Good Husband Material

by Susan Mallery

  Gage shook his head. He’d had enough for one day. “I need to get to work.”

  His mother wiped her face. “There’s more, Gage. More things you need to hear.”

  He couldn’t imagine what those things might be. Nor did he want to. “Not now.”

  “Then, when?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It has to be soon.”

  He wanted to ask why. He wanted to refuse her request. Instead, he nodded.

  She rose slowly; it seemed she’d become old overnight. After walking to the doorway, she paused as if she would say more. Then she turned and left.

  Gage crossed to the window and stared out at the morning. The sky was a clear Texas blue, the temperature already in the eighties. The central air unit he’d replaced three years ago kept the house cool, as did several ceiling fans. He focused on those now, on their whisper-quiet sound and the faint brush of air against the back of his neck. He heard Kari walk up behind him. She placed a hand on the small of his back.

  “Gage,” she said gently.

  He didn’t move. “What else could she have to say?” he asked. “Think there’s another bombshell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything else. I don’t want to talk to her again.”

  Behind him, Kari sighed. He heard the exhale, felt her disapproval.

  “I know this has been a shock, but in time you’ll see—”

  He spun to face her. “See what? That everything I’ve believed all my life is a lie? I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see that my mother went off to get herself pregnant by a man she’d never met before. Or that she liked doing it with him so much, she went again the following year. I don’t want to finally understand why my father always hated my brother. I don’t want it to be real and not just something Quinn imagined. I don’t have to know any of it.”

  She stood her ground. “There’s more to it than that.”

  “Is there? Like what? Am I really a part of the Reynolds family? Is Ralph really my father?”

  “Of course. Yes, to both. You’re furious about something that happened over thirty years ago. You’re just learning it now, so it has a big impact on you, but these are not new events. Nothing has changed but your perception. You love your mom—you always have. Despite everything, I know that’s not going to change. All I’m saying is that you both need time, and that you have to be careful not to say things you’ll regret.”

  “She’s the one who should have regrets,” he said bitterly.

  “I’m sure she regrets hurting her husband, but I don’t believe for a second she regrets either you or Quinn.”

  He couldn’t disagree with that. However, he was not in the mood to be reasonable. “Interesting all this advice coming from you,” he growled. “Last I heard, you weren’t so quick to forgive your family for what they did to you.”

  Finally he had gotten what he’d thought he wanted. Kari dropped her gaze and took a step back. But instead of feeling vindicated, he only felt lousy.

  “Sorry,” he said quickly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, you’re right. I want to say that my situation is different, and of course it is. Every situation is different. But your point is that I’m not in a place to throw stones. I can’t argue with that.”

  He held out his arms and she stepped into his embrace. “I hate this,” he murmured into her hair. “The information, the questions, how it’s all changing.”

  “I know.”

  “It will never be the same again. I’m not who I was.”

  “You’re exactly the same man you were at this time yesterday.”

  No, he wasn’t. She couldn’t see the changes, but he knew they were there.

  “I don’t belong here anymore.”

  Kari raised her head and stared at him. “Possum Landing is still your home. I’m the one who wanted to get away and see the world, but you’d already done that. You wanted to come home.”

  “Is it home?” he asked. “There aren’t five generations anymore. At least, not in my history.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  He released her, then glanced at his watch. “I have to get to the station. Are you going to be around tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can I come by?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Gage spent the morning dealing with the crisis of two teenage boys from a neighboring town taking a joyride through a field at four in the morning. They’d been drunk and damn lucky. When they’d plowed through a barbed-wire fence and jerked loose several fence posts, the one that had shot through their front window had missed them both.

  The rancher was threatening charges, while one parent thought jail time would teach his wayward son a lesson and the other kept saying “Boys will be boys.”

  “They’ll be dead boys if they keep this up,” Gage said flatly to the four adults. “I’m booking them both. They have clean records, so I doubt they’ll get more than a warning and some community service. Maybe it will be enough to teach them a lesson, maybe not.”

  Then he stalked out before any of the parents could speak with him. Normally he didn’t mind taking the time to deal individually with kids headed in the wrong direction. He liked to think that he’d steered more than one teenager back onto the straight and narrow. But not today. Today all he could think about was the lie that was his past, and his suddenly unclear future.

  He stalked into his office and closed the door. Several staff members looked up at the sound. Gage couldn’t remember the last time he’d shut himself off from what was going on in the station. Mostly he liked to be in the thick of things. Hell, maybe he should have just stayed home.

  But instead of clocking out for the day, he reached for the phone and dialed a number from memory. He gave the appropriate name, number and password to the computer before a pleasant-sounding woman picked up the phone.

  “Bailey,” she said crisply.

  “I’d like to get a message to my brother,” he said.

  He heard her typing on a keyboard. “Yes, Sheriff Reynolds. I have authorization right here. What is the message?”

  There was the rub, he thought grimly. What to say? “Tell him…” He cleared his throat. “Tell him to call me as soon as he can. It’s a family matter. No one’s sick or anything,” he added quickly.

