Chapter Six
Oh, she didn’t like this. She did not like this at all.
As Molly slipped out of her jacket the next morning and hooked it on the rack in the reception room, she reread the vital sign chart that Cara Lee, the nurse who’d come in for overnight duty to monitor Meatball, had just handed her.
“Eleven.” Molly felt a tightening in her stomach as she stared at the PCV percentage. “That’s not good.”
“Poor guy had a rough night.” Cara Lee narrowed blue eyes, her brows pulling as she examined Molly with the same scrutiny she’d give a sick puppy. “Looks like he wasn’t the only one.”
“Oh, yeah.” Molly brushed back some of her hair, wild and unruly today, remembering the shadows under her eyes that had met her in the mirror that morning. “Well, I didn’t expect to perform surgery last night.”
“Your father said you were done by ten,” Cara Lee said. “I figured you got a good night’s sleep.”
She figured wrong. “Not really. I stressed about the dog.” And his owner. “Is he still in Special Care?”
“Of course.” Cara Lee gestured toward the room on the left that served as their ICU when needed. Unlike the office in town, which used to be her father’s practice, the Waterford Farm vet office was a small operation, used primarily for checking on the many dogs housed and trained at the facility. On the rare occasion they had serious treatment, they had two rooms that could be used for high-level monitoring and long-term recovery. Thank goodness, because they’d need both for this case.
“I’m going to see him now.” She took a few steps and reached for the doorknob. “I don’t want him to be alone long.”
“Oh, he’s not.”
Molly felt her breath catch, already knowing what Cara Lee was about to say.
“His owner’s in there.”
Molly froze and slowly turned to look at the nurse. “He is?”
Cara Lee grinned at the reaction. “I know, right?” she mouthed the words. “He’s hot.”
Oh God. “Really?” The word came out like a croak. “I hadn’t noticed.”
They were too good of friends for Cara Lee not to lift a you can’t be serious brow, but Molly ignored it and headed in.
Trace didn’t turn when the door opened. He stood next to the large cage, both hands braced on the bars, staring down at Meatball, who moaned with every inhale and shuddered on the exhale as he slept.
Trace wore faded jeans and a white T-shirt that clung to well-developed muscles, both arms completely covered in colorful tattoos. His dark hair was tousled on top, but cut short along the neckline and around the ears. Facing his profile, she could see his jaw was clenched, and one vein in his neck throbbed in a steady beat that perfectly matched the one pounding in Molly’s chest.
“He’s a wreck,” he murmured, still not looking at her.
For a moment, Molly wondered if he meant him or the dog.
“He’s struggling,” she acknowledged.
Finally, he tore his gaze from Meatball, turning his dark eyes to her, shocking her with the red rims of someone who might have been crying. Or maybe he had the same crappy night she had.
“The nurse said I should talk to you.” He sounded like the very idea bothered him.
Molly lifted the paper in her hand. “Meatball’s blood test shows a low PCV, or packed cell volume. That means the percentage of red blood cells to serum is low, and he might need a blood transfusion.”
He murmured a curse and threaded his fingers through his hair, pulling it back and making it even more tangled. “Then what?”
“Then…” She hated to make him agonize any more. One of the many reasons she’d barely slept was shame for how she’d treated him. Even taking Pru and the past out of the picture, she should have been more compassionate. “Then there might be more surgery,” she added softly. “If he doesn’t respond to the transfusion, we’d have to look for a vessel that isn’t ligated completely, or maybe a complication that happened during the splenectomy. Something affecting the red blood cells.”
She took a few steps to the cage and carefully unlatched it, but Meatball didn’t stir. His left paw was outstretched with the IV stuck in his shaved skin. Reaching in, she stroked his smooth brown belly, feeling for any new distension.
Meatball’s closed eyes fluttered at the touch, and Molly drew back, looking up to meet Trace’s gaze. He was silent, with agony carved on to every feature.
“He’s a great dog,” she said, knowing that if he were any other person on earth, she’d add a gentle touch to his arm and a lot more sympathy. He deserved that, no matter who he was. “He has very intelligent eyes,” she continued. “Even as miserable as he was last night, he was sweet.” His tail had thumped the operating table as if to express his trust. And she should have told his owner that last night.
