Unforgettable, page 31
“Guilty? But why?”
“He already feels badly because our relationship has caused such a rift in my family. He doesn’t need this too.”
“Your stubborn menfolks started this mess, not you or Gavin. Whichever way you and Gavin choose to conduct your lives is no one else’s concern. I still can’t get over that Thanksgiving fiasco.”
“Me neither, but that doesn’t change how Gavin feels or for that matter how I feel.” Anna pressed a hand over her heart. “I can’t forget that Gavin lost his best friend because of me.”
“Not because of you,” Janet insisted. “Gavin lost his friend because Wesley is plain stubborn. How does Kelli feel about all this?”
“About the same as my mother and I do. Oh, Janet. It’s such a mess.” She jumped to her feet and began restlessly moving around the room. “What am I going to do?”
“Tell Gavin the truth. If you don’t tell him, sooner or later he’s going to figure out how upset you are by all this.”
“Janet, I can’t. Things were bad enough that Wes, Ralph, and Devin decided that they didn’t want Gavin at our family Christmas dinner.” She threw her hands up. “The man has been included in all our family gatherings since I was a teenager.”
“That’s not right.”
“Absolutely not. I was so upset that I decided if Gavin isn’t welcome, then neither am I.”
“Oh, I bet your parents didn’t appreciate that.”
“You got that right. As far as I’m concerned, it can’t be helped.” Anna paused, then said, “Mama isn’t having it. She told my dad to fix it. So he came by to talk to me and Gavin. Daddy told Gavin that he was welcome. My parents want us all to be together on Christmas.”
“I always liked your dad.” Janet smiled.
“He’s a good man. If only it had stopped there.” Anna covered her face. “I have never been more embarrassed. Daddy didn’t bite his tongue. He came right out with it. He doesn’t like our living arrangement and believes that if Gavin wants me he should marry me.”
“Honey, your dad is an old-fashioned kind of guy. Accept it.”
“Daddy practically came out and insisted that Gavin marry me or leave me alone.”
Janet shook her head. “You’ve had a tough week.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Out of the blue Gavin’s father showed up. Poor Kyle is scared that he’s going to take him with him when he leaves.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wish I was. Gavin has enough to deal with without me adding more problems by telling him that I’m in love with him. Believe me, this isn’t the right time for a confession.”
“Anna, how long do you honestly think you’re going to be able to keep it from him?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Gavin cares for me. It’s enough. I don’t want him to ask me to marry him because he feels guilty.”
Janet wondered aloud, “Do you think he would?”
“No, but that doesn’t change the fact that my father has been more of an influence on him than George Reynolds has. Or that he believes marriage is not for him. I have no choice but to accept that. He has been honest with me from the first. The problem is mine, not his.”
Janet didn’t look convinced but she reassured, “Gavin cares for you. And for now I think you should concentrate on nothing more than being happy. I say forget your family and his father. Just enjoy being together.”
Anna gave her a hug. “Thank you. I feel so much better. Maybe all I needed was to talk about it, get it out.”
“You’re welcome. This will be your first Christmas as a couple. Romantic dinner, late at night. Sounds good to me.”
“Sounds ideal. Even though my mother will be very upset if I don’t show my face on Christmas, she will be even more upset if my brothers and cousin get into another fight with Gavin.”
“I don’t envy you having to tell your mother.”
“I know. We’re going Christmas shopping on Friday. I’ll tell her then.”
George came in with a heavy scowl on his face later that evening. Kyle was cleaning the kitchen, while Gavin and Anna were still at the table enjoying a cup of coffee.
“Would you care for some dinner?” Anna asked.
“Hell no. What I need is a damn drink.”
Anna and Gavin exchanged a look.
“I don’t know what’s wrong but I know you have no right to swear at Anna,” Gavin snapped.
George sent Anna an impatient look, yet offered a hasty apology and headed down the hall.
“What’s with him?” Kyle went back to filling the dishwasher.
“I don’t have a clue. But I suppose I’d better go find out.”
Kyle caught his brother’s arm. “You don’t think he’s changed his mind about signing, do you?”
“No, bro. My guess is he’s lost at the casino.” Gavin said to Anna, “Great dinner, sweetheart,” before he left and, disappeared down the central hallway.
