Dance Away with Me(97)

When they’d had enough time to regain their equilibrium, she offered them her car to drive home, but they decided to walk. She carried Wren upstairs. The bed looked so inviting that she curled up with her, and they both fell asleep.

She awakened to the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She opened her eyes as Ian walked in. He gazed down at her, taking her in from her toes to out-of-control hair. “You’re a sight, Tess Hartsong.”

She yawned. “And good morning to you.” She slid her legs over the edge of the bed. Wren performed her best baby stretch, and Ian came over to pick her up.

“I kicked Winchester out, but now he’s come back. He says he has to talk to you.”

She moaned. “Do I look like I’m awake enough to endure another character assassination?”

“You do not.” He tucked Wren in the crook of his elbow. “He says he won’t leave until he talks to you. I’m aching to throw his ass out, but I don’t want him coming down here while you’re alone.”

“Thoughtful.”

“Knowing you, I also suspect there’s an off chance you actually want to talk to the son of a bitch, something I highly recommend you forgo.”

“Look! Wren’s smiling at you!”

“Yeah, she does that every once in a while.”

“It’s like she’s flirting.”

“Little girls and their—” He stopped and brushed his thumb along the edge of Wren’s blanket. When he looked up, he regarded Tess with disgust. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you? Talk to him.”

“It’s a sickness.” She grabbed a brush from the dresser and ran it through her tangles.

“If he expects me to leave you alone with him, he’ll have to rethink.”

She tugged at a tangle. “For a man who hates messy emotions, you can’t seem to get out of the sludge pond.”

“I almost feel sorry for the son of a bitch. You should see him. He’s so used to everything going his way that he doesn’t know how to cope when it doesn’t.”

*

She could see what Ian meant. Winchester’s skin was ashen, his manicured gray hair disheveled enough to reveal a newly balding patch at the crown. One side of his dress shirt hung out of his wrinkled trousers, and his bare ankles indicated he’d forgotten to put his socks back on before he’d shoved his feet into his formal black wingtips.

He heaved himself from the couch and regarded her with his customary belligerence. “Since you seem to know everything, explain my wife’s insane behavior.”

“It’s not insane,” Tess said.

“Everything was fine until you came here.”

Ian handed Wren over to her, a muscle in the corner of his jaw ticking. “Here’s a thought, Winchester. Maybe if you stopped blaming Tess for your problems and looked at yourself, you could figure this out.”

“Kelly didn’t start sneaking off to the cabin until she got here.”

“Possibly because Tess made the cabin habitable again,” Ian retorted. “You have a broken family, man. The family you’re so proud of. Your wife is suffocating and your daughter is afraid of you, and all you want to do is blame Tess.”

Brad’s belligerence collapsed like a parachute hitting the ground. He dropped to the couch and sank his head in his hands. “When did I turn into the bad guy? I love my wife. And since when is it a sin to want to keep your daughter safe and innocent? To protect her.”

“You love your daughter,” Ian said. “I’ll buy that. But your wife? Do you love her or do you only love the way she does everything you tell her?” He leaned against the wall by the piano. “Here’s why I think you have such a vendetta against Tess. Because you can’t control her. She doesn’t care that you’re the big man around here, and she’s missed the memo that says everybody’s supposed to suck up to you.”

“That’s not true.” It sounded more like a question than a statement. “She . . . We have our values. We . . .” He made a helpless, halfhearted gesture. “I’ve had plenty of chances, but I’ve never once screwed around on Kelly. All these years. I’ve given her everything she could possibly want.”

Ian wouldn’t back off. “Just a wild guess, but did you think of asking her what she wanted or did you only tell her? You’re a bully, Winchester. You’ve bought into the bullshit about your own self-importance. You’re the guy with the money and the connections. But now somebody you care about has pushed back, and you can’t hack it.” Winchester flinched, but Ian wasn’t done. “Man up, dude. Take some fucking responsibility.”

The town’s most prominent citizen collapsed in on himself. “All I want is my wife back. How am I supposed to do that?”

“Hell if I know,” Ian said. “You’ll have to ask Kelly.”

Winchester rose unsteadily from the couch. Without a backward look at either of them, he stumbled out.

And Tess had barely said a word.

“That,” she told Ian, “was awesome.”

He smiled. “More awesomeness awaits.”

“What do you mean?”

He gazed at the baby in her arms. “Wren, do you want to see my tree house?” He bent close to her face, as if he were listening. “Yep. She does.”