A Coldwater Christmas Read online

“No, but I think her turning seventy-one has made her desperate. She mentioned that life was passing her by, and shortly thereafter she got involved with your father. I think he’s playing on her emotions and trying to make her feel as if he can help her turn back the clock or something.” Jana looked at him. Paused. “I don’t have anyone else I can go to for help.”

  “How about your husband?” Again, Kace’s voice was flat enough, but his gray eyes turned a little stormy.

  “Ex-husband,” she corrected, and she continued before Kace could remind her that he, too, had that same label. “Dominick doesn’t want to get involved.”

  Kace didn’t say “wise man,” but he managed to convey just that with a simple grunt.

  “Understandably, there’s some animosity between Dominick and my mother since the divorce,” Jana felt the need to add. What she wouldn’t admit was that Dominick downright hated Eileen and probably secretly hoped that his ex-mother-in-law was marrying someone who’d give her a few emotional sucker punches.

  “Understandably,” Kace repeated, “there’s still some animosity between your mother and me. Approaching her about this would likely just cause her to tell me to mind my own business. It’s not illegal for your mother to get engaged to my father.”

  Jana made an aha sound. “But what if it is? My own father could be out there, alive and well. Yes, he left when I was a teenager.” That’d been one of the things that Kace and she had in common. “And yes, my mother believes he’s dead, but what if he isn’t? And she didn’t do any paperwork to officially declare him dead, either. Then, my mother would be committing bigamy by marrying Peter, and that’s a crime.”

  She didn’t feel as if she was grasping at straws, but Kace must have thought that because he gave another grunt. This one had a weariness to it.

  “I know that over the years both you and your mother hired PIs to find your father. And just because he wasn’t officially declared dead, it doesn’t mean the state doesn’t accept that he is.” He paused. “Do you have any proof whatsoever he’s alive?” he asked.

  “No, but that doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

  Kace stared at her a long time. “The Galveston cops believe he drowned when he was sailing on his boat in the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “He could have faked his death,” she quickly reminded him. It was possible.

  “Your father’s been gone for twenty years,” Kace calmly pointed out. “Even if he’s still alive, your mother wouldn’t be prosecuted for bigamy because she believes she’s a widow.”

  Jana hadn’t actually thought the bigamy angle would work with Kace. It certainly hadn’t caused her mother to budge. But Jana thought she might have something else in her arsenal to get Kace’s help.

  “Please,” Jana said, and she hoped he realized that was the first time she’d ever begged.

  Much to her relief, Kace didn’t seem to dismiss that. In fact, his grunt turned to a sigh. “Is this about money?” Kace asked. “Are you worried Peter will take her for everything she owns?”

  Jana dragged in a long breath because she doubted Kace would understand this. “Yes. My mother isn’t the sort who can live without funds. And no, it’s not just because she’s high-maintenance. Her whole self-worth is tied to her money. It would crush her to lose everything.”

  “Then, the solution is simple. Your mother can do a prenup. If this is really a case of true love, then the groom won’t mind—”

  “She won’t ask him to sign one,” Jana interrupted.

  That had been the third-round argument to try to talk her mom out of this. The first had been about having the lovebirds wait until they knew each other better before saying I do.

  Her mother had nixed that.

  The second argument had been for Eileen to look deeper into Peter’s past, to go to Oklahoma and talk to people who knew him so that she could find out if there were any red flags.

  Her mother had nixed that, too.

  The third argument had been the prenup. The fourth, another search for Jana’s father. The fifth—the one that Jana was working on now—was for Eileen to talk to Kace and his brothers to try to learn about Peter’s character flaws. Jana was certain the man had plenty of them if he could turn his back on his four sons.

  “Eileen’s my mother, and I don’t want her hurt,” Jana threw out there, and in her mind that was the biggest reason of all to stop the wedding.

  And Eileen would be crushed if this marriage didn’t work out. She wouldn’t be able to survive a divorce or being abandoned again by another husband. Her ego was just that fragile.

