“No one will argue with you about that,” Shaw said to Marty. “But the fact remains that someone needs to take care of Kinsley. She’s fifteen and still in need of things like food, clothing, shelter and occasionally some love and attention.”
“She needs help with polynomials,” Cait snarled. That probably wasn’t a huge factor here, but it did drive home that Kinsley should have someone who cared enough to know that about her.
“I can’t take her back,” Aurora said, standing.
“Sorry, no can do,” Marty piped in. “Look, you know I wouldn’t be good at it. I’d end up doing her more harm than good.” He turned to Shaw, his palms up again, his voice pleading. “You and Lenore are better at this. You can do right by her.”
And there it was. The straw that broke the camel’s back. Or in this case, Shaw’s back.
Shaw stood and faced Marty. “For years, you’ve dumped this kind of shit on Mom and me. On Austin, Cait and Leyton, too. And no, I’m not saying Kinsley is shit. But you sure are. You don’t deserve to be a father, so man up and start keeping your dick in your fucking jeans.”
Apparently, Shaw himself was going to be the loose cannon today. There was no way for him to stop the avalanche of anger that was slamming down on him. God, this made him boil. Marty had twisted him up for years, pulling crap like this. It was twisting him up and had put one gut-twisting fear in him.
That he could turn out to be as shitty a father as Marty.
“I should go,” Marty said. He looked a little shaken, but his voice was steady when he turned to Rick. “Draw up the papers so I can set up child support payments and a trust fund for Kinsley. I can do that much for her.”
And Marty turned to leave.
“If you walk out of here, don’t come back,” Shaw warned him. “Don’t ever try to see me again.”
“Ditto,” Leyton agreed.
“That includes your grandkids,” Austin contributed. “If you turn your back on Kinsley, I won’t let my girls be around a dick wad like you.”
Cait didn’t say a word, but with a glare that could have melted Antarctica, she jabbed a pin up the doll’s ass.
Marty gave them each a long glance and turned to walk out.
“I’ll go with you,” Aurora said, hurrying after him.
Marty and she hadn’t even made it to the front door when it flew open and Kinsley came running in. Ryan was right behind her, and Kinsley practically came to a skidding halt.
“The waitress at the ice-cream shop said you were here,” Kinsley murmured, glancing at both Marty and Aurora.
The girl’s glances continued as Shaw and the others came into the living room. She must have seen something on their faces to let her know what had been going on here. And what the outcome had been.
“Oh,” Kinsley said. “Oh,” she repeated, and this time it wasn’t so much an exclamation of surprise as resignation. By the third time she repeated it, the hurt was there. Not the angry, lashing kind of hurt. But the sort that went all the way to the soul.
“You’re both here to say you don’t want me,” Kinsley concluded. Then she focused on Shaw, Cait, Austin, Leyton and Lenore. “And you tried to force one of them to take me.”
“Kinsley,” Ryan said, going to her side. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She convinced absolutely no one, and looked up at Ryan. “I’m sorry, but I need to go for a walk or something.”
With her shoulders slumped, Kinsley headed to the back door. At least Marty and Aurora had some fiber of decency that caused them to look ashamed of themselves. Good.
“I hope you get infected anal warts,” Cait threw out, her words apparently aimed at Marty.
Shaw sighed, turned and went after Kinsley to try to patch up the kid Marty and Aurora had just torn to pieces.
“Wait up,” he called out to Kinsley when he saw her heading for the barn and likely the hayloft. He wasn’t in the mood for climbing stairs today. Kinsley apparently wasn’t, either, because she stopped by the corral.
“I’m okay,” she repeated once he’d caught up with her. “I’m not going to cry all over you.”
“Too bad. This is my waterproof shirt.” Shaw hooked his arm around her neck and yanked her to him. “Sometimes, there’s not a strong enough word to describe certain people.”
“Flaming assholes,” Kinsley supplied.
