Montana Hero (29 page)

K
at was certain
she’d never been more nervous in her life. Even the mysterious unknown of childbirth didn’t compare to the what-ifs racing through her mind as she prepared to meet the man who almost certainly was her father.

Roger Zabrinski was due to arrive at the Bozeman airport at six that evening. He’d booked a flight out of LAX immediately after Kat emailed him her willingness to meet.

In the thirty-six hours since Flynn’s bombshell revelation, Kat had functioned in a state of perpetual shock. Thanks to Skype, she knew Roger’s face and general appearance. Silver hair, longer and more fashionable than his older brother’s buzz cut. More lines around his eyes and mouth, though. The California sun and too many years of fast living, she assumed.

Roger had been frank about his poor choices and dependency problems. “I’ve been clean and sober since 1997,” he said. “A woman I used to date ODed alone, in her apartment. They didn’t discover her body for a week. She had me down as next-of-kin, so I had to ID the body. I went from the morgue to a recovery program, and I’ve never regretted it for a minute.”

He created a private folder in an online sharing service, which he’d immediately filled with photos of his life, accolades and movie star acquaintances. He included several dozen scanned images of her mother. A beautiful, sexy ingénue who obviously was madly in love with her equally handsome boyfriend.

“She looks so happy. I don’t remember ever seeing her this alive and engaged,” Kat admitted the last time they spoke.

He told her it nearly killed him to wait until Flynn broke the news. “I wanted to pick up the phone and call you immediately, but Flynn made me understand what a shock this revelation was going to be. He’s a great guy. You’re a lucky girl.”

Lucky?
Kat hadn’t known what to say to that so she’d changed the subject. “Have you told your family?”

“Not yet,” Roger admitted. “I wanted some time with you all to myself. Selfish, I know, but I missed out on your whole life, so I figured a couple of days wouldn’t matter.”

Kat understood. She’d taken sick leave to hibernate with Brady while he awaited the doctor’s okay to return to school.

“Plus,” Roger told her, “once I tell Robert, the Zabrinski circus will erupt in full force. I’ll bring you some of my super-duper antioxidant vitamins. Believe me, you’ll need them. I speak from experience.”

Kat had been touched by his concern and by the fact he wanted time with her without his family’s involvement. “I told you how Brady sprang the news about Robert being his grandfather, right?”

Lately, she’d had so much on her mind she couldn’t remember who she told what.
A sign of what was to come? No. Not yet. Please, God, not yet.

“I wish Robert had thought to call me. I might have put two and two together sooner. But no one is more of a stiff-neck prude than Bobby Z.” His laugh was so Brady-like. “He hates it when I call him that. I can’t wait to give my grandson a hug. I love him already for shaking my big brother out of his complacent little niche.”

Eventually, she’d given in to Brady’s pleas to speak with his “almost” grandpa online. Kat had hovered in the background, listening, hoping, even snickering behind her hand once or twice. The only thing missing? Flynn wasn’t there to share the moment with her.

She’d tried calling him a dozen or more times, but he wasn’t picking up. Nor had he deigned to return any of her messages. It was like he’d fallen off the face of the earth or gone into hiding—something that sounded very un-Flynn-like.

“Well, enough of that bull crap,” she thought as she watched her son dash toward his classroom.

With his doctor’s blessing, she’d dropped Brady at school early so he could have breakfast with his new BFF—Chloe Zabrinski. “We’re just friends, Mom,” he’d stressed when he told Kat who he was meeting for breakfast. “We’re almost cousins, you know.”

“Okay, but remember your promise to Roger. He wants to be the one to tell his family.”

Brady had rolled his eyes. “I know, Mom. Chloe’s going to tell me what people are saying about me. Some kids think I got lost on purpose.”

The thought had crossed Kat’s mind, too, but she’d never tell him that.

Instead of returning home to her laundry and cleaning, she drove to Bailey Jenkins’s Western Bling, the quaint little shotgun-style house just across from the railroad tracks, where she’d spent one of the most wonderful nights of recent memory.

