Sparking the Fire (35 page)

“You go on in, too.”

“And leave you to marinate in your guilt?”

“I'm not—” He started over. “She's my responsibility and tonight I screwed up.”

“You can't monitor her 24/7, Wyatt. She's surrounded by people who love her, but she's a kid and will still make dumb choices. Tonight, she made up for it with a good choice. She called someone.”

“She called you.” Another bitter accusation, but this one tasted all wrong. He knew Molly and Roni had been getting close. He loved that they were, so he had no right to go all sad panda now.

“She's terrified of disappointing everyone, but especially you. Maybe this summer started out with different intentions, but she's been getting closer to all of you. And with what she went through when she was sick and that piece of crap she thought was her dad, the idea that you might abandon her is the scariest thing she can imagine.”

He knew that. He'd lived with that fear his entire childhood, even years after being taken in by the Dempseys. He wasn't funny like Gage or Beck. He didn't wear his heart on his sleeve like Luke or Alex. He was the stutterer in the shadows, the odd one out, nothing to tie him to the Dempseys but his desperation to belong.

It had taken a while to figure out that their love for him wasn't dependent on his performance. Surely Roni knew that their love was unconditional. No need to win it, she was already in it.

Each of them would die for her.

Which got him thinking of who else he might die for, and the danger she'd put herself in tonight.

“You should have called me.” But the words sounded less harsh than in his head.

“It was a split-second decision, Wyatt. You were thirty minutes away and I was ten. By the time you got there, it could have been too late. So how did you even know where she was?”

He got out of the truck and scooted around to the other side to open it, then pulled Molly down and into his arms.

“Darcy called me at the bar to ask if Roni was feeling better. She'd bailed on hanging with her and Beck because she claimed she was sick. I've got a tracker on her phone. When I got there and found you there, too . . . well, damn. Won't forget it.”

“What?”

“All five-four of badass Molly Cade fronting with those pissants.”

“No fronting about it. I meant every word.”

She did. This pint-sized beauty with the warrior heart too big for her chest put herself in the line of fire for the one person who meant more to Wyatt than anything.

“Don't like that you had to do that. It was dumb and brave and crazy. That's my girl you took care of and that goes a long way with me.”

He framed her face in his hands and kissed her, pouring his frustration and need into it. Maybe more. His wishes that he was a better man. The best uncle for Roni, the right guy for this woman of his dreams.

He had no clue what to do about that, so he kept on with the only language he could speak with any eloquence. Kissing her, opening her up to his demanding mouth, mapping her with his tongue. Tonight, it wasn't just his fear of losing Roni that had slapped him in the gut, it was that crazy panic that Molly could be hurt and terror—yeah, terror—that he'd fallen hard for this woman.

He was definitely punching above his weight here, but what man ever thought he was worthy of his woman? So goes the first commandment of relationships. And the second? Whether you're wrong or you're right, say sorry early and often.

“About what happened at the set.”

“When you figuratively whipped out your dick and had a sword fight with my ex-husband?”

“Probably not my finest moment. But I couldn't
not
do anything, Molly.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“I know he didn't treat you right and then he waltzes in and puts the moves on you. I'm not going to take that lying down.”

Her expression darkened. “You think I can't handle Ryan? I've been handling him for five years. And I certainly don't need this alpha dog act of yours in front of the rest of the cast and crew. Have you any idea how dangerous that is? How one slip from an insider source places me slap-bang in the middle of a love triangle on TMZ?”

“Says the woman who just got all up in the face of those pricks at that party. You don't think someone grabbed footage of that?”

“That's different. Roni needed my defense. I don't need yours.”

At one time, he might have believed that—at least, about himself. He'd spent most of his life thinking he didn't need anyone, always maintaining a buffer between him and the people in his life. But lately, he'd come to realize that was wrong. Humans weren't supposed to be Teflon-coated robots, repelling all the love coming their way. If you found a bunch of people or a special someone you connected with, then shout it out. Tell the fucking world.

That's probably what he should have said next.

Instead, there was this gem: “I refuse to say sorry for defending what's mine.”

Surprise widened her violet-hazed eyes.
What's mine.
Even he hadn't expected those words to fall from his mouth. Neither had he expected how goddamned right they felt.

Apparently, he was the only one who felt this way.

“I'm not your property, Wyatt. I already had a bossy control freak for a lover once. I don't need another.”

“Everything I do is with you as the focus.”

“That's what he said.”

Shit, that stung. No guy enjoyed comparisons to the bad news his woman had eighty-sixed in a previous lifetime.

He stepped back and folded his arms because really, there wasn't anything he could add to that. She'd decided those walls of hers were impervious to his sledgehammer, and who was he to convince her otherwise?

That miracle mouth of hers worked, but she seemed to realize that her last statement was a conversation ender and headed into Gage's.

 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

W
yatt didn't do introspection. He didn't do emotion. And he was trying not to do regrets.

But he did self-recrimination pretty well.

He had failed Roni. She clearly didn't want a relationship with him, and he wasn't sure he had it in him to try anymore. They were blood but what the hell did that matter? Billy Fox had been blood, too, but Wyatt had been nothing but an obligation to his father, a tie forced on him by societal norms and legal duty. He'd had to grow up fast, and maybe he expected too much from his niece.