She should have taken two minutes while Liam and Dad did the X-rays and pre-op tests to sit calmly with Trace to explain what they were going to do, why they had to, and what the possible outcomes were. As she would have with any other dog parent in that situation.
Instead, she’d been a stone-cold bitch to him.
“He’s the best,” he agreed.
“I think we can fix him up,” she said. “I don’t want you to worry too much.”
His expression flickered, not revealing anything except that her words affected him. “I didn’t think you cared much about the owners,” he murmured.
Ouch. Well, she had that coming. “I do.”
He repositioned himself in front of the cage, leaning closer and reaching his arm in where hers was, his skin brushing hers and sending a crackle of electricity through her. She slid her arm out and took a full step away.
“Hey, bud,” he whispered. “You’ll be out of this cell soon.”
Cell? Molly tried not to react to that, but might have failed. One corner of Trace’s lips curled in a wry smile.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said softly. So softly, she wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or Meatball. “It’s like an elephant in the room.”
Oh Lord. Here we go. “It…is?”
He looked directly at her. “What’s protocol? What’s right? Do you acknowledge the past or try to ignore it?”
Molly inhaled sharply. “I guess you—”
“I say face it head on,” he interjected, saving her. “It’s uncomfortable, yeah. But I think it’s best to get it out there and endure the discomfort, because honesty is the most important thing.”
She nodded slowly. “I was going to—”
“So, yeah. Protocol says it’s okay to admit you know and I know.”
He did? She waited, breath trapped, her gaze dropping over his face and landing on a cleft in his chin that looked like a man’s version of the tiny dimple in her daughter’s chin. His daughter’s chin.
“I spent the last fourteen years in prison.”
And all her breath came out in a whoosh. That’s what he was talking about? “My father told me,” she said. “He said that’s where you’ve been.”
He shifted his attention back to Meatball, and only then did Molly notice that for the entire conversation, he’d kept a hand on his dog’s head. She stared at that hand, at the size and strength of it, the dusting of dark hair and the clean, blunt-cut nails. The tats stopped at his wrists; his hands were ink-free and masculine. And, God, she remembered to this day what he could do with those hands.
“Did he tell you what for?” Trace asked.
Get a grip, Moll. He wanted to talk about prison…not Pru. She could handle prison. She could handle anything but the inevitable truth she had to tell him. Today.
“Not in great detail.”
He stood up straight and let go of Meatball. “I want details,” he said solemnly. “And I want them now.”
“Details.” She fisted her hands at her sides. Did he mean Pru now? Obviously, he had to wonder or suspect. “Details about…” She added him a questioning look.
“About when you’re going to do a transfusion and what will make you decide to do surgery again. And what kind of surgery would it be. What are the risks?”
With each question, she felt herself relax a little, back in the zone of veterinary medicine, not talking about the child they shared. Still studying his expression and holding his gaze, she let out a sigh and made a decision. She would tell him later. She’d explain the process with Meatball, get the transfusion going if he needed it, and after they knew for certain whether there’d be another surgery, she’d tell him about Pru.
“Would you like to sit down in my office and have a cup of coffee?” she said. “I’ll go over everything, from beginning to end. I have some pictures of his stomach from the surgery, and I can tell you where my concerns are. He’s fine for now. I want to run another PCV test in an hour and then decide. We have time to talk.” And rock your world.
He didn’t answer right away. For a long moment, he held her gaze, silent. Her heart hammered so loud, it was a wonder he didn’t hear it.
“Do you have any other pictures?” he whispered.
She drew back an inch, not sure she understood. “Pictures?”
“You know, baby pictures? First day of school? On Santa’s lap or with her first puppy?”
“Oh.” It was barely more than a breath.
“You see, I’ve missed so much.”
She closed her eyes against the sting of tears. “Yes,” she admitted. “You have.”
* * *
Wally would be proud. In fact, Jim Wallace, certified shrink to the cons and officially the best friend Trace had ever had, would jump up from his chair, give a high five, and hoot out loud in the most undignified, untherapistlike way.
Trace might have made a few false starts in the conversation with Molly, mentally backing off and changing the topic without her actually realizing that’s what he’d done, but he reached his end goal.