Okay, those were strong enough words, and Shaw made a sound of approval. “You shouldn’t curse, though. Well, not around anyone but me,” he amended. He suspected this was the start of many visits from child services, and it was probably best if the social workers didn’t hear that kind of language.
“Marty and my mom won’t take me,” Kinsley said. Even though she’d said she wouldn’t cry, she pressed her face against his shoulder. “I’m a screwup, too much trouble.”
Shaw had heard enough. “I’ll take you.”
Judging from her suddenly stiff muscles and the quick lift of her head, Kinsley hadn’t had a clue he was going to say that. Shaw had known. He’d figured that out when Marty had stood up from the table. He hated cleaning up after his father, but he hated even more that Marty and Aurora had made Kinsley feel like the screwups that they were.
“My place isn’t big enough for you so I’ll talk to my mom about you staying here in the big house,” Shaw went on. His mother would welcome that as she welcomed all of Marty’s kids. “I’m just up the road, and in and out of here all the time. I’ll just make a point of being more in than out.”
Kinsley shook her head. “You don’t want me.”
“Yeah, I do.” He was about to add, Or I will want you if you learn polynomials. But even said in semi-jest wouldn’t be good right now for the girl’s already battered ego. “You’re my sister.”
She started blinking hard, trying to fight back those tears. “Why are you saying this? Why are you doing this?”
“Big brother.” He tapped first his chest, then her head. “Little sister. Just don’t expect me to be nice to you all of the time. I’m only nice to Cait every third Monday of the month. You get Wednesdays.”
She lost that fight with the tears, and one went sliding down her cheek. “Really? You’ll take me?”
Shaw brushed a kiss on the top of her cardinal red head. “Yeah, I’ll take you. But do me a favor and dye your hair a color that doesn’t spook the livestock. I’m worried about a stampede.”
Kinsley elbowed him in the gut, which was an acceptable form of sibling affection.
He hooked his arm around her neck, ready to take her back to the house so they could discuss this with Lenore, but he saw that Cait, Austin, Lenore and Leyton were in the yard waiting. For that matter, so were Aurora, Sunny and Ryan. He hadn’t even known Sunny was there, but Ryan and she were standing with Aurora by the woman’s car.
“Kinsley can stay with me,” Lenore immediately volunteered when she stepped forward.
“No, she can stay with me.” Cait stepped forward, too.
“I have a big place,” Leyton added. “You can stay with me. And I’m more responsible than some people.” He tipped his head to Cait, who was still holding the doll. Pins jutted out from it in every direction, but there was a concentration of the sharp objects in the very spot where Cait had wished Marty’s warts.
“Leyton can’t teach you to polish your toenails while blow-drying your hair,” Cait countered. “Hey, it’s a good multitasking skill to have,” she added when her brothers groaned.
Lenore’s face brightened, and her smile stretched across her mouth. “I know. All of you can move back in with me. You can have your old rooms.”
Silence, followed by some politely muttered noes. Well, polite from Shaw, Leyton and Austin. Cait’s “no flippin’ way” was louder and had an edge of determination to it.
“All right, suit yourselves, but the offer stands. Anytime...” Lenore tra
iled off when Aurora walked up to them.
“Could I please talk to you a moment?” Aurora asked Kinsley. “Alone?”
They all waited for Kinsley to give some kind of signal that she wanted either the talk or the alone part, but she stayed quiet. The Jamesons stayed put. Ryan and Sunny came closer, and Ryan moved to Kinsley’s side.
Aurora sighed and put her gaze back on Kinsley. “You’ve been crying,” Aurora said.
“Yes,” Kinsley admitted in a “what’s it to you?” tone.
Aurora didn’t get defensive. She nodded. “I’m sorry. I love you, Kinsley, I do, but—”
“There shouldn’t be any buts when it comes to love,” Shaw interrupted.
Of course, that didn’t make sense. People added buts all the time. Hell, he had. He wanted Sunny, wanted to be with her, but he didn’t want a family. Ironic, since family was what he had the most of. And what was most important to him.
