Sammy shrugged. “Few months ago. She said you’d already given up enough for us, and she wasn’t coming to you for more money, and when I asked whatthatmeant, she said law school and being rich and important like her dad.”
Gard frowned. Dani had been working at a restaurant in Fairmont the past two years. She’d claimed she was making enough. She was supposed to ask him if she needed help.Hedidn’t have a kid to support. He had the money, and he wanted to help.
Why hadn’t she just asked him? But since Dani wasn’t here, he couldn’t lecture her about asking for help. He had to deal with the story she’d told Sammy. Did Dani believe all that BS? Did she really not understand?
Sammy would. He’d make sure of it. He looked right at her and delivered a speech he’d given Dani too many times to count. More repeating patterns he couldn’t seem to stop.
“I didn’t give up law schoolforyou guys. I gave up law school because the way my parents treated your mom when she was struggling was a wake-up call. I didn’t want to follow the path they’d set for me—being a lawyer and being cruel like them. I wanted to follow my own path. So I didn’t go to law school. It was no great sacrifice. It was a choice I made. Don’t let her ever tell you otherwise.”
Sammy watched him carefully, but he couldn’t read what was behind all that careful survey. “But you have sacrificed for us, even if you didn’t sacrifice that.”
He wanted to lie to her, but he figured she’d see right through that. “That’s what family should do, Sam. When it matters.”
She looked down at her now-empty plate.
“Sammy.” There were so many things he wanted to say. He struggled to find the words to express what he felt, what she needed to know. Gard and Dani had grown up in a house of hard words. Or no words. Criticism and high expectations. Icy silences, withdrawn support. No one spoke oflove, just respect and failing to meet expectations. They might have had all the material things in life, but they hadn’t had anything deeper, anything soft.
Gard still struggled with expressing those softer things, but if he’d learned anything in the years of trying to deal with Dani’s addiction, Sammy growing up with just him and Dani as support, it was that he didn’t want words left unsaid just because he was afraid to be uncomfortable or vulnerable.
And he’d use whatever words, whatever feelings, whatever soft, sharp truths to make sure Sammy knew that she was loved, cared for. That she wasimportant. He couldn’t make her choices for her, or Dani’s, but he could do that.
“I know her doing this again hurts. It hurts me too. I love her, and I’d do anything to fix this for her. For you.”
Sammy shoved away from the table. “I’m going to do my homework.”
But Gard was faster, and he blocked her path to the room. She stood there, gaze on the floor, shoulders hunched and rounded forward as if she could protect herself from the soft words.
He pulled her into a hug, squeezed her tight. “It would be worth any sacrifice, because you both matter,” he said softly.
She didn’t pull away, but she did look up then, tears in her eyes. “I thought it was enough this time. I really believed…she wouldn’t go back this time.”
Gard had to swallow against his own tight throat as his heart cracked in two—not the first time Dani had done that to him. Hopefully not the last because he needed her to come back, evenif she broke his heart a million more times. “Me too, baby. Me too.”
“So, we’re hiringcriminals now?”
Lia didn’t spare Albennie a glance. Even though she was breaking the no-talking-the-first-hour-at-the-bakery rule. “She’s fifteen.”
“Fifteen-year-olds can still be criminals.”
Since Lia knew that from experience, she could hardly argue with Albennie. “We’ll have her do prep. Wash dishes. Keep her in the kitchen and away from the till. It’ll be fine.”
“You’re too softhearted.”
Lia snorted. Not something she’d ever been accused of. Except from Albennie. Who, in fairness, probably knew her better than anybody. So maybe she should be a little worried about that soft heart.
The bell on the door tinkled, so they moved out of the kitchen to the main area. Sammy stepped in first, looking just as surly as she had the day she’d played thief. Gard was dressed in his uniform behind her.
“God, he’s hot,” Albennie said quietly, fanning herself with a dishcloth.
“You say that about every cop who walks in here,” Lia said irritably, because hewashot and she didn’t want him to be. Bad enough when he was a random figure on the periphery of her social life. Worse when she was starting to see the man behind the uniform.
An uncle who cared about his teenage charge, who was that hot, and now far more in her orbit was a recipe for disaster.
Lia snatched the dishcloth out of Albennie’s hands and stepped forward with a smile that had to have looked more like a grimace thanks to Albennie’s words. “Morning, guys.”
“Good morning,” Gard greeted cheerfully.
Sammy only grunted. Which Lia supposed was the reason behind Gard’s cheer.
