Come Home to Me

2

Aaron stood on Cheyenne and Dylan’s doorstep, next to the baby stroller parked on the porch. Waiting for someone to answer his knock, he heard Cheyenne’s voice from inside the house. “Mommy’s here, Wyatt,” she cooed.

A few seconds later, she swung open the door and did a double take.

Aaron had imagined she was holding Presley’s baby, but she wasn’t. She must’ve said what she did as she left him in the other room.

“Aaron! I wasn’t expecting you.”

He hadn’t planned on coming over—until he ran into Presley at Ted Dixon’s signing. Ever since he’d learned she was back, and even before that, he’d been hoping for an opportunity to apologize for his behavior the night her mother died. He hadn’t been able to deal with the level of emotion involved. That kind of tragedy carried him back to his own mother’s death, something he avoided at all costs. But he felt bad for being such a callous jerk and would never forget how frightened he’d been when Presley went missing right after she left his place and didn’t turn up for several days. He blamed himself for everything that happened in the interim; he knew she’d been through a lot. Whatever she’d experienced was so awful that neither Cheyenne nor Dylan would talk about it. For a long time, he’d wanted to tell Presley he was sorry, but she hadn’t given him the chance. Whenever he asked for her number, Cheyenne told him she didn’t have a phone. And Presley never called him. Even in the two weeks she’d been home, she hadn’t tried to reconnect. If not for his customers at the auto body shop alerting him, he would’ve had no idea she was back in town, not until he ran into her at the signing. Dylan hadn’t mentioned it. Dylan rarely talked about Presley in Aaron’s presence.

“Dyl home?” he asked because Cheyenne was still blocking the doorway, and he didn’t know how to inspire a warmer welcome. He’d guessed Presley would be stopping by to pick up her baby. Wyatt had to be somewhere if he wasn’t with his mother, and this was the logical place. The stroller confirmed it.

His sister-in-law began to fidget. “Dyl?”

“Yeah. Your husband and my big brother—remember him?” Presley couldn’t assume he was merely looking to get in her pants if her sister and his brother were around when he spoke to her. That would make the contact legit. Then maybe they could strike up some of their old camaraderie, and he could walk her home and offer an apology, since things had gone badly at the bookstore before he could work his way around to what he’d really wanted to say.

Cheyenne ignored the sarcastic jab. “Of course he’s here. He’s watching TV.”

When she glanced past him, at the drive, he realized why she was reluctant to invite him in. She didn’t want him here when Presley arrived. But Cheyenne was too polite to make it any more obvious. With a pleasant smile, she stepped back. “Come on in.”

He understood that she didn’t feel he’d treated her sister right. He hadn’t been the best for Presley. But he’d never hurt her intentionally. And he wasn’t the same person he used to be. Why did they think only she could change?

When Cheyenne grabbed a sweater off the hall tree instead of following him toward the living room, he stopped. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.” She waved a hand. “I’m just taking Wyatt for a walk.”

“It’s cold and dark.” It had also been raining an hour ago and could rain again. Spring usually came early in Gold Country, but the first week of March had been a week of full winter.

“We won’t go far.”

A dark-headed little boy toddled out of the living room, holding a rubber block, the corner of which he had stuffed in his mouth.

“This must be Wyatt.”

There was another pause on Cheyenne’s part, but he understood why. She didn’t want anything, or anyone, to come between Presley and her recovery, and that included him. “Yeah. That’s Wyatt, her pride and joy.”

It was motherhood that’d changed Presley. Aaron felt certain of it.

Wyatt stared up at Aaron with round eyes the color of melted chocolate—just like his mom’s.

“Cute little bugger,” he said. “Seems big for his age. Kind of surprising coming from a half-pint like Pres.”

“Presley says his father was tall.” Cheyenne moved as if she planned to sweep the baby into her arms and head outside, but Aaron was closer and stooped to pick him up before she could.

“Hey, you,” he said. “What a chunk you are. Doesn’t look like you’ve ever missed a meal.”