“I’m sorry,” Aurora repeated to Kinsley. “I think Marty and I just need some time. I’d like to be able to come out and visit you.”
“How do you know I’ll even be here?” Kinsley fired back.
Aurora stayed quiet a moment and actually looked guilty. Good. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was a start. “Marty said he has good kids, that they’d do the right thing. Especially Shaw,” she added, glancing at him.
That brought on a chorus of groans from all his siblings except for Kinsley. Leyton, Austin, Cait and Lenore walked away, and Ryan, Shaw and Kinsley stayed put. Sunny, too, but unlike Ryan she didn’t come closer. She stayed a good ten feet behind Aurora.
“I know you’ll think this isn’t my place to bring this up,” Aurora went on, talking to Shaw now, “but please go easy on Marty.”
“On Marty?” Shaw snapped. There went that start.
Aurora nodded. “Marty and I talked for a long time. Hours of just catching up with each other’s lives. He just wasn’t happy here, but he’s found himself now. Who would have thought that he’d live out his dream?”
Yeah, that start was definitely gone if Aurora believed Marty deserved to be cut some slack. “He had dreams of fathering children and not raising them?”
She pulled back her shoulders. “No, not that. I meant his writing.”
Shaw figured he looked clueless because he was. “What writing?”
“Oh. I just assumed he’d told you. I mean, he did say only a handful of people knew, but I thought you would know for sure since he has so much respect for you.”
Shaw just kept on feeling clueless. “What the heck are you talking about?”
Aurora swallowed hard. “Marty...he’s an author. He writes those cute children’s comics with the duck.”
Shaw felt as if the earth had just tipped on its axis. Apparently, so did Sunny because she seemed to be on autopilot when she came closer.
“Slackers Quackers?” Sunny asked.
“That’s the one.” Aurora smiled now. “He told me all about how he used to make up stories and songs for his kids when they were little.”
Shaw got a bad feeling in the pit of his shell-shocked gut. Sunny had gone pale, so maybe she was going through the same thing.
“Then, after Marty left here, he started writing,” Aurora went on. “He kept writing when he wasn’t recording songs or on tour. When he finally sold one, he asked his publisher to hire this illustrator he liked. Well, he said he felt sorry for her. But he pushed and pushed, and the publisher finally hired her.”
Sunny hadn’t had much color left to lose, but that took her from pale to pasty white. “Oh, God,” she muttered.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SUNNY STOOD BACK and looked at the shreds of paper that now lined Slackers’s duck bed. Well, not actually a bed. It was a Moses basket, the kind parents used for newborns, which Em had found in the attic and brought to the barn. It still had the eyelet lace padding, which had more eyelets—AKA holes—than it had when it’d first been used, but Slackers seemed to like it.
And Sunny definitely liked seeing the shredded paper there.
She couldn’t wait until Slackers crapped on them. She’d like the shreds even better then, and the crap would give them the respect they deserved.
Her phone dinged with a text message from Shaw. There was no actual message this time, only a question mark. It was his way of letting her know he was still worried about her and wanted to see her.
I’m fine, she typed, figuring that was a new personal record for repeating those two words.
The lie.
She’d doled out that very lie plenty after her surgery and the bra injury. She was having to say it again now that word had gotten around about Marty being J.B. Whitman. Word had also gotten around that he’d hired her out of pity.
She wondered if she could give Slackers some prune casserole to make the crapping start sooner. Those slivers of paper were still too pristine, and she could see bits that she would have preferred not to see.
Don’t come over, Sunny added to the text before she fired it off to Shaw.
Sunny knew her response would make him sigh and feel worse than he already did. He no doubt wanted to see her, to try to make things better. But he couldn’t. Because Shaw couldn’t fix this latest mess that Marty had made.
