormous pan of roast beef hash, with a large bowl of salad and corn bread on the side.
Grams handed a dish to Alex as they sat down. “Here you go.”
“Allergies?” Jackson asked, looking at the contents—potatoes with mushrooms and cheese instead of beef.
“I’m a vegetarian,” Alex replied.
“Vegetarian?” Jackson choked and Kayla kicked him under the table as a warning.
Alex stuck up his chin. “Yeah. Got a problem with that?”
Kayla nearly choked herself—on a laugh. She suspected her son had enjoyed telling his cowboy birth father that he didn’t eat meat. The possibility pleased her; a little defiance could help Alex deal with the situation.
“No, it’s fine...great,” Jackson said hastily.
Morgan gave the pan of roast beef hash a speculative look and Kayla got the feeling she was considering a sudden conversion to vegetarianism to bait her father. Finally she spooned a large serving of the traditional hash onto her plate.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” she told Alex.
DeeDee nodded. “He’s a sap. No meat on his pizza. That’s just wrong. I live for pepperoni.”
“I like veggie pizza just fine,” Alex argued.
“Me, too,” Morgan said, “but it’s better with pepperoni.”
“Or bacon.” DeeDee smacked her lips.
“What about Hawaiian?” Morgan asked. “Plain pineapple isn’t the same.”
Suddenly Kayla’s gaze met Jackson’s and she realized he’d gone from being disconcerted to amused at the girls’ attempts to convert Alex. They both chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Alex asked suspiciously.
“Nothing much,” Kayla said. “Let’s enjoy our hash. It’s beef for us, and mushroom cheesy for you.”
“The vegetarian version also sounds delicious,” Jackson said. “You’re a fine cook, Mrs. Garrison.”
“Please, call me Elizabeth.”
“And I’m Hank,” Kayla’s grandfather urged. “Morgan, that goes for you, too. None of that Mr. and Mrs. nonsense. We’re all family now.”
Kayla blinked back tears. Growing up, her mother had claimed her parents would be humiliated by their daughter’s teen pregnancy. “I couldn’t go home,” she’d often declared. “They would have slammed the door in my face.” But once Kayla had met the Garrisons, she’d realized it was Carolyn’s embarrassment about her drinking and succession of men that had kept her away, not concern over her parents.
After dinner Jackson stopped Elizabeth when she began gathering plates and silverware. “You’ve done enough. Who’ll take a turn washing up with me?”
Before Kayla could nudge Alex, her daughter spoke up. “I will.”
Jackson smiled at her.
“Thanks, DeeDee.”
The rest of them played a card game while the dishes were washed and dried. Kayla had to admit, grudgingly, to herself that at least Jackson’s attitudes weren’t so dated that he expected only women to be on dish detail. Of course, he might have been doing it just for show.
“How about a hike?” Jackson suggested as he hung up the dish towel. “I saw a trail leading off from the campground when we pulled in.”
“Sounds good,” Hank said and Elizabeth nodded.
They started off together, but the three kids quickly ranged ahead.
Grams tucked her arm into her husband’s. “Go on and catch up with them. We’re fine.”
Kayla and Jackson quickened their pace and she called out, reminding Alex and DeeDee to remain in sight.
The light was glorious. The golden radiance of the sun on the horizon cast an alpine glow over the landscape, and Kayla caught her breath at the sight of a large stag standing tall and alert in a meadow.
“Magnificent, isn’t he?” Jackson murmured. “Worth putting up with me to be here?”
“We’ll see.”
“It’s got to be worth it being here with your grandparents. I saw how emotional you got at dinner when Elizabeth talked about us being a family.”
“Oh,” Kayla said, abruptly feeling self-conscious; she didn’t enjoy having her feelings on public display. “What makes you think I was emotional?”
“Hey, turnabout is fair play. You see my jaw muscles tense when I get uptight. I notice your eyes. Did it mean that much to have Elizabeth call us a family?”
“It just reminded me how silly it was to stay away from them all these years.”
“Why did you?”
“A lot of reasons, most of them meaningless in retrospect. I thought they’d be embarrassed that both their daughter and granddaughter had a baby in their teens. My mom made it sound... Well, it doesn’t matter. I should have realized they weren’t like that.” Kayla didn’t add that Alex’s resemblance to Jackson would have made returning to Schuyler a challenge, or that her pride had been involved, at least in the beginning. When he’d accused her of sleeping around, she’d sworn she would never return.
“You didn’t trust them.”
“Maybe to some extent,” she admitted. “After everything that had happened, I wasn’t sure they’d want me around. But it was mostly because I didn’t want them to be hurt by what I’d done or think I expected someone else to take responsibility. Now I realize it hurt them more by staying away.”
He was silent a moment. “You should give yourself a break.”
“Why should I when you won’t? You’re still angry that I didn’t force you to accept that Alex was your child. Admit it, you still feel it’s my fault, somehow.”
Jackson glanced at the kids a couple hundred feet away. “Maybe we should try to stop throwing accusations at each other. I handled it badly when you got pregnant, but we have to figure out a way to make this work.”
“I didn’t mean to throw accusations, and certainly not about the pregnancy. It was both our responsibilities. And now I understand why you suddenly dumped me and went back to Marcy. At the time it looked as if you’d scored a few times, so you didn’t have any more use for me.”
Perhaps it was the rosy light of the lowering sun, but Jackson’s neck seemed to redden slightly.
“I’m sorry it came off that way.”
She sighed. “Fine. Let’s just enjoy this beautiful place for an hour without dredging up garbage from the past.”
“That’s a good idea. Shall I tell you everything I know about Yellowstone?”
“Thanks, but I’ll wait for a park ranger.”
