Always a Hero

“Never mind,” he said, obviously realizing it was her in the photo, despite the fact that she had looked radically different in those days, with her hair long and wild and a ton of makeup and glitter on.

She met his gaze as this time he focused his attention on her unwaveringly. “You’re Kai Reynolds.”

Three things hit her in rapid-fire succession.

She was being assessed, in much the same way as his surroundings had been when he’d first come in.

Second, she knew those eyes. Jordy’s eyes. The same vivid green, although somehow muted. Tired, she thought.

And at last came the realization. Impossibly, this was the stuffy, boring, staid Wyatt Blake.

And he was looking at her as if she’d crawled out from under the nearest rock.

Chapter 2

It was worse than he’d feared.

Wyatt stared at the young woman before him. He’d hoped, when he’d first seen the tidy, well-organized store that perhaps he’d been wrong to expect a problem here.

Play On hadn’t been here when he’d lived here as a kid. He’d heard that the woman who owned and ran it had once been in a semi-successful rock band, which had registered only as an oddity in a little town like Deer Creek. But Mrs. Ogilvie—who had been the local information center when he was a teenager seemingly in trouble at every turn, and apparently still fulfilled that obligation—told him that Jordan came here after school almost every day, he’d known he had to check it out. Especially since Jordan had told him he was studying at school. He didn’t like being lied to, especially by his own son. If this was going to work at all—and he had serious doubts about that—there had to be honesty between them.

The hypocrisy of that high-flown thought, given his own secrets, made him grimace.

“You’re the owner,” he said.

It came out more like an accusation than a question. He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but his thoughts had put an edge in his voice.

She said nothing, but he’d spent his life gauging people’s reactions, and as clearly as if she’d shouted it he knew he’d gotten her hackles up already. That wasn’t how he’d wanted to approach this, but damn, she looked like his worst nightmare as far as Jordan was concerned. The rock-and-roll history was bad enough, but the slightly spiky red hair that fell forward to surround a face that managed to look sexy and impish at the same time, and the slim, intricate, knotted bracelet of a tattoo in a deep bluish-green color around her left wrist finished it for him. She would be an impossible-to-resist lure for an impressionable boy.

“Well?” he said, his voice even sharper.

“Was there a question?” she asked, her tone as cool as the steady gaze of smoky gray eyes. Whatever else she was, she wasn’t easily intimidated.

He took a deep breath, and tried to rein it in. After all, she wasn’t some rock gypsy any longer, was she? She’d quit that life, so maybe there was some sense behind those eyes.

The question was, how much of that life had she brought with her here?

“Where’s the paraphernalia? In back?”

She blinked then, looking genuinely puzzled. “What?”

“The cigarette papers, the bongs, the glass pipes.”

She went very still. The smoky gray eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “This is a music store, not a head shop.”

“Right. And you never touched the stuff when you were a rock star.”

She looked at him levelly. She was tall, he thought, five-eight or so. She wore black jeans and a gray shirt that had some sort of shine to it. Unremarkable, except for the way the shift and sheen of it subtly emphasized curves beneath it.

A subtle rocker? Hard to believe, he thought.

“As a matter of fact,” she said icily, “I never did. And also as a matter of fact, I was never a rock star. I played in a band.”

“A successful one.”

“For a while.”

“And you use that.”

“Marketing,” she said. “I’d be a fool not to, if I want to stay in business in a tough world.” The practical assessment surprised him. “You have a problem with that?”

She was challenging him now.

“Only when you use it to lure in kids.”

She went very still. When she spoke, her voice held a new edge that made him wary. “Lure?”

“Sexy girl rocker,” he said. “If you’re a teenage boy there’s not many lures bigger.”

For an instant she looked startled. But her voice was no less edgy, and the edge sharpened as her words came bursting out.

“That dream died thanks to the kind of thing you’re accusing me of selling. I would no more have drug paraphernalia here than I’d cook up meth in my kitchen.”

At the fierceness of her voice Wyatt drew back slightly. Perhaps he should have done some research before he’d come charging in here. He didn’t care for the way she was looking at him. Which was odd, since he’d come in here not caring what she thought, only wanting to find out what drew his son here day after day.

“You know,” she said, “when Jordy told me his father did nothing but work and hassle him, I thought he was being a typical teenager. That his situation just made normal parenting seem like hassling. Seems I was wrong. You really are a … hard-ass.”

Wyatt had the feeling Jordan had used another word, and he noted the fact that even angry she had not repeated it. He assumed a woman who’d lived in the rock world had much worse in her vocabulary, so either she’d censored herself because she didn’t use the language with a potential customer, or because she was protecting Jordan.

Belatedly—much too belatedly—he realized that she knew he wasn’t a potential customer at all, that she knew who he was.

“How did you know?”