The day before—mercy, had it really only been twenty-four hours?—Aurora had put into motion what was to be Sunny’s worst heart stomping yet. The woman hadn’t known a stomping was in the works, though, because Marty hadn’t told Aurora the illustrator’s name. The illustrator he’d hired because he’d felt sorry for her.
Sunny had heard of pity sex, but this was a first for pity duck drawings.
Part of her, the sensible-adult part, wanted to dismiss it and shout from the rooftops that she had talent, that she would have become an artist or illustrator even if Marty hadn’t done this.
But she couldn’t.
Because at the core of her sensible-adult being, this hit her secret-fear nail right on the head. A fear that everything about her had been just part of a script. The Little Cowgirls producers had given her a hobby, a role that they could use to keep the show moving along. McCall had been assigned reading and had been given dozens of books. Hadley had gotten the edgy superhero graphic novels. Sunny had gotten the sketch pad and pencils. She was the only one who’d turned the producers’ props into a career.
Or so she’d thought until twenty-four hours ago.
But apparently her career had been part of Marty’s script for her. Why, she didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
Her phone rang, and before she looked at the screen, she knew it would be Shaw. Everyone else had accepted her brush-off and her need to be alone and rethink and evaluate everything about her life. Well, not Ryan. But everything else, including whether or not coming back here had been a massive mistake. If she’d stayed away, she wouldn’t have heard what Aurora had said, and Sunny could have gone on living her imperfect but mostly intact life.
Of course, she wouldn’t have reconnected with Shaw, either.
Maybe that, too, was preventing her from going back to her mostly intact life. Before this homecoming and Shaw, she’d had a plan. One that had taken the curvy back roads approach rather than the more direct route of an interstate. But that plan had included her having her own family. She’d gotten a start with Ryan, but she still wanted a baby.
Either she had to make a new life plan.
Or give Shaw up.
She pressed the accept-call button, not sure what she was going to say to him, but it turned out that wasn’t a problem because Shaw spoke first.
“I don’t want you changing your mind and signing that contract from Hugh,” he greeted.
Now this was an area where she could ease his mind. “I won’t. I shredded it and put it in with Slackers for him to crap on it.”
“Good.” The relief came thr
ough in that one word, but the worry was still there, too.
“I also shredded the contracts and release forms that Sunshine sent,” Sunny added. “I think there’s a spot of duck pee on some of them, but I’m expecting more. Em gave Slackers a massive tub of water to drink and play in.”
“Good,” he repeated. “Better than just burning them.”
So she’d thought, too. Burning would be over much too fast, and these papers—the ones that her mother had tried to use to hurt Shaw and her—deserved a dousing with fowl fluids.
“Sunny,” Shaw said. No relief this time in his voice. It was a stew of all the bad emotions. Sorrow, regret, hurt and plenty more of that worry. “I know you don’t want to see me, but please don’t do anything...”
He paused so long that she started filling in the blanks with words he could possibly say. Rash. Stupid. Out of hurt. But that wasn’t how he finished it.
“Without me,” he said.
Somehow that was perfect and rebroke her heart all at the same time. Without me seemed to be a “comfort blanket” offer. One that she would have jumped at if it weren’t for just two things.
That baby, for one.
Plus, she didn’t want to drag Shaw into the middle of her life unless she could offer him something more than an already broken heart. At the moment, she couldn’t. She needed to get back to her plan, get off these back roads, and then pray that Shaw would still be there after she’d pulled her life back together. Or rather after she’d made a new life.
“I won’t do anything without telling you,” she assured him.
“Let me see you,” Shaw pressed.
She sighed. “Tomorrow. I’m getting ready to drive Ryan to Austin to help him get settled into his dorm.”
“I didn’t think you were doing that for another couple of days.”
“Ryan and I moved it up a bit because there’s a group of the professors and students getting together for dinner tonight. And he’s anxious to get started.” Equally anxious, too, to give her a change of scenery that he no doubt hoped would also pull her out of this dark hole she was in.
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