Daisy's Back in Town (22 page)

"How did it feel, Daisy?" His voice lowered, got rough and smooth at the same time. "How did it feel to get back at me for not loving you? Did taking my child make you feel good? Did it satisfy your revenge?"

"It wasn't about revenge."

He grabbed her wrists and removed her hands from his arms. "Did lying with Steven Monroe get me out of your head. Your heart? When you were with him, were you thinking of me??

"No!"

"Remembering how it used to be between us?" His voice lowered even further and he pinned her wrists behind her back. "How good it was." He pulled her up against his body and said against her temple, "How good it still is."

The brim of his hat touched the top of her head. "Stop it, Jack."

"All those years, were the two of you laughing it up over what you'd done to me?"

"No, Jack. It wasn't like that. No one was laughing." Her heart knocked in her chest and she swallowed hard.

"Believe me. I know I should have told you sooner."

His voice got real quiet next to her ear when he asked, "Who's listed as daddy on that boy's birth certificate?"

"Steven."

He pulled back far enough to look into her face. "Goddamn you, Daisy."

"We thought it would be easier for him in school. I'm sorry"

"I don't give a flying fuck how sorry you are. Because it's not half as sorry as you're going to be."

"What do you mean?"

He set her back on her heels and slid his hands to her shoulders. "All those years ago when you chose Steven over me because I was just a poor kid with grease on my hands, working in my daddy's garage that's not how things are now. I'm not poor anymore, Daisy I can afford a real good lawyer, and if I have to, I’ll fight you."

"There won't be a fight."

"I want to know my son."

"You can get to know him. I want you to. And when we leave -"

"When you leave," he interrupted. "He stays."

"That's ridiculous. He's not staying here with you. His home is with me. In Seattle."

"We'll see about that."

"I know you're angry. I don't blame you."

"Nice to know you don't blame me." He released her and turned to the door.

"I should have told you about Nathan years ago, but don't punish him because you're mad at me." She followed close behind him to the front porch. "He's been through so much. He lost his dad and now this."

Jack turned around so fast she almost ran into his chest. "He didn't lose his dad. Steven Monroe wasn't his father."

Daisy wisely didn't point out that Nathan thought of Steven as his dad and had loved him. "Nathan's been through a lot in the past few years. He needs a little peace. Some calm in his life." She didn't add that she needed it too. "I'll talk to him. See what he wants to do, and I'll call you."

"I'm not going to wait around for you to call me, Daisy Lee." He moved down the steps toward his Mustang parked at the curb. "After I talk to Nathan, I'll tell you how it's going to be," he said as he walked away, the morning sun shining down on his straw hat and his wide shoulders.

"Wait." She ran down the steps after him. "You can't talk to him alone. I'm his mother. He doesn't know you."

He walked around the front of the car then stuck his key in the driver's side door. "Whose fault is that?"

She looked at him from across the top of the car. "I should be there."

He looked back at her and laughed. "Like I should have been there for the past fifteen years?"

She grabbed the door handle to jump in his car but the door was locked. Then she remembered Pippen and realized she couldn't go even if she forced her way into his car. "Nathan is my son. You can't exclude me."

"Get used to it."

"We can work this out. I know we can." She didn't know anything of the sort, but she was determined to keep things from getting too ugly. "I should have told you. I know that, and except for handing over my son, I'll try and make it up to you."

"How? On the trunk of a car?" He unlocked the Mustang's door. "Not interested."

So much for keeping things from getting too ugly.

Nathan sat with his back against the basketball pole at Lovett High. The backboard and hoop cast an oblong shadow on the court to the free-throw line.

He gazed across the football field to the tennis courts. He didn't like it here. He didn't know what he expected Texas to look like, maybe like Montana. He and his dad had been to Montana once, but Texas wasn't like that.

Texas was flat. And hot. And brown.

Texas was nothing at all like Seattle.

He pushed with his feet and slid up the pole until he stood. He adjusted the chain around his neck and glanced at the high school behind him. "High school," he scoffed. It wasn't even as big as the grade school he'd gone too.

