The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(104)

“He’s a good man,” she stated.

Fucking hell.

“Do we have siblings?” Toby asked.

She shook her head. “No. He . . . had kids already.”

“So you raised them,” Toby said.

She shook her head but said, “They were older. Almost in their teens. He’s older. He’s now in his late seventies.”

Almost their teens.

She raised them.

“Dad was well-off. Not enough for you?” Johnny asked.

Her chin lifted. “Yes, my current husband is wealthier than your father was, but that wasn’t why I fell in love with him.”

Fell in love with him.

Jesus.

“You’re married to him?” Toby asked.

“We were . . . aware of Lance’s passing. We . . . made things official after your father passed.”

Jesus.

“Were you with him while you were with Dad?” Johnny kept at her.

She grew visibly cagey.

Fucking hell.

“I knew him growing up,” she allowed. “He was older than me. But I knew him. We . . . knew each other.”

“And then he got shot of his wife or she died or whatever and he was available, so you had a clean go,” Johnny surmised.

Her face turned pointy. “That’s not how it happened.”

Lie.

The woman was fucking lying.

Sitting in the mill, Johnny’s home, her dead husband’s property, a property she knew the kitchen had not been fully updated because she’d been there, repeatedly, probably before she was married, definitely after she was married, undoubtedly while she was pregnant with one or both of them, and she was fucking lying.

“Can you understand how we might not believe that?” Toby asked.

“This isn’t how I wanted this to go,” she returned snappishly.

Losing patience.

Quickly.

He knew her type. He’d seen that type again and again.

She was gearing up for a tantrum if she didn’t get what she wanted.

“How about you just lay it out there so it can go how it goes and gets done,” Toby suggested.

“I just want to get to know my boys,” she said shortly.

“Why now?” Johnny inquired.

She turned her head and looked out the wall of windows that led to Johnny’s balcony, beyond which was the creek.

“Sierra,” Johnny called.

She turned back. “I’m your mother. I never gave you permission to call me by my name.”

“You did the minute you walked out the door of our home, fell in love with another man, actively made sure you were never found until you were ready to come back, and then you made the approach the way you made it,” Johnny returned. “So you got a choice. You’re Ms. Whatever the Hell You Call Yourself, and I hope like fuck it isn’t Gamble, or you’re Sierra. Which one is it?”

“Clearly Lance didn’t teach you any manners,” she bit.

“No, but Margot did. It’s just that you’re sitting in the home I share with my fiancée, lying to my goddamned face, so I’m seeing I don’t have a lot of patience with you,” Johnny returned.

“I’m not getting any younger,” she declared curtly.

“And he hasn’t put you in his will,” Toby guessed.

“I don’t need your money,” she spat.

The other thing you didn’t do with Johnny Gamble.

You didn’t spit words at his brother.

Johnny shared this by pushing his chair back, standing and announcing, “Okay. We’re done here. You’re not gonna be straight with us, give us answers we fuckin’ deserve, this is over.”

“We fought, my . . . my husband and I. He wanted me to get a divorce so he could marry me. We had to wait until . . . until I was ready. Then Lance passed unexpectedly, and I was free. He had to . . . make arrangements so Lance’s investigators couldn’t find me. All of that annoyed him. But I didn’t want to see your father again,” she told them.

Shit.

Fuck.

With the way his dad treated women, Toby wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.

Johnny was always sure of their dad.

“Why?” Johnny demanded.

“If I did, he might make me see you.”

Everyone fell silent.

Sierra broke it.

“I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t . . . wasn’t . . .” She shook her head hard. “I’d walked away from you. I wasn’t ready—”

This wasn’t about Lance Gamble.

This was about Sierra Whoever the Fuck She Was.

“For this,” Toby finished for her. “You weren’t ready for this. You weren’t ready for us to learn you’re a narcissistic, money-hungry bitch. You left mills and shacks and garages and four-bedroom houses to have BMWs and work done on your face when it was needed. And you’re so up your own ass, you couldn’t handle us not worshiping you because you couldn’t handle some of Dad’s attention shifting from his wife to his sons. It’s gotta be about you. With him gone, you think you can pretend to eat shit and that you want to meet Johnny’s fiancée, and we’d be so relieved you were back, it’d be all about you. A very Merry Christmas, Mom’s finally home. Dad couldn’t say shit, he’s gone. It’s your story to tell. Problem with that, Sierra, is we both got dicks. We’ve met women like you. So you’re not foolin’ anybody.”