just Alex, it was also Kayla.
She’d claimed that she didn’t need any money, but whether or not that was true, what about a college fund? Or sharing parental responsibility? The fact that another man had adopted Alex didn’t mean a damn thing. The guy might be all right, but it was Kayla, not her ex-husband, who’d driven to Schuyler looking for her runaway son.
If their positions had been reversed, Jackson knew nothing could have kept him from searching for Alex, as well.
Jackson spotted a slack wire on a fence and reined in Thunder again. He swung down from the saddle and took out his tools, thinking about the frosty expression in his former girlfriend’s eyes. He was quite certain she’d prefer to keep him away from Alex, so to have a relationship with his son he’d have to figure out how to get along with Kayla.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to call the Garrison household and make sure she hadn’t made a beeline for Seattle. For that matter, he had only Kayla’s word that she’d told Alex the identity of his birth father. If there was one thing he’d learned from Marcy and Patti, it was how many ways a woman could shade the truth.
SOONER OR LATER Alex figured his mom would tell her grandparents to stop spoiling him and DeeDee. They kept doing all sorts of nice things. Like today. The Garrisons had cable, but they didn’t get the Mariners games, so Grandma had called the cable company and ordered a sports package.
That was okay. Alex didn’t mind being spoiled.
Now he and DeeDee were watching the Mariners in the family room. His mother had gone for a drive with Grandpa and his great-grandmother was in the kitchen. She was such a terrific cook it made him wonder if he wanted to stay a vegetarian, even the kind of vegetarian who sometimes cheated with chicken or fish. He missed hamburgers and pepperoni pizza awful bad.
“I like it here,” DeeDee said, lounging back on the cushions with the bowl of popcorn Grandma had made for them.
“Me, too, but just for a visit.” Baseball on TV was okay, but it wasn’t the same as going to Safeco Field. Besides, Sandy was in Seattle. Not that he was worried Mom would move them to Schuyler. She could only leave her business for a while, and he knew how much she cared about her work. He sure didn’t want to leave Seattle for good.
Another inning passed and the Mariners weren’t doing much better than in the first three. Then they pulled off two singles, a double and a home run in the sixth.
“I knew that pitcher was losing his arm,” DeeDee said smugly as the opposing team’s starting pitcher left the mound. “Hit the road, Jack,” she called at the TV screen.
“Mariner batting didn’t hurt,” Alex countered, getting up during the break. “I’m gonna make more popcorn.”
In the kitchen he popped a batch and stood at the window for a few minutes, munching from the bowl. Montana backyards sure were different from anywhere in Seattle.
The phone rang. It had been ringing a lot because Grandma and Grandpa’s friends kept calling to ask about him and DeeDee. Alex yawned, not much interested until his ears caught, “Hello, Jackson.” He crept to the connecting door between the kitchen and Grandma’s sewing room. It wasn’t nice to listen in, but he wanted to hear what she was saying to his birth father.
The half of the conversation he could hear, broken by silences, was weird.
“No...Kayla is still here...Well, of course she’s told him.” There was a longer silence. “I’m not interested in what’s fair to you, Jackson. It wasn’t fair to take a sixteen-year-old girl out for a date and return her home pregnant, even if Kayla says she takes responsibility, as well. You were older and I expected better.”
Wow. Alex was proud of his grandmother. She was plenty tough when she needed to be.
“You’ll just have to be patient,” Grandma said after another minute. “I can’t promise, but where do you want to meet?”
Alex heard a car door slam in the driveway and hurried back to the hot-air popper. He was dumping another batch of kernels into it when his great-grandfather walked through the back door.
“Great idea,” Grandpa said. “Make some for me.”
“Uh, sure.”
“That’s a very serious expression you’re wearing, young man. Is something on your mind?”
Alex made a face. He wasn’t good at playing it cool. “Yeah, maybe...I don’t know.”
Grandpa grinned. “That kind of answer would drive a courtroom judge crazy.”
Alex started the popper. It was noisy and he was glad to have an excuse not to say anything. He didn’t know what to think. Mom had said it was his choice to see Jackson, so why was the guy calling the house?
After giving Grandpa a bowl of popcorn and topping off his own, Alex went back to the family room. DeeDee was on the floor next to the bookshelf, studying the contents.
She rolled over and grinned at him. “Guess what I found?”
“Not interested.”
“Bet you will be—it’s the yearbook from when Mom was in high school here.”
It was a pain to admit, but DeeDee was right. Grabbing the book she was waving in the air, he sat on the couch and thumbed through the pages.
He stopped at the junior class photos and looked at the picture of his mother. She didn’t look that different from now. In the senior class section he rolled the pages until he came to Jackson McGregor.
DeeDee must have guessed whose picture he was staring at. “What does your birth dad look like?”
“Kind of like me.”
“Nah,” she denied. “Can’t be two faces that ugly in the world.”
“You’ve been waiting to use that line, haven’t you?”
“Natchramento.”
Alex closed the book and tried to concentrate on the ball game. The Mariners had pulled even further ahead, so he ought to be cheering, but something was bugging him. What if his birth dad tried to make trouble? Was that why he’d called?
Maybe this Jackson guy wanted him to move in...or to get custody. He could be trying to make Mom do something else she didn’t want to do. Grandma hadn’t sounded happy on the phone.
Alex didn’t want to live anywhere else, even if he was still mad that Mom hadn’t told him about the adoption and...well, everything. Maybe he should just tell her he’d decided not to see his birth father and ask how soon they could go back to Seattle.
* * *
THAT EVENING KAYLA steamed into Ryan’s Roadhouse, where her grandmother had said Jackson wanted to meet for another discussion. He was seated at the bar, talking on his cell phone as she came closer.
“Hell, no, Morgan...Well, you aren’t a boy, you’re a girl and...Okay, so the