They probably all wore cowboy boots and rode horses to school. Probably all listened to crappy country and western music and chewed tobacco. Probably nobody rode skateboards or listened to Korn or Weezer or played Sniper Fantasy for XBOX.

Nathan pulled up his pants and hardly noticed when they slipped back down his hips. Problems bigger than his baggy pants occupied his thoughts. He'd dropped his skateboard at Jack Parrish's garage, and then he'd run away like a big scared baby.

He really wished he hadn't done that, but the way Jack had grabbed his arm had freaked him out. And the way he'd looked and swore at him, too. One second they'd all been laughing, and in the next, Jack had grabbed him and stared at him so intensely, he'd about capped his pants. Nathan didn't know if Jack had figured it out in that moment, but by the look on his face, he thought maybe he had. Then before Nathan had even realized what he was doing, he ran away like a little kid.

Jack probably thought he was a dork.

With a shrug of his shoulders he told himself he didn't care. His dad had told him lots of stories about Jack. He made him sound real cool, like someone Nathan would really like. But he didn't think he liked Jack. He liked Billy, though. Billy watched "Monster Garage." Billy was cool.

He picked up a rock and threw it hard against the backboard. It made a satisfying thwack, rebounded and almost hit him in the head. Obviously, his mom hadn't told Jack yet. Nathan had just assumed that she'd told him already or he never would have walked into that garage today. After all, that's why she was here. To tell Jack about him. At least, that's why she'd said she was coming here.

He moved back across the field toward the opening in the chain link fence. He was pretty mad at his mom, and feeling really stupid. Plus, he had to figure out a way to get his board back. Maybe he'd just let Jack keep it because he really didn't want to walk back into the garage and ask for it back. Not now.

The grass beneath his black skater shoes squished and he figured the sprinklers had been on that morning.

Water droplets collected on the leather toes of his shoes and he watched them roll off. His mom should be back from the hospital by now. He had to tell her where he'd been. She'd probably get mad at him, but he didn't really care. The more he thought about it, the madder he got at her. If his mother had told Jack, or at least told Nathan that she hadn't, he wouldn't have gone to the garage and made such a dick weed out of himself.

When he looked up, he noticed a girl walking toward him a few feet away on the other side of the fence.

Through the links he could see that she had shiny dark hair and smooth tan skin like she spent time sunbathing.

They met at the opening at the same time, and he stepped aside to let her go through first. Instead, she stopped and stared at him.

"You're not from around here. I know most everyone, but I've never seen you," she said with a definite Texas twang, drawing out her words. She had big brown eyes, and beneath one arm she held poster board and construction paper.

"I live in Washington," he told her.

"Washington, D.C.?" She said it like his mother and grandmother did. Like there was an r in the word "wash."

She wore a blue T-shirt with the words Ambercrombie and Fitch in silver glittery letters. She was a prep, and he didn't like preppie girls. Girls who shopped at Ambercrombie and Fitch and The Gap. Goodie-two-shoe girls.

"No. State."

"Are you here visitin' someone?"

No, he had no use for preppie girls... but she had the kind of lips that made him think of kissing. Which he'd been thinking about a lot lately. "Yeah, my grandma, Louella Brooks, and my aunt Lily." He'd kissed one girl in the sixth grade, but he didn't think that counted.

A frown pulled at her brows. "Lily Darlington?"

"Yep."

"Ronnie's cousin Bull is married to my aunt Jessica." She laughed. "We're practically related."

He doubted that made them related at all. And what the heck kind of name was Bull? "What's your name?"

"Brandy Jo. What's yours?"

Despite being a prep and having a drawl, Brandy Jo was hot. The kind of hot that made his stomach feel fuzzy and his chest feel heavy and made him think about how complicated girls were. And it was at these times, when he was thinking about girls, that he missed his dad the most "Nathan," he answered. A guy just couldn't ask his mother about certain stuff.

She studied him a moment and her gaze lowered to his lip. "Did that hurt?"

He didn't have to ask her what she was talking about. "No," he answered and hoped his voice didn't crack. He hated when that happened. "I'm getting a tattoo next."

Her big brown eyes rounded and he could tell she was impressed. "Your parents will let you?"