To her credit, she didn’t play dumb. “Please. Like there’s more than two sets of those eyes in Deer Creek.”

He blinked. He’d of course known Jordan had the same color eyes. It was one of the reasons, along with childhood pictures of each of them that could be interchangeable, that he’d never doubted Jordan was his son. He just hadn’t expected a total stranger to notice it within five minutes.

And he hadn’t wanted to tick off the one person in town that Jordan seemed to voluntarily gravitate to within that first five minutes, either. He wasn’t even sure what had set him off. There had been a time when he’d been smoother, when he’d assessed a person accurately and chosen the right approach to get what information he needed from them.

Apparently that time was long past.

“Is my son here?” he asked, not even bothering to comment on her recognition.

“He’s in back.”

His brows furrowed as he glanced at the hallway behind her. “Doing what?”

“Smoking dope.”

His gaze snapped back to her face.

“Isn’t that what you expected?”

There was no denying the sour tone, or the annoyance in her voice.

And there was no denying that, if she was telling the truth, he had it coming. He just couldn’t seem to find the right path on anything connected to Jordan.

With an effort he was almost too weary to make, he pulled his scattered thoughts together and made himself focus on the reason he was here and the best way to get what he needed from this woman, not the woman herself. It was surprisingly difficult. She had a presence, and he had the brief, flitting thought that she must have been something onstage.

“Ms. Reynolds,” he said, trying to sound reasonable, “I’m just looking for my son.”

“What you’re doing,” she said, “is driving him away.”

“He’d have to be a lot closer before I could drive him away,” he said wryly.

Something flickered in her eyes, whether at his rueful words or his tone he didn’t know. But it was a better reaction than that fierce anger, or that icy cool, and he’d take it.

“Look, I just found out how much time Jordan spends here. I wanted to check the place out.”

“So you come in with an attitude and a lot of assumptions?”

She had him there. “Yes,” he admitted simply.

That won him the briefest trace of a smile.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not realizing he was going to say it until the words were out.

“About which?” she asked, clearly requiring more than just a simple, blanket apology.

He looked at her for a moment. She held his gaze steadily. Nerve, he thought. Or else he’d lost his knack for intimidation entirely in the last year. Since that had been his goal he should be happy, not standing here missing the skill.

“The attitude,” he said finally. “And the assumptions … they should have stayed at the possibilities stage.”

“Every music store is a haven for druggies and their gear? A bit old-school, aren’t you? Why risk it when people can get whatever they need or want online, with no open display of wares to get hassled over?”

She had, he knew, a very valid point. Several of them. He really should have thought more before he’d barged in here on the offensive.

“I was just worried about Jordan.” He let out a long breath, lowering his gaze and shaking his head. “I pretty much suck at this father thing,” he muttered.

“It’s a tough gig.”

The sudden gentleness of her tone caught him off guard. “I know this has been … difficult for him.”

“Ya think?” she said. “His mom dies, the father he never knew shows up out of nowhere and proceeds to drag him back to that nowhere with him … well, nowhere in his view, anyway.”

He’d been right about that, it seemed, Wyatt thought. Jordan talked to her. A lot. Certainly more than to him.

“I know he hates it here,” he said.

“I know. ‘It’s too cold, half the roads aren’t even paved, and there’s hardly any people,’” she said, clearly quoting something Jordan had told her.

“That’s exactly what I like about it,” Wyatt said.

“The cold, the roads, or the lack of population?”

“Selection C.”

Her brows rose. “So it’s not just me who sets you off, it’s people in general?”

He wasn’t quite sure there wasn’t something about her in particular, but he didn’t want to delve into that now.

“I’ve seen what people can do.”

For a moment she just looked at him. Then, with an odd sort of gentleness, she said, “I have, too. They can build skyscrapers, write incredible poetry and stories, and impossibly beautiful music. They can be kind and generous and pull together when others need them. They can weep at pain and sadness, or at a beautiful sunset.”

He stared at her. “And they can inflict pain, murder and mayhem on each other.”

She didn’t flinch. “Yes. That too. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever had to deal with the reality.”

Her gaze narrowed, and he regretted the words. And not for the implied criticism. Hastily he looked for something to divert the question he could sense was about to come.

“What kind of name is Kai?”

It sounded rude, and abrupt, but it accomplished the goal. Instead of asking what he knew about mayhem, she instead said sweetly, too sweetly he thought, “Mine.”

Now that she’d been diverted, he backed off. “I mean, where did it come from?”

“My parents.”

She wasn’t obtuse, he already knew that, so she was paying him back for his attitude, he supposed. He also figured he had it coming.

“And what,” he said evenly, “was their inspiration?”

She studied him for a moment before saying, “It’s Kauai without the u a.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Island in Hawaii? Fourth-largest? The Garden Isle?”

