the briefest of glances, one that slashed her with scorn.
“You mean do I always have to tell him the bare-assed truth?”
“No, I mean do you always have to deliberately humiliate him?”
“There’s the reason your kid’s in trouble today,” he said. “You.”
She turned cold all over, when she’d just been hot.
Pray God it wasn’t true. But of course, she had been afraid that it was, ever since the trouble started with Shane.
Surely, surely, since she’d tried so hard, she wasn’t as bad a parent as Gordon and Toni, her mother, had been.
“A boy needs somebody to grab him by the collar, yell at him, shake him and scare the shit out of him once in a while,” Gordon raved on, “that’s what makes a man out of him.”
“Destroying his pride makes a man out of him?”
“Stay out of this, Andie Lee. You came to me for help, so I’m helping you.”
He clamped his mouth shut in that tight, straight line she remembered so well. For Gordon, the subject was closed.
Well, he’d have to get used to the fact she was no longer a little girl who wanted his approval.
“Oh, right. You’ve got him to the point of kidnapping girls and trying to steal cars, and in only three weeks. I could never have accomplished that all by myself.”
He ignored her.
“And now you’ve left him in jail for the whole night.”
“More than one whole night,” he said. “Know that.”
Fear struck, all through her. She tried for a reasonable tone of voice.
“That’ll only make things worse, Gordon. Shane—”
He interrupted in his usual vicious way. “I got him in a cell by himself. You know that. I saw you hovering around with your ears flapping in the wind while I arranged it.”
She wished with all her being that she hadn’t asked him for help. If only she’d made the decision to sell her practice before she ever dialed his number! Then she could’ve had money to buy help for Shane. But the practice was her livelihood and the only asset she hadn’t already poured into this battle against addiction.
Her reasoning had been that her practice was as important to Shane’s future as it was to hers. So she had destroyed her considerable pride and broken her fifteen-year-old vow never to be at Gordon Campbell’s mercy again. For four days and nights, she had thought about it and agonized over it but in the end she had decided that any amount of pain would be worth the suffering if it could save Shane’s life and sanity.
She would do anything to save Shane. How could she even think about sacrificing this chance of help for him just to cling to her pride and the word of honor she had given to herself?
Gordon had the resources to help the one she loved. She would swallow her pride and call him.
And so she did.
It was still hard to believe that she had broken her vow. That vow, coming out of fury and fear and the unspeakable shocked hurt of a child betrayed by its mother—a feeling she had sworn at his birth Shane would never know—had held her upright while she lived in poverty as a teenaged, single mother. It had driven her to travel with Chase Lomax on the rodeo circuit, painting designs on leather chaps and shirts for a living while he tried to win the big prizes riding roughstock. Later, she waited tables to take care of her baby and pay her way through college and veterinary school.
That vow had pushed her to borrow a lot of money to set up her practice, even after Gordon had offered, at her mother’s funeral, to help her get started. That had been some kind of temporary sentimental aberration—not because he felt guilty or generous toward Andie Lee but because he’d felt suddenly lonely without Toni.
Theirs had been some kind of devil’s pact. They had fought like tigers all the years they’d been married but they never separated. They both thrived on the conflict, even though they both knew that it would come out, always, with Gordon on top.
Only one thing had ever brought them to agree. That was the idea that Andie Lee should date Trey Gebhardt, scion of another prominent family, a political family that could do Gordon some good at the national level. Trey had raped her on their third date and Shane had been the result.
Her mind drew back from the memory fast as a damp finger from a sizzling burner. Her life hadn’t turned out to be all that bad—not until Shane started going downhill. Before that, he had been her greatest joy.
One good thing was that she’d had Chase to help her—although not with money, because back then he’d had none, either—and she still loved him for being the only daddy Shane had ever known. And she loved him for loving her. He just hadn’t loved her enough to quit the rodeo life and make a real family, and she hadn’t loved him enough to keep going down the road with him.
Now she was a professional, accustomed to making life-and-death decisions and giving orders that were obeyed. She’d made another bad choice by asking for Gordon’s help, but she was a grown-up now and she wouldn’t let him push her around.
“I’m taking him away,” she said. “As soon as they let Shane go, I’m taking him someplace else.”
He pressed his foot harder on the accelerator.
“He’s staying here,” he said. “Either on the Splendid Sky or in jail.”
“This is all about your ego,” she said, “and we don’t have time for that. I’ve got to save him before it’s too late and that point’s coming closer by the minute.”
“Andie Lee,” he said, letting a full measure of disgust come into his voice, “I’ll take care of your boy. Go back to Texas and see to your practice before you end up losing it.”
He looked at her again and this time she couldn’t read one single trace of emotion in his blue eyes.
“You’ve put a lot of money and energy into veterinary school,” he said “You’d be losing that, too.”
“My life’s over anyway if Shane goes down the tubes,” she said. “And there’s no way I can leave him here since your idea of taking care of him is to tell him he doesn’t have a daddy to do jack for him.”
“That’s the truth. He doesn’t.”
“And whose fault is that?” she asked, surprised at the depth of bitterness she heard in her voice.
Andie Lee, you’ll fool around and make him really mad and he’ll leave Shane in jail to spite you. He has all the power around here, and you know it. Take care.
But the words were already said and on the table and she would make him acknowledge them. She should have said them to him long ago.
“Yours,” he said. “It’s your fault he has no daddy. I gave you choices. I would’ve arranged for you to get rid of the baby or to marry Trey Gebhardt, either one.”