He found George in the living room, helping himself to Gavin’s stock of Scotch. “What set you off?” Gavin leaned a shoulder against the door jam.
After swearing long and hard, George drained his glass. “Nothing to talk about. It’s all gone.”
“What’s all gone?”
“Twenty-five grand, that’s what.”
“You lost it all?” Gavin said incredulously. “How? What, you didn’t have sense enough to stop when you saw your luck was changing?”
“It’s gone,” was all George said as he refilled his glass.
Gavin straightened, swallowing down the “I told you so” retort rising in his throat. “Drinking yourself into a stupor isn’t going to change anything.”
“It’s easy for you to say. Look at all this. Everywhere I look shouts money with capital letters.”
“You think someone handed it to me? Is that what you think?” Gavin shook his head in disbelief. “You feel so sorry for yourself that you forgot were I came from.” His laughter held not even a sliver of humor. “You were there, man, when it all began for me. I am not the issue here. You are. What are you going to do?”
“How in the hell should I know?” George yelled, flinging the costly crystal glass into the fireplace. “I don’t even have enough money to buy the kid a stinking Christmas gift. If there hadn’t been gas in the car, I wouldn’t have made it back here.”
“If you want someone to feel sorry for you, keep looking. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
“You think I don’t know that?” George filled a new glass before he sat down on the sectional sofa. “Join me, I hate to drink alone.”
Gavin snapped. “You toss another glass into that fireplace and I promise you, you’re going next.”
“What do you want from me?”
“One thing. I want you to sign over your parental rights to Kyle over to me. I don’t want Kyle to go through what I went through. I want him to grow up knowing that if his father doesn’t care about him, it’s okay, because his older brother does.”
George slowly put his glass down on the coffee table. He was smiling when he said, “Okay, but it will cost you.”
Gavin glared at the man who fathered him for a long, tension-packed moment. “Cost me? What are you resurrecting? Slavery?”
“Very funny.” George leaned back, stretching his legs out in front of him. “You have something you want signed and you have something I definitely need. How about a trade?”
“You’re not getting another quarter out of me. I made that decision in September when you walked out on Kyle. So, Reynolds, if you need money I strongly suggest you look elsewhere.”
“No problem.” George quickly rose to his feet. “The boy’s going with me. I don’t want to ruin the kid’s holiday, so we’ll leave the day after Christmas.”
“Not likely. I’m the one with temporary custody, remember? Or have you forgotten that I had to go to court to get it? Did you even stop to wonder how in the hell I was going to enroll him in school or have him treated if there was a medical emergency?”
Gavin’s mouth tightened even more when he went on to say, “You walked out and didn’t look back until you were in need of a place to stay. That’s the only reason you came back. If you refuse to sign over full custody, make no mistake, you will be seeing me in court. Kyle’s future is worth fighting for.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“I’m dead serious. Kyle deserves to be happy, to grow up in a home with a brother who loves him.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting into.” George snickered.
“Like you know more than I do? Where were you when I was growing up? You weren’t around when I started school. You weren’t around to attend any of my elementary school assemblies or teacher conferences. My mother attended those alone.”
Gavin hadn’t expected to tell his father any of these things, but suddenly he couldn’t keep the old hurts inside any longer. “You weren’t there to see any of my junior high or high school games or track meets. Yeah, that’s right, I ran track back then. You sure as hell weren’t at my high school or college graduations.
“You think I want that for Kyle? No way. You sorry bastard, you didn’t attend my mother’s funeral. And she loved you to her dying day.”
Gavin struggled for a calm he didn’t feel. He was fighting the urge to go after his father with his fists. He prided himself on being a better man. He had to prove that to himself by hanging on to his temper.
Eventually he said, “My brother deserves better than I had it. And I plan to see that he gets it.”
“I never knew those things bothered you.”
“You never bothered to ask. Eloise Mathis was both mother and father to me. And she did a damn good job of it.” He admitted, “When I was little, I used to ask her why. Why didn’t my daddy love me?”
He swallowed the hurt that had never gone away. “She tried to assure me that you did love me, but I stopped believing. I finally realized she was protecting me from the truth.”
Gavin moved to stand in front of his father. “I remember asking you once why you were never around. I was about seven. Do you remember your answer?”
George cleared his throat. “How am I supposed to remember what happened when you were a kid? That was over twenty years ago. I don’t remember what I did last week.” He couldn’t meet his son’s unwavering gaze.
