Dirty Little Lies: A Men of Summer Novel (33 page)

It wasn’t said with any sense of resentment, just of loss. God, how she wished she’d been good enough, just being Grace.

“You have it all wrong—”

“And I don’t want to discuss it any longer.” Pushing from the desk, she rose quickly and stepped around the other side of it. “You look at those damned files for a while. Maybe you’ll remember something. Maybe then, you’ll remember why I didn’t matter.”

“Dammit, Grace!” His tone was like the snap of a whip, and she ignored it as she raced from the office, only to run into Zack’s chest.

Instantly, his arms were around her as she clenched her fingers in his shirt, searching for a way to remember that the past was past. Her father was alive. He was alive. And she loved him, no matter what.

“It’s time to get out of this office for a while,” Zack stated, his voice hard as she glanced up at him, though his eyes were trained on her father behind her. “You need a break.”

“Yeah, that’s what I need,” she agreed, moving carefully around him. “Maybe some fresh air. I think I’ll go out back for a while.”

And Grace had to admit, nearly an hour later, that it was nice to be outside. The warmth of the late-summer air, the breeze from the river, and the sun beaming down on the yard were relaxing. Being alone had helped her to find her footing again, helped to force her emotions back under control. For now. They were weak, the hurt like a bleeding wound she couldn’t close.

Well-established ornamental trees and flowing shrubs bordered comfortable seating arrangements on the covered patios.

Now, if Zack would just get the various friends and family, with the exception of his foster brothers and their mates, out of the house, then she might be able to enjoy sitting on the patio.

From inside the house, the drone of voices could be heard, despite the fact that the doors leading from the dining room and kitchen were securely closed. There were far too many people chatting, explaining, and generally catching up, not to be heard outside.

Zack’s aunt, her Maddox lover, and their daughter, Calli; Zack’s uncle Clyde and his wife, Mena, as well as their two sons, Gray and Lobo. Then there were four bodyguards she’d been introduced to, and the arrival of her uncle Vince and cousins Cord, Sawyer, and Deacon.

A houseful.

Far too many, as far as she was concerned. Too many eyes watching her, too many who knew her, pitying her. And the knowledge that if her uncle and Cord hadn’t known for a fact that Ben Maddox was alive, then they’d at least suspected it. There was very little surprise when they were faced with the man the world believed they’d buried nearly twenty years ago.

“Oh, come on, Dad…” Calli’s voice drifted through the small opening of the kitchen patio doors, irritated and filled with protest before lowering itself, the rest of her protest falling away.

Her father.

Her lips twisted in disgust at the title, but her heart twisted in pain. No one had meant as much to her as her daddy when she was a girl, and his death had destroyed her sense of security. A security she’d never managed to regain, she realized. And losing her aunt and cousin so quickly afterwards had only exacerbated the damage and reinforced the fear of loving anyone else.

She had friends, but not friendships the loss of which would scar her further. Losing more family—her uncle, her cousins—would be devastating, but if she lost Zack … She couldn’t imagine what that would do to her. Zack had slipped into her heart over the years. She should have known that her intense fascination with him was far more than just arousal. Just as she should have known that her refusal to face Zack with their need for each other over the years was but one of the signs that she cared far too much for him. That he was too important to her.

“Hey, cuz.” Sawyer’s voice drew her attention as he stepped onto the patio, closing the door before sprawling lazily in the chair across from her. “You should come inside and be social for a while.”

“Oh,” she laughed a bit mockingly. “I think that’s the last thing I need to do right now.”

Sawyer’s brows lifted at her protest. “Not every day a girl sees her father come back from the grave. It’s a chance for answers, if nothing else, ya know?”

Her eyes narrowed on him. Sawyer was the negotiator of the family, the one who always tried to mend fences, see things differently.

“It’s not every day a girl learns she wasn’t good enough to go into hiding with her father either,” she told him painfully. “That the daughter he had with another woman meant more—” She quickly shook her head. “I don’t want to go over this again, Sawyer. Just let it go, okay?”