Do what needs to be done, Trace. He could hear Wally’s voice. Can’t get a goal if you don’t know it. It’s going to make you uncomfortable, Trace. You can handle it, just do what has to be done no matter if it hurts short-term. That’s how you grow. That’s how you change.
And last night, sleeping in a hovel that now legally belonged to Trace, he was plenty uncomfortable, but it was nothing like this morning waiting for Molly to show.
He’d wrestled with the facts all night. Dealt with the horror of possibly losing Meatball, which would be one of the many cruel ironies that plagued Trace’s life. Like the fact that he accidentally killed a man while defending a woman. Or that he spent his life loathing his inmate father only to become an inmate himself. And the twist of fate that, after a war with the prison system that he’d ultimately won, the dog he’d been allowed to keep was at death’s door a few weeks later.
And now…this. Because of the biggest mistake he’d ever made in his life, he’d missed out on a mistake he hadn’t even known he’d made.
Umproo.
Of all of life’s cruelties, the realization that he had a daughter took precedence and even offered a much-needed relief from worrying about Meatball. And now what? How the hell would he ever convince Molly Kilcannon to let him—with his murder rap and prison time, his inked-up body and run-down spirit—be anywhere near a little girl who was so completely and totally perfect?
Molly Kilcannon had all the power here.
“If you don’t mind, can we take this outside?” Trace held up his coffee cup with a remarkably steady hand. “After fourteen years, I can’t get enough fresh air.”
“Oh, of course.” Molly looked a little surprised by the request and glanced toward a coatrack in the corner of the lobby where they’d come to get coffee. “Let me get my jacket.”
They put their cups down, and she reached for a pea coat on a hook.
“I’ll get it,” he offered, opening the jacket and holding it for her. That earned him a quick look over her shoulder. “To prove chivalry’s not dead,” he added. And to stay on your good side.
She slid into her coat and went back to get the coffee while he pulled on his Goodwill special. When she handed him the cup, he couldn’t help but notice the slight tremble in her hand.
Okay, she might have the power, but she was scared. And he didn’t want that, not at all.
She stepped to the desk and waited a second while the receptionist finished a call. “I’ll be outside for a few minutes,” Molly said. “Cara Lee’s going to run another test on Meatball in a bit, and I’ll want the results as soon as possible.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Molly. I didn’t think you were going to be here today.”
She shrugged. “I’m supposed to be at the other office, but they’re covering for me. I wanted to check on Meatball and talk to…” She gave him a glance. “To Trace.”
It was difficult for her to actually say his name. The realization torqued him a little, but he’d become pretty good pals with humiliation over the past fourteen years. What was one more sidelong glance? He’d killed a man. He was used to the dubious looks that came along with that.
A moment later, they stepped out into the cold morning air. Trace sucked in a breath, as he did almost every time he was exposed to fresh air, especially this clean, mountain air he’d taken for granted his whole life before it was all stolen from him.
He sipped the hot coffee and let his gaze travel over the property currently bathed in winter sunshine. He hadn’t been able to see details last night, and this morning, he’d been hell-bent on getting to Meatball. But now, he drank in the full glory of Waterford Farm, a sprawling place behind fancy gates he’d only ever heard about.
What those gates protected was nothing short of stunning. Foothills, covered in frost and darkened by pine forests or bare trees, rolled all the way to the horizon before giving way to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. Closer to where he stood, a massive backyard went on for acres and acres, filled by a huge kennel, several outbuildings, and training pens. At the heart of it all, across a wide drive, sat a grand yellow farmhouse with green shutters and smoke puffing out of multiple chimneys. From here, the back porch was completely visible, furnished with rocking chairs and chaises, trimmed with white railings like comforting arms to hold everyone close and tight.
Molly had grown up here, he knew, with her big, happy family who now must all work at this facility they’d built.
And he’d grown up in a hole on the other side of Bitter Bark with a “missing” father and a fruit loop for a mother.
He shook off the thought and looked at a training pen where six or seven sizable dogs were running around while two people tossed orders at them and threw bright green balls that they weren’t supposed to chase.
“Distraction training,” he mused.
“Yes, that’s exactly what they’re doing today,” Molly answered.
“The whole town is so dog-friendly now,” he said.
