“And you hate that?” Emmy asked.
“There are good things about a small town. And there are bad things, too. I was miserable growing up here.”
“Was it claustrophobic for you? Were you just aching to spread your wings, find adventure?”
She said that with a smile, but he didn’t seem to see the humor in it. He stared at the tabletop, sober and solemn again. He ate some potato chips. He drank a few swigs of beer. But he didn’t answer her, and Emmy thought, Great, the return of Gloomy-Gus...
Then he took a breath, sat up straighter and looked at her rather than the table. “One of the bad things about a small town is that it’s hard to keep anything private. Pretty much everyone around here knows my family’s history, so you might as well hear it from me. My mom wasn’t married to our biological father.”
“So...what? She and your father lived together without getting married and because it was a small town that didn’t go over well?” Emmy asked.
“That would have been so much better. Instead my mother was Mitchum Camden’s longtime mistress,” he said flatly. “He’d come to town for visits—always meeting our mom in secret, trying to make sure no one ever saw them together—and then he’d go home to his wife and kids in Denver. And as of today, DNA says that he was definitely our father.”
Emmy was confused again. “You just learned that today?”
“When my mom died, she told Kinsey who had fathered us all—”
“Not before?”
“Not before. Camden—and a lot of his family—died in a plane crash when Mom was pregnant with Kinsey—”
“Camden... Like Camden Superstores?” Emmy was just trying to get the details straight.
“Yeah, Camden as in Camden Superstores.” More contempt. “Mom married Hugh when Kinsey was two, Liam and I were three, Conor was barely seven. Hugh adopted us—”
“But you still called him by his name? Not Dad?”
“We called him Gunny. That’s what he was in the service—a gunnery sergeant—and that’s what he liked to be called. Outside home we called him our father, but Mom always referred to him as Hugh when she was talking to us, so when we refer to him that’s what we’ve all called him, too. Either Hugh or Gunny.”
“But you were still close to him? You still grew up thinking of him as your father?”
“Him and no one else. And he was our dad in every way that counted—he legally adopted us right away, took over the farm, supported us, raised us. He was the only father we knew, and whenever any one of us asked who our real father was, Mom would shut it down. She’d say that it was hurtful and disrespectful to Hugh to bring up anyone else when he was so good to us.”
“Wasn’t it a little weird? I mean, she wouldn’t open up about who your real father was, but still she made it clear that your adopted father wasn’t your real father by only calling him by name with you?”
“Yeah, I guess it was.”
“Did it always leave you wondering who your real dad was?”
There was another long, heavy pause before Declan said in a quiet, deep voice, “I didn’t have to wonder. I knew. I never told the rest of my family, but from kindergarten on, I did.”
“Kindergarten? How did you learn something like that when you were so little?”
“Greg Kravitz,” he said. And if ever Emmy had heard hatred in a name, it was then.
“Greg Kravitz,” she repeated, knowing the name but unsure whether to reveal that knowledge.
“See, that’s what can happen in a small town,” he went on. “A scandal can go underground when it’s over, when a tough marine comes along and makes an honest woman of someone who has four bastard kids with some rich player. But even if the scandal goes underground, even if a majority of the townsfolk start to overlook it, to put it in the past, there are still some people who hang on to it—just more quietly. Some people who talk about it around their own kids—”
“Their kindergarteners?”
“Well, yeah,” he said scornfully. “They need to do that when they find their kid in the same class with one of those town bastards and they want to make sure their kid doesn’t go anywhere near him.”
“Oh, that’s so ugly,” Emmy said.
“It’s definitely not pretty,” Declan agreed.
“But how did it only affect you and not your twin?”
“School policy was to separate twins into different classes. Liam and Topher were in one class. I was in the other.”
“With Greg Kravitz.”
“Who, by the third day of school, got me alone in the boys’ room to tell me what his parents had told him—that I was the bastard kid of one of the Camdens, that my mother was his whore.”
“Oh. Wow. Someone said that to you in kindergarten?” Emmy said with even more incredulity.
“Yeah. I didn’t know what a bastard or a whore were but it was pretty clear they were bad.” He sighed and shook his head once more, but this time in such a sad way that Emmy’s heart went out to the little boy he’d been. Then, in a quieter voice, he said, “So I went home, asked my mom and made her cry...”
The ongoing weight of that was evident, and Emmy felt even more sorry for young Declan.
“She and I were alone when I asked her,” he went on. “Her face went ghost white, her eyes got really big...” Declan’s own eyebrows arched and Emmy could tell that the image of his mother’s ashen face was vivid in his mind.
Then he said, “And all she said was that those were bad words and I was never to repeat them to anyone.” And she must have said it sternly and with some defeat in her tone because that was how Declan spoke now.
“Seeing what those words did to her...” He shook his head yet again. “I loved my mom. To me she was a great lady, and...man, I didn’t want to make her cry! I still didn’t know what those words meant, but I knew enough to know that they had to be kept secret. So I never mentioned them again. In fact, I’ve never told anybody about the hell Kravitz put me through until right now.”