The baby pulled the block out of his mouth and gave him a gummy smile that revealed several Mini-Chiclet teeth. “Ma-ma-ma!” he chanted, hitting the block with his free hand.

Aaron shifted his attention to Cheyenne. “Doesn’t seem to be afraid of strangers.”

“No. He’s a happy, trusting little guy.”

When Aaron used the baby’s own fist to tap his nose, Wyatt gave an infectious belly laugh and tried to shove his toy into Aaron’s mouth.

“That’s okay, dude,” Aaron said, twisting his head. “That block’s got more than enough spit on it already.”

“Aaron? That you?” Dylan called, and Aaron let Cheyenne take the baby.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“How’d it go in Reno? You find the right location?”

Aaron walked into the living room to see Dylan sprawled on the couch, his hair wet. He’d worked late and must’ve just showered. They were slammed with business, which was another reason Aaron thought it was time to open a franchise. “Nothing I’m in love with. I’m considering Placerville instead.”

“I wouldn’t go there.”

“It’s closer, only forty miles away.”

“But it’s a smaller market. When’d you get back?”

Aaron fell into one of two leather side chairs and propped his feet on the coffee table. The L.A. Lakers were playing the Miami Heat, and it looked like a close game. “Couple of hours ago. I promised Mr. Nunes if he gave us another day to finish his Land Rover I’d get Ted’s new book autographed for him.”

Dylan sat up. “You went to the signing?”

“For a few minutes.” He hadn’t gotten the book. The line had been too long. Then he’d spoken to Presley and ended up walking out. But he could go over to Ted’s later and pick up a copy.

“How’d it go?” his brother asked.

Why did Aaron get the feeling that this was a loaded question? Was there some underlying concern about him attending the book signing? “Fine. Why wouldn’t it?”

His brother forwarded through a commercial break. “No reason.”

“Because Presley was there?”

“Chey’s been nervous about the two of you running into each other,” he explained.

“Why?” Aaron asked. “What’s going on? Everyone’s acting as if we should be enemies. As if I’ll do something terrible if I get the chance. But I’ve never mistreated Presley. I mean...I wasn’t always as nice as I could’ve been, but I was never seriously out of line. We were friends,” he added with a shrug. “We had fun together. That was it.”

Dylan didn’t seem particularly swayed by this speech. “You know she’s had a rocky past. We don’t want her getting mixed up in the things she used to do, that’s all.”

“I’m one of those things? You’re blaming me for her drug use?”

Drawing up one leg, Dylan rested the hand that held the remote on his knee. “You partied with her a lot.”

“But it’s not like I introduced her to drugs, or even encouraged her to take them. She was a coke-hound. She would’ve partied with someone else if not with me.”

“Maybe, but you weren’t in the best place back then, either. It’s not like you ever discouraged her. You both played fast and loose. But whatever. That’s in the past. We’re hoping it’ll stay there. Life’s difficult enough for a woman trying to support a kid all on her own.”

Aaron frowned as he remembered his conversation with Presley at the bookstore. “She’s not doing it ‘all on her own.’ Wyatt’s father helps out, doesn’t he?”

Dylan made a sound of disbelief. “You kidding? She knew Wyatt’s father for...what? An hour or two? He was just some prick who took advantage of her when she was high and running from everything she didn’t want to feel. If there was any hope of finding him, I’d rearrange his face. But she’s not in contact with him, doesn’t know how to reach him. When I asked, she couldn’t even give me a name.”

“She told me he pays child support,” Aaron said tightly.

“Pride talking. She doesn’t want you to realize how desperate she’s been, that she’s barely getting by.”

“Why would she feel she has something to prove to me? I’ve never looked down on her.”

“She’s putting on a brave face, what else? People do that.”

“Not people who know each other as well as we do.”

“Things have changed, Aaron.”

That was the second time tonight he’d heard essentially the same thing. “To hell with change. Why does everything have to change?”

“Just let go of the past. The two of you aren’t good for each other—especially now that she has a child.”

The old anger welled up. “Wait a second. Who the hell are you to make that decision?”

Dylan shot him a dirty look. “Chey and I were here when you were together, remember? We know what the two of you were like.”