“Twenty-four years ago. I remember your exact words. ‘I don’t have time. Now you run along. I got business to keep track of.’” Determined to get his emotions under control, Gavin paused before he went on to say, “The business you were talking about was playing the ponies. It was always something to do with gambling. That was more important than me or my mother.”
“Look, I made a few mistakes—”
“A few? Try more than I can even count. The only time you bothered to show up for my sake was when I was drafted into the pros. You were there the day they cut the check, looking for your share. And because my mother loved you, I’ve always given you what you asked for.
“No more. Understand this, you lost your cash cow when you brought Kyle here and left him. Any money I would have given you will go to Kyle. I’ve set up a trust fund for him. His college is paid for. Whatever he needs to start his career will be there. And you can’t touch it. I’ve made sure of that.”
“What kind of man do you think I am?”
Gavin said candidly, “That’s the problem. I don’t know you at all. What’s worse, Kyle doesn’t know you either.”
He watched anger and resentment move across his father’s features, but he didn’t see regret or shame. If he had seen either one, he might have backed down.
“Yeah, I will admit I didn’t do all the things I should have for you. But with Kyle, you aren’t taking into consideration that it was his mother who turned his care over to her elderly aunt while he was still in elementary school. Then she got herself hooked on drugs and overdosed. When the aunt died earlier this year, I took him.”
“Because there was no one else but you,” Gavin said dryly.
“I took him in.”
“What does that change? Nothing.” Gavin went on to reveal, “If it weren’t for my high school coach and later Anna’s father, I wouldn’t know what it means to be a man. They showed me by example. A man takes care of his own. Always. Lester Prescott has always been available to his kids no matter what.” Gavin snapped, “Regardless of what Kyle’s mother did or didn’t do, still you are his father.”
“I took care of him.”
“Did you? It doesn’t look that way from where I’m standing.”
Both men were so focused on each other that neither noticed the boy standing in the doorway.
“For all I know, his drug addict bitch of a mother was—”
“Shut up! You shut the hell up!” Kyle hurled himself at his father with his fists clenched.
Gavin managed to catch him before he could let a fist fly. He whispered to his brother, “It’s going to be okay.”
“You heard what he said.” Kyle was shaking as tears flowed down his cheeks and he fought to free himself. “Let me go.”
“Not until you calm down.” Gavin ran a soothing hand over his brother’s slim shoulders. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks.”
“But he said…” Kyle wiped his face on a sleeve.
“I didn’t mean for you—”
Gavin cut in, “You’ve said enough.”
Whatever the older man was about to say, he stopped. He busied himself by draining his glass.
“Don’t you think you owe him an apology?” Gavin asked their father, his jaw so tight he could hardly speak to the man. Kyle wasn’t the only one furious.
“I’m sorry, son. I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”
“What’s going on?” Anna asked. The tension in the room was so thick it was palpable.
“Nothing worth repeating. Come on, bro. We both need some fresh air.”
Kyle nodded, turning to leave. He didn’t spare his father a backward glance as he headed toward the staircase.
“You don’t need to go up with me. I’m okay now.”
“Good. I’d hate to have to break his jaw.”
Kyle laughed. “I’d like to see that.”
Gavin put a hand on his brother’s arm, halting his progress. “He had no right to call your mother names. He’s angry because he lost at the casino and was taking it out on anyone willing to listen. I’m very sorry you heard it.”
Kyle nodded. “At least when you say you’re sorry, I know you mean it.” He took a deep breath before he said, “Gavin, he’s going to try to take me back. I know he will.”
“You’re right. He might try, but he won’t win. He has nowhere to take you. He no longer has that apartment in Dayton. I promise you, I’m going to do everything within my power to keep that from happening.”
26
When Gavin returned to the living room, he was relieved to see it empty. He was so angry that he didn’t trust himself not to go after his father. Scowling, he walked into his office and called his attorney.
Afterward, he found Anna working on her laptop at the desk in the kitchen. He didn’t even ask if she knew where his father had gone. He walked over and pulled her out of her chair and into his arms, taking comfort from her woman’s scent. He began telling her what had been said, all of it, including his own hurt and resentment.
“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.” She kissed his throat.