She was talking to him, he realized, as if he were the obtuse one. And he somewhat belatedly realized he would do well not to underestimate this woman.

“Were you born there?” That seemed a reasonable question, he thought.

“No. The fun part happened there.”

His mouth quirked. And she smiled, a bright, beautiful smile, and much more than the tiny alteration in his own expression deserved.

“Mom shortened it to the one syllable, to avoid me having to remember what order all the vowels came in when I was little, a thoughtfulness I still thank her for.”

The quirk became a smile of his own, he couldn’t seem to help it. And when he asked this time, the attitude was missing.

“What’s Jordan really doing?”

“Playing.”

He blinked. “Playing. Video games? Poker? Bingo?”

She didn’t take offense this time. Instead, the smile became a grin, and it hit him somewhere near the solar plexus and nearly took his breath away.

“A Gibson SG.”

“A guitar?”

“That one, to be exact,” she said, gesturing at the photograph he’d seen near the guitar display.

He didn’t have to turn to look; the image seemed to have been seared into his mind. But he only vaguely remembered the blue guitar. What he remembered was the flash and lighting pouring down over the stage, creating a sort of halo around the woman—a girl, really—in a sleek, black outfit that looked painted over long legs, sweet curves, and a tossed mane of red hair. Brighter, longer, and wilder than her hair now, it gleamed like wildfire with the backlighting.

“He’s playing a guitar,” he repeated, to be sure he’d heard right. “Your guitar.”

“Seemed like he’d had a bad day. Thought it might cheer him up.”

“I didn’t … He’s really playing?”

“Well, he’s trying. Practicing. Hard. He really wants to learn.”

Since he hadn’t seen Jordan try hard at a damn thing, Wyatt was more than a little taken aback. “Since when?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’d say he started coming in about six months ago.”

About a month after he’d returned to Deer Creek, Jordan in tow.

“You didn’t know he was interested?”

He shook his head. “His mother never said.”

She looked at him consideringly, no doubt wondering why he hadn’t known himself, without being told. But all she said was, “I’m sorry, it must have been awful, her dying like that.”

“Yes.” It had been awful. Painful and hard, and those last days when Melissa had been in such an anxious rush to tell him all he needed to know were days he would never forget.

“He misses her.”

“I know.”

“You don’t,” she said, eyeing him with that assessing look again.

“I barely knew her.”

“Well enough to have a child with her.”

He wasn’t about to explain that complicated story to this woman he’d just met.

“My mistake,” he said.

He saw the abruptness of his answer register. But when she spoke it wasn’t in response to that.

“Do you know your son any better?”

“No,” he admitted, his earlier frustration rising anew.

“Maybe if you’d ever had anything to do with him, you’d be in a better place with him now.”

She didn’t say it accusingly, but it bit deep just the same. He didn’t make excuses, ever. He’d been determined not to discuss this with anyone, for Jordan’s sake if nothing else, and he certainly didn’t want to do it here and now and with this woman. But the pressure of not being able to handle one thirteen-year-old boy, he who had handled far worse, was wearing him down. And for the second time since he’d walked in here, words he’d never intended to say surged out.

“Hard to do when until seven months ago I never even knew he existed.”

Chapter 3

Kai stared at the man standing on the other side of the counter. So many impressions were tumbling through her mind that she’d almost forgotten her first one, that those eyes, Jordy’s vivid green eyes, looked far too exhausted for a man in his line of work.

Jordy’s whine—because the long, wound-up complaint had indeed been that—echoed in her head. He’s a pill counter. He counts how many packages of cold pills they put in the boxes. How lame is that? And he wouldn’t even have that job if old man Hunt didn’t owe him a favor.

She had understood Jordy’s anger about his life, agreed he had a right to be upset, having been uprooted from the only home he knew and dragged a thousand miles away, away from his school, his friends. But this had hit a hot button with her, and it had been an effort to answer quietly.

“My dad worked in a canning plant once,” she’d told him. “Dead fish all day. He hated it. But he did it. Because he had a family to take care of, because he wanted me to have a roof over my head and food on the table. It’s called responsibility, Jordy. It’s called being an adult.”

Jordy had stared at her incredulously. “You standing up for him?”

“Nobody does everything wrong.”

Those words came back to her now as she stared at the pill counter. Of all the things this man might be in life, that was one she never would have guessed at if she didn’t already know. Because despite the weariness in his eyes, he was the most intense man she’d ever seen, and in her former life she’d seen some prime examples.

And she wasn’t sure she liked that intensity being turned on her.

Sexy girl rocker….

How could she be so flattered and so irritated at him at the same time? Perhaps it was the way he’d said it, so casually, as if it were self-evident. And he couldn’t know he was hitting a nerve.

A nerve that made her say, rather sharply, “Your wife has a kid and you never knew? How did that work?”

“She … wasn’t my wife. Then.”