“You can thank my soon-to-be sister-in-law for that.” She nodded toward the two people in the pen. “That’s Shane, one of my older brothers, doing the training. His fiancée came up with the idea to build tourism.”
“It’s nice to be able to take Meatball into stores in town,” he said. “People don’t even flinch that he’s part pit.”
She smiled and blew into her coffee cup to cool it off. “More thanks to Shane.”
He took a few steps toward a grassy area, not really interested in talking about her brother, but wanting to let her set the pace of the conversation. He waited a beat, wondering if she’d be direct or coy.
“When did you figure it out?” she asked softly.
Yes. Direct. He so appreciated that. “Last night, she told me she turned thirteen in August.”
She let out a long, slow sigh and led them toward a wide path where some benches were situated in the sunshine, a perfect distance to watch the training in the pen or drink in the scenery. And talk about the daughter he hadn’t known he had.
“What have you told her?” he asked.
She turned to him, her eyes softening as she considered the question. “Thank you for asking that first,” she said. “About her. It wasn’t what I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting? Demands for shared custody?” He added a dry laugh so she knew that wasn’t his endgame. His goal was to know Pru, plain and simple, and not upset her life. Beyond that, he had no idea, other than to inflict the least amount of pain for everyone.
“I wasn’t sure,” she admitted. “And as far as what I’ve told her? Nothing.” She paused when they reached a bench. “Oddly enough, I was planning to tell her everything this weekend.” She plopped down, making the coffee splash a little on her bare hand. She wiped it as if the second of pain was nothing compared to what was evident in her eyes.
“This weekend?” He frowned, thinking about that. “Because I showed up?”
She looked up at him. “No. Because she’s thirteen, and I’ve been beating around the bush about who her father is for a while, and it is time. She deserves the truth. But now?” She closed her eyes. “I hadn’t planned on having living proof.”
“What have you told your family?” he asked. “Your friends? Your…husband?” The last one was a wild guess, but he’d thought about who that might be and how he’d take to Trace. Or not.
“I’m not married,” she said.
“Ever?”
She shook her head.
“You’ve raised her alone.” He sat down next to her as the weight of that hit his shoulders.
“No, not really. I’ve had the entire Kilcannon clan behind me and, up until a little over three years ago, the world’s greatest mother.”
Her mother was dead? His heart hitched, for her and little Pru. “So you had your family’s help, but no one else?” While he’d skipped town, killed a man, got locked up, and left her to raise a child alone. “Shit. Sorry.”
She blew out a breath, giving up on the coffee and setting the cup on the ground to turn to him. “Look, I really tried to find you. I mean, my mother did. But no one knew where you were, or your mother, either.”
“My mother moved to be near me when…it all happened. And she did come back, but I guess she didn’t stay long. We didn’t communicate much after I was incarcerated.” And really, could he blame her? His mother looked at him and saw…his father. The other con in the family.
“I guess I could have hired someone,” Molly said, swallowing visibly. “But I was consumed with a new baby. Then, when Pru was a little over a year old, Mom told me you were killed in a bar fight in West Virginia, and I accepted that as the truth.”
He snorted softly. “Where’d she hear that?”
“I never knew. She said she had it on good authority.”
“Don’t know how good that authority was but, like any good rumor, there’s a thread of truth to it.”
Her brows drew together in confusion. “You’re obviously not dead.”
“There was a bar, not quite a fight. A man died, but not me. The West Virginia part was right.” He looked down at his hands, the deadly weapons, as that prosecutor had called them.
“That’s why you went to jail,” she surmised.
“There’s a price to pay when a man dies.” His voice sounded flat even to his own ears. He’d long ago stopped telling anyone within earshot the truth of what happened that night. Wally had convinced him that he was trying to make himself feel better, but a dead man was a dead man, regardless of the circumstances. Let her think he was drunk, stupid, and pummeled some innocent bystander, or whatever she saw in her head when she heard the words bar fight.
Except, he’d sure like to tell his daughter the truth. If he had the chance.
“When did it happen?” she asked.
“The night after I left Bitter Bark. I had to get out while Bart cooled down and didn’t want to kill me.”
“For turning his wife down.”
His lips lifted in a smile. “You remember?”