He nodded. Rather than being embarrassed by the lingering hurt, he was relieved to get it out in the open. There was no question that he trusted her completely.
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever I have to do to get his signature on that paper. If that means money, then I have to do it, although it will be very hard to swallow. How can I put Kyle through a custody trial?” Gavin sighed heavily. “He’s not strong enough emotionally to deal with all the garbage that is bound to come out during a trial. What if he had to testify against our father? I won’t put that kind of pressure on him, not unless there is no other way. You saw what happened when Reynolds let loose on Kyle’s mother.”
“I don’t blame Kyle for being upset. For what it’s worth, I agree with you. You have to protect your brother.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” He kissed her tenderly. “It helps knowing I have your support. Did you know that fool lost the entire twenty-five grand? I doubt he has enough left to play the nickel slots. Writing him a check will be like throwing good money after bad.”
“Gavin, if you do that, you know he will only come back for more a few months down the road.”
“There won’t be a next time. After he relinquishes his parental rights he will have nothing I want.” He brushed her lips with his kiss. “I’m sorry, but I can’t get away tonight. I have—”
“Shush, I know. Kyle needs you.”
“You’re not angry?”
“Of course not.” She slid her arms around his waist and gave him a squeeze. “But I should be going.”
“Let me get our coats. I’ll walk you to the cottage.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. I need a few of your good-night kisses. It’s the only way I’ll get any sleep tonight.”
“Look, man, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Prescott. Hell, I don’t want to know.”
“Then why bring it up?” Gavin frowned at Everett Long, the Lions’ offensive coordinator.
“You guys have been tight for too many years to let anything come between you, especially a woman, even if she is family.”
“You’re right, Long. It isn’t your problem.” A muscle jumped in Gavin’s jaw.
“It’ll be everyone’s business if you two don’t get it straightened out by game time. Nothing and I mean nothing is going to keep us from winning this one, and that includes you and Prescott.”
Suddenly a well-dressed man walked up to them. “You Mathis?”
Gavin paused barely a hundred yards from his van. “Yes?”
“I’m an associate of your old man’s,” the man said, glancing nervously over his shoulder.
Gavin turned to Everett, “Excuse me. I’ll see you tomorrow at the game.”
“He already feels badly because our relationship has caused such a rift in my family. He doesn’t need this too.”
“Your stubborn menfolks started this mess, not you or Gavin. Whichever way you and Gavin choose to conduct your lives is no one else’s concern. I still can’t get over that Thanksgiving fiasco.”
“Me neither, but that doesn’t change how Gavin feels or for that matter how I feel.” Anna pressed a hand over her heart. “I can’t forget that Gavin lost his best friend because of me.”
“Not because of you,” Janet insisted. “Gavin lost his friend because Wesley is plain stubborn. How does Kelli feel about all this?”
“About the same as my mother and I do. Oh, Janet. It’s such a mess.” She jumped to her feet and began restlessly moving around the room. “What am I going to do?”
“Tell Gavin the truth. If you don’t tell him, sooner or later he’s going to figure out how upset you are by all this.”
“Janet, I can’t. Things were bad enough that Wes, Ralph, and Devin decided that they didn’t want Gavin at our family Christmas dinner.” She threw her hands up. “The man has been included in all our family gatherings since I was a teenager.”
“That’s not right.”
“Absolutely not. I was so upset that I decided if Gavin isn’t welcome, then neither am I.”
“Oh, I bet your parents didn’t appreciate that.”
“You got that right. As far as I’m concerned, it can’t be helped.” Anna paused, then said, “Mama isn’t having it. She told my dad to fix it. So he came by to talk to me and Gavin. Daddy told Gavin that he was welcome. My parents want us all to be together on Christmas.”
“I always liked your dad.” Janet smiled.
“He’s a good man. If only it had stopped there.” Anna covered her face. “I have never been more embarrassed. Daddy didn’t bite his tongue. He came right out with it. He doesn’t like our living arrangement and believes that if Gavin wants me he should marry me.”
“Honey, your dad is an old-fashioned kind of guy. Accept it.”
“Daddy practically came out and insisted that Gavin marry me or leave me alone.”
Janet shook her head. “You’ve had a tough week.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Out of the blue Gavin’s father showed up. Poor Kyle is scared that he’s going to take him with him when he leaves.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wish I was. Gavin has enough to deal with without me adding more problems by telling him that I’m in love with him. Believe me, this isn’t the right time for a confession.”