Kai considered this, puzzled over it, and the only answer that fit was that he’d married her after he found out about Jordy. The boy hadn’t mentioned it, only that he’d never known his father, and wished his mother had never married him. She’d assumed he’d walked out on them, which had given her even more reason not to like the man.

Seven months, he’d said.

Jordy’s mother, he’d told her, died six months ago.

Which meant Wyatt Blake married her knowing she was dying.

Or perhaps because?

This put a whole new light on things for her. Whatever else his sins were, and according to Jordy they were many, Wyatt Blake was obviously trying to do the right thing by his son. The concern that had driven him here was apparently real, and somehow knowing that made his rude, accusatory questions easier to stomach. No less annoying, but slightly less temper-provoking.

“Look, Mr. Blake,” she began, “Jordy’s having a tough time. He misses the place he knew, his friends….”

“Those friends he misses are why we’re here. He was headed down a bad road.”

“At thirteen?”

“You think there’s an age limit? You of all people should know better.”

She bristled anew, her kinder thoughts about him forgotten. “Me, of all people?”

He jerked a thumb toward the photograph. “Half the kids in that audience were probably high.”

That hit a little too close to a nerve that would never heal, and she didn’t want to talk about it, especially not to this man who seemed intent on his interrogation and entirely oblivious of her efforts to be reasonable.

“What exactly do you want, Mr. Blake? I told you your son is here and what he’s doing. If you’re afraid of him falling under my evil sway, you can order him not to come back. But I’ll tell you up front that you’ll regret it.”

His brows lowered, and he looked even more intense. And, she admitted, intimidating. But she stood her ground, even when he said in a voice that sent a chill through her, “Is that a threat?”

“That,” she said determinedly, “is a simple fact. Playing is the one thing, the only thing, Jordy likes in his life right now. You take it away from him, give him no solace for what’s been done to him, and you’ll lose him completely.”

“Done to him? I brought him here to keep him out of some serious trouble. He was hanging with some kids who were headed that way fast.”

“Fine. But he’s in no danger here. Contrary to what you think.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Exasperation crowded out the wariness his voice had roused in her. “Why shouldn’t you? Or do you approach everyone you don’t even know with the assumption they’re lying?”

For an instant she saw something that looked like surprise cross his face. Then, in a voice she found, perhaps oddly, incredibly sad, he gave her an equally sad answer. “Yes.”

Again she got that impression of utter and total exhaustion. Not so much physical, he looked too fit and leanly muscled for that, but mentally. And emotionally, if she was willing to admit he might have any emotions other than anger, which she wasn’t. She—

Her thoughts broke off as Jordy emerged from the soundproof room. The boy stopped dead when he spotted his father.

“What are you doing here?”

The words held a barely suppressed anger tinged with a hurt it took a moment for Kai to figure out. Then she realized this had been Jordy’s safe place, the one place his father hadn’t known about and therefore didn’t intrude upon. And now that was gone, and, judging by his expression, he felt he had nothing left that was his.

“Looking for you. So you can explain why you lied about studying after school.”

Jordy flushed. “I lied to keep you off my back.”

“Yet here I am. Again. Go get in the car.”

Something in his words made Kai remember Jordy’s story about the times he’d run away after they’d first come here, and how his father always seemed to find him and drag him back, no matter how hard he tried to hide where he’d gone. That had to mean he cared, didn’t it? Or did it mean Jordy was right, that his father only wanted him so he could push him around?

When Jordy had first started coming here—after the third futile effort to run away—she’d wondered, enough that she kept a close eye on the boy for any sign of abuse. Finally she’d asked him, and Jordy’s surprise, then grudging admittance that his father had never struck him, told her it was the truth.

“He put a fist through a wall once, though,” Jordy had said, as if he felt he needed to prove to her that his father was as bad as he’d been saying.

“Better than backhanding you in the face,” she’d pointed out, and Jordy had subsided. She wasn’t so far removed from her own teenage years that she didn’t remember what a pain she herself had been, and sometimes she wondered why her own father hadn’t slapped her silly a time or two.

So she empathized with Jordy, tremendously. But now that Wyatt Blake was standing here, looking at the boy who looked so much like him with such frustration, she found herself empathizing with him as well. Not because of the frustration, but because beneath it she thought she saw something else.

Fear.

Whether it was fear of failing at the job he thought he sucked at, or of what would happen to Jordy if he did fail, she didn’t know. But either way, she knew that deep down this man did care.

“My mom was so wrong,” Jordy said. “She always told me you were a hero. But you’re not and I hate you.”

His father just took it. He never even reacted, and Kai guessed he’d heard it all before. His flat “I know” tugged at something deep inside her. Moved by that unexpected emotion, and remembering what Marilyn had said earlier, she spoke as if Jordy hadn’t said any of it.

“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.”