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“Can’t say as I blame you for wanting to move back. Too many people and not enough land in San Fran. And here, you’ve got good trout fishing. The best hound dog in the state. And plenty of Southern girls to keep you company.” He paused. “Although you didn’t really care for Southern girls after Melissa, did you?”
Nash took another sip of tea. “I don’t want to talk about Melissa.”
Donny John nodded. “You’ve always kept your thoughts and feelings close to your vest. Did you realize that you’ve never talked about your mother after she died? Not once. Grayson and Deacon bring her up all the time in our conversations, but you don’t bring her up at all.” He continued to rock. “I get it. Sometimes it’s hard to talk about painful things. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to go through the pain in order to get to the healing.”
Nash stopped rocking and looked at his dad. “And you don’t think I’ve gone through pain?”
“No. I don’t think you’ve gone through anything. I think you’re stuck smack-dab in the middle of pain and refuse to swim to shore or ask for help.”
Nash got up so quickly that Blue thought he wanted to play and jumped up to dance around his feet. But Nash was too upset to pay him much attention. “Ask for help from who, Dad? You? Because after Mom died, you were nowhere around. You were off chasing women and ignoring the fact that you had kids. And how could I ask Deacon for help when he was burdened with all the jobs that you were supposed to be doing? So yes, I ignored the fact that my heart felt like it was ripped in two.” He held up his hands. “Instead, I became Easygoing Nash Beaumont who has the world by its tail. But it’s all a lie. I have nothing by its tail but bad luck.”
Donny John didn’t seem fazed by his son’s burst of anger. He continued to rock and reached out to scratch Blue’s ears. “There’s no doubt that I was a crappy father after your mother died. I wish I could go back and change it, but the only thing I can change is the here and now.” He looked up. “If you want to talk about what’s brought you home looking like Blue on bath day, then I’m here, Nash, and I’m listening.”
It would’ve been so easy to tell Donny John to go to hell. It wasn’t like the man didn’t deserve it. But something stopped Nash. Maybe it was because he had no right to cast stones. Or maybe he was just tired of being smack-dab in the middle of pain. Whatever it was, he sat back down in the rocker and told his father everything. His pain after Melissa died and hiring the escorts to make sure he had complete control. And he talked about Eden. He talked about the first time she walked into the hotel suite until the day he walked out of the newspaper office. When he was finished, night had fallen, their tea was nothing but melted ice, and Blue had left the porch to chase raccoons. He expected Donny John to have something to say about how stupid it was to hire escorts or how wrong Eden was to betray him. Instead he keyed in on something else entirely.
“You say she dressed up like a hooker just to get a story?” He chuckled. “Now that’s quite a woman. Sounds like she has no trouble going after what she wants.”
Nash sent his father an annoyed look. “And she doesn’t care who she uses in the process.”
Donny John nodded. “But sounds to me like you were both doing a little using. She was using you to get a story. And you were using her to get over Melissa.”
“I wasn’t using her!” When his father lifted an eyebrow at him, he backpedaled. “Okay, so maybe I was using her at first. But not after we started seeing each other. I was completely truthful with her. While she told me nothing but lies.”
Donny John’s other eyebrow hiked up. “Completely? Sorry if I don’t believe you, Son, but I’ve never known a man in my life that was completely truthful with a woman. If we want to stay in a relationship, we can’t be. Because if women truly knew what went on in a man’s mind, they’d go screaming back to their mamas in a New York second.”
“So you’re saying you lied to Mom?”
“I’m saying I stretched the truth a little. Like telling her that I liked that ugly haircut she got after Grayson was born and the puke-green dress that made her look like a puffed-up frog. I lied and told her I hadn’t looked when Norma Willis lost her top at the lake—but what man in his right mind wouldn’t look at those huge hooters?” He rested his head on the back of the rocker. “And I lied when I promised her that I’d find another wife for me and a mom for you boys. I tried. Hell—I guess I’m still trying. But there is no replacement for your mother. She was one in a million.” He turned his head and looked at Nash. “But what I never lied about was how much I loved her. Did you tell this Eden that you love her?”
Nash could’ve denied that he ever loved Eden, but the hole in his chest said otherwise. “No. And I’m glad I didn’t. If I had, I would really look like a fool.”
“Ahh.” Donny John went back to rocking. “There’s nothing worse than looking like a fool.” He paused. “Of course, she looked like even more of a fool when she published that retraction in the newspaper.”
Nash sat up so quickly that the rocker cracked him in the back of the head. “What retraction?”
Donny John tossed the melted ice out of his mason jar. “According to Deacon, Eden wrote an article retracting the first article—or not retracting it as much as explaining it. It seems there was a big mistake made at the newspaper and someone sent in pages from her journal. Pages where she was fantasizing about being with the panty billionaire in a hotel room.”
Nash stared at him. “But that’s ridiculous. No one is going to believe that.”
Donny John shrugged. “Maybe not, but you’ve got to give her credit for trying.”
“I don’t have to give her credit for anything. Especially when she shouldn’t have written the article in the first place.”
“Maybe she just wanted to get her job back. According to Deacon, she’d been fired from the newspaper weeks earlier.”
Eden’s office being in the janitor’s closet suddenly made sense. Obviously, she had refused to leave the newspaper until she’d written the story about him. “But then why would she write a retraction?” He spoke more to himself than his father. “If she’d let the story stand, she might’ve gotten her job back. Now her creditability as a serious reporter is completely ruined.”
Donny John started rocking again. “Maybe she doesn’t care about her creditability. Maybe she just cares about you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Eden’s room at her parents’ house had been turned into a yoga studio the day after Eden had left for San Francisco. Her mother had never believed in dwelling on the past. She was a firm believer in living in the present. Which explained why she hadn’t asked Eden any questions about why she’d returned to Grover Beach. She had just hugged Eden close, then moved the yoga balls so they could pull down the Murphy bed from the wall.
Now, Eden was tucked into that bed, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. They were the only things that remained of her childhood and were a vivid reminder that the little girl who had dreamed of reaching them had returned home a failure.
She didn’t care about failing at being a reporter or a marathon runner. Those goals were meaningless now. But she was devastated at breaking Nash and Madison’s trust. She had tried to call Madison before she left, but Madison hadn’t answered. So Eden had left a lengthy apology. No excuses, just a plea for forgiveness. She had tried to do the same with Nash. But all she got out was his name before she’d started sobbing and hung up. It didn’t matter. He would never forgive her. Not after everything she’d done. Besides lying and betraying him, she had publicly humiliated him. And not even her retraction letter would change that.
The retraction letter was getting as much attention as the original article had. Before Eden left San Francisco, Mike had called to ask forgiveness for publishing her article and to tell her that the newspaper had been flooded with e-mails about her retraction. It seemed that men didn’t believe it while women did and wanted Eden to share more of her journal pages and fantasies about the Beaumont brothers. Mike thought she should pitch the idea to Stella. But the newspaper business had lost its sparkle for Eden.