“Anna, how long do you honestly think you’re going to be able to keep it from him?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Gavin cares for me. It’s enough. I don’t want him to ask me to marry him because he feels guilty.”
Janet wondered aloud, “Do you think he would?”
“No, but that doesn’t change the fact that my father has been more of an influence on him than George Reynolds has. Or that he believes marriage is not for him. I have no choice but to accept that. He has been honest with me from the first. The problem is mine, not his.”
Janet didn’t look convinced but she reassured, “Gavin cares for you. And for now I think you should concentrate on nothing more than being happy. I say forget your family and his father. Just enjoy being together.”
Anna gave her a hug. “Thank you. I feel so much better. Maybe all I needed was to talk about it, get it out.”
“You’re welcome. This will be your first Christmas as a couple. Romantic dinner, late at night. Sounds good to me.”
“Sounds ideal. Even though my mother will be very upset if I don’t show my face on Christmas, she will be even more upset if my brothers and cousin get into another fight with Gavin.”
“I don’t envy you having to tell your mother.”
“I know. We’re going Christmas shopping on Friday. I’ll tell her then.”
George came in with a heavy scowl on his face later that evening. Kyle was cleaning the kitchen, while Gavin and Anna were still at the table enjoying a cup of coffee.
“Would you care for some dinner?” Anna asked.
“Hell no. What I need is a damn drink.”
Anna and Gavin exchanged a look.
“I don’t know what’s wrong but I know you have no right to swear at Anna,” Gavin snapped.
George sent Anna an impatient look, yet offered a hasty apology and headed down the hall.
“What’s with him?” Kyle went back to filling the dishwasher.
“I don’t have a clue. But I suppose I’d better go find out.”
Kyle caught his brother’s arm. “You don’t think he’s changed his mind about signing, do you?”
“No, bro. My guess is he’s lost at the casino.” Gavin said to Anna, “Great dinner, sweetheart,” before he left and, disappeared down the central hallway.
He found George in the living room, helping himself to Gavin’s stock of Scotch. “What set you off?” Gavin leaned a shoulder against the door jam.
After swearing long and hard, George drained his glass. “Nothing to talk about. It’s all gone.”
“What’s all gone?”
“Twenty-five grand, that’s what.”
“You lost it all?” Gavin said incredulously. “How? What, you didn’t have sense enough to stop when you saw your luck was changing?”
“It’s gone,” was all George said as he refilled his glass.
Gavin straightened, swallowing down the “I told you so” retort rising in his throat. “Drinking yourself into a stupor isn’t going to change anything.”
“It’s easy for you to say. Look at all this. Everywhere I look shouts money with capital letters.”
“You think someone handed it to me? Is that what you think?” Gavin shook his head in disbelief. “You feel so sorry for yourself that you forgot were I came from.” His laughter held not even a sliver of humor. “You were there, man, when it all began for me. I am not the issue here. You are. What are you going to do?”
“How in the hell should I know?” George yelled, flinging the costly crystal glass into the fireplace. “I don’t even have enough money to buy the kid a stinking Christmas gift. If there hadn’t been gas in the car, I wouldn’t have made it back here.”
“If you want someone to feel sorry for you, keep looking. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
“You think I don’t know that?” George filled a new glass before he sat down on the sectional sofa. “Join me, I hate to drink alone.”
Gavin snapped. “You toss another glass into that fireplace and I promise you, you’re going next.”
“What do you want from me?”
“One thing. I want you to sign over your parental rights to Kyle over to me. I don’t want Kyle to go through what I went through. I want him to grow up knowing that if his father doesn’t care about him, it’s okay, because his older brother does.”
George slowly put his glass down on the coffee table. He was smiling when he said, “Okay, but it will cost you.”
Gavin glared at the man who fathered him for a long, tension-packed moment. “Cost me? What are you resurrecting? Slavery?”
“Very funny.” George leaned back, stretching his legs out in front of him. “You have something you want signed and you have something I definitely need. How about a trade?”
“You’re not getting another quarter out of me. I made that decision in September when you walked out on Kyle. So, Reynolds, if you need money I strongly suggest you look elsewhere.”