“So what? You have no right to tell me who I can and can’t see. Even after all these years, you’re still trying to be my father?”

Dylan paused the Lakers game. “Don’t start on that tired old argument—”

“I’ll start on it if I want to. I’ve had enough, Dyl. There’s only three years between us. It’s time you remembered that.”

Fortunately for Aaron’s peace of mind, Dylan didn’t deny that he had the tendency to be too controlling. “Old habits are hard to break, I guess,” he grumbled. “Anyway, when will you finally get past whatever you hold against me? We can go over my mistakes until we’re blue in the face, but that won’t fix them. The bottom line is this–Chey and I care about you and Presley. We want to see you both continue to—”

“What?” Aaron broke in, throwing up his hands. “Live our lives as you see fit?”

“Stay off drugs, if you want the truth, damn it!”

Aaron got to his feet. “I shouldn’t have come by.”

Dylan tossed the remote on the coffee table and stood up to follow him out. “Maybe you don’t want to admit it, but you have one hell of a chip on your shoulder. It’s time to grow up. Time to understand that I did the best I could. I was eighteen when Dad went to prison. Do you think I wanted to take his place? Hell, no! But I didn’t see anyone else who was willing to do the job. Were you going to do it? At fifteen?”

“Kiss my ass,” Aaron muttered, and that was all it took to snap Dylan’s restraint.

“Shit, you know how to enrage me like nobody else!” he roared, and smashed his fist through the wall.

Aaron felt his jaw drop. They’d gotten into some gnarly fights in the past, but he’d never seen Dylan lose control with so little provocation. This spat was minor in the overall scheme of their relationship. “Aren’t you overreacting a bit?”

“I don’t care if I am!” Dylan yelled. “You think you’re sick of a few things? Well, I’m sick of them, too—and tired of your damn resentment!”

Aaron didn’t respond. He just slammed the door on his way out.

It wasn’t until he was back at the rambler in the river bottoms where he’d grown up and still lived with his younger brothers that he cooled off enough to realize all the baby gear in the hallway and the stroller he’d seen at Dylan’s house were gone when he stormed out. Cheyenne hadn’t taken Wyatt for a walk; she’d taken him home to his mother.

* * *

When Cheyenne came back from bringing Wyatt to Presley’s and saw that Aaron’s truck was no longer parked in front, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“He’s gone,” she said into the phone. She’d used her cell to call Eve Harmon, whose family owned the B and B where they both worked, as soon as she left her sister’s. Eve was the only person in the world with whom she’d shared the truth about Presley’s baby. Even her other close friends didn’t know.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Eve said.

Cheyenne unzipped her coat. Thanks to the brisk walk, she wasn’t cold enough to remain bundled up. “At least now I won’t have to go back in and smile while we chat about Presley and Wyatt as if I’m not betraying my brother-in-law and my husband.” Because of Presley’s recent return, her name would definitely have come up if Aaron was still there.

“Are you sure Aaron has no clue that Wyatt is his?” Eve asked. “Or could it be that he suspects but prefers to leave the situation as it is?”

“I have no idea. I just know how hard it is for me to keep this a secret. Sometimes Wyatt’s paternity seems so obvious that I can’t believe Dylan hasn’t guessed.”

“Why would he? You told him Wyatt’s dad was some guy from Arizona, so he accepts it.”

She paused on the sidewalk. She didn’t want to go any closer to the house, didn’t want her husband to overhear what she was saying. “Is this you trying to make me feel better? Because pointing out how much he trusts me only makes me feel worse.”

“We’ve talked about this before. What else can you do?”

Dylan might be her husband but he was also Aaron’s brother, and for all the differences between the two men, they loved each other with the kind of ferocity that stemmed from surviving great hardship together. She had no doubt that Dylan would tell Aaron—eventually, if not right away. He wouldn’t be able to help seeing the situation from his brother’s perspective, just as she couldn’t help seeing the situation from her sister’s. She could plead with him, of course. Tell him that Presley had never had her life so together, that they couldn’t risk sending her into another tailspin like the time she’d run away from Whiskey Creek and gotten mixed up with a sadistic man. But that would only be effective for so long, until the loyalty he felt toward his brother prevailed.