* * *
JACKSON WAS GRATEFUL for the temporary truce as they retraced the trail. The youngsters had gotten spooked by something rustling in the shadowed forest undergrowth and had hastily closed the distance between themselves and the adults. They quickly recovered their composure, however, and chattered back and forth about movies such as Gremlins and The Blair Witch Project.
“Isn’t DeeDee too young for those films?” he asked Kayla in a low voice.
“Yup. She saw them at a friend’s house during a slumber party. She isn’t allowed back there.”
The corners of Jackson’s mouth twitched at Kayla’s stern expression; it was nice to know she was a mama bear when it came to her children.
“Luckily, DeeDee doesn’t scare easily,” Kayla added.
“She does seem self-assured.”
Back at the campsite Jackson lit a fire and everyone gathered around it. He wasn’t sure how Morgan would react when Elizabeth brought out marshmallows, chocolate bars and graham crackers—the last time he’d suggested making s’mores, Morgan had put up her nose and called it “kiddie stuff.” But his daughter took one look at Alex and DeeDee eagerly poking marshmallows on barbecue forks and didn’t waste a second doing it herself.
“Careful,” Morgan warned as Alex tried to shake a burning marshmallow from his barbecue fork. “Remember what happened in Wild Hogs.”
Alex laughed. “Yeah, but there’s no way we could all share a sleeping bag. DeeDee kicks.”
“Ha,” DeeDee said. “You’re the one who ends up with his head where his feet should be.”
The charred marshmallow dropped into the glowing coals and Alex stuck a fresh one on his fork.
Wild Hogs. Jackson remembered the film about four aging friends taking a motorcycle road trip, though he didn’t recall a marshmallow incident. It seemed as if most of the movies he’d seen, he hadn’t truly watched. What had happened to his ability to simply enjoy the moment?
Right now was a good example. He kept averting his gaze from Kayla and how the firelight glinted on her hair, turning the color to molten gold. She was a beautiful woman in a beautiful setting; he should simply appreciate the sight. After all, neither of them was interested in each other.
So no problem.
Feeling the tightening in his groin, Jackson put a marshmallow on a barbecue fork and extended it over the fire. Maybe he was better off being cautious.
* * *
JACKSON’S METHODICAL PLAN for seeing Yellowstone was annihilated the following morning. The first thing the kids wanted to see was the Old Faithful Geyser, followed by a visit to the nearby souvenir shop.
An idea occurred to him, though, and he watched until he could talk to his daughter alone in the store.
“Morgan, DeeDee’s birthday is in a few days,” he said quietly. “Shall we pick out a gift?”
“I already got her something from me.” Morgan hurried away to join Alex, who was looking at books.
Jackson released an exasperated breath. When could Morgan possibly have gotten a gift?
Jackson looked at a jewelry display and tried to recall if he’d seen DeeDee wearing any necklaces or bracelets. He’d actually already gotten a present for her in Schuyler, but he couldn’t use it now since Morgan would realize he’d suggested shopping together as an afterthought.
* * *
THE NEXT FEW days were hectic.
Jackson didn’t know the Garrisons well, but he was impressed with their vigor. Unless a particularly strenuous hike was planned, both Hank and Elizabeth kept pace with the rest of them. The fourth day was an exception—they made an excuse to stay in camp so they could prepare a party for DeeDee while the others explored the Upper Geyser Basin.
“It doesn’t look real. It’s almost as if they painted the bottom,” DeeDee suggested when they reached Morning Glory Pool.
Jackson chuckled. The brilliant hue didn’t look real. “Nature does amazing things. Look at abalone shells.”
“Or petrified wood,” Alex said. “I love the Gingko Petrified Forest, though the petroglyphs are my favorite thing there.”
Now he was talking about petroglyphs?
Jackson shook his head, amazed by Alex and DeeDee’s aggressive curiosity. They studied roadside plaques, read guidebooks and acted as if every historical display was a treat. Bu
t the best part was seeing Morgan’s blasé attitude being swept away by their enthusiasm.
Still, the trip wasn’t turning out the way he’d envisioned. He’d thought there would be solo hikes with Alex when they could grow closer, along with teaching him to fish and the other things his dad had done with him and his brothers. He’d hoped for alone time with Morgan as well, perhaps getting her to open up about what was wrong. Instead, the kids were practically inseparable.
“Do Alex and DeeDee usually do so much with each other?” he queried softly. “I thought teenage boys treated younger sisters as nuisances. Not that I ever did with Madison or Alaina, of course. I was a very tolerant big brother.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Okay, so I ditched them at every opportunity.”
Kayla snapped a picture. “Sometimes Alex ditches DeeDee, too, but this is an unusual situation, and both of them know family solidarity is important to me.”
“It’s important to me, as well,” Jackson commented.
“That’s nice,” she said, though he wasn’t sure she believed him.
Ironically, he was getting to know Kayla better than Alex. It wasn’t a waste of time—they needed to get along—but it was tricky. Aside from when she got steamed and started arguing, she was pleasant, yet reserved. He admired her intelligence and enjoyed some of their debates, but she clearly had no faith in him, despite acknowledging he’d changed since high school.
Obviously, they both had a problem with trust.
Jackson’s increasing attraction to Kayla was another complication. He’d nearly embarrassed himself a few times when she came back from an early-morning run, flushed with a healthy glow, her damp T-shirt clinging to her body. The main thing saving him was Morgan going running with her.
Kayla must have hypnotized his daughter—Morgan was not a morning person. But it reminded Jackson that he’d speculated whether the two might connect. They seemed to be communicating well enough. After running they went to the camp showers together and returned chatting and laughing.
Hell, he’d only heard his daughter laugh a handful of times in the past year. And then it was with her friends, not with him.
“Drat, my SD card is full,” Kayla said ruefully when she tried to take a photo. “I hope they’ll have some at the next gift shop.”
