“You should tell her you know how to fish.”
More than a little amused at how Jace saw the world, Charles asked, “You think it’s that easy?”
Jace shrugged. “Worth a try.”
Charles shook his head and chuckled in concession. What would Mason think if he could see me now? He’d say I’ve lost my fucking mind.
Charles met Melanie’s eyes the next time they approached where she stood. “Melanie, want to go fishing tomorrow? You, me, and Jace?”
She nodded, put a shaking hand up to her mouth, and her eyes suddenly shone with tears.
As he and Jace rode out of earshot, Charles said, “Hey, from now on I know who to come to for dating advice.”
Jace’s eyes rounded. “What is dating?”
Charles chuckled again. “You’ll have to ask your mother that one.”
Temporarily satisfied with that answer, Jace moved on to ask him other questions. He wanted to know if he had a car and why he always wore sunglasses.
It occurred to Charles, as they made their way around the ring for the twentieth or so time, that riding involved much more than staying on a horse. Just like the ranch was about more than people simply training them. This was a way of life. It was uncomplicated and honest and offered him something money had not brought him—a second chance.
Sarah’s words came back to him: “Nothing is impossible if you want it badly enough.” He looked across at Melanie and then down at her son.
I do want this.
Charles was dismounting from his horse onto surprisingly shaky legs when his phone rang. He didn’t want to answer it. Melanie was sending her son into the house with Sarah for a snack, and that gave Charles the perfect opportunity to speak to her privately. He pulled her far enough away from the others that their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.
He kissed her briefly when she joined him, showing restraint only out of respect for the number of eyes still watching them. She smiled up at him shyly. “I’m glad you didn’t leave.”
“I—” The ring of his cell phone interrupted his admission that he could never leave her. He let the call ring through. But it rang again. And again.
In frustration, he took it out of his pocket and was prepared to silence it when he saw the number. It was Tanner’s social worker. “I have to take this,” he said and half turned away.
Although he’d had his cell phone number since day one, the social worker had never used it. Adrenaline kicked in as Charles imagined all the possible scenarios in which he would. “What is it?”
“Did you see TJ on Thursday?”
“No, I’m out of town this week. I told him I’d see him next week.”
“He left the group home last night. The staff told me he took all his things with him.”
“To go where? Why didn’t anyone stop him?”
“He turned eighteen yesterday. He has the right to go anywhere he wants to now.”
Thursday was his birthday? Shit. “Where would he go?”
“I was hoping you’d know. He ran with a tough crowd when he was with his foster parents. I hope he’s not headed back there.”
“I don’t understand. We had a plan for him. His college would have been paid for. He knew that. Why would he run?”
“My guess is he’s afraid to believe you. He doesn’t want to give you a chance to disappoint him.”
Charles looked down at his watch and let out a string of profanity. “I can be back in the city in five hours. Give me any information you have about where you think he’d go. I’ll find him.”
The conversation he’d planned to have with Melanie fell to the wayside. “I have to fly to New York tonight,” he said curtly as he pocketed his phone.
Disappointment was clear in her eyes. “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know,” he said as he sketched out a strategy for fixing the situation. How long did it take to find a kid who didn’t want to be found? And then what the hell happened once he was found? Take him back to the group home? Get him an apartment of his own? Tell him you’d like to help him more but you’re too busy getting laid down in Texas?
“Are you going to tell Jace?” Melanie asked, putting her hands on her slim hips in a show of displeasure.
“Tell him what?” It was difficult to focus on anything but how he’d screwed up.
Melanie narrowed her eyes and spoke slowly, distinctly, expressing her anger through the clipped tone she used. “That you won’t take him fishing tomorrow. He thought you were serious.”
“I was,” Charles said and ran a hand roughly over his chin. Shit, Jace. Who am I trying to fool? If I can’t handle being a mentor, how the hell do I think I can be a father? Years of frustration with a guilt he’d never been able to shed surged within him, giving his voice a cold, hard edge. “Listen, you were right. I don’t belong here. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.” He turned away and started walking to his car.
Melanie called out his name, but he didn’t stop.
She stepped in front of him and blocked his path, her hair whipping wildly in a sudden breeze. “What happened, Charlie?”
Everything I told myself wouldn’t. I fucked up again. Charles took a purposeful step around her, but she moved with him. “I remembered why I chose the life I did. You’re a wise woman, Melanie. You saw me for who I am. Jace needs a father he can depend on and clearly that is not me. Now step aside because I’m leaving.”
Instead of doing as he said, Melanie put a hand firmly in the middle of his chest. “Not until you tell me who just called you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Charles said with disgust. The details are irrelevant when the pattern remains unbroken. I just hope I find Tanner before I have another reason to hate myself.
She didn’t back down. “It matters to me. You came out here because you said we belong together. You asked me to trust you, but I wasn’t ready to. I haven’t always shown the best judgment when it comes to relationships, and I was afraid to be wrong again.” She raised her other hand and placed that on his chest as well, then threw his own words back at him: “I don’t know much about love or how any of this is supposed to work, but I’m here and I’m trying.” A fire lit in her eyes. “And if you try to leave without telling me the real reason, I will show you why they call me the Takedown Cowgirl.”
