Secret Maneuvers (21 page)

Pushing the pain away again, I choked out, “You can call me whatever you want, but Dad sounds fucking awesome because I’ll be calling you Son.”

He barked a small laugh. “Another parent that cusses. Are you going to tell me that I can’t say those words, too?”

Pushing him back far enough to look into his face, “Man rule number one, what the women don’t know, won’t hurt them.”

Seth burst out laughing as Belle gave a huff of frustration.

Annabelle

The hotel room door closed behind us as Seth and I walked towards my truck in the parking lot. There was a full day of work ahead of me and I had to get Seth back to school. I’d pulled him out during his lunch so that he could talk to his father and so that I could arrange for Bobby to spend some time with him at our house tonight while I was working. He’d be late to his next class, but it was time well spent and it wasn’t like he was behind in any of his classes anyways. He’d managed to maintain an A average so far in school, which I considered a miracle since he had half of my DNA. The boy definitely took after his father not just in looks and athletics, but in the academic area as well.

We both climbed up in the truck, and neither of us said a word until Seth’s high school came into sight.

“I’ll always love you, Mom. No matter what.”

Boy, I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that until he had given it to me. I felt the telltale pricks in the corners of my eyes that meant tears were threatening, and quickly squashed the urge to let them free. My emotional defenses had started crumbling the minute Bobby had walked back into my life and now I seriously needed to get my shit together. Walking through this world with your heart on your sleeve would get you nothing except a bucket load of misery, and who wanted to live life like that? There would always be room in my heart for my boy, though, and the reassurance that he was offering that he would always love me in return was a blessing I would never take advantage of.

Parking the truck in front of the school’s front entrance, I turned in my seat to face him. “Thank you, honey. I’ll always love you, too. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’re willing to forgive me for what I’ve done.”

He shook his head for a second before reaching across the seat to pull me into a tight hug. “You need to forgive yourself, Mom. I forgave you a long time ago. You did what you thought was the best for us and what kid wouldn’t be lucky to have a parent that did that for them? We’re going to find a way to work all of this out. I promise.”

Huffing a self-deprecated laugh, I told him, “Shouldn’t I be the one giving you promises here?”

Pulling back to look me in the face, he smiled. “Doesn’t matter who does it this time. All that matters is that we’ll get through this together.” Letting me go, he grabbed his book bag out of the backseat and started to open the door to get out.

“Don’t forget that it’ll be your dad who meets you at the house after football practice tonight. I’ve got to stay at work late.” I almost choke on the words. Now that Bobby was in his life I would have to get used to talking to Seth about his father. Somehow, it felt like I’d stumbled on a new form of torture having to refer to Bobby as ‘Dad’.

“Yeah, Mom, we made those plans like fifteen minutes ago. I haven’t forgotten them that fast. Give me a break.” Seth hopped out of the truck before I could give him a playful smack on the arm and
jogged into the school without looking back.

I sat there marveling for a minute over his confidence that everything was going to be okay now that Bobby was in our lives. I only wished I had that same kind of confidence.

Chapter Thirteen

Bobby

I let myself into Belle’s house with the spare key that she’d given me. Seth would be home in a few minutes and I was looking forward to spending some time alone with him while Belle was working. Stepping into the dark house, I shut the front door behind me and started to walk forward to the kitchen so that I could turn a light on when movement in my peripheral vision at the dining room table stopped me. Turning to face the threat, I was surprised at who the unexpected intruder was. Teagan. Even in the dark, with nothing except the dim light from the just rising moon filtering through the sliding glass doors behind her, I could make out red hair pulled back neatly from her face. She was staring at me blankly, with no hint of shock at my presence here in Belle’s house, which meant one of two things. Either she knew I was here, or she was a master at hiding her emotions.

The fiery glow of a lit cigarette moved from where it had been hovering over its ash tray upwards to a feminine mouth where it then stopped so its owner could take a drag. As she exhaled her husky voice murmured, “Long time no see, Bobby.”

Somehow, I got the impression that this visit was no coincidence and she was far from happy to see me. Moving towards the kitchen, I turned on the light, went to the fridge, which was thankfully equipped with my drink of choice, grabbed two beers and then turned around, heading back to the dining room table. Setting the second unopened beer next to her already opened and half consumed one, I sat at the opposite end of the table from her. Scanning her from the top of her head to where her midsection disappeared underneath the table, I noted that the years had been good to her physically.

Same bright red hair pulled back in a severe bun at the nape of her neck. Her thin face with its high prominent cheekbones and lips that were so full they were almost too big for her face, told me that she might look like the same stick skinny girl that she’d been in Georgia, but she also might be a bit leaner and harder than she’d been before.  It was hard to tell for sure, though, since she was wearing her Marine Corp cami’s and her oversized issued seabag was on the floor, still stuffed with her gear. That meant that she’d dropped whatever she was doing to come straight here when she’d presumably found out about me. Why would she feel the need to rush here to Texas to confront me? Looking for some kind of clue, I pulled my eyes from her seabag back to her face and looked her straight in the eye.

The rest of her face and body posture might be impassive, but the eyes gave it away. They were the same blue with green flecks, but they didn’t look as young as the rest of her. The shadows there told me that while the outer packaging of Teagan Robert’s might look damn good, on the inside, she’d seen too much and carried too many demons than could be exorcised. They also seemed to burn with a near fanatical intensity that said she meant business. Not a mild mannered let’s sit down and talk like reasonable adults business, but more like a if you so much as blink the wrong way I will bust a cap in your sorry ass business. Belle and Seth were her family and she wasn’t going to let anyone mess with her family.

