Coming Home (8 page)

Caleb shook his head and Sydney remained
silent.

"His truck's out front," Jack pointed
out.

"He must be around then."

"Maybe he came in, saw you two ruttin' and
left."

Sydney bit down harshly on her lip and
yelped.

Neither man noticed; they were too busy
glaring at one another.

“Dad," she started, instantly stopping when
he stalked out the door. He slammed it behind him, leaving the
sound to echo around the walls.

Caleb frowned, shrugging when he moved across
the room. "What's his deal?"

"You're joking, right? I broke his heart when
I left because of you, yet now he basically catches us
fucking."

"Being crude doesn't suit you, Syd."

She laughed sarcastically, picking up her
clothes and starting to dress. Pushing past him, she opened the
front door. "I write that word at least ten times a day. I'm not
the person you remember, Caleb. Open your fucking eyes!"

She raced out, her bare feet hitting the
dusty path.

Jack stalked over to the cottage and ignored
her calls for him to wait. It could have been far worse—he could
have walked in ten minutes earlier, but Sydney raced after her
father. "Dad, wait. Please?"

Cloud dashed across the yard, barking as he
chased her cat, Socks. Jack usually bellowed at them, but he didn't
even pause.

"Dad, why are you so angry?" She sounded
whiny, but it hurt. He continued to ignore her. She understood his
embarrassment at finding his daughter basically having sex, but his
rejection perplexed her. He continued to shut her down until they
entered the cottage.

Once inside, he only spoke three words. "Shut
the door."

She did as he asked, and took her seat on the
chair across from him. "Are you going to speak to me now?"

Jack winced, wringing his hands and
eventually making eye contact. "What's goin' on Ne-Ne?" The
gruffness of his tone didn't hide the edge buried within. What he'd
seen had irritated her father.

"I think that was pretty obvious," she
mumbled.

"Don't like the games you're playin',
girl."

Her spine snapped straight, bristling in
response. "What games?"

"Remember you already broke that boy's heart
once. It would be awfully mean of you to do it again."

Horrified, she squeaked, "I can't believe you
just said that. The last thing I want is for Caleb to be hurt. I
didn't want that the first time. I came back here for you, not to
torture Caleb any further."

"Don't seem that way to me. You can't deny
what you were doin', or rather just
finished
doin', with
him."

"I haven't denied anything! Dad, each time I
came home I avoided him so I didn't upset him. And you know it. Why
are you being like this? I'm your daughter. You should be watching
out for me not Caleb."

Jack reached out immediately, patting her
knee. Her lip trembled. "I'm always watchin' out for you, but your
old man can't do that from another state. And that means you need
to understand a few things."

Sydney nodded, giving him time to
continue.

"While you're not here, Pax and Caleb are all
I have. They keep me company and look out for me. I see the upset
in Caleb's eyes whenever I talk about you. He still hurts after all
this time. I don't want you tearin' that wound open. Syd, you ran
away from him, showin' him the relationship was over, and yet it
sure didn't look over from where I was standin'. If you want him
and realize the mistake you made, then great, but you need to be
serious about this. Messing around with his feelings ain't
fair."

Sydney digested what he'd said, berating
herself for not considering how much her father had grown to love
Pax and Caleb. "You're warning me away from Caleb? Seriously?"

"No need to be so dramatic. You never change.
Always quick to jump to conclusions." He paused, patting her knee
again. "I'm just sayin' you should think long and hard before
startin' what you don't intend to finish."

"I'm not in the mood to argue with you, but
you have no clue about what I've thought about. Maybe I do want to
see it through." His brows shot up, disappearing underneath his
white bangs, and she saw hope flair in his eyes. Her admission
hadn't been intentional. In fact, she'd been equally surprised when
the words left her mouth.

"I'd say you need to leave the boy alone
until you decide. Stop thinkin' about us as the people you visit
from time and time, and consider the destruction you leave in your
wake each time you leave. I raised you better, Sydney."