Charles had never seen anything more beautiful or determined than his sexy cowgirl preparing to hog-tie him if he tried to skirt around her again. It pulled him back from the past enough for him to clear his head. He took one of her hands in his and raised it to his lips. He wasn’t comfortable revealing his weaknesses to anyone, but Melanie wasn’t just anyone. She deserved the truth. “It was a call from Family Services in New York. Tanner ran away yesterday.”
“The boy who mugged me?”
“Yes.”
“Why would they call you?”
“I’ve been mentoring him.”
“You never said anything about it.”
“It’s not like I did it well. Look what happened. I came here the week of his birthday. He doesn’t trust people easily, and I just lived up to the worst of what he expected from me. He took off and no one knows where he is.”
“And you’re going back to find him?” she asked, even though they both knew she knew the answer to that question. She wasn’t asking out of curiosity—she needed to confirm what she believed.
“Yes. Although I don’t know what I’ll do after that. He doesn’t need a mentor who doesn’t even know his birthday.”
There it was, the ugliness inside him, laid out for Melanie to see. She kept asking if Charles would be a good father to her son—perhaps she should consider this her answer. Perhaps they both should.
Remarkably, she didn’t look away in disappointment. She stood there, blocking his way, with an expression on her face he’d never seen. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but it sent his stomach into crazy summersaults.
“You made a mistake, Charles. You’re human. We all d
o the best we can and sometimes it’s not good enough. But that doesn’t mean Tanner doesn’t need you.” She squeezed his hand in hers. “I need you. Jace needs you. Don’t walk away from any of us, even if we tell you to, because none of us mean it.”
Charles pulled Melanie into his arms and shuddered as her words washed over him, releasing his prison of guilt and doubt. He took her mouth in his with a crushing kiss, one in which all his pent-up emotions poured out. She met that kiss with a fervor of her own. When he finally raised his head, both of them were shaking from the intensity of their feelings.
Melanie raised a hand to his cheek and said, “Go find Tanner. We’ll be here when you get back.”
He kissed her forehead. “You really are a sweet woman, Melanie . . . when you’re not threatening to hit me with a frying pan.”
Melanie chuckled in his embrace. “I meant that, too.”
Charles smiled. “That’s what made it sexy.” He pulled her close to him so his hard-on nudged the soft curve of her stomach. “I love the way you take me down.”
Melanie blushed. “The way you say that makes it sound naughty. You just wait until you get back. I’ll take you down. I’ll . . .” She whispered some suggestions in his ear that sent his blood rushing to his cock and all coherent thought out of his head.
“Saying that to me when there’s nothing we can do about it is torture.” He kissed her. “But don’t let that ever stop you.” He kissed her again. “I’ll be back as soon as I can be.”
Sarah piped in from near them. “You’re leaving, Charlie?” Tony and David were close on her heels.
“I have to.” He wasn’t going to say why at first, but Melanie prompted him to with a nod. “I’ve been working with an at-risk kid who thinks no one cares about him. He turned eighteen and took off, but he has nowhere to go. Nowhere good, anyway. I have to find him.”
Sarah looked back and forth between Charles and Melanie. “Do you both want to go?” she asked. “We can watch Jace again.”
Melanie met Charles’s eyes and smiled gently. “No, I can wait for Charles to come back because I know he will.”
Charles nodded.
“Where are you going?” David asked in a disapproving tone. Tony stood at his side, looking even less pleased with Charles.
Sarah restated the situation quickly. David nodded slowly, then said, “I know people in New York. One of my marine buddies is a cop in Brooklyn. He could help.”
Tony added, “I’ll call Dean. He’ll want to come with us.”
“You’re all coming with me?” Charles asked, genuinely surprised.
Tony hooked a thumb in the loop of his jeans. “We’re family. That’s what families do.”
Charles didn’t have time to question Tony’s change of heart. “Okay. Then we leave in thirty minutes. I have a private plane at the Telson airport.” He looked past the group to the porch, where Jace stood, and said, “But first I have to do something.”
He met Jace at the bottom of the steps. “I won’t be here tomorrow. I have to go back to New York. That means we’ll have to postpone the fishing.”
“Post bone?”
“Do it another day. I have something really important I have to do, but I’m coming back.”
Jace looked him over slowly. “When?”
“As soon as I can,” Charles promised. “Then you and I and your mother will spend a whole day together. Fishing or doing whatever you want.”
Jace looked across the driveway at his mother. “I saw you kiss my mom. Are you two going to be doing that a lot?”
Charles hid a laugh in a cough. “I hope so.”
“Lyle’s mom and his new dad do that all the time, too. They’re having a baby now. Are you going to have a baby with my mom?”
Charles swayed a bit in the face of a question he hadn’t thought much about yet. “I—we—”
“It’s okay if you do, but I want a brother. I don’t like girls much.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Charles said and was relieved when Melanie joined them.
Chapter Twenty-One
Once aboard his private plane, Charles started organizing his resources in New York. He called Tanner’s social worker and recorded every shred of information he was willing to give about where he’d come from and where he might go. He called his security team and a private investigator. If the boy was still in New York, one of them would find him. He instructed his secretary to forward all calls directly to his phone.