This morning, he couldn't bear to look at her, so deep was his disgust—not for her, but for himself. For thinking he had it in him to be a normal family guy. At the breakfast table, she had opened her mouth to say something, her father's eyes imploring him, and shut it down at whatever she saw on his face.

The door slam? Spectacular.

Ten minutes later, a loud,
I mean business
rap on the back door pulled him out of his Cocoa Puffs laced with self-pity.

Wyatt opened his back door to find Molly standing there with her fist raised, ready to knock again. Dressed in her sexy yoga gear, her body language stiff, she looked like inner peace was not going to come easy today. She also looked beautiful.

“I'm not talking to you,” she snapped.

“Pretty sure I heard you say something. To me.”

“I'm here to tell you to stop being a jerk to your niece.” She waved a finger. “Yeah, I know, she's your niece and it's none of my business, and I get that you're furious about the danger she was in, but she's just a kid. A kid who did something really dumb, and you're going to have to be the grown-up here and stop taking what she did as a personal insult.”

“I'm not—”

“You are. She's a sneaky teenager, something you know a helluva lot about, Mr. Let's-Screw-in-the-Camaro—”

“Which was your idea.”

Her eyes promised instant death if he dared challenge her again.

“She wants nothing more than to know you. You're the closest thing she has to a dad.”

Contradiction was on the tip of his tongue, but she puffed up to what seemed like twice her size and held up a hand of
shut-it.

“Oh . . . what's that sound?” She cocked an ear dramatically. Freakin' actors.

He was about to say he didn't hear anything but he suspected it was a trap.

“I believe it's the sound of your Terminator programming telling you to get your head out of your ass and man up.”

And with that, she twitched her shapely hips off to Gage's backyard.

•   •   •

YMan:
I'm a jerk.

The longest minute of his life later . . .

Roni:
Tell me something I don't know.

YMan:
I think you don't know how much I love you.

Roni:
Lame.

Roni:
;)

YMan:
Come back home. Not doing this with an audience.

Before Wyatt hit send on that last message, the door to the kitchen opened. His beautiful niece stood there, flushed, red-eyed, looking a whole lot younger than fifteen. His heart seized and terror hurtled through his veins as the memory of last night tried to take hold. He could have lost her, and his wounded pride had almost destroyed what they were building.

“Let's go for a ride.”

Her big eyes welled. “Sho—should I get my stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“You're driving me back early, right? To Bloomington. I'll miss the party.”

He was supposed to drive her home tomorrow, but first the family was coming over tonight to give her a proper send-off. He shook his head. “No stuff. Just you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Wyatt turned the truck into Roseland Cemetery. They parked and walked a couple of hundred feet to the grave in the northeast corner, the final resting place of Sean and Mary Dempsey and their eldest son, Logan Keyes. It'd been a while since he visited, but fresh gerbera daisies, his mom's favorite flower, smiled back at them. Beck liked to tend it on a regular basis.

He let Roni take a moment to absorb where she was. When the silence became taut enough to squeeze the breath from his lungs and the words from this throat, he spoke.

“You look so like your dad, Roni. Hurts sometimes to rest my eyes on you.” Shit, it came out sounding like an accusation. “Sorry.”

“It's okay. You look like him, too, and sometimes that makes me a bitch.”

She stared at Logan's tombstone and its epitaph, “Beloved Husband, Son, Brother, and Hero.” “Mom didn't tell me about him until after I was recovered, and I was so angry. About the cancer and being behind in school and feeling tired all the time. That she married the wrong guy and he treated her like shit and the cancer again because without it, I would never have known the truth, I could have, like . . . just kept my life. Gerry was a crappy drunk of a dad, but until they did those tests, he was
my
crappy drunk of a dad. Instead, I get sick and lose two dads. One's dead and one doesn't want to know. When you showed up after, like, fourteen years, I was pissed. Really, really pissed. He wasn't here, but you looked exactly like him, and I . . . I didn't know what to do with all of that.”

He reached for her, any fleeting worry that touching her might result in his hand being bitten off vanishing into the ether as she curled her soft fingers around his.

Molly's words echoed.
I think Roni would like to hear about the father who loved his baby brother so much . . .

“When I was a kid, I did something dumb and was put into juvenile detention. I was pretty scared and thought I was all alone. But Logan showed up one day, not to visit but to stay. He got caught on purpose. To protect me.”

Tears filled in her eyes. “He did that?”

“Family meant everything to him, Roni.” He wasn't trying to make her feel worse, but he needed her to understand. If Logan had known about her, he would have moved skyscrapers to be with his daughter. It wasn't fair. It just was.

Tears trickled down her cheeks. “I wish I'd met him.”

He threw an arm around her shoulder and tucked her into his chest. “I wish you had, too, but we can't change that. We can only look to the future. I've got his girl under my wing. You don't just have Logan's blood runnin' through your veins, Roni, you have mine. You know what that means?”

She sniffled. “That I'm never going to have a boyfriend again.”

“Damn straight.”

A burst of tension-busting laughter left her throat. “I'm so sorry for what I did. I met Dean online and yeah, with Mom gone I saw this opportunity. But I did want to meet you all. That's the truth. Then when I got here that day at the cookout and you didn't look like you wanted me there, I felt like I was butting in.”

“Sweetheart.” He squeezed her shoulders tighter. “Surely you realize by now that my pleased face and my pissed face are practically one and the same.”