A Father's Name(48)

His father had been a user. Tyler lost track of the number of women his father brought home in a drunken haze. Nameless women who his father discarded with no thought or remorse.

Tyler had never done that.

Any woman he dated understood he wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship.

That’s what he’d intended back when he’d asked Angelina out. Two people having a good time. And if she’d said yes back then, maybe that would have been all they had. Maybe not. But now, he knew that she wasn’t like that. Despite what she’d said downstairs, she wasn’t the type of woman who could separate sex and love.

Not that he was conceited enough to think she loved him. But he knew that she cared for him, and this was part of their lovemaking.

What the hell had he done?

Jace squawked in the next room. Thankful for an excuse to get out of bed, Tyler rolled to his side, but Angelina stopped him. “Let me, please? I think that’s one of the things I miss the most. Getting a baby in the night.”

“Sure,” he said and kept his gaze on her as she got out of bed and reached for her panties and her ever-present T-shirt, then hurried next door.

He laid back in the bed and listened to her murmur to the baby. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, but Jace was quiet.

About ten minutes later, Tyler got up, slipped on his jeans without fastening them and padded next door. Jace’s bedroom door was ajar and he peeked in.

In the soft glow of the small lamp, Tyler could make out Angelina sitting in the rocking chair, the once-again sleeping baby in her arms. His legs hung over the arm of the chair, and his one arm draped over the other end, but Angelina didn’t seem to notice. She rocked and stroked Jace’s white blond curls, singing so softly Tyler couldn’t make out the song.

She looked up and smiled at him and Tyler realized how big a mistake he’d made by making love to Angelina.

He’d worried about her feelings. He’d worried that she couldn’t separate and compartmentalize having sex and keep it from spilling into deeper emotions. And now he realized it wasn’t Angelina with the problem. It was him.

He couldn’t separate his feelings from making love with her.

It was love.

Pure and simple.

Well, not simple. Not simple at all. He stood there lost in watching her cuddle Jace and though he couldn’t regret losing everything when he went to jail because he’d had to do it, at this moment he wished it had never happened. He wished he’d grown up with the Matthews family, and not with his drunken abusive father. He wished that he was standing here a man without all the emotional baggage, able to give Angelina Tucker everything she was due.

“Ty?” she whispered.

“I was checking on the two of you. I’ll be downstairs when you put him back down.”

He padded barefoot down the stairs and into the kitchen. If he was a drinking man, he’d pour himself a glass of something about now. But he didn’t. Not ever. His father’s example was too much of a deterrent. He settled for making some coffee. Normally he wouldn’t think of his favorite brew this late at night, but he knew he wouldn’t be sleeping anyway.

He listened to the coffee perk and stared out the window. The fireflies that had been so prevalent this summer blinked on and off merrily in the yard under the huge silver maple that only allowed the merest of dappled moonlight to shine through.

He loved the peace of this farmhouse. It was the first place he’d felt at home since that brief time he’d spent at the Matthews’ at the end of high school.

He could hear himself think here.

What he was thinking tonight was that he was a fool to act on his desire for Angelina.

He heard her come into the room, but still stared at the backyard.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she finally said, repeating his line from the Fourth of July.

“They’re not even worth half that much,” he assured her without turning around. Maybe if he didn’t look at her he could end this here and now—end it without her knowing that it was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Maybe they’re worth a lot more than that to me. Talk to me, Tyler.” She stepped between him and the window, forcing him to look at her. “Talk to me.”



“What do you want me to say, Angel? I was honest when I told you this couldn’t be more than sex.”

“And I was honest when I said I was okay with that.”

How did you fight a crazy woman who didn’t even begin to realize her own worth? “It shouldn’t be okay with you, Angel.”