  After yet another long pause, Kace finally nodded. “All right, I’ll talk to Eileen.”

  The relief washed through her. Jana forgot all about a sleeping Marley in her arms and tried to hug Kace, but she only managed more like a body bump. Just enough contact of her hip against his that he noticed. Her body noticed as well, and as if on cue, she got another tug of attraction.

  He was hands-off, of course. But the tug gave her an even harder yank until she got a flash of a memory. A really good one of Kace naked and in her bed.

  It was a bad time for it to happen, but their gazes collided again. And held. She couldn’t be sure, but Jana thought that maybe he was getting some flashes of memories, too.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  She shouldn’t mentally be playing with fire. Especially with the ink not yet dry on her second divorce. She’d failed not once but twice at this whole relationship thing, and she had put Kace through too much to even consider them going for another round.

  Yes, she still clearly saw him naked.

  The image vanished in a flash though when she caught movement in the doorway. Kace must have caught it, too, because he automatically stepped in front of her. And that put him face-to-face with their visitor.

  Peter Laramie.

  “Son,” Peter said, smiling and extending his hand in greeting. “It’s good to see you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  EVERYTHING INSIDE KACE went still when he saw his father’s face. The feeling didn’t last. Nope. Because a fierce storm slammed in right behind that stillness.

  Way too many memories and the raw emotions that went along with them.

  The images came, clipped and fast like rounds from his service weapon. Kace had been nearly ten the day his father had left, and despite all the time that’d passed, he could still remember it in perfect detail. The packed suitcase—a scuffed brown one with a broken left wheel. The loud argument that’d gone on between his parents. The slamming of the door as his father had stormed out. Kace had stood there for a long time, waiting for him to come back.

  He hadn’t.

  His father hadn’t exactly been a prize, and in fact he’d made an art form of ignoring his sons while he was either drunk or worked on his so-called paintings. But being ignored had been a damn sight better than being abused, and that abuse had started not long after the slam of the door.

  At least the man’s clothes didn’t bring back any bad memories. Peter wasn’t dressed like an out-of-work bum with four kids but rather what Kace figured was an outfit more suited for a trendy artist. A black leather jacket over a white T-shirt and black skinny pants. Yep, skinny. His hair—also black—was practically to his shoulders and mussed in such a way that looked careless, but Kace figured a lot of care and money had gone into it to get that style.

  Kace didn’t take his father’s hand that he was still holding out for a shake, and he put his own now fisted hands back on his hips. He was pretty sure he was scowling, and Kace didn’t try to make his expression even remotely friendly.

  “If you’re here to challenge the traffic ticket, you’ll need to speak to the receptionist,” Kace said, his voice thankfully void of any emotion. He didn’t want to show this piece of shit anything that was going on in his head.

  His father eased back his ha
nd, but unlike Kace, he managed a friendly smile. “No. I’m not challenging it. I didn’t see the red light, but if your deputy says I ran it, I’m sure I did. I was distracted when I drove into town.”

  “Then, there’s nothing you and I need to discuss,” Kace calmly informed him.

  Kace took his cowboy hat and jacket from the pegs on the wall, slipped them on and turned back to Jana. Kace opened his mouth but realized that he didn’t have a clue what to say to her. Seeing Jana had caused nearly as much of a firestorm of emotions as seeing his father, and that was Kace’s cue to get moving. Without waiting for anyone’s reaction, he walked straight to the front door and outside.

  Kace hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until he dragged in some much needed air. Cold air at that. For once, the forty-degree temps actually felt good to him. He kept dragging in his breaths, kept walking, and he headed just up the street toward the building where two of his brothers had offices.

  Callen actually owned the place, and he ran his cattle broker business on the second floor. Nico rented space from him and had his office for Laramie’s Bucking Bulls on the bottom floor. With some luck, they should both be in since it was early afternoon of a normal workweek.