“No problem.” George quickly rose to his feet. “The boy’s going with me. I don’t want to ruin the kid’s holiday, so we’ll leave the day after Christmas.”
“Not likely. I’m the one with temporary custody, remember? Or have you forgotten that I had to go to court to get it? Did you even stop to wonder how in the hell I was going to enroll him in school or have him treated if there was a medical emergency?”
Gavin’s mouth tightened even more when he went on to say, “You walked out and didn’t look back until you were in need of a place to stay. That’s the only reason you came back. If you refuse to sign over full custody, make no mistake, you will be seeing me in court. Kyle’s future is worth fighting for.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“I’m dead serious. Kyle deserves to be happy, to grow up in a home with a brother who loves him.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting into.” George snickered.
“Like you know more than I do? Where were you when I was growing up? You weren’t around when I started school. You weren’t around to attend any of my elementary school assemblies or teacher conferences. My mother attended those alone.”
Gavin hadn’t expected to tell his father any of these things, but suddenly he couldn’t keep the old hurts inside any longer. “You weren’t there to see any of my junior high or high school games or track meets. Yeah, that’s right, I ran track back then. You sure as hell weren’t at my high school or college graduations.
“You think I want that for Kyle? No way. You sorry bastard, you didn’t attend my mother’s funeral. And she loved you to her dying day.”
Gavin struggled for a calm he didn’t feel. He was fighting the urge to go after his father with his fists. He prided himself on being a better man. He had to prove that to himself by hanging on to his temper.
Eventually he said, “My brother deserves better than I had it. And I plan to see that he gets it.”
“I never knew those things bothered you.”
“You never bothered to ask. Eloise Mathis was both mother and father to me. And she did a damn good job of it.” He admitted, “When I was little, I used to ask her why. Why didn’t my daddy love me?”
He swallowed the hurt that had never gone away. “She tried to assure me that you did love me, but I stopped believing. I finally realized she was protecting me from the truth.”
Gavin moved to stand in front of his father. “I remember asking you once why you were never around. I was about seven. Do you remember your answer?”
George cleared his throat. “How am I supposed to remember what happened when you were a kid? That was over twenty years ago. I don’t remember what I did last week.” He couldn’t meet his son’s unwavering gaze.
“Twenty-four years ago. I remember your exact words. ‘I don’t have time. Now you run along. I got business to keep track of.’” Determined to get his emotions under control, Gavin paused before he went on to say, “The business you were talking about was playing the ponies. It was always something to do with gambling. That was more important than me or my mother.”
“Look, I made a few mistakes—”
“A few? Try more than I can even count. The only time you bothered to show up for my sake was when I was drafted into the pros. You were there the day they cut the check, looking for your share. And because my mother loved you, I’ve always given you what you asked for.
“No more. Understand this, you lost your cash cow when you brought Kyle here and left him. Any money I would have given you will go to Kyle. I’ve set up a trust fund for him. His college is paid for. Whatever he needs to start his career will be there. And you can’t touch it. I’ve made sure of that.”
“What kind of man do you think I am?”
Gavin said candidly, “That’s the problem. I don’t know you at all. What’s worse, Kyle doesn’t know you either.”
He watched anger and resentment move across his father’s features, but he didn’t see regret or shame. If he had seen either one, he might have backed down.
“Yeah, I will admit I didn’t do all the things I should have for you. But with Kyle, you aren’t taking into consideration that it was his mother who turned his care over to her elderly aunt while he was still in elementary school. Then she got herself hooked on drugs and overdosed. When the aunt died earlier this year, I took him.”
“Because there was no one else but you,” Gavin said dryly.
“I took him in.”
“What does that change? Nothing.” Gavin went on to reveal, “If it weren’t for my high school coach and later Anna’s father, I wouldn’t know what it means to be a man. They showed me by example. A man takes care of his own. Always. Lester Prescott has always been available to his kids no matter what.” Gavin snapped, “Regardless of what Kyle’s mother did or didn’t do, still you are his father.”
“I took care of him.”
“Did you? It doesn’t look that way from where I’m standing.”
Both men were so focused on each other that neither noticed the boy standing in the doorway.
“For all I know, his drug addict bitch of a mother was—”
“Shut up! You shut the hell up!” Kyle hurled himself at his father with his fists clenched.