There were two problems with her assumptions. For one, I wasn’t here to mess with them. On the contrary, I was here to claim them. For two, I wasn’t just anyone and I wouldn’t let her stand in the way of me obtaining what I considered mine. However, at the moment, Teagan Roberts looked like a junkyard dog at the end of her chain. That meant I was going to have to handle her with care in the hopes that she wouldn’t try to chew me up and spit me out while inadvertently ruining what I was working for here.

“Long time no see, Teagan. What exactly are you doing here?”

“Funny, that’s what I’ve come to ask you.”

There’s nothing like knowing your suspicions are right. The woman had traveled from God knew where to come warn me off her best friend. Looked like some things never changed. She’d done something very similar when I’d first started pursuing Belle in high school. Only she hadn’t shown up at my house unexpectedly to do it. Back then, she’d pulled me aside in the school’s hallway to let me know that if I hurt her best friend, she’d kick me in the balls so hard I’d be feeling them every time I tried to swallow my food for a week. Back then, I hadn’t taken her very seriously. I wouldn’t be making that mistake this go round.

“You might want to specify what exactly it is that you’re looking for here, Teagan. Do you want to know why I’m here in Texas? Or do you want to know why I’m here in Belle’s house?”

She took another slow drag off her cigarette. “Oh, I know why you’re in Texas. I want to know why you’re here in her house. I can honestly say that it’s the one place on God’s green earth that I never expected to see you at.”

Fury ignited inside of me. Of course she never expected to see me here. She’d helped Belle keep the secret of my son from me. Unlike Belle, her father was still very much alive and still in Sylvania. Not that I would expect her to have some kind of close relationship with him since he wasn’t much better than Belle’s father had been, but the point was, she had the means to get in touch with me or my family if she’d wanted to let me know about Seth. So why should she expect me here? I didn’t realize until this moment just how mad I was at Teagan, too. For helping Belle keep Seth from me over the years and maybe for smoking that damn cancer stick in front of me, too. Not that she would know that I was an ex-smoker and she was waving temptation in my face like a red cape at a bull, but that didn’t stop the irrational urge to blame her for doing it on purpose anyways.

Taking a long pull off my beer gave me a few seconds to calm down so I wouldn’t flip my shit on her. Starting a fight with Teagan wouldn’t help me get to where I wanted to be with Belle or Seth. It would be better to see if I could turn her into an ally than give into the urge to lash out for things that were in the past and couldn’t be changed.

Setting the beer down on the table, I answered the original question, “I’m here in this house because this is where my family lives. Now why are you here?”

Stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray, she then spread her arms wide and gave a sarcastic smile. “I’m here because this is my family and I’ve always been welcome here. The same can’t be said for you.”

Tapping a finger on the side of my beer bottle I fired back, “They’ll always be your family, Teagan, I get that, but they’re my family, too. Now it’s my turn for a question. How would you know I was here since that would be classified information?”

The side of her mouth tipped up in a cat that ate the canary grin. “Funny thing about trying to plan a surprise when you’re coming home from overseas. Sometimes, you are the one who gets a surprise. I called a mutual friend of Belle’s and mine to see if they would pick me up from the airport only to be warned that Belle already had a surprise visitor here. You could say that this individual is extremely concerned as to Belle’s frame of mind about you showing up here in Texas and finding out about Seth. They urged me to get here as fast as possible. That’s why there’s practically still sand from Afghanistan on the bottom of my boots. I didn’t even have the time to change after we were released from duty.”

Through gritted teeth I snarled, “And who the hell is so concerned about my being here? The Sheriff Belle’s been fucking?”

“Now, now, Bobby. That green-eyed monster impression you’re doing doesn’t look too good on you. Charlie Jenkins is a good man. In fact, I was hoping one day Annabelle would give in to his many requests of a long term relationship. He’d be a good husband to her and a good father figure for Seth.”

I lost control of my temper and exploded. “Why the hell are you being such a bitch? I get that you’re mad on your friend’s behalf. I hurt her and you’re trying to protect her.” I waved a finger between the two of us. “You and I both know I’m not some dickhead scumbag like the two of you grew up with. So why are you bending over backwards to keep my family from me when I’ve just found them?”

Calmly, as if she didn’t care just how badly she’d pissed me off, Teagan took another cigarette out of her pack and lit it up. Fucking fantastic. She was going to be a goddamn chimney smoker in front of me. Once she’d taken a long inhale and blown it back out, she looked me dead in the face, as if she considered me no threat at all, and started moving those full lips of hers.

“I’ve got all kinds of patches from the service, you know. A patch that says I’m a proud Marine. A patch that says I’m a veteran. A patch that says I was there for Iraqi Freedom and a patch that says I’m there for Operation Enduring Freedom, but what I really need is a patch that says I was there for Operation BB-DB-AB”.

“Is there a chance you’re going to start to make some sense anytime soon?”

She kept going as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “You see, the beginning of that war was BB, or ‘Before Bobby.’ I was there to watch as a little girl the same age as me walked on eggshells around a father ten times as violent as mine; always careful of what she said or did. Hoping that one day he would wake up and love her like all the other fathers loved their little kids. Then, I watched her survive the crushing blow the day she turned into a teenager, her father once again did not get her so much as a fucking slice of cake, but instead came home and said now that she was old enough to be a whore like her mother and she should get out on the street and start paying their bills right before he knocked the ever living shit of her. Instead of completely crushing her spirit from having all her hopes and dreams of a real family brutally ended for her, she learned to buck-the-fuck up and do what she had to do to get by.”

These were all things I already knew about Belle’s life growing up. Frankly, I didn’t want to relive them and be reminded how someone so innocent, so goddamn beautiful all the way down clear to her soul, had suffered so needlessly. Why was Teagan bringing this shit up?