Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) (5 page)

“Travis . . .” Selena brushed hair out of her eyes.

Oliver’s brother wore a deplorably wrinkled version of the starched shirt and dark navy pants that made up his sheriff’s department uniform. He looked rumpled and in need of a hug. But he was smiling down at Selena, same as every other time he’d seen her around town.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I didn’t know you were behind me. Been bouncin’ off things all morning. Stuff jumping off practically every table I passed at school. It’s been a bit crazed, ever since Camille’s and my morning doughnut dash. And I . . .”

Good God. She was babbling. Lines of friendly confusion wrinkled Travis’s forehead and ratcheted up his blond, boy-next-door good looks.

“I need to get back to school,” she said.

“Not yet you don’t.” Marsha pushed Selena toward Oliver’s brother. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”

At Selena’s scowl, Marsha’s eyebrow shot up again.

“Five minutes, my dear.” Marsha’s voice had shifted into the same
my word is law
tone that kept her kids in line. “You’ve been running from us long enough. You want to help Joe and me. Then break the ice with Oliver and our family. My boy being back isn’t becoming another reason why we never see you and that beautiful child of yours.”

Marsha disappeared into her husband’s room.

“Make yourself comfortable, darlin’.” Travis shot her a wickedly
smooth Southern smile. “No one says no to Mom once she makes up her mind.”

Selena gave him her best
puh-lease
glare. She’d been immune to his charm since they’d been teenagers and he’d harmlessly flirted with her once or twice, admitting later that he’d done it only to get a rise out of Oliver. But she was also a realist. Marsha wanted Selena and Oliver to talk. Likely as a distraction from the helpless feeling of watching the love of Marsha’s life suffer in a hospital bed.

What were the chances of the woman turning the idea loose until she’d had her way?

“Five minutes.” Selena rolled her eyes.

Five minutes followed immediately by her avoiding the entire Dixon family again, at least until Oliver was good and gone.

Chapter Four

“Computers?” Oliver’s dad was beaming.

Joe also had an intimidating array of tubes and wires coming out of him, hooked up to a roomful of equipment. The hearty, indomitable man Oliver remembered appeared anything
but
indestructible now.

“I make computers do what my clients want them to do,” Oliver said, keeping his shock at Joe’s weakened state to himself.

His dad hadn’t wanted to talk about himself or the past any more than Marsha had. She’d hurried Oliver into Joe’s CICU room, and Oliver’s dad had instantly insisted on a recap of Oliver’s life since he’d been gone. Marsha had slipped away to give them some time alone.

“It takes you all over the world?” Joe asked.

A man could get addicted to hearing the growing wonder in his voice, like a kid opening presents on Christmas morning.

“Wherever they’re paying the most,” Oliver said.

“Wherever they need the best?”

“Something like that.”

“Tell me everything. Not that I’ll understand much of any of it.” Joe coughed out a soft laugh and winced at the pain in his chest.

Everything
. . .

Not the kind of everything, Oliver warned himself, that would unnecessarily worry either of his parents.

“I reengineer systems and software other people can’t handle. It’s crisis work, usually at the eleventh hour for clients who can’t afford for things to stay broken any longer. I untangle whatever mess they’ve made trying to avoid paying a professional problem-solver who charges what I do. I straighten things out, good as new. Better, usually.”

Oliver huffed out his own laugh. He sounded like the kind of PR-pimped-out jerks he avoided at corporate parties. The walking billboard types, touting their brilliance to whoever’d listen. Oliver’s work spoke for itself. He was already on the short list of the corporate officers who spent a fortune on damage control. That’s all that mattered. Usually. But this was Joe, with pride shining in his eyes . . .

It was a crazy perfect moment.

“Any type of company?” his dad asked.

“I’m wily that way.” Oliver winked, when in actuality he’d been called a con man by more than a few of the competitors he regularly finessed contracts away from. Xan Coulter in particular.

She’d made sure to e-mail him that morning during his predawn pilgrimage to Chandlerville. She’d closed the Seattle contract last night, after his less-than-convincing pitch. A rare enough outcome that she’d wanted to know if he was okay.

“But no college?” Joe asked.

Oliver squeezed his dad’s hand.

A formal education was what his foster parents hoped all
their kids would try for. Kids who aged out of the system often weren’t prepared for or didn’t see the point of going to college. Too much of life had landed on them at too young an age, making it harder to believe in things like going for your dreams. Marsha and Joe were having none of that.

“I did tech school for a while,” Oliver said. “Scraped my way through, busting it at part-time jobs to make tuition. Then I realized I was pretty much better at what I was doing than my professors.”

“Computers were always your thing. They were all you wanted to do, whatever class you were in”—Joe coughed around another soft laugh—“on the rare occasions that you actually found your way to class.”

Oliver wanted to hug his dad and hold on to the moment. He wanted to go back and better appreciate every day he’d had his parents’ unconditional support in his teenage life.

“I’ve been lucky,” he said. “My first real client paid me crap in return for giving me a shot. The company had contacts everywhere. Now corporations part with a chunk of their bottom line to have me reengineer the communication and data-sharing nightmare that modern cloud computing can make out of business solutions.”

