rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_7f1c41dc-ed24-5746-8e00-c0574b369036">Chapter 2
“I know, Dad,” Isaiah Jacobs answered for the umpteenth time.
His old man was spoiling for a fight, but he wouldn’t get it. Not today. No matter how hard he tried. Not with the news Isaiah had been blindsided by just two days ago still sinking in.
Isaiah tightened his grip on the old Ford pickup’s steering wheel and navigated the winding state road leading back to Wintersage. He was barely a week into civilian life, but tension stiffened his posture as if he was awaiting a fleet admiral’s inspection.
“I don’t need you hauling me around like a soccer mom, either,” Ben Jacobs groused. “I drove myself back and forth for six weeks of treatments. I can certainly do it this last week.”
“I know, but I’m here now, and I want to drive you.” Isaiah’s conciliatory tone belied the fact that he hadn’t given his father a choice in the matter. He’d parked the old pickup, which he’d driven back in high school, crossways, blocking the door to his parents’ four-car garage.
“It’s bad enough your mother’s got me on this god-awful macrobiotic diet. She also banned me from my own office. Threw the fact it’s technically her family’s business in my face and dismissed me like some grunt. After all these years.”
Isaiah glanced at the passenger’s seat. His father’s arms were crossed over his chest and weight loss had made the mulish set to his jaw more pronounced.
“Mom’s trying to look out for you,” Isaiah said. “And as far as work goes she just insisted you take sick leave. Like she would have done with any Martine’s employee in your situation.”
“I’m not any employee.” The elder Jacobs’s thunderous baritone rattled the windows of Isaiah’s old truck. “I’m president of that damn company.”
A president who had been outranked by Martine’s Fine Furnishings’ worried chairwoman, Cecily Martine Jacobs, who’d resorted to a power play to force her husband to make his health a number-one priority.
“Mom’s doing what she thinks is best to—” Isaiah began.
“Don’t need mothering or smothering,” his father interrupted. “I’m not some kid. I’m a grown man.”
So am I. The words sat unspoken on the tip of Isaiah’s tongue.
The logical part of him understood his folks’ reasoning for not revealing his father’s status as soon as they’d found out, camouflaging it in every email, phone call and Skype chat. They hadn’t wanted to worry him.
However, the son in him wished he’d been told immediately that his father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer two months ago. Instead of being blindsided by the news his first day home in three years.
“Don’t need you patronizing me, either,” Ben groused. “We may have the same military rank, Lieutenant, but I’m still the parent here.”
Keeping his eyes on the road, Isaiah stuck with the same noncombatant phrase he’d repeated all afternoon.
“I know, Dad.”
His mother had warned him that while the course of radiation therapy wasn’t painful, it had left his father fatigued and ornery.
“And we should have taken my Benz instead of your old truck,” his father added. “When was the last time this beater was taken through a car wash, anyway? The neighbors are going to think I’ve hitched a ride with some backwoods hillbilly, instead of a decorated navy lieutenant.”
“Retired lieutenant,” Isaiah corrected.
A harrumph came from the passenger’s seat. “Who the hell retires at twenty-nine years old?”
I do, Isaiah thought.
Like his father and grandfather, he’d gone from Wintersage Academy to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Isaiah had graduated a commissioned officer and dedicated the next seven years of his life to the navy, proudly serving his country.
Now, for the first time in over a decade, he was a free man. No longer weighed down by tradition, expectations or duty, he was finally going to follow his own life plan and fulfill his long-held dreams.
Ambitions he hadn’t shared with anyone.
Actually, there was one person who knew, he thought. They’d even made plans to pursue their goals, together.
But that was a lifetime ago.
Before he could banish it, a faint recollection of a teenage girl with deep chocolate skin and a long raven mane swept up in a high ponytail popped into his head.
Sandra Woolcott.
Isaiah felt the corner of his mouth quirk upward in a half smile at the sweet memory of the first girl to claim his heart. He’d driven along this same road, in this same truck, with a brand-new driver’s license in his pocket and Sandra in the passenger’s seat.
He could almost hear her laughter as the wind freed her hair from her ponytail and her hair whipped around her face that long-ago spring day.
Isaiah had traveled the world and dated his fair share of women, but he’d yet to come across one more beautiful than Sandra.
Curiosity replaced his musings, and he wondered how her life had turned out. Had she pursued their big plans on her own, after he’d put family expectations and tradition ahead of his own desires and her?
“Hey!” His father’s strident tone jarred him out of his reverie. “Have you been gone so long you forgot your way home? You were supposed to make a left at the intersection.”
“I know, Dad.”
Staring through the windshield at the gray skies, and trees nearing the end of their autumn peak, Isaiah banished thoughts of Sandra to the back of his mind, chalking up the out-of-the-blue flashback to being back in Wintersage.
Ben heaved a drawn-out sigh. The one he used when he was on the brink of losing his patience. “Son, if you say ‘I know, Dad’ to me one more time...” His father’s voice trailed off.
“Sorry,” Isaiah said.
“Well, aren’t you going to turn this heap around?” Ben groused. “Or do I have to drive us home.”
Isaiah shook his head. “We’re not going home yet. So just sit tight.”
“We’re headed downtown?” Ben asked after Isaiah made a left turn.
He nodded, bracing himself for inevitable blowback.
“For what? To give the town busybodies something else to gossip about?” his father protested. “‘Poor Ben Jacobs. He looks like a scrawny chicken,’” he mimicked. “Then they sanction their tongue wagging by tacking the words bless his heart on the end of every juicy tidbit.”
“You may have lost a few pounds, but you look fine,” Isaiah said.
His