“Not even your brothers?”
Declan let out a humorless chuckle. “Especially not my brothers. Or Kinsey. How could I tell them what I was hearing about our mother? Even after we were grown, do you really think I was going to talk about how people around here considered our mom a whore? No way.”
“So you just kept it inside?”
He shrugged his answer to that as if there had never been any other course for him.
“How did you handle that?” she asked, knowing it had to have been a huge burden for him.
“I didn’t handle it all that well,” he said with some chagrin. “I kept to myself unless I could be with Liam or Topher—which got me the reputation as a loner.”
“But you did trust Topher?”
“His mom was my mother’s best friend, so...I don’t know...maybe she just accepted the affair that produced us all. One way or another I trusted that whether or not Topher knew, it wasn’t an issue with him or his family. But otherwise I stayed strictly to myself, on the sidelines.”
“Did that make Kravitz leave you alone?”
“Nah. I think it actually made it easier for him to get to me because I was alone. When I was with Liam or Topher, he stayed away.”
“So you were the only one he tortured—his pet project. But it went on from kindergarten?” Emmy asked.
“Oh yeah, he took his last shot the day we graduated high school. Around here—at least then—unless a parent or a teacher wants a change, the class you start out in in kindergarten is the class you’re in until middle school. So through fifth grade, Liam and Topher were in one room while I was stuck in the other.”
“But in middle school that changed,” Emmy said, looking for some hope.
“Yeah, Kravitz and I had some classes together from then through high school, but not all of them. We were still in the sam
e small school, though. And by then he was just so good at it...” Declan said. “He was a devious SOB. And God, but did he know how to make himself look innocent. He knew he’d get in trouble if anyone heard him using that kind of language—not to mention, he’d have to deal with my brothers and Topher if they realized what he was doing—so he made sure that he only taunted me when no one was in earshot. At least, no one but people who were already on his side. I certainly wasn’t going to report him—telling anyone would mean calling my mother a whore, even if it was just to repeat what he’d said. As we got older he learned to have his friends as backup—they’d be grinning from behind him—”
“So there were other kids he told.”
“Hey, you can’t keep it to yourself,” he said facetiously. “He was discreet enough to stay out of trouble, but his crew definitely knew.”
“And again, how did you handle it?”
“I tried to ignore it, ignore him. I tried to stay away from him. But he just loved that he had something so juicy that always got a reaction out of me. When we were little and I’d reach the point where I couldn’t take it anymore, I’d ram him to the ground, we’d roll around until somebody pulled me off him. When we were older, I’d throw the first punch, he and his friends would pile on, and...” Another shrug. “And I’d usually get my ass handed to me. There were so many fights that after a while I was not only the loner, I earned the title of troublemaker, too.”
“How were you the troublemaker when it was all of them jumping on you at once?”
“Like I said, I was always the one to throw the first punch. And how could I defend myself when teachers or the principal or cops broke it up? I couldn’t tell anybody what was going on, so I just looked like the hothead with a grudge against a more popular kid.”
“And at home...they never knew why you were in so many scrapes?”
“I’m not really sure. I only know that I never faced any consequences at home for the fights. But neither Mom nor Hugh said anything, and I didn’t say anything either.”
“Did your stepfather know that Camden was your father?”
“I honestly don’t know that either. Behind closed doors Mom might have confessed the truth. Or maybe she never volunteered the information and he respected her enough not to ask. I have no idea. And I don’t know if he knew why I was fighting—but I do know he never punished me for it.”
Declan shrugged again. “Hugh was all about toughening us up—me and Liam and Conor—to get us ready for the military. Could be he thought the brawls were just good training,” Declan said with some amusement finally showing through.
Until he sobered again. “All I do know is that from kindergarten on I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Northbridge. And as happy as I was to go, Northbridge was probably just as happy to see me leave. I’d imagine that when they heard it was me who drove Topher to his death, they all just said that figures...”
“No, you’re wrong about that,” Emmy said. “I understand why you couldn’t wait to get away from here. But whenever I’ve heard your name mentioned with Topher’s, it hasn’t been negative. Not at all. Everyone just seems relieved that if it had to happen, at least only one hometown boy was lost.”
His laugh this time was so harsh it was almost hard to hear. “Don’t try to tell me anyone around here claims me as a hometown boy. I may have been born and raised here, but the academy was the first place I ever felt like I wasn’t a full-grade outsider. It was the first place where I was truly treated like I belonged. The marines are my home. The marines are what I can’t wait to get back to. This place? I’m just here to do what needs to be done and then I’ll be happy to put it behind me again.”
“I still think you’re mistaken about how the town sees you,” Emmy said, even though she could see that he wouldn’t be convinced. “I think whatever went on with you here in the past is forgotten. You were only a kid after all.”