"I'm doing nothing wrong," she shot back,
hating the way he made her feel. "Caleb is a grown man and can make
his own mind up.
He
came onto
me
, so I'd say he's
just as responsible for the potential heartbreak."

"So it is goin' to end that way then?"

She gritted her teeth, growling in
frustration. "You never hear me. I try to tell you things—explain
myself, but you never listen. It's like you pick out key words and
mold them to what you'd rather hear. When I was seventeen, for
example, you found those notebooks and raged for hours about how
disgusting they were. Never once did you allow me to actually
explain."

Jack shook his head, removing his hand and
resting back in his chair. "You've got it wrong. As I recall, I
handed those damn books to you and asked you what they were. Your
embarrassment caused you to scream at
me
. After that night,
you refused to talk to me about it. I had little choice but to
leave you be. I tried Ne-Ne."

Silence surrounded them, suffocating in its
thickness. Pax and Caleb intimated something similar about that
night, but she'd refuted their memories. Too many people were
showing her a different side. Could her memories have warped with
time, leaving her to recall only what she wanted to?

The thought didn't sit well with her. She
loved her father but had such resentment about the way she thought
he treated her night he found her notebooks. If those memories were
wrong, she'd held onto the false hurt for too long. The only way
forward would be to deal with as much of truth she thought her
father could cope with. The interludes between herself, Pax, and
Caleb would be out, but she wanted her dad to know what she really
wrote. As it stood, Jack thought she worked as a journalist for a
teen magazine.

She had made so many mistakes, and pushed the
people she loved away. Her only excuse? She thought they wouldn't
understand her dreams. Sydney convinced herself Jack wouldn't deal
well with a daughter who wrote erotic fiction, and that Caleb and
Pax would think badly of her because she loved them both—wanted
each of them for very different reasons.

It hit her that she couldn't have been
further from the truth, and the only person she'd been running away
from had been herself. The problem rested with her, and when the
reality struck home, she reached over, taking her father's hands in
hers. "There have been parts of my life I never wanted to share
with you. Not because I didn't trust you, but because I preferred
to keep them hidden. I would have been mortified if anyone had
found out. Living in Sacramento meant I could keep my secrets
hidden." She exhaled gently, softening her tone. "Obviously, that
wasn't the only reason I left, but it's why I rarely come back. The
longer I stay here, the more chance there is my secret will be
uncovered. I guess I'm seeing I should have never done that. I
didn't need to keep things from you, did I, Dad?"

"Not one damn reason for it," he replied, his
voice gravelly. "So give it to me. I can take it."

Her heart pounded fiercely and she battled
the urge to turn tail and run. Her head told her to do it—to run as
fast and as far as she could, but for once, her heart overrode
it.

“My job. Dad, I'm not a journalist."

"Don't you dare tell me you work in some fast
food dump. I'm not havin' you runnin' miles away only to serve
morons food."

Sydney laughed, the tension easing slightly.
Her father would never change. He would always tell it straight.
Sometimes she wondered if he'd ever possessed a verbal filter, or
if that had faded with age.

"No, I don't work in a restaurant."

"Those places ain't no
restaurants
."

"Dad, listen, please. I still write, just not
for a teen magazine. Um, actually I write books. I've written a lot
of books."

Jack nodded, taking in her news, though he
didn't comment. "I suppose you're wondering why I want that to be a
secret, huh?"

He nodded again and waited. The butterflies
in her stomach started to go crazy, and no amount of deep breathing
helped. She wouldn't feel better until she confessed, so she
purged. "I write erotic fiction, books with sex in them. Usually a
lot, and most of the time there's more than two people
involved."

Sydney sat on the grass, staring across the
field at the horses. The breeze skimmed her body, ruffling her
T-shirt and skirt, and the grass tickled her bare feet. She fell in
love with the seclusion again, just as she had many years ago.
Living in Sacramento meant she'd become accustomed to a busy life,
but she never felt the same sense of calm as she did here.

