Justine Davis - Always a Hero

“So, were you glad to come back home?” she asked.

The man frowned as he looked at her.

“Me?” he finally asked, with such an undertone of puzzlement that she wondered if he’d spent any time at all dealing with his own feelings since he’d apparently taken Jordy on.

“You,” she said, keeping an eye on Jordy, who was still glaring at his father. “You moved from wherever you were living, too.”

“No,” his father said. “I wasn’t glad. I never wanted to come back here.”

She saw a flicker of surprise cross the boy’s face. He’d obviously never thought of this. Perhaps never thought about his father having feelings at all. But he quickly recovered, the sullen expression taking over again.

“And you never wanted me, either.”

Again his father didn’t react to the fierce declaration.

“Get in the car, Jordan,” he said. “You’ve got homework to do.”

Jordan opened his mouth, and for an instant Kai held her breath, thinking Jordy might earn that backhand with the words she could almost feel rising to his lips. But the boy conquered the urge, and after a long glare at his father he stalked toward the door. She saw Blake pull a set of keys out of his jeans pocket, aim one toward the glass door and hit the unlock button. The lights on a black SUV parked just to the right of the shop entrance flashed. He watched the boy open the door and climb into the passenger seat.

“He walks here from school, you know. He could walk home,” she said.

“Not safe,” he said, almost absently, still focused on the car.

“In Deer Creek?”

“Any where.”

He muttered it, so low she could barely hear it. And then he turned back to look at her. The key was still in his hand, and she saw his fingers move over it.

“Wishing you could lock him in it?” she asked. “Maybe until he’s eighteen?”

His head snapped around. She felt that assessing gaze once more, as if he were gauging if she’d been joking or seriously accusing.

“Thirty,” he said after a moment, apparently going with the former.

That was progress, she supposed. And she couldn’t help smiling widely at the so normal, parental answer. “Now you sound like my father.”

He seemed to pull back a little. His gaze flicked once more to the photograph of her on the wall. “He probably still wishes he had kept you locked up until you were thirty.”

So much for progress, she thought. “You get scorned by a girl in a band once, or what?”

“Can’t imagine any father wanting that life for his daughter.”

Her father had, in fact, expressed his concerns. On occasion, strongly. But he’d done it gently, out of love, not out of … whatever it was driving Wyatt Blake to snipe at her.

Which drove her to say, very, very sweetly, “Oh, no. Much better that she live a nice, normal life, maybe fall for some guy who takes what he wants then walks blithely away, not even bothering to find out if she might be pregnant.”

The hit scored, and by his expression it was a good one. Which, she supposed, told her a little more about this man; if he was a complete jerk he wouldn’t be feeling anything.

But then, if he were that jerk, he wouldn’t have bothered to take Jordy, would he? She fought back a growing curiosity about how it had all happened. Why she was feeling that at all was beyond her, after the way he’d talked to her. His concern for his son excused a lot, but to come in here, into her own place, and talk to her like that, was beyond infuriating.

“So are we done?” she asked, letting her feelings show completely this time, now that Jordy was safely out of earshot.

“No.”

Startled, she drew back slightly.

“You’re going to forbid him to come here? Take that away from him, too?”

He ignored that. “I hear there are some guys who hang out here, guys I don’t want my son around.”

“Bands practice in my sound room. A lot of guys—and girls, thank you—hang out. Would you rather have them maybe going somewhere they could find some real trouble?”

What you’ll drive Jordy to if you’re not careful, she added inwardly.

Again, he ignored her point. “These aren’t musicians of any stripe. Where this kind hangs out, there’s trouble, eventually.”

Although she admitted silently that there were a couple of customers she could do without, exasperation prodded her to say, “Even the cops have to wait until somebody does something to convict them.”

Something flashed through his eyes then, something dark and grim, and her breath caught. “Thankfully I’m not a cop. I don’t have to wait.”

Still unsettled by that look, Kai changed her tactics. “There’s no one who causes trouble in my store,” she said, then added pointedly, “so I keep my nose out of their business.”

“Watch they don’t get their hands—or worse—in yours,” he said. His tone was as grim as that expression had been, and she of the usually quick comeback couldn’t think of a thing to say.

And then he was gone, turning on his heel and heading for the vehicle where his son sat waiting in a full-blown sulk.

If it wasn’t for the fact that everything she’d said about Jordy coming here was true, she almost wished he really would forbid the boy’s visits. At least then she’d be a lot more likely to never have to speak to his father again. And that was a win on her scale.

The battles, for today at least, were over.

Wyatt sat wearily in the leather chair beside the now dark reading lamp. After Jordan had gone to bed he’d made a circuit of the house, then the big yard, inspecting every step of the way, looking for any sign those “old acquaintances” had overcome those misdirections and found him anyway.

If it was just him, he’d take his chances, rely on the skills that, while perhaps a bit rusty, he knew were still there, waiting. But now there was Jordan, and that changed everything. He couldn’t even risk assuming his old colleague was right, that the person asking about him was a friendly. Or if he had been, that he still was.

Again relying on that compartmentalization, he had finished the paperwork and reports for work, details he was allowed to complete at home, which in turn allowed him to be here almost all the hours Jordan wasn’t in school. His generous boss had two kids of his own, and although they were adults now, he remembered the teenage years well enough to be sympathetic with Wyatt’s predicament.

And you should be with his, Wyatt told himself, thinking of the suspicious incidents that had been occurring at the plant—evidence of a prowler, footprints, broken shrubbery, movement seen by the young night watchman. But the property surrounding the plant was open forest, with free access, so it was hard to prove it was even connected to the plant.

But he knew it was. He also knew he was lucky just to have the job he had. He’d hesitated to approach John Hunt, not liking the idea of cashing in on the sincere but emotion-driven “I owe you everything. If there’s ever anything I can do,” that the man had delivered years ago. He’d anticipated feeling like a beggar, or worse.

But John had been there like some—too many—of his former bosses never had been. He’d understood immediately, offered him a couple of jobs he knew he didn’t want before they had, reluctantly on John’s part, settled on the inventory control position the man couldn’t believe he really wanted.

“I need to learn how not to think,” he said, wanting to be honest about his reasons even as he realized that was the last thing he probably should have said to a prospective employer.

John Hunt had studied him for a long moment. The man was smart, you didn’t build the kind of thriving enterprise he had built if you were stupid or lazy. Hunt Packing—affectionately known by its employees as “Little HP,” as opposed to the computer giant—was small, but a model of success in a difficult time.