“Even so, if my sister has her way things are going to get stirred up again—she’s thrilled to be a Camden and she’s invited the whole clan to her wedding. As you can imagine, they’ve been...less than thrilled to learn Mitchum was a long-term cheat. They refused to believe it was true, but now we have DNA that proves it. Not sure if that changes anything. But whether they show or not, she’s opening the lid on that old scandal. And I don’t want any part of what happens after that.”
“I can’t say I blame you,” Emmy said quietly, wondering why he’d chosen her to tell this to for the first time.
It had probably just been a fluke, she reasoned. Or just a convenience—he’d received the confirmation of his birth father today. Maybe he’d needed to unload a little, and she just happened to be there when that need peaked.
He finished his beer and took his plate to the sink.
Emmy saw that as the signal that he was finished talking about this. She’d long since stopped eating, so she took her own plate around the counter, too, just in time for Declan to reach for it to put the plate in the dishwasher with his.
“So tonight’s your night walking the floors with Kit,” he said then. “You worked hard today... Are you up for it or do you need me to take a second night?”
“That wouldn’t be fair,” she declined even though she appreciated the offer. “Besides, I’ve been doing this for a while now—every other night. I’m used to it.”
“If you’re sure...” he said with an inflection that she thought might have been respect.
He closed the dishwasher and rested a hip against the counter’s edge, crossing his arms over that broad chest of his. “And then tomorrow we have a beekeeper coming to check out the hives and tell us what to do with them?” he said.
Emmy nodded. She was standing not far away, squarely in front of him, and looking up into eyes she still couldn’t believe were that blue. “Late tomorrow afternoon,” she confirmed. Then, to get her mind off those eyes, she goaded him a little. “You’ll have to wear the suit, you know?”
“So will you, won’t you?” he challenged.
“Yeah, but I know I’m gonna rock it...”
He chuckled, clearly not having expected her to say that. “Well, since I haven’t seen you in anything that you haven’t rocked, I think you’ll probably do wonders for bee suits, too.”
Emmy had been joking, not fishing for flattery.
Not that she didn’t like hearing it. Or seeing him genuinely smile again.
She liked the compliment and the smile too much, so she bypassed both and went on with her joke. “But you...” she said, sighing tragically. “I’m just worried that you’ll look silly.”
He lifted his chin to scratch the evening’s stubble. She’d been trying to keep herself from thinking about how sexy he looked unshaven, but there was no not thinking about it when he did that.
“Nah... I’m pretty sure I’m gonna rock it, too” was his cocky comeback.
“Oh, you are, are you?” she challenged.
He finished rubbing his chin and lowered his eyes to hers, the sparkle that had been only a scant flicker the night before finally there in full force. “Pretty sure,” he confirmed brashly. “In fact, I think I’m gonna rock it more than you are.”
Emmy laughed. “We might have to have the beekeeper rate us to make sure there’s no question.”
His smile turned into a grin and that brought Emmy’s gaze to his supple and sexy mouth. “Hey, bring it on,” he said.
There was more insinuation in his tone than there had been before, and when his gaze dropped to her mouth and stayed there, their topic of conversation became a fleeting memory to Emmy. Instead the only thing on her mind was the idea of that mouth of his kissing her...
His smile was softer now.
His eyes were warmer.
Was he leaning forward the slightest little bit?
She thought he was.
She thought it to such a degree
that she raised her chin, fully ready to accept the kiss that was about to happen.
Unless she was imagining it...
Oh right. She probably was.
That was her pattern after all, she reminded herself. Her imagination got the best of her and she believed things were different than they were. Especially with this guy.
But there’s nothing going on between you, she told herself firmly, spinning around suddenly so her back was to him before he could realize the mistake she’d almost made.
“I left the sample of the new formula powder in my car,” she announced in a hurry. “I have to go get it. The doctor said to finish out today with the old stuff and start the new tomorrow. You might as well go to bed. I can take care of that, too.”
Then she left the kitchen and went out the front door without another word to Declan. She paused for a few minutes in the chilly night air to take some deep breaths and clear her mind of this crazy tendency to see things one way when the reality was completely different.
Because the reality was completely different, she insisted to herself.
And she absolutely would not let go of her hold on reality with this guy.
Chapter Five
“Hi, honey. I was going to call you tonight to see how things are going—did you read my mind?” Karen asked when she answered Emmy’s phone call early Tuesday morning.
“No, no mind reading. I’m just taking out your Mexican casserole so it can thaw in the fridge today. But you didn’t write the cooking temperature on this one. I thought I’d catch you before you go into the office so I’m prepared when I cook it tonight. Plus I have a favor to ask.”
Her mother gave the cooking direction and with that out of the way, Emmy explained that she’d accepted a job taking wedding pictures for Declan’s sister and asked if her mother would pack her cameras and equipment and express ship it all to her.
After taking extensive notes of what Emmy needed and assuring her she and Emmy’s father would ship it the following morning, her mother said, “Where are the kids?”
The Marine's Family Mission Page 8