Her father had taken her news of her real
career far better than she could ever have expected. He'd admitted
her revelation hadn't been that much of a surprise, given the
notebooks he'd found when she was seventeen. He'd also admitted to
seeing numerous books by her on the bookshelf in the main house.
However, he didn't know they had been by her at the time. He'd
merely commented to Pax and Caleb about how much they must really
like that particular author.

Something flashed in her father's eyes at
that point.

It had been a realization of sorts, but one
he refused to elaborate on. For a moment, she thought maybe he'd
figured out her other secret, but he denied the look had ever
existed, telling her she'd been imagining it. She hadn't, there had
definitely been something going on in his head at the moment, but
she dropped the subject. Knowing her father, he wouldn't budge and
discuss the topic until ready.

She smiled, recalling the way he'd hugged
her, muttering how proud he was of her, even if she wasn't the most
conventional of people or the easiest to raise. His teasing made
her giggle like a child. Hugs from her father had been one thing
she'd missed terribly. Even at thirty, she still longed for that
kind of love—the kind only her dad could offer her.

Feeling energized after purging her truth,
she'd brought her laptop up to the upper paddock, ready to do some
writing. Pax and Caleb had let the horses loose in the field
earlier, so she'd watched them gallop around for a short while
before inspiration struck.

Time passed quickly and before she realized
it, she'd been sitting in the field writing for almost three hours.
Looking up, she noticed Pax sauntering over to her.

Her gaze raked across his body, taking in the
way his jeans hung low on his hips, and the way his fitted plaid
shirt accentuated his wide shoulders and small waist.

"Hey you," he said, shooting her a smile that
lit up his whole face and had her wanting to jump him right in the
middle of the horse paddock.

He tossed her a green apple, biting into one
of his own and sitting down next to her. "Hey yourself."

"You look better, sweetheart. Since you
spilled to Jack, I mean."

Nodding, she placed the apple on top of her
closed laptop and turned her body toward him. "I feel better. I
always worried that I'd disappoint him, that when he found out,
he'd hate my choices. Maybe even disown me."

Furrows appeared on his brow and he touched
her face. "You're so silly sometimes, and somewhat dramatic. Jack
adores you. I doubt there's anything that would piss him off enough
to
disown
you."

She chuckled. "My dad called me dramatic
too."

"Then Jack and I are on the same wavelength."
He kissed her quickly, winking when he pulled back. She tasted the
apple juice on his delicious lips. "Why have you been hidin' up
here?" His hand still held her cheek, his fingers flicking her
earlobe.

"Oh, I'm not hiding. I needed a bit of space
to write.

“I thought coming out here would cut me off,
from the Internet and life in general, for a while."

"You get much done?"

"Lots."

Wiggling his brows, he lowered his tone. "Do
I get to see? Or can we reenact it later?" The vibrations of his
voice had her thighs squeezing together.

Snorting, she shoved at his chest, only for
him to shackle her wrists with his hands. "You can read it when I'm
comfortable with it. Right now, it's nothing more than random
thoughts and ideas."

His expression grew serious when she spoke.
"Ah, but Syd, your ideas are so damn dirty and so amazingly sexy
that Caleb and I love reading what your mind comes up with
next."

She blushed but continued to smile coyly.

"You're some contradiction, you know that?
Those words you write are hot enough to burn the page, and yet all
I have to do is mumble in your ear, or say the word fuck and you
blush. It's fascinating."

"It's certainly something, though fascinating
wouldn't be the adjective I'd use to describe it."

He pulled her hands closer to his chest, and
to keep from toppling on top off him, she straddled his lap. His
answering smirk told her the position had been what he had wanted
all along.

"Roman seems happy here," he said, changing
the subject entirely.

"He does. I've neglected him."

Pax kissed her again. "If you decide to
leave… he'll be okay here. I want you to know that. Don't worry
about him."

"If?" She all but whispered.