A Father's Name(44)

He was a chip off the old block.

“There’s something about your…uh, situation that’s been nagging at me,” Tucker said hesitantly, which was not her standard operating procedure. She was a throw caution to the wind and speak her mind sort of woman, so her reticence stood out.

“My situation?” he asked.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.” Then more to herself than to him she murmured, “There’s something not right about it.”

He chose his words very carefully. “Angel, I went to court and stood before the judge and didn’t fight the charges. I took a deal.”

“See, that’s just it. You didn’t fight the charges and took a deal. Did you tell the judge you did it? Did you actually say it?”

He hadn’t. It was a point of pride. One of the few remnants he allowed himself.

Tyler didn’t lie. He might be a chip off the old block in a lot of respects, but not like that. After each of his benders, his father would swear that was the last time he was done drinking. And every time his father hit him, or beat him, he’d swear that he’d never touch him again.

Lies.

Tyler had to hold on to at least one truth about himself if he could help it.



So he couldn’t lie to Angelina as she looked at him so trustingly. He had never admitted to the crime, he simply hadn’t contested the charges. Maybe it was splitting hairs, a fine line, but it was a line he drew and could walk. It was a line that allowed him to live with himself. That was the part of the plea deal he’d insisted on. He wouldn’t plead guilty.

She took his silence as a sign she was right. “Told you. You’d never do something like that.”

“You’re wrong, Angel. If it was Jace,” or you, he added silently, “I’d do anything it took. Anything. I’d beg, borrow or steal if I had to.” In his heart he knew it was true. He’d break his last promise to himself and lie if that’s what it took to protect one of them.

“I think I understand that. I’d do anything for Bart.” She paused and added, “You’re a good man, Tyler Martinez. I don’t need you to tell me what happened. I want you to know, I believe in you. You’re a good man.”

It was too much. Too damn much. Angelina sat across from the baby wearing her sciencey, holiday t-shirt and jeans, and looking at him as if he’d hung the moon.

She believed in him. With no proof. Heck, with nothing at all. She simply believed in him. Before the formal charges were even made, friends and colleagues had abandoned him. They’d believed the worst, but not Angelina.

He’d wanted her since the first time he’d seen her. She’d crawled out from under his car with a smudge of oil on her cheek, her hair tucked into a baseball cap, with fly-away curls escaping every which way, and she’d grinned at him.

He generally dated other professionals—women who were more at home in cocktail dresses than jeans. But one look at Angelina Tucker, and he’d pursued her with an instant lust that wouldn’t give him respite.

When it became apparent she wasn’t interested, he’d swept that desire under the rug, but it was back now, stronger than ever because now he knew her and she was amazing. Walking into the garage before, he’d felt the same sense of accomplishment he always did when someone else serviced his cars. He loved to wait at the shop and visit with George Tucker, knowing that he didn’t have to touch a wrench or a lugnut. But George hadn’t been there that day, only Angelina.

He didn’t understand it then, but he did now.

Now, it had gone beyond that initial immediate attraction. He cared about her, more every day. Watching her tonight at dinner, laughing with her friends, blowing on french fries before handing them to Jace, talking with such excitement about the fireworks, like a little girl. And his desire grew.

Like a dash of cold water, he thought of George Tucker telling him that Angelina deserved more than an ex-con.

If only George knew the truth. It wasn’t simply his conviction that made Angelina Tucker out of his league, it was everything else.

He should scoop up Jace and get away from her. He started to move toward the sleeping baby, when Angelina intercepted him and kissed him. She instigated it, and controlled it, taking that simple kiss and turning it into something profound.

There was hunger in her kiss, but there was tenderness, too.

And that tenderness was his undoing.

All his fine ideals and plans to walk away faded beneath the weight of that tenderness. There, over the sleeping baby, he kissed Angelina back trying to say in that one gesture what he would never say in words.