“Hmm,” he murmured, then seemed to perk up. “I hear Magnus is ready to return to his momma,” he said then. “That mean-assed little coot managed to get out of his crate and destroy half Ole Doc Branton’s office. And I hear there’s a little female Rottie there he was real sweet on.” Sawyer was obviously fighting his laughter. “Maybe it’s time to bring him home and get him a little girl Rottie, ya know? Some feminine companionship.”

“You have a dirty mind,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her breasts, refusing to listen to him. “If you’re just going to sit here and be mean to me, then go back inside. You can practice your odd sense of humor on Zack’s guests. I’d prefer to live in denial where Magnus is concerned. He’s still a puppy. He doesn’t need a female Rottie.”

His expression stilled, the flash of anger quickly hidden behind an implacable mask. “Zack’s guests,” he grunted broodingly. “You’re right, sweetheart, denial can be an excellent state sometimes.”

She didn’t comment; she couldn’t. She’d never preferred denial over reality, but the last few hours had shown her the error of her ways.

“He was my favorite,” Sawyer said long moments later, his voice almost too low to hear. “Damn, thought my guts were being ripped out when we were told he was in that truck.”

A shudder worked up Grace’s back. She still had nightmares about the night her aunt had awakened her, her face soaked with tears, and told her …

She’d screamed. For hours she’d sobbed, railed, and screamed for her daddy. Inconsolable, so steeped in grief that her uncle had threatened to call the doctor in and have her sedated. And he would have, had it not been for Cord, Sawyer, and Deacon.

Her throat tightened with that remembered pain.

“What can I say, Grace, to take that look of shattered pain out of your eyes?” he asked then. “It’s the same look you had then.”

Tears dampened her eyes and threatened to spill. “It’s not the same,” she finally whispered, swallowing tightly. “If he’d just left to stay alive, then he would have had me brought to him.” She stared down at her hands, watching her fingers link together, then release. “How disappointed he must have been in me, Sawyer, to just forget me. To just start a new family, have another daughter…” Her lips trembled as she tried to smile, tried to push it back again, and failed.

It was ravaging her, shredding her insides, and she didn’t know how to stop it.

“Hey, now, cuz.” He moved to the cushioned patio sofa beside her, his arm going around her shoulders. “Remember, you were like five or six, and Ben brought you on that camping trip with us when he decided we were all going to eat off the land for a weekend?”

Oh, she definitely remembered that one.

“He was so disappointed in me,” she whispered. “That poor little squirrel broke my five-year-old heart.”

“‘How could you be so mean!’ you cried, sobbing like your heart was broke,” he recounted. “‘There could be baby squirrels that needs its Momma and Daddy.’”

She fought to hold back her tears. “I wasn’t the daughter he wanted.”

Sawyer laughed, genuinely amused. “Then we weren’t the nephews he wanted either,” he informed her with a snort. “There was a store not more than a mile down the mountain, we argued, when he told us he was going to make you eat that squirrel. ‘Well, that store might not be there when you need it,’ he went all gruff on us,” Sawyer chuckled. “So now, old Beau-Remi, he just tilts his head and stares back at old Ben like he’s done lost his mind and says, ‘Well, use the one across the road from it. You kill all the little critters you hafta, but that wee cher,’ as he called you, ‘ain’t gonna go hungry long as Beau-Remi has a dollar to buy a sandwich.’ Sticks his hands in his pockets, feels around, then looks up at Ben all serious-like and says, ‘Hey, man, loan me a dollar.’” Sawyer was laughing through the entire last half of the tale. “Well, now, while he was rambling on, his brother Maddox, he’d done started hiking down that hill, ’cause he had the money to buy sandwiches, after making sure his sweet little sister liked ham and cheese. But when Beau-Remi asked for that dollar, I swear to you, every damned one of us was handing him money to buy not just your sandwich, but ours, too. ‘Ham and cheese tastes a hell of a lot better than critter any night of the week,’ Cord told him with such somber insistence, we were laughing out our asses.”

“That was Beau-Remi?” She stared up at him in surprise. “I hadn’t even remembered that until the night I walked in on … everyone the other night.” She shrugged. “I talked to them every week until Luce was arrested, and they never mentioned it.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer sighed. “They finally stopped calling and demanding to talk to you about the third week after Luce’s funeral, but they sent Vince a message that they were coming for you.”

