CHASING PEPPER (Gray Wolf Security, Texas Book 5)
Page 16
“You grew up here?”
“For a few years.” I gestured toward the battered Airstream parked against the side of the house. “That’s really my childhood home. That’s where we lived while my dad was active on the rodeo circuit.”
She nodded. “Kind of what I pictured.”
“Did you? Can you imagine me doing homework on the chipped dining room table?”
“I can, actually.”
I stopped right in front of the porch and pulled her in front of me, wrapping my arms around her. She stood still, let me lean on her for a moment. She knew how hard this was going to be for me. That’s why she had insisted on coming, and I was grateful despite my initial resistance. I was glad she was here; I was glad she cared enough to help me through this moment.
And then the door opened and a tall man, his hair finally going gray, stepped out onto that tilted porch.
“Nolan?”
I nodded. “It’s me, Pop.”
He moved like a young man, not like a middle-aged man who’d broken nearly every bone in his body at least once. He jumped down onto the ground in front of us and stared at me for a long moment. Then he pulled me into his arms, tugging Pepper along. He laughed, looking down at her as he clung to me.
“I’m Johnathon.”
“Pepper.”
He grinned widely, that grin I’d always associated with a good win in the arena.
“Nice to meet ya.” He stepped back and looked me over. “You’re too thin, boy. You need to eat more.”
“Just like you, Pop.”
He laughed, touching his ribs where they were visible through the thin undershirt he was wearing.
“Come inside. You’re early. I was going to wear a suit, but I was waiting to the last minute so I wouldn’t get gravy all over it.”
“Don’t worry about it, Pop. We didn’t expect you to dress up.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been quite a few years since my son showed up for Thanksgiving dinner.”
The house was filled with people, old rodeo folk I remembered all too well from my childhood. I introduced Pepper over and over again, feeling torn between the sense of coming home and the embarrassment that Pepper might not like the world I’d come from. But she was quickly lost in the stories they told, a beer in one hand and someone’s shoulder or hand in the other. She fit right in here. She fit in just about everywhere.
She was…perfect.
My father never asked why I hadn’t been around since I got out, and he never asked why I stopped writing. He never asked anything. He just stood proudly by my side and basked in my presence.
I’d never understood the word “unconditional” until that moment. And when I looked at Pepper, I knew they were cut from the same cloth.
I was one lucky man.
Chapter 28
At the Compound
Kipling couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like celebrating anything. But tonight he was so grateful to have found the Graysons and Gray Wolf Security 2 that he couldn’t find the words to express it.
“To family,” was all he could say when it was his turn to offer a toast at the Thanksgiving table.
Everyone, with the exception of Nolan and Pepper, was there. Ingram and his wife, Bailey, were at one end of the table, her swollen belly growing bigger and bigger by the day. Elliot and his girl, Brooks, were at the other end, staring into each other’s eyes like no one else existed. Alex and Tierney were a little less starry eyed, but just as affectionate, stealing looks and kisses when his sister, Vanessa, wasn’t watching. Knox was chasing her boyfriend’s kids around the room, laughing each time one of them did something that would drive another mother to distraction, her man, Dunlap, watching with a look of utter amazement on his face. And then, of course, David and Ricki were there, Ricki laid out on a lounger that was brought into the dining room especially for her so that she wouldn’t have to sit up, but wouldn’t miss the festivities.
And Chase, curled up in Kipling’s lap, was sound asleep. The effects of the tryptophan in turkey always seemed to have a more powerful effect on children.
This night was so different from the traditions that Jesse had insisted that Kipling follow during their marriage that there was no comparison, but it still reminded him of those wonderful dinners. He missed his wife with an intensity that hurt. And his little girl whom he hadn’t gotten to know quite as well as he’d wanted.
He shouldn’t have gone on that last tour of duty; he never should have left them alone. But he did. And they were gone, and the man who did it was gone. Those were things he was going to have to learn to live with. And he was doing his best. Meeting David and his family and accepting a position with Gray Wolf 2, had gone a long way to help him heal, to help him see that there was still life left for him to live, purpose for him to fulfill. But he didn’t think he would ever stop missing his family.
He slipped out of the dining room and carried Chase up to his bed. He was just coming back down when the buzzer rang at the front gate.
Who the hell could have business with them today of all days?
One look at the monitor on Annie’s desk and the good feelings melted into something darker.
He chose to walk down there rather than have this discussion over an intercom that might be overheard by someone else.
“What are you doing here?”
“He was innocent.”
I shook my head, staring at her, at her familiar features that were almost as ingrained on my mind as my wife’s.
“He confessed.”
Harley Connors held up a piece of paper and shoved it through the slates of the wrought iron gate.
“The DNA came back yesterday. He was innocent. It wasn’t his DNA in that house.”
I picked up the paper and briefly thought of tearing it up. But I looked. She was right.
Mickey Connors was innocent of killing my wife and child.
But if that was true, why did he confess?
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