No Flynn. Damn. She hadn’t wanted to bring their personal business to the SAR office, but what choice did she have?

Unfortunately, his truck wasn’t in the parking lot at work, either. She started to back out but a loud honk made her slam on the brakes. Heart jumping from the rush of adrenaline, she looked in her rearview mirror. Janet.

Janet had plenty of room to go around Kat’s car, but instead she pulled abreast and lowered her passenger side window. “Got a minute?”

Kat faked a smile. “Sure.” Maybe Janet could give her a hint about Flynn’s whereabouts.

No such luck. All Janet wanted to hear was whether or not Kat had spoken with Roger Zabrinski. “Yes, thanks to you. And Flynn. Do you know where he is?”

“Not really. Said he had some personal matters to take care of. Have you tried his brother?”

Kat tapped her forehead.
Duh.
Flynn wouldn’t go anywhere without telling Ryker. Or his best friends, either.

Happily, Janet was generous about sharing everyone’s contact numbers. Before leaving the parking lot, Kat tapped Ryker’s number and waited for the call to go through.

Unfortunately, Ryker and Mia were in Helena. “We drove up yesterday and spent the night in Austen’s apartment. I haven’t talked to Flynn in a couple of days. The last thing he said was he’d be wallowing in irony. Whatever that means.”

Irony?

She glanced at her watch. Time was zipping by.

Zip. The zip line.

She could drive up and look around. If she found Justin, she’d beg him to get a message to Flynn. Screw pride. If they asked why, she’d tell them the truth. “I love Flynn. I wish I could marry him and live happily-ever-after, but there’s a good chance that will never happen for me. Why take him down with me?”

Once she hit the highway, she had to fight to keep the speedometer at fifty-five.
Focus. Don’t get ahead of yourself.
How often did she caution Brady to stay in the moment and not miss something important?

From the corner of her eye she saw a local realtor’s sign sporting a big red
SOLD
banner. She remembered the day she and Brady went with him to look at a house. Flynn had said something about a single guy looking to buy a single family home reeking of irony.

A tingle of possibility blossomed in her chest as she pulled over. Since there wasn’t any traffic, she backed up and called the number on the sign.

“Hi. This is Kat Robinson at SAR. My boss, Flynn Bensen, isn’t answering his phone and we have a small emergency. I’d like to send someone to…” A minute later, she had the address of—and directions to—Flynn’s newly purchased home.

Her hands trembled slightly on the steering wheel as she made a right turn on a narrow winding road that followed a small feeder creek. The land was like much of the land around Marietta—relatively flat at first glance, but gently undulating when you took a closer look. Fences segregated cattle in some areas, and plowed fields in other spots.

At the next corner, she turned left and there it was—the driveway leading to a charming, older ranch-style house planted on a slight rise, lovingly nestled in a cluster of mature trees. And backed up to the side door was Flynn’s truck.

She pulled alongside the truck and hopped out of her car. Without giving herself a chance to second-guess her decision, she dashed up the three wide, concrete steps to the front door.

“Hello. Anyone home?”

She didn’t wait for an answer before stepping inside. Oak floors, tall ceilings, recessed lighting and a knock-your-socks-off view were the first impressions that crashed through her mind as she called out, “Flynn? It’s me, Kat. May I come in?”

Flynn stepped out of the kitchen into the great room—a glass in one hand, a dishtowel in the other. In stocking feet and faded jeans with a grungy red and gray plaid flannel shirt and his hair a straight-from-bed mess, he looked like a poster boy for Montana Life magazine. Her heart flip-flopped and her breasts tightened in that I-need-him-to-make-love-with-me-now way she’d come to know.

Wanton. Crazy. They hadn’t spoken in nearly two whole days. He blamed her for breaking his heart.

But none of that mattered. She wanted him in a way she knew would be imprinted on her soul for all time. He was the one in the same way Roger never stopped loving her mother.

“The house has a sold sign on it. Yours, I assume from the packing boxes.”

“Mine.” He held out his hands, gesturing at the openness. “Escrow closed this morning, so I started hauling stuff out of storage. I’m not in a big rush. Bailey said to take my time moving, but you know how it is. You find something that feels right to you and you just want to make it your own.”

