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“No.” Dread surged through his veins, snapping with vicious teeth. She was going to ruin everything.
Again with the lifted chin. Linda made exactly the same motion when she was being stubborn. “You’re my dad. I deserve to know you.”
“I’m not worth knowing.” When he’d been released from jail he’d made two vows—never to go back inside and to protect the daughter he’d never seen. Even though it meant cutting her out of his life, he’d kept those vows for twelve years and fully intended to keep them until the end of his days. “Go home. Does your mother know you’re here?”
Her eyelids flickered. “She thinks I’m with friends.”
Great. Linda was going to be furious. He and his ex-girlfriend had a pact. He kept his distance and she contacted him once a year on their daughter’s birthday with an update. The next message was due in two weeks and three days. Usually it was a terse, bare bones email—text only, no photos. He never complained, grateful for the scraps she was willing to share.
Yearning seared his heart. He had to send Elle away, but since she was here...
“How did you find me?”
Colour rose in her cheeks. “Mom always said she’d tell me about my dad when I was older. Well, I’m almost sixteen. I said if she didn’t tell me now, I wouldn’t live with her anymore. I’d go to Gramma and Gramps, or stay with Shelby’s family.”
The news just got better and better. Cash squeezed his eyes shut briefly. Who the hell was Shelby? Linda would lay that at his door too. “You shouldn’t have threatened her.”
Elle shifted her feet, sneakers squeaking on the concrete floor. “Yeah, maybe. But she promised me.”
He sincerely doubted Linda had promised to tell Elle anything. But to a child wondering about her father, he imagined any words other than a flat out “no” could be twisted into a commitment to tell the truth in the future.
A cellphone rang. Elle fished one out of the back pocket of her jeans and looked at Cash with anxious eyes. “Mom.”
“Don’t tell her where you are.” Perfect. Now he was encouraging his daughter to lie. But what good would it do to tell the truth? “Say you’re on the way home. Because you are. You have to go. I mean it.”
Silence expanded between them, punctured by four more shrill rings before the call dropped.
“You’re my dad.” Elle’s eyes glistened with tears. “I want to get to know you. I need to get to know you.”
He shook his head, a granite weight of sorrow and regret bowing his neck. “Trust me on this. It’s better if you don’t. Go home, Elle. Have a good life. But don’t come back.”
Grief and pain etched her smooth young face and gave him a glimpse of what she’d look like in maturity. With a sob she spun around, pushed hard on the door, and vanished onto the sidewalk.
The plywood-covered frame swung back into place, darkening the interior to a shade as ashy as his soul. He stood frozen, staring forward as if he could still see her, wishing he could have given a different answer. Wishing a lot of things in his life were different.
“That was a shit thing to do.”
He’d forgotten Cyril was there. He turned to the boy, who gripped a large push broom, a pile of glass shards at his feet.
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his skinny neck. “I mean it. She was scared, coming to meet you for the first time. And you were a jerk.”
There was nothing wrong with the boy’s nerve. Cash gave him credit for standing up for Elle. Didn’t mean he had to tolerate it.
“Mind your own business.” He put as much menace in his voice as he could and was sourly pleased to see Cyril take a small step back. “Dustpan’s in the storeroom. Go get it. Now.”
CYRIL WAS WAITING ON the sidewalk outside Absolute Motorcycle Repair when Penta arrived to pick him up. She told herself she was relieved not to have to face Cash again. That’s what that twinge was. Relief, not disappointment. How could she be disappointed at not seeing a scary, bearded, tattooed biker?
Once on their way, she asked how the day had gone. Cyril merely grunted.
“Are you finished? Is everything cleaned up?” she prodded.
He sighed, the long-suffering sigh of a teenager wishing he were anywhere but trapped in a car with his annoying mother. “Most of it. He says I’ve still got to work off the cost of damages. He told me to go back Monday after school.”
Irritation flared, infinitely more welcome than the unsettling attraction she’d experienced earlier. Who did Cash Rylance think he was? It was Penta’s responsibility to discipline her children. Wasn’t a day of unpaid labour enough? She squelched the disturbing memory of the ransacked showroom, along with the sinking suspicion that Cyril owed Cash whatever the stern-faced man demanded.
“You have track and field then.” It was the one activity Cyril hadn’t abandoned after the divorce, and she wanted nothing to jeopardize that tiny ray of normalcy. “Did you tell him you couldn’t come?”
Cyril shrugged. Whatever that meant.