“You’ve worked your ass off making your life happen. That’s determination, not luck.” Joe pointed with his free hand for emphasis. “Your mother and I always knew you’d figure out how to put being so obstinate to good use.”

Oliver grinned, the memories bittersweet. “I was a piece of work, wasn’t I?”

“You were finding your way.”

“Listen, Dad, I’m sor—”

“Don’t you say sorry to me.” Joe sounded disappointed for the first time. “You were young and making the mistakes young people
have to make. Do you think I regret a single thing that’s happened, when I look at the man you’ve become? What you’ve done with your life, what you’ve done for our family, working as hard as you have—it’s a miracle. I won’t have you apologizing for that.”

Oliver shook his head but kept his peace. His dad’s praise was everything he’d wanted. And now that he had it, it only made him want more. He got a grip and shrugged. “I solve problems. Wrangle them into submission. Most messes want to be figured out. You just have to dig under the surface, find a place to grab hold, and get to work. The rest falls into place if you keep pushing and don’t give up.”

It was the mother of oversimplifications. His client schedule on a typical day was loosely organized chaos. Xan Coulter had been hammering at him about partnering up: sharing project loads;
not
working himself into an early grave; maybe even having a shot at a personal life. Which he clearly didn’t, if the parade of women he’d torched short-lived relationships with—including Xan—was any indication. And then there was his burnout, spring of last year.

Oliver would have given anything to tell his dad about all of it. Get his advice. But not today. Not ever.
Not
his parents’ problem.

“You’ve done a lot of good with the money you’ve made,” Joe insisted. “There’s so much your mother and I couldn’t have given the kids without you. Extra school supplies and field trips and computers at the house, vacations for the family, even presents at Christmastime. Tuition for Bethany at the community college after she gave up her scholarship to art school. Specialized therapy the state can’t cover because Family Services is forever tightening their budget. My salary’s stretched to the breaking point just covering the everyday.”

“I’m glad, Dad.” So glad, it was downright embarrassing.

“But we’d have been just as proud of you, with or without the money you make.” Joe pointed his finger again. “Because you
remembered your family. You still wanted to make a difference here—even if being with us is still hard for you. That’s worth a hundred times more to your mother and me than the fortune you’ve sent home.”

“It’s not that it’s hard . . .” Oliver shook his head, wondering how to say what he wanted to say now that he had the chance, without worrying his parents with things that he could deal with on his own. “It’s just that—”

Marsha appeared beside the bed. “Travis is back from grabbing a bite downstairs.”

Her touch on Oliver’s arm felt even better than the hug she’d given him when he’d first gotten there.

“Go spend a little more time with your brother.” Her voice was breezy and light. Her smile was the genuine article. But none of it erased the worry from her eyes. “Let me get this troublemaker to sleep a little.”

“Trouble is your favorite thing about me.” Joe grinned at his college sweetheart. “And what makes you think I’m going to be able to sleep now that our boy is home?”

Oliver inhaled around the desperate love he felt for these two, dreading already the reality of walking away again. Marsha was at her strongest when life threw its trickiest curveballs. Whatever she had to do, it got done. He’d admired that about her even when he’d been an f’ed-up kid.

You’ll be fine, son,
she’d said to him his last night in Chandlerville.
You’ll make this work. And you’ll be back.

Joe had just brought him home from county lockup—free of charges for wrapping the family van around a tree in a drunken stupor. But the damage had been done. Marsha had packed the few things Oliver owned outright in Joe’s old backpack from when he’d gone to college at the University of Georgia. She’d met
Oliver and Joe at the door: Oliver hung over, Joe grimly worried and ominously silent the entire ride home. Marsha had hugged Oliver, and he’d known it was over. For the first time since losing his birth mother he’d been truly terrified.

It was time for him to figure out if he wanted to self-destruct or make a life for himself. And he was going to have to take the next step on his own.

I know this is hard,
Marsha had said, her voice strong as she clung to him.
But I have faith in you. And we’ll be here. We’re your family, Oliver. We’ll always be here for you . . .

Her resilience, her belief that life’s hardest struggles could make you stronger, was the constant he’d circled back to most over the years. She’d had confidence in him, even when he’d been at his worst. Now she was just as determined that Joe would get better. Eyes open, arms wide, convincing everyone else to fight a little harder than they thought they could, she was going to will Joe’s complete recovery into reality. And Oliver would do his level best to help her.

Joe was studying him with his uncanny ability to see more of people than they often wanted to be seen. “You’ll do it?”

Oliver’s mom glanced between the two of them. “Do what?”

“The house,” Joe explained. “The kids. Teddy.”

“No . . .” She shook her head. “I can take care of—”

“You’re going to take care of yourself before you end up being admitted, too.” Joe held tight to her hand when she would have pulled away. Oliver stood and let his dad tug Marsha down to sit beside him. “You’re already exhausted. You haven’t left the hospital since we got here. Dru can bring you some things from the house to make you more comfortable. Oliver will take the lead with the kids, at least until I’m on the mend enough for you to divide your time better.”

“But Teddy’s just a baby,” she said. “And Family Services—”

“Oliver helping will show the county that things are still stable. Dru and Travis can shift stuff around at their jobs only so much. Oliver’s between contracts, right?”

Oliver nodded, feeling as if a noose were cinching a tad tighter around his neck.