“Maybe it would be different if Presley wasn’t a great mother,” Cheyenne said. “But she’s completely devoted to Wyatt. I feel terrible admitting this, but she’s done a lot better with him than I ever expected.”

“It would also be different if Aaron wasn’t so unpredictable,” Eve added. “But you have no way of knowing how he might react—whether he’ll be fair and reasonable or angry and overpowering.”

Cheyenne stared at the lights glowing from inside her own house. “He can be so large and in-charge. And he has more resources than Presley does. If they ever battled over Wyatt...” She shuddered at the thought. No one wanted to fight Aaron. But Presley would do just that. She’d never give up, not if she were fighting for her child. “How could I ever put my sister in that precarious a situation?”

“You can’t. Presley deserves some happiness. And she is happy these days, isn’t she?”

“Happier than I’ve ever seen her.”

“Then that’s proof you’re doing the right thing.”

“Still, if Aaron or Dylan ever find out...” She felt heartsick at the prospect, but she couldn’t open her mouth, couldn’t risk telling because of what it could destroy.

“You have to hope they don’t,” Eve said matter-of-factly.

“What a mess.” Someday what she and Presley were doing would not end well; the thought of that terrified her. “Anyway, I’m home now. I should go.”

“Okay. You’re on tomorrow?”

Cheyenne had recently scaled back her hours so she could help with Wyatt. Neither of them were quite used to her new schedule. “Yeah.”

“Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

As they disconnected, Cheyenne tried to push her concern into the back of her mind, as she’d done so far. But when she went inside and turned to hang up her coat, she saw the hole in the wall—proof that she couldn’t tell Aaron about Wyatt. He had an anger problem. That alone suggested they’d better not second-guess the decisions made two years ago.

“What happened?” she called out to Dylan. “Don’t tell me you and Aaron got into it again.”

There was no answer.

Unhappy with the damage that had been done to her house, Cheyenne hurried into the living room. Her husband sat on the couch with the TV on pause, holding his head in his hands.

“Dylan, what is it? He didn’t hit you, did he?”

She grew even more alarmed when he glanced up at her with a hollowness in his eyes.

“No, he didn’t hit me.”

“What made him punch the wall?”

Dylan shoved a hand through his hair. “Aaron didn’t do that. I did.”

“What?” She’d never known Dylan to do such a thing. Like Aaron, he had a temper. Heaven help any worthy opponent who pushed him too far. But he’d always been able to control himself—at least since she’d come into his life. Before that, he’d had a reputation for being reckless, even dangerous, but that was understandable. He’d felt he had to do whatever he could to survive, and to make sure his brothers did, too.

“I’ll patch it,” he said in an attempt to mollify her.

“I’m not worried about that so much as I am about you.” Sitting down next to him, she rubbed his back, trying to soothe him. “What got you so upset?”

“Aaron infuriates me. You know that.”

“But you can usually cope with it. What did he say or do to set you off tonight?”

His beard growth rasped as he rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I was trying to tell him to stay away from Presley, and he got belligerent, as he always does.”

The guilt she’d been feeling burrowed a little deeper. “Don’t fight with your brother over Presley. That makes me feel I’m the one who dragged you into it, because I’m so concerned about her.”

“There’s no need for him to screw up her life. If he loved her and was willing to step up and marry her, I wouldn’t feel like this. But...he doesn’t want anything she’s got to offer. Not now. She has a kid, and that’s entirely too much responsibility for him.”

Dylan adored Wyatt, felt protective of him. “Are you sure? That Aaron’s not ready for—” the way he looked at her made her adjust what she was about to say “—for someone who might be interested in a more serious relationship?”

“Hell, no. He’s never been able to maintain a serious relationship. What makes you think he could start now? I wouldn’t want him to get involved with Presley again, anyway. That’s all we need. You know how volatile he is, how their relationship could potentially affect ours.”