  While Kace walked, he texted his other brother, Judd, who was one of the deputies, and asked him to come ASAP for a family meeting. Judd wouldn’t like that because it was his day off, but Kace didn’t care. He didn’t want any of his siblings running into their father on the street. It’d been a bad enough shock for Kace, and he needed to give them a heads-up along with filling them in on the wedding plans.

  Hell.

  He hated that his father still had this kind of hold over him, and Kace wasn’t going to stand for it. So what if the man married Jana’s mother? So what if Peter ended up living in Coldwater? This was Kace’s home. His brothers’ home, too. And their sonofabitch of a father wasn’t going to throw any monkey wrenches into that.

  Kace hoped so anyway.

  However, it was possible that Jana was right to have some concerns about her mother and this marriage. Kace didn’t know the man that his father had become, but unless there’d been some significant improvements, then Eileen could be facing big trouble. Trouble that wasn’t his, Kace quickly reminded himself. If his father committed some kind of crime, then Kace would arrest him. Barring that though, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do.

  Even if it was obvious that Jana expected something from him.

  But Jana was yet someone else he needed to push to the back burner until he dealt with the issue of his father.

  Kace threw open the door to the building, already heading toward Callen’s office, but he came to a stop when he saw not only Callen but also Nico in the reception area. No receptionist or assistant today, and Kace was thankful for it since he wanted this conversation to be private.

  “You’re here about our worthless shit of a father showing up,” Callen said right off the bat.

  Okay, so Kace wasn’t going to have to drop a bombshell after all. It had already been dropped. “Let me guess. Liberty called Shelby?” Kace asked.

  Callen nodded. Shelby was Callen’s wife and also friends with Liberty, and Kace should have known his deputy wouldn’t have kept something like this to herself.

  “Does Judd know yet?” Kace added.

  Callen gave another nod. “He’s on the way here, and FYI, he’s in a pisser of a mood.”

  Not a surprise. Judd wasn’t usually a rose-colored glasses kind of guy, and in many ways their trek through the bad parts of foster care had affected him the most. Ditto for their father leaving. Judd had been eight at the time and closer to the man than the rest of them had been. Callen, who’d been seven, and Nico, who’d been barely five, just hadn’t blipped too often on their dad’s radar.

  “Our father came to the police station—” Kace started.

  “With Jana?” Nico immediately asked.

  Kace frowned. Of course, someone had blabbed about Jana’s visit, too. “No. She came by first, to tell me about her mother marrying Peter.” He decided to stick with calling the man by his given name. It didn’t clog up his throat the way saying “our father” did.

  “I’m betting Jana’s upset about this,” Callen concluded. “She asked you to try to stop the wedding.”

  Even though Jana and he had been divorced for well over a decade, clearly his brothers still knew her well. “She did, but I told her that other than having a chat with Eileen that I couldn’t help. That’s when Peter came in.”

  “And what did he want?” Callen pressed when Kace didn’t add anything else.

  Kace had to shrug. “I didn’t wait around to find out. As far as I’m concerned, he’s got nothing to say that I want to hear.”

  His brothers mumbled what sounded to be agreement, but no one had time to voice anything else before the door flew open. Flew being the operative word, and it would have smacked Kace in the shoulder if he hadn’t darted to the side.

  And Judd stormed in.

  In the pecking order, Judd was the next to oldest of them, but he was the biggest. He’d not only gotten an extra couple of inches in height from their shared gene pool, he’d gotten wide shoulders and the seemingly permanent expression of someone about to throw some punches.

  “It’s true?” Judd immediately asked. “Did the douche bag really come to Coldwater?”

  Kace suspected that over the next couple of hours Peter would get called other vile things—many of them from Judd.

  “He’s here,” Nico verified.