  “Very well, sir. I’ll see that he gets the message.”

  Gage didn’t bother asking when that might happen. He’d tried to contact Quinn enough to know it could be weeks before he heard back, maybe even a couple of months. Or it could be tomorrow. There was no way to be sure.

  “Thanks,” he said, and hung up.

  He leaned back in his chair and stared into the office. Instead of seeing people working, talking and carrying files, he saw his past. The idyllic days of growing up in Possum Landing. He’d been so damn sure he belonged. Now he wasn’t sure of anything. His identity had been ripped from him.

  As far as he could tell, the only good thing to come out of all of this was an explanation for his brother. Not that an answer would be enough to make up for Quinn’s particular hell while he’d been growing up.

  Gage had never understood the problem between father and son. Gage could do no wrong and Quinn could do no right. Ralph hadn’t cared about his younger son’s good grades, ability at sports or school awards. The only time he’d bothered to attend a game of Quinn’s was when Gage was on the same team. He’d never said a word when Quinn made the varsity baseball team during his sophomore year. Quinn had been a ghost in the house, and now he lived his life like a demon. All the pain, and for what? A lie?

  Gage turned in his chair and gazed at the computer. The blinking cursor seemed to taunt him. Lies, it blinked over and over. Lies, lies, lies.

  So what was the truth?

  There was only one way to find out. He clicked on a law-enforcement search engine, then typed in a single n
ame: Earl Haynes.

  The ancient, shuddering air-conditioning didn’t come close to cooling the attic. Unable to face more painting because it reminded her of Gage, Kari had decided on cleaning out the attic, instead. She’d opened all the windows and had dragged up a floor fan that she’d set on high. It might be hot up here, but at least there was a breeze.

  She sat on the dusty floor in front of several open boxes and trunks. Grammy had kept everything. Clothes, hats, shoes, pictures, newspapers, magazines, blankets, lamps. Kari shook her head as she gazed at the collection of about a dozen old, broken lamps. Some were lovely and probably worth repairing, but others were just plain old and ugly. They should have been thrown out years ago.

  But that wasn’t her grandmother’s way, she thought as she dug into the next layer of the trunk in front of her. She encountered something soft, like fur, then something hard like—

  “Whoa!”

  She jumped to her feet, prepared to flee. There was an animal in there.

  An old umbrella lay by the door. She picked it up and cautiously approached the trunk. A couple of good, hard pokes didn’t produce any movement. Kari used the umbrella to push aside several garments, then stared down at an unblinking black eye.

  “Well, that’s totally gross,” she said, bending over and picking up a fox stole with the fox head and tail still attached. “All you need are your little feet, huh?”

  While she wasn’t one to turn down a nicely cooked steak, she drew the line at wearing an animal head across her shoulders. This poor creature was going right into the give-away pile.

  The next box held more contemporary items, including some baby and toddler clothes that had probably belonged to her. She held up a ruffly dress, trying to remember when she’d ever been that small.

  “Not possible,” she murmured.

  Below that was her uniform from her lone year as a cheerleader, back in middle school, and below that was something white and sparkly.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she pulled out the long, flowing strapless gown. The fabric of the bodice twisted once in front, then wrapped around to the back. Clinging fabric fell all the way to the floor. She crossed to the old mirror in the corner and held the dress up in front of her.

  She’d never actually worn it, but she’d tried it on about four hundred times. Her prom dress. Kari squeezed her eyes shut for a second, then stared at her reflection. If she squinted, she didn’t look all that different. With a little pretending, it could be eight years ago, when she’d been so young and innocent and in love, and Gage had been the man of her dreams.

  Gage. She sighed. She’d been trying not to think about him all day. That was the point of keeping busy, because if she wasn’t, she worried and fretted, neither of which were productive. Unfortunately, the blast from the past in her arms had dissolved her mature resolve to keep an emotional distance from the situation.

  Instead, she remembered her excitement at the thought of going to her prom with Gage. After all, the other girls were going with boys from school, or from one of the nearby colleges. But she had been going with a man.

  Only, that hadn’t happened. Instead of dancing the night away, she’d been on a bus heading to New York. Instead of laughing, she’d spent the night in tears. And while she couldn’t regret the outcome—leaving had been the right thing to do—she was ashamed of how she’d handled the situation.

  “Too young,” she told her reflection. “Of course, if I was old enough to be in love with Gage, I was old enough to tell him I was leaving, right?”

  Her reflection didn’t answer.

  She put the dress down and walked to the stairs. She wanted to call Gage and ask if he was all right. She wanted to go to the station and see him. But she couldn’t. Not today. Yesterday all those things would have been fine because he wouldn’t have misunderstood her motives, but now everything was different. Now he might think she was pressuring him because of last night and this morning. She didn’t want him thinking she was one of those clingy women who gave their hearts every time they made love with a man. She wasn’t like that at all. At least, she didn’t think she was. Not that she had any experience in that particular arena.