No. He'd have to get it without his mother knowing somehow. A few months ago they'd made a deal, he could keep his lip ring if he promised to never get a tattoo as long as he lived. He'd promised, but he figured he only had to keep his word until he was eighteen and old enough to get one himself. Tattoos were cool. "Sure."

"Where?"

He pointed to his shoulder. "Right there. I don't know what I want yet, but when I do, I'm definitely getting a tat."

"If I could get one, I think I'd get a little red heart on my hip."

Which Nathan thought was pretty lame and really girly. "That'd be cool." He dropped his gaze to the poster boards beneath her arm. "What are you doing with that stuff?"

"I'm gonna teach city-rec art classes to little kids this summer. It's gonna be a lot of fun, and I'll get paid five-seventy-five an hour."

Teaching art to little kids didn't sound like a lot of fun to Nathan, but getting paid five-seventy-five an hour was sweet. He quickly did the math in his head and figured that if a kid worked five hours a day, five days a week, he could make around five hundred and seventy dollars in one month. He could buy a lot of CDs or new board trucks with that kind of money.

A black Mustang pulled alongside the curb on the other side of the fence, and Nathan watched Jack Parrish get out. He pushed his cowboy hat up his forehead and gazed at Nathan over the top of the car. "You forgot your board at the garage."

Jack didn't look so scary this time, but the fuzzy feeling in Nathan's stomach got worse. Like when he rode the Zipper too many times at the Puyallup fair. "Yeah."

Brandy Jo looked from Nathan to Jack then back again. "See ya around."

Nathan glanced at her. "Okay, see ya." As she walked away, he returned his attention to the man both his mom and dad said was his biological father. As far as Nathan could see, he didn't look much like Jack.

"I took your skateboard to your grandmother's."

Nathan stepped through the opening in the fence and stood next to the passenger door. If the feeling didn't go away, he was afraid he'd get sick. And he really didn't want to do that. "Was my mom home?"

"Yes. She and I talked." He rested a forearm on the top of the car "She said you've always known that I'm your father."

"Yeah." He swallowed past the lump forming in his throat. He didn't know why he felt so weird. It wasn't like he cared what Jack thought. He'd gone to the garage earlier out of mild curiosity. That was it. He didn't care what anyone thought. "I've known."

"Well, I'm glad that at least she didn't he to you." Jack looked at the watch strapped around his wrist and tapped his fingers three times on the top of the car. "Do you want a ride home?"

"Okay." Nathan waited for Jack to unlock the door, then he climbed inside. He sat in the soft beige leather seat and his stomach churned a little bit more. He didn't know what this car was worth, but a lot more than his mom's stupid minivan back in Seattle. That's for sure. "Is this a Shelby?"

"Yep. It's a nineteen-sixty-seven GT 500."

Nathan didn't know that much about Mustangs except that if you were going to have one, this was the one.

"What's the engine?" he asked as he shut the door.

"The original 428 Police Interceptor"

"Tight."

"I like it." Jack shifted, glanced behind him, then pulled back out onto the street.

"How fast will it go?"

"A hundred and thirty-two. Of course that's nothing compared to the Daytona. How fast did you say it was clocked on the closed course?"

"Two hundred on the closed course. One-eighty right out of the showroom in nineteen sixty-nine."

Jack laughed and moved his hand from the steering wheel to shift again. "You know, Billy could use some help with that Barracuda that's in the shop. Since you're here for a while and going to own a Daytona someday, you might want to give him a hand with that Hemi."

Was he kidding? Nathan would crap all over himself just to touch a Hemi. "That could be cool, I guess. But I don't know how long I'm gonna be in town."

Jack looked over at him, the shadow of his hat fell across his nose. "We'll talk to your mom and see how long you're going to be here." He turned his attention back to the road and shifted the big engine into third. "Of course, just 'cause you're family doesn't mean we can pay you more than the other guys."

Pay? As in earn money working on a Hemi? He'd crap all over himself twice. Nathan looked down at the chain hanging from one loop of his pants. He cleared his throat and bobbed his head a few times. "Sweet."

"We'll start you out at seven-fifty an hour"