Macy Ward had never imagined that on her wedding day she would be running out of the church instead of walking down the aisle.
But just over a week earlier, she had been drawn out of the church by the sharp crack of gunshots and the harsh squeal of tires followed by the familiar sound of her fiancé’s voice shouting for someone to get his police cruiser.
Her fiancé, Jericho Yates, the town sheriff and her lifelong friend. Her best friend in all the world and the totally wrong man to marry, she thought again, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. She shot a glance at her teenage son who sat beside her in the passenger seat.
“You ready for this, T.J.?”
He pulled out one earbud of his iPod. Tinny, too loud music blared from it. “Did you want something?” T.J. asked.
It was impossible to miss the sullen tones of his voice or the angry set of his jaw.
She had seen a similar irritated expression on the face of T.J.’s biological father, Fisher Yates, as he stood in his Army dress uniform outside the church with his brother—her fiancé. Fisher had looked far more attractive than he should have. As she had raced out into the midst of the bedlam occurring on the steps of the chapel, her gaze had connected with Fisher’s stony glare for just a few seconds.
A few seconds too long.
When she had urged Jericho to go handle the incident and that they could postpone the wedding, she had seen the change in Fisher’s gaze.
She wasn’t sure if it had been relief at first. But the emotion that followed and lingered far longer had been more dangerous.
Now, there was no relief in T.J.’s hard glare. Just anger.
“Are you ready for this?” she repeated calmly, shooting him a glance from the corner of her eye as she drove to the center of town.
The loose black T-shirt T.J. wore barely shifted with his indifferent shrug. “Do I have any choice?”
Choice? Did anyone really have many choices in life? she thought, recalling how she would have chosen not to get pregnant by Fisher. Or lose her husband, Tim, to cancer. Or have a loving and respectful son turn into a troublesome seventeen-year-old hellion.
“You most certainly have choices, T.J. You could have failed your math class or gone to those tutoring sessions. You could have done time in juvie instead of community service. And now—”
“I’ll have to stay out of trouble by working at the ranch since you decided not to marry Jericho.”
It had been Jericho who had persuaded a judge to spare T.J. a juvenile record. The incident in question had resulted in rolls and rolls of toilet paper all over an old teacher’s prized landscaped lawn and a mangled mailbox that had needed to be replaced.
“After postponing the wedding, I realized that I was getting married for all the wrong reasons. So, I chose not to go ahead with the wedding and I’m glad that I did. It gave Jericho the chance to find someone he truly loves,” she said, clasping and unclasping her hands on the wheel as she pulled into a spot in front of the post office.
“I told you before that I don’t need another dad,” he said, but his words were followed by another shrug as T.J.’s head dropped down. “Not that Jericho isn’t a nice guy. He’s just not my dad.”
Macy killed the engine, cradled her son’s chin and applied gentle pressure to urge his head upward. “I know you miss him. I do, too. It’s been six long years without him, but he wouldn’t want you to still be unhappy.”
“And you think working at the ranch with some gnarly surfer dude from California will make me happy?” He jerked away from her touch and wagged one hand in the familiar hang loose surfer sign.
She dropped her hands into her lap and shook her head, biting back tears and her own anger. As a recreational therapist, she understood the kinds of emotions T.J. was venting with his aggressive behavior. Knew how to try to get him to open up about his feelings.