Gavin managed to catch him before he could let a fist fly. He whispered to his brother, “It’s going to be okay.”
“You heard what he said.” Kyle was shaking as tears flowed down his cheeks and he fought to free himself. “Let me go.”
“Not until you calm down.” Gavin ran a soothing hand over his brother’s slim shoulders. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks.”
“But he said…” Kyle wiped his face on a sleeve.
“I didn’t mean for you—”
Gavin cut in, “You’ve said enough.”
Whatever the older man was about to say, he stopped. He busied himself by draining his glass.
“Don’t you think you owe him an apology?” Gavin asked their father, his jaw so tight he could hardly speak to the man. Kyle wasn’t the only one furious.
“I’m sorry, son. I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”
“What’s going on?” Anna asked. The tension in the room was so thick it was palpable.
“Nothing worth repeating. Come on, bro. We both need some fresh air.”
Kyle nodded, turning to leave. He didn’t spare his father a backward glance as he headed toward the staircase.
“You don’t need to go up with me. I’m okay now.”
“Good. I’d hate to have to break his jaw.”
Kyle laughed. “I’d like to see that.”
Gavin put a hand on his brother’s arm, halting his progress. “He had no right to call your mother names. He’s angry because he lost at the casino and was taking it out on anyone willing to listen. I’m very sorry you heard it.”
Kyle nodded. “At least when you say you’re sorry, I know you mean it.” He took a deep breath before he said, “Gavin, he’s going to try to take me back. I know he will.”
“You’re right. He might try, but he won’t win. He has nowhere to take you. He no longer has that apartment in Dayton. I promise you, I’m going to do everything within my power to keep that from happening.”
26
When Gavin returned to the living room, he was relieved to see it empty. He was so angry that he didn’t trust himself not to go after his father. Scowling, he walked into his office and called his attorney.
Afterward, he found Anna working on her laptop at the desk in the kitchen. He didn’t even ask if she knew where his father had gone. He walked over and pulled her out of her chair and into his arms, taking comfort from her woman’s scent. He began telling her what had been said, all of it, including his own hurt and resentment.
“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.” She kissed his throat.
He nodded. Rather than being embarrassed by the lingering hurt, he was relieved to get it out in the open. There was no question that he trusted her completely.
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever I have to do to get his signature on that paper. If that means money, then I have to do it, although it will be very hard to swallow. How can I put Kyle through a custody trial?” Gavin sighed heavily. “He’s not strong enough emotionally to deal with all the garbage that is bound to come out during a trial. What if he had to testify against our father? I won’t put that kind of pressure on him, not unless there is no other way. You saw what happened when Reynolds let loose on Kyle’s mother.”
“I don’t blame Kyle for being upset. For what it’s worth, I agree with you. You have to protect your brother.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” He kissed her tenderly. “It helps knowing I have your support. Did you know that fool lost the entire twenty-five grand? I doubt he has enough left to play the nickel slots. Writing him a check will be like throwing good money after bad.”
“Gavin, if you do that, you know he will only come back for more a few months down the road.”
“There won’t be a next time. After he relinquishes his parental rights he will have nothing I want.” He brushed her lips with his kiss. “I’m sorry, but I can’t get away tonight. I have—”
“Shush, I know. Kyle needs you.”
“You’re not angry?”
“Of course not.” She slid her arms around his waist and gave him a squeeze. “But I should be going.”
“Let me get our coats. I’ll walk you to the cottage.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. I need a few of your good-night kisses. It’s the only way I’ll get any sleep tonight.”
“Look, man, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Prescott. Hell, I don’t want to know.”
“Then why bring it up?” Gavin frowned at Everett Long, the Lions’ offensive coordinator.
“You guys have been tight for too many years to let anything come between you, especially a woman, even if she is family.”
“You’re right, Long. It isn’t your problem.” A muscle jumped in Gavin’s jaw.
“It’ll be everyone’s business if you two don’t get it straightened out by game time. Nothing and I mean nothing is going to keep us from winning this one, and that includes you and Prescott.”
Suddenly a well-dressed man walked up to them. “You Mathis?”
Gavin paused barely a hundred yards from his van. “Yes?”
“I’m an associate of your old man’s,” the man said, glancing nervously over his shoulder.
Gavin turned to Everett, “Excuse me. I’ll see you tomorrow at the game.”