  Unlike the rest of them, Nico’s voice wasn’t dripping with anger and concern. It was just his nature. He was way too laid-back in most instances, but Kace was glad to have a cooler head in the room. It would maybe balance out the one serious hothead who was in the process of unpinning his badge from his shirt. The moment Judd finished doing that, he thrust it out for Kace to take.

  “I’m going to kick the douche bag’s ass,” Judd announced, “and I don’t want to be wearing a badge while I’m doing it.”

  Just as Kace hadn’t obliged Peter with a handshake, he didn’t take Judd’s badge, either. “Put that back on,” Kace growled, and it was an order from not only Judd’s boss but also his big brother. “Kicking his ass will only give him more importance than he deserves. I want all of you to just ignore him.”

  That got the expected results. Glares from Judd and Callen. A halfhearted lift-of-his-shoulder agreement from Nico.

  “You think it’s wise to ignore a rattlesnake?” Judd snarled.

  “There’s no proof of his recent snakelike behavior,” Kace pointed out, trying to be the voice of reason.

  Callen huffed. “You think he’s marrying Eileen for her beauty and charming personality?”

  “No.” He didn’t think that, because Eileen didn’t have either of those attributes. “But the woman’s got a right to marry a snake, former or otherwise.”

  Again, the door flew open, and again Kace had to do some dodging to keep from being hit. This time, Shelby rushed in, and she went straight to Callen. “Are you okay?” She caught his face in her hands and studied him with very concerned eyes.

  “I’m fine,” Callen assured her, easing her hands away so he could pull her into a hug.

  “I saw him,” Shelby said. “He was coming out of the police station.”

  Kace didn’t ask how she knew it was Peter. For one thing, there weren’t many visitors to the police station so he could have been easy to peg. Easier, too, because of the resemblance. Kace had seen plenty of himself and his brothers in Peter’s face.

  “What are you going to do?” Shelby asked.

  “Kick his ass,” Judd answered, and he would have gone out the door if his fiancée, Cleo Delaney, hadn’t come in. This time, the door did hit Kace, but he didn’t mind. Cleo was the one person in Texas who could reason with Judd when he was in
this mood.

  “Good,” Cleo concluded. “I can help you kick his ass.”

  Kace groaned and stepped in front of them. So much for Cleo’s reasoning abilities. “There’ll be no ass kicking. Do you think I want to have to arrest all of you? And besides, you’re half Peter’s size,” he reminded Cleo.

  “I could cheer Judd on while he punches the scum’s lights out,” Cleo reminded him right back.

  “No punching, either,” Kace snarled, and he made sure he sounded mean and pissed off. That mood came a little easier when the door nearly smacked into him again.

  This time, it was Nico’s girlfriend, Eden Joslin, who came rushing in. Since there was now a crowd in the room, she glanced around, and the moment she spotted Nico, she hurried to him.

  “Are you all right?” Eden asked, echoing Shelby’s earlier concern.

  “Fine and dandy.” Nico flashed her a smile—his specialty—but it didn’t quite make it to his eyes. This had shaken all of them.

  “Are you going to beat up your sperm-donor father?” Eden pressed.

  Nico smiled again, this time a little more genuinely. “Kace says we can’t, that we should just ignore him.”

  “Well, screw that,” Eden concluded, and she turned to the rest of them to plead her case. “You should at least give him a piece of your mind, complete with some choice curse words to let him know what a sack of crap he is for running out on his kids.” She got an agreement from everyone in the room but Kace.

  Kace looked up at the ceiling for a second, hoping for some kind of divine intervention. He really didn’t want to arrest his entire family and their significant others. Intervention came, thank goodness, but it wasn’t divine.

  Their foster father, Buck McCall, walked in.

  Clearly, word of Peter’s return was traveling like wildfire because there was no way Buck’s arrival was a coincidence. When they’d been kids, Kace and his brothers had had several foster placements, but none had been better than Buck. Maybe that’s why Peter’s return was fueling Kace’s anger as much as the rest—because Buck was their real father in every way that mattered.