Subtle reminder? Or pointed hint at how much she’d hurt him?

“You’re talking to Brady’s mother, remember? I know all about immediate gratification.”

She closed the door, kicked off her boots near his and walked toward him. “Don’t you check your messages? I left about forty of them.”

He glanced toward his phone resting on the counter. She could picture three or four stools pulled up to it while Flynn or…somebody…worked in the kitchen. “I told the office I needed a couple of personal days.”

“So, you did or didn’t see my emails, texts and voice messages?”

“I did,” he admitted, the look in his eyes giving away nothing. “I don’t want your apologies, Katherine. I married one woman for the wrong reasons, and I don’t plan to do it again.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why’d you marry her? Darla, right? Justin mentioned her name.”

He returned to the kitchen to finish his task. She could see new shelf liner—the expensive kind she liked—on all of the shelves in the open cabinets. He set the dry glass upside down on the bottom shelf and picked up another glass from the sink. “When I met Darla, I told people she taught me to believe in love-at-first-sight. By the time we finally divorced, I wasn’t sure I even believed in love, period.” He looked over his shoulder. “Until I met you.”

“What makes you think we’d do any better for the long-term?”

“Because you don’t care about all the trappings. You care about the people in your life—even the ones you barely know, like Molly. That was the moment I realized you might be the one. Even after dealing with your mother for years, you felt only compassion for Molly. You went to help, instead of running in the other direction. That’s a firefighter’s response, Katherine.”

“You really think I’m brave? You’re wrong. I’m scared spitless. I’m terrified that I’m going to wind up just like my mother.”

She held up a hand to keep him from trying to reassure her or whatever he was going to say. “Not for my own sake. Once the patient gets to a certain point in the disease’s progression, they don’t know how big a life they lost. But the people who loved them can’t forget, and that loss never stops hurting.”

He set his towel aside and walked to her. “No furniture, yet, but the carpet in the living room is new.”

They walked through the empty dining room, which shared a spectacular view with the great room, and sat, side-by-side, backs resting against the wall.

“Mom isn’t the first person in my family to die from Alzheimer’s, Flynn. My grandmother passed away from complications of the disease when I was eleven. She lived with us until the last year of her life, when she turned combative and abusive. It was terrifying to watch. Mom was devastated to have to put Grandma in a facility, but she had no choice. And I knew exactly how that felt when I had to make the same decision.”

He put an arm across her shoulders and pulled her tight to his side. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. Two in a row sounds like pretty bad odds, doesn’t it?”

His frown was so filled with compassion. She knew his heart was breaking for her. “Do they know for a fact the disease is genetic?”

“Not exactly. But the tendency seems to run in certain families. The way I understand it, we all inherit some form of the APOE gene from each parent. People who get that gene with a slight variation—the APOE-e4—run a higher risk of developing the disease at a younger age.”

“Have you had genetic testing?”

She shook her head. “I think in the back of my mind I thought if I could find my birth father, and nobody in his family ever had it…dumb, huh? Pure denial.”

“Human.” He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Have you decided Roger’s your dad?”

“I think so. He’s bringing a DNA kit with him. He wants me to do the swab in his cheek. Something in the symbolism makes sense to him.”

They didn’t speak for a few moments, which gave Kat time to work up the courage to ask, “If I get tested for the high risk gene and my report comes back as a low threat, do you think you might be interested in dating?”

He pulled back enough to look at her. “Dating?” His expression went tender—the way she’d seen him explain something to Brady. “Well, the thing is, when I said I love you, Katherine, I meant I
love
you. I’m no expert on love, but I know what love isn’t. I know this sounds harsh, and impulsive, but where you’re concerned, it’s all or nothing for me.”

“All? As in marriage? Kids?”

He leaned down and kissed her. “You have a lot on your plate at the moment, including a new father and a very large family. And I’ve got a house. So, how ’bout we slow things down and see what happens?”

She looked at her watch. She knew one thing she wanted to happen. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Slow is for sissies.”

*