  No, the reason she wanted to talk to Gage had nothing to do with their intimacy and everything to do with what he’d just found out. She was being a good friend, nothing more.

  The phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. She dashed down the narrow attic stairs and flew toward her grandmother’s bedroom, where the upstairs phone was kept.

  “Hello?” she said breathlessly. Gage had called. He’d called!

  “Ms. Asbury?” a cool, female voice asked.

  Kari’s heart sank. “Yes.”

  “I’m Mrs. Wilson. I’m calling you about your résumé. Do you have a moment?”

  “Sure.” Kari sat on the bed and tried to catch her breath.

  Fifteen minutes later she had an interview scheduled for the following week. At this rate she would have a job in no time, she told herself as she hung up. In Abilene or Dallas or some other Texas city.

  Just not Possum Landing.

  Kari didn’t know where that thought had come from, but she didn’t like it. She was back in town for a visit, she reminded herself. This time was about fixing up the house to sell it, not reconnecting with anyone. This wasn’t about Gage.

  She repeated that thought forcefully, as if the energy invoked would make it more convincing. Unfortunately, all the energy in the world didn’t change the fact that she had a bad feeling she was lying to herself.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gage showed up at Kari’s door at a little after six. Until he’d walked from his house to hers, he hadn’t been sure he would come. He’d nearly canceled a dozen times, reaching for the phone to call and tell her that something had come up. Or that he needed to spend the night by himself to figure out what he was going to do next. This wasn’t her problem; she didn’t need to be involved.

  But every time he picked up the phone, he put it back down again. Maybe he should spend the evening thinking by himself, but he couldn’t. Not yet. In the past twenty-four hours, he’d come to need Kari. He needed to see her, to be with her, to hear her voice and hold her close. He didn’t know what the needing meant and he wasn’t sure he liked it. But he acknowledged it.

  Kari was a part of his past. Expecting anything more than a few nostalgic conversations and maybe a couple of tumbles in bed was a mistake. More than a mistake—hadn’t he already fallen for her once?

  So here he stood on her front porch, needing to see her and hating the need. He reached out and knocked once.

  When she opened the front door and smiled at him, he felt as if things weren’t as bad as he’d first thought.

  “I come bearing gifts,” he said, handing her a bucket of fried chicken with all the fixings that he’d picked up on the way home. “The diner still makes the best anywhere.”

  Kari laughed and took the container. Her blond hair swayed slightly as she shook her head. “Do you know, I haven’t had fried chicken since I left here eight years ago?”

  “Then, I would say it’s about time.”

  She inhaled deeply, then licked her lips. “I guess so.”

  Still smiling, she stepped back to let him in the house. He walked inside, a folder still tucked under one arm.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Information on my biological father,” he said. “I did some research today. I’ll fill you in over dinner.”

  She led him into the kitchen. The small table by the window had been set for two. She offered wine or beer—he took the latter.

  He watched her as she crossed to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle. She wore a loose sundress that skimmed her curves before flaring out slightly at the hem. Her feet were bare. He could see that she’d painted her toenails a light pink. Gold hoops glinted at her ears, while makeup emphasized the perfect bone structure of her face.

  When she was younger, he’d thought she was
the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Sometimes when they’d gone out he hadn’t wanted to do anything more than sit across from her and gaze at her face.

  Time had changed her. The twenty or so pounds she’d lost had angled her face and hollowed her cheeks. She’d been a pretty girl before and now she was a beautiful woman. He could imagine her in twenty years…still amazing.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Is there a sudden wart on my nose?”

  “No. I was thinking how nice you look.”

  She glanced down at the dress. “I’d say something like ‘this old thing,’ but it happens to be from an exclusive designer’s summer collection. He offered it to me as a going-away present when I was in his show right before I left.”

  “It’s nice.”

  “It retails for about two thousand dollars.”

  Gage nearly spit. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not even a little.” She grinned. “Suddenly I look a little better than nice, huh?”

  “You always do, and it has nothing to do with the dress.”

  She sighed. “Nice line. Perfect timing, very sincere. You’ve gotten better, Gage, and I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.”

  He shrugged off the compliment. He hadn’t meant his comment as a line—he’d been telling the truth. But explaining that would take them in a difficult direction. Better to change the subject.

  “Are you telling the truth when you say you haven’t had fried chicken since you left?”

  “Of course.” She carried the large bucket to the table and pulled off the top. “I haven’t had anything fried. It’s not easy staying as thin as I’ve been. No fried chicken, no French fries, no burgers.” She tilted her head. “I’ve had ice cream a couple of times and chocolate. I let myself have one small piece once a month. Now that I’m a normal person again, I can eat what I want.”

  “Then, let’s get started,” he said, putting his folder on the counter and joining her at the table.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were up to their elbows in fried chicken, mashed potatoes and coleslaw. Kari licked her fingers and sighed. “I’d forgotten how good this is. Even Grammy couldn’t come close to the recipe.”