When he finally set his phone aside, he realized he’d been a one-man show for three curious cowboys. They were sprawled in the surrounding cream-colored leather seats as confidently as if they’d been born to such luxury. It would take more than money and fancy vehicles to impress this group. They were assessing him by what he was doing rather than what he owned, and Charles realized that he respected them for it.
He looked around at the sleek interior of the aircraft. It used to be important to him. He’d needed to show himself that he’d made it.
But he no longer gave a damn about any of it. Making a life with Melanie might mean moving part of his business to Texas, but he was ready for the change.
His future brother-in-law laid his Stetson on his knee. “Nothing yet?”
Charles shook his head.
Dean, Tony’s older brother and the sheriff of Fort Mavis, said, “We’ll find him. People have patterns of behavior. They go to places they know, especially if they don’t have the financial resources to support a real run.”
With one hand fisted on his jeans-clad leg in frustration, Charles said, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand why he left. I set up a trust fund for him with the monies earned from the Unleashed, Unchained video. No, I didn’t hand it over to him, but it was his. All he had to do was enroll in any college and everything would have been paid for. He knew that. I couldn’t adopt him, but I would have found him a place to live. I could have helped him, especially now that he’s of an age that he can make those decisions for himself. Why would he run?”
David rubbed a hand over his chin thoughtfully and said, “When you grow up with nothing, it’s hard to believe anything good could last. He probably figured he’d cut you out of his life before you disappointed him.”
“I missed one fucking birthday.”
Tony leaned back in his chair and watched Charles for a long moment, then said, “And this is the kid who mugged Melanie?”
Charles pinched the bridge of his nose as his head began to pound. “The one and only.”
David said, “He’s been working with him, trying to turn him around.”
Letting out an audible sigh, Tony lamented, “You’re making it impossible to dislike you.”
Charles met Tony’s eyes and decided to lighten the mood with some humor. “I’m sure I’ll compensate in other ways.”
“I’ll still kill you if you hurt Melanie,” Tony said with enough steel in his voice that Charles didn’t doubt he was serious.
Dean piped in, “What did I tell you about death threats, Tony?”
Tony returned his hat to his head, this time placing it so it partially covered his face. “Never in front of the sheriff.” He settled himself back, looking like he was going to nap. “Charlie, we live by a code in Texas. Shoot. Shovel. Shut up. Just remember that.”
David nodded in Tony’s direction. “He’s a miserable bastard, but he’s here and he won’t go home until you find Tanner. That’s how I judge a man. There’s a saying in the horse world: you can’t ride pretty. Often the most important things about a horse or person are not outwardly, instantly apparent. But if you watch both real close, they’ll show you what they’re made of.”
Charles grew uncomfortable beneath the sustained scrutiny. “If you watch me much longer, you’ll see a man who has failed at everything except making money.”
“Until now,” David said simply, leaned back in his seat, and decided to follow Tony’s lead. He closed his eyes and covered his eyes with his hat.
Cha
rles looked across the small aisle at the only other passenger still awake. Dean shrugged and said, “I’m just here to make sure none of y’all get arrested.”
“That’s not something I normally worry about.”
Dean smiled knowingly. “Well, welcome to the family.”
Sarah handed Melanie another cup of coffee and joined her at her kitchen table. “He’ll be back, Mel.”
“I know,” Melanie answered and took a sip absently. “He doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean.”
With a smile, Sarah joked, “You got my brother on a horse.”
Shaking her head, Melanie corrected her. “Not me, Jace.” The wonder of that realization washed over her again so she repeated it. “He did it for Jace.”
“Yes, he did.” Sarah sniffed and Melanie realized her normally happy friend was close to tears.
Melanie reached across the table and took her hand in hers. “I’m sorry. Is watching Charles with Jace bringing back memories? I’ve been so self-absorbed lately. I didn’t even think how this could be affecting you . . .”
Sarah smiled even as a tear ran down her cheek. “You are the answer to every prayer I ever voiced for my brother. You don’t know what you and Jace have done for him. Done for me. You’ve given me back the brother I thought I’d lost forever.”
Melanie wiped away her own tears impatiently. “Stop it, Sarah. Now you’ve got me crying. I didn’t do anything.” Her face reddened as an image of the last time she and Charles had been in her kitchen flashed in her mind. “Well, nothing I could tell anyone about.”
That returned the smile to Sarah’s face. “I told my parents about you. They want to come down and meet you.”
“Oh boy,” Melanie groaned. “I wonder what Charles thought of that.”
“He barely talks to them. I sure he doesn’t even know I called. I hope that being with you will help him with that, too. He and my father used to be close. Charlie was a mini Dad. Then after Phil passed, it all just fell apart. We fell apart. I thought it was something that was irreversible, like losing Phil. But I see now that it doesn’t have to be. They said they’d come when Charlie invites them. Last year I would have said that meant never, but now I’m hopeful. Charlie’s going to make that call. I know he will. And when my parents meet you, they’re going to love you as much as I do.”