“Why?” she asked, confused. “Why would they care?”

“Grace,” he sighed gently, “they’re your brothers. They always cared. If it hadn’t been for Dad’s stubbornness and, as I hear it, Ben’s refusal to allow it, then they would have taken you to raise when you were five. We’re lucky they didn’t do it anyway.”

Unfolding her legs, Grace turned to him, frowning. “I haven’t seen them.” But even if they hadn’t come for her, they hadn’t forgotten about her.

“I hate how you’re hurting, honey. It breaks my heart.” He leaned forward, his expression filled with compassion. “But I can understand why he did it.”

“So Calli would be safe,” she whispered. That was all it could be, because Grace would never have refused to go with the father she’d loved.

“Or tipping off whoever’s been waiting to use you to draw Ben out,” he told her softly. “Vince knew, but we only learned recently that there was suspicion Ben was still alive since right after Mom was killed. You and Zack were both being watched, and we never knew for certain who was watching. We never suspected it was Luce, just as we never suspected the others.”

Rising to her feet, Grace could only shake her head. “It doesn’t matter, Sawyer—”

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed. “But, Grace, too much has been hidden from all of us over the years, not just you. Cord just found all this out himself. Alexander Brigham was conducting his own internal investigation even as Dad was frantically trying to identify whoever’s been orchestrating all this, and they had to walk a very fine line to ensure you weren’t harmed while they jumped through hoops to keep anyone from suspecting it. We came here this morning to discuss all this with Zack, and came face-to-face with a man we weren’t even certain was still alive.”

“He was involved in all this from the day he was able to function after that coma, but he couldn’t have me taken to him?” She swung around furiously, facing with him with years of grief, of anger. “Stop excusing him, Sawyer. Stop trying to explain the unexplainable. His other family mattered more.”

“Or your disappearance would have alerted them to the fact that he was alive,” Sawyer suggested instead. “The choices he faced weren’t easy ones, Grace, and they’re not choices he hasn’t paid for, I don’t believe. Because if there’s one thing I know for a fact, Ben loved you. He loved you so much that he was going to take you with him the night of that explosion. If he had, he would have been in the truck when it went up in flames rather than waiting outside it for the helicopter coming for him and Zack’s parents. Both of you would have died, and he knew it. He knew it, and he was terrified to risk you that far again.”

He had to be lying to her. But she knew Sawyer, she even knew when he was lying, and he believed what he was saying.

“He what?” Confusion swamped her. “He wasn’t taking me with him.”

Sawyer’s expression was heavy with somber truth. “Yeah, he was. You were sick, remember? He was supposed to just be going to Kingston for parts for that old tractor of his. He was going to take you with him, but when he went to the house to get you, Sierra had put you to bed, because your fever was so high. You were still getting over that flu you had that week.”

The dream she’d had of him next to her bed, so sad, his eyes damp with tears as he spoke to her. It had happened.

She shook her head. “He was going to take me?”

A movement at the patio door had her turning, had her facing the father she’d believed hadn’t wanted her. “I was waiting to tell Clyde I wasn’t going until you were better, when that truck exploded and left me in a coma for weeks,” her father’s voice said from the entrance to the house, grief giving it a hollow, pain-filled sound. “Zack lost his parents, and for months, they weren’t certain I’d live. But I would never have just left you, girl. You were my sunshine, just as Calli is, and my world hasn’t been right without you.”

Zack stepped onto the patio and moved to her, his arm going around her to hold her against him.

“You were my girl, Grace,” Ben said, his voice hoarse now, his expression lined with pain. “I couldn’t leave without you. I wouldn’t have left without you.”

“And later?” She was breaking apart. She could feel the ravaged, broken emotions tearing free inside her. “Why later? You left me here when you didn’t have to. You left me.” She held on to Zack, her fingers digging into his arm.

“I did what I felt I had to do to keep you safe,” he whispered. “If I’d taken you, then whoever’s been determined to destroy this family would have known I was alive. It wouldn’t have been a suspicion, honey, they would have known. And I couldn’t be certain I could protect you and Calli if that happened. Not just Calli, Grace, but you as well. You’re my daughter, too, and not a day ever went by that I haven’t grieved because you weren’t with me.”