But Aaron wouldn’t ask permission. No one could tell him what to do; no one could make him see reason if he didn’t want to. If Dylan tried to step in, to influence him, Aaron could do exactly the opposite just to prove his autonomy.

“It’s too bad that she had to come back before he left,” Cheyenne lamented.

“I’d rather have her here in Whiskey Creek than depending on people she can’t trust to take care of Wyatt.”

Dylan had been as livid as she was when Presley found those marks on Wyatt. The owner of the thrift shop had let her bring Wyatt to work three days a week, but she still had to leave him on the weekends, because it was busier, and when she went to massage school at night.

“I agree Wyatt’s better off here,” she said, “but...”

“What?” he prompted.

But he didn’t know nearly as much as she did. “Having the two of them in town for even a month is too long.” She gave him a rueful smile as she checked his hand. He’d bruised and scraped his knuckles. “Do we need to take you to the hospital? Have that X-rayed?”

He shook her off. “No. It’s not broken.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. I’ve broken it often enough to know the difference.”

She mussed his hair. Although he was as tough as a man could be, there was a childlike innocence in the way he cared for her that formed the foundation of her happiness. “I love you so much, too much. Even when you punch holes in my wall.” She stood up. “Let’s wash off your hand before you get blood on the couch.”

“Chey?” He caught her wrist, pulling her back to him.

“Yes?”

“Does it ever make you...envious to see Wyatt?”

The gravity of that question gave her an inkling of what might be causing Dylan to act out. It didn’t have to do with Aaron. Not completely.

“Why would it make me feel envious?” She could guess, but wanted to draw him out. He rarely put a voice to his fears and concerns; instead, he expressed them in some physical act, by making love to her, going to the gym he and his brothers had set up in their barn or—tonight, anyway—punching a hole in the wall.

“We’ve been married for a while now and...no baby.” He studied her. “Despite how badly you want one.”

He felt he had to provide something she wanted that much. He wasn’t used to being unable to give her what would make her happiest. Since he was eighteen, he’d been taking care of the people in his life. He always took on added responsibility; it was just who he was.

“I do want a baby,” she admitted. “I want your baby. But if we can’t have one, we can’t. Nothing could ever make me regret marrying you.”

“What if it’s me—my fault? You wouldn’t resent it someday?”

“Of course not.”

“Because it’s got to be me,” he said. “You’ve never done anything physically damaging.”

“You think fighting might’ve hurt your...equipment?”

“If I had a dollar for every time I got kicked in the nuts...”

He’d started in MMA when his father, grief-stricken after losing his children’s mother, stabbed a man in a bar and went to prison. Dylan had had to do something to augment what he could earn from the family’s auto body shop, which wasn’t exactly a success back then. Without the money he made fighting, his younger brothers would’ve been split up and placed in foster care.

“If that’s the way it is...we’ll accept it,” she said.

“Accept less, you mean.”

“Accept reality.”

His troubled eyes met hers. “I should get checked out.”

She’d wanted him to see a doctor—until she’d gone to a doctor herself and learned that it wasn’t her. “No.”

He reared back. “Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t matter.” She laced her fingers through his. “We’ll keep trying. You like that part, anyway,” she teased, but he didn’t let her levity distract him. He didn’t even smile; he was too intent on the conversation.

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“We’ll adopt.”

“But thanks to your mother—or, rather, Anita— you’ve missed out on so much already. I want you to have your own baby. I want you to experience pregnancy and childbirth and see yourself in the child you’re raising. And I want your real mother, now that you’ve found each other, to see her family grow.”

“We don’t always get what we want,” she told him.

“That’s just it. You’ve had to settle for most of your life. I can’t bear the thought that you might have to settle now because of me.”

“Dylan, I can love an adopted child just as much. Anyway, even if we never get a baby, I’d give up anything for you.”

He stared at her as if trying to decide whether she meant it. Then he kissed her deeply, tenderly, and led her into the bedroom, where he made love to her as though everything was fine and they’d get beyond this. But she could tell when she started to doze on his chest afterward that he was wide-awake and staring at the ceiling.