“Of course I remember. You told me what happened. That his wife came on to you and you turned her down and she told her husband you tried to…to attack her.”
For some reason, it gave him a boost of confidence and hope that she remembered the truth and, based on the way she relayed the story, believed him. It had been so long since anyone believed anything he said.
“Yeah, I figured Bart would come to his senses eventually, so I took off. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been in that bar in West Virginia, and instead of going to prison, I would have…”
“You’d have known about Pru,” she finished for him.
“If you told me.”
Her jaw loosened. “Of course I would have. You had a right to know her.”
“Have,” he corrected, aware that the closer they got to this, the more it mattered. “I have a right to know her.”
She shut her eyes like the words hit a target. “I know that, but this is Pru we’re talking about,” she said. “It won’t be…simple.”
His laugh was quick and wry. “Think that’s the point of this conversation.”
“She’s not an ordinary girl, Trace.”
“I figured that out in about five minutes,” he said, hearing the gruffness in his voice and praying it didn’t crack with emotion. “She’s incredible.”
Her features softened at the words and the fight he hadn’t even realized was in her eyes disappeared. “I really didn’t expect this.”
“Since you thought I was dead.”
She managed a smile. “I meant that, after last night, I knew you’d either figure it out, or I’d tell you, and then you’d…you’d…” She lifted her hands, at a loss for words.
“Make demands? Tell her I’m her father? Drag you into court? Blackmail you? What kind of man do you think I am? Wait, don’t answer that.”
Again, she sort of smiled, looking up as if she appreciated the tiniest bit of humor in this humorless situation. He stared at her, seeing, not for the first time, the way her eyes matched her daughter’s perfectly, that incredible mix of amber and gold and copper and tinges of green. They were wide, with long lashes, framed by eyebrows the same color as her hair, like burnished mahogany.
“Molly, I killed a man about twenty-four hours after…after we were together.”
She flinched, but held his gaze, an act of bravery that touched him somewhere he didn’t even know could be touched anymore.
“You think I’m so cocky I would blow in here with a half-dead dog, discover I’d made a baby girl with you, and expect you to upend both your lives so I could start playing Daddy?”
“I honestly had no idea what you would do when I saw you last night. But I’m really happy it’s not any of those things.”
“All I want is to be part of her life.”
She blinked at him. “How?”
“I don’t know, but that’s what I want.”
“But you don’t know Pru. I know, I know.” She held off an argument with one hand up. “That’s the point. But she’s really…” She stared ahead, thinking. “She does everything by the book, Trace. She’s obsessed with being right and good and on time and perfect and structured.”
“Wonder where that came from.”
She inched back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a legit question. Everything about us comes from some experience or incident in our lives.”
“Did you study psychology in prison, too?”
He smiled. “A little.”
“Well, I don’t know where her personality comes from, because she was born this way. And the whole idea that she…that you…that we…” She dropped her head and pressed her fingers against her temples. “I have to think through how I’m going to tell her.”
“But you were planning to this weekend,” he reminded her. “What were you going to say?”
“That you were dead.”
The words hit hard.
“But obviously, I can’t now.”
Because he’d shown up and stolen the chance for her to do that. Now the little girl who liked everything good and right was about to find out what the legacy was on the other side of her muddy gene pool. And that would hurt her.
Something twisted in his gut, a pain as sharp as what Meatball must have felt last night. But this wasn’t a flipped stomach. This was a flipped heart and a need to protect that child no matter what it did to him.
“Then that’s what you should tell her,” he said simply. “Tell her that her father died, make up a name if you have to, and I’ll…I’ll…” This time, his voice did crack.
“What?” She choked the word. “I’ll do no such thing,” she said. “I’ll tell her—”
“Molly!” The nurse came running out with no jacket, and Molly and Trace instantly popped to their feet.
“It’s Meatball. His PCV has dropped to seven, and he’s vomiting. We need to transfuse and do an ultrasound, stat.”
“On my way.” She turned to him. “Just…wait. Don’t do anything. Don’t…don’t leave yet.”
She took off, long, wavy hair flying in the breeze, leaving Trace holding a cup of cold coffee and what felt like broken pieces of his past.
Don’t leave yet.
Okay, he wouldn’t. But save my dog, please.