Merry with a Ranger (Love Beach Holiday Collection)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

N ASH

Dinner was torture. Silent, pure death.

Thankfully, Bonnie chose the seat next to me, though her shell of a mother perched on my other side so I got the full blast of her father’s interrogative stare across the table. That was okay. I understood him. Bonnie’s mom, on the other hand…

Well, I understood her, too.

All too well.

I spent years in the FBI talking to traumatized women in various stages of recovery, trying to help them grasp details they barely remembered, or readying them for the stand in the hope that on the day they would be the performing monkey we all needed in order to put the sons of bitches who created the trauma away for a long, long time.

Occasionally, it worked.

Often, our processes created more damage than was there when we started. I hated it. Pinned between the two women, Bonnie with her innocent doe eyes staring beseechingly at me, and Mrs Little with her blank face that recognized no one, made the first steps to purgatory I earned myself dozens of times over for all the above reasons. Not that her mom seemed to know her husband or her child when Bonnie spoke to her across me, but somewhere in there Sarah Little recognized one thing: this conversation had to go on, and she was expected to be a part of it.

She played her role, just like everyone else at the table. Hers just came out a little more obvious, and stilted.

My heart ached for all of them, including the angry, protective father and husband seated across from me who seemed intent on ashing me with a single glare.

Unfortunately for him, that hadn’t happened for me yet.

The moment my knife sat next to my fork across my plate he slapped the table decisively, jerking Bonnie out of her stupor where she shredded her paper napkin systematically into her lap beside me.

“Right. Nash and I need a chat on the balcony with a nice glass of that whiskey you were killing before we came in. Or three.” His eyes warned me I wasn’t taking Bonnie back to my room tonight, or any other night.

A twenty-seven year old woman who was fast on her way to becoming a mirror of her empty shell of a mother, in all respects. My spine stiffened, but I knew this conversation was coming the moment I saw him. To be honest, as much as I knew it would sting, my curiosity won out fair and square. Bonnie and I spent ten minutes at the bar earlier, lying our asses off to each other.

This man would slap me in the face with the truth for my own good and tell me to thank him for it.

I would, with a few hand selections of my own right back.

“Yes, sir.” I rose, dragging my fingertips along Bonnie’s upper arm in full sight—nothing hidden here—anticipating her reaction.

She didn’t disappoint.

Her shiver was a full body effort that left the scant remains of her napkin in confetti. A large part of me needed her beneath my weight the next time she did that, but first I had to deal with a different sort of threat who seemed to have no idea of the damage he did to his daughter.

“Two, please.” My knuckles rapped the bar top lightly at the back of the room. The bartender didn’t have a big job tonight; either everyone ate out, or the resort wasn’t doing its job well over Christmas. “Event in town tonight?”

“Yacht party at the marina. You know rich kids. Plus the night markets on the boardwalk.” His knowing gaze told me he recognized my ilk.

I nodded back and didn’t ask him to throw his wisdom my way. Something told me I’d regret it. Hands filled with two generous fingers each to match the tip from earlier, I winked at Bonnie as she escorted her mother back toward the rooms.

Her lips sliding between whitened teeth, her gaze darted to the balcony and back. Hesitating for a second, she parked her mother in stasis near the door and the barman, and dashed back to me.

“I won’t be that long.” I searched her eyes, frowning.

“I never got to tell you anything.” Her eyes glazed with more salt than the ocean beyond the closed doors, though a rushing far louder than the sea filled my ears the moment she started to speak. “I– there isn’t enough time. Please find me afterward. I need to apologize.”

“Bonnie, there’s nothing?—”

She shook her head, vehement. “You can’t say that, Nash.” One tear jeweled her lashes like a glistening Christmas bauble. “You don't know .”

I swallowed hard. “You should have stayed.” I backed up a step, and another as she mouthed two words that ripped me apart inside. The kid I’d been looking for her that night, and the man I’d been five minutes ago, still clinging to a futile specter of hope, died a little.

I couldn’t.

Nothing else.

Turning my back to Bonnie, I paraded across the dining room floor to find her father outside and prayed I’d go numb in the night’s ocean freezing air before he said anything else that stung.

Maybe I wasn’t half as prepared as I thought.

Kicking the sliding door gently shut behind me, I walked along the balcony where the wind picked up around the side of the building in a veritable gale. Naturally, that’s where her father stood, his hands latched around the railing as though it would keep his bulk that was in no way threatened in blowing away on solid ground.

I coughed discreetly and passed over the glass. “Sir.”

He took the glass without looking. There was a measure of trust I didn’t expect.

“I know who you are, Mercer.” He stared across the sand, up the long beach where white caps flickered further out to sea while the waves themselves were eaten by the darkness.

“I missed her that night.” My voice stayed quiet, almost lost in the wind.

Almost.

He sighed. “We both did. She ever tell you?”

I shook my head, though he couldn’t see the motion, and joined him at the railing, both our drinks untouched. “I spoke to her this afternoon for the first time in ten years, sir. Real gut punch. Thought…thought I was over her, you know. The disappearance. Don’t know if you understood what happened after. The town was in an uproar. You all ran off. No one knew what happened. Speculation. Lies, rumors…the works. Her name…” I shook my head and dipped my neck between my shoulders, stretching muscles that were never right after that night, but they weren’t ready to give, yet. “I tried to quell them but I gotta admit even I struggled with that. After a while I got silent, too. Wondered where she’d gone. What happened to make you all run.”

The words fell out and I cursed myself internally for being so verbose. The silent dinner hit me in all the right/wrong places. But as I glanced sideways at the father staring into the darkness, I knew I wasn’t the only one affected that way. He just showed his fears, his stress differently.

Grant Little didn’t move. Not a word or a breath escaped him, though he didn’t hold back on purpose, turn purple or swell like an over puffed bullfrog. Nothing. That was a skill under duress. A learned trait. Or maybe this man endured so much that he’d mastered the art of stillness. An acquired skill.

“We were…required to leave.” He spoke to the night, the wind whipping his words away the moment he spoke, but my trained ear picked up each one, already knowing the bullshit story he was about to spin for me. “Headed north, got out of town after my wife’s first turn. Couldn’t stay around after that. Too much for her,” he said gruffly, as though emotion caught up with him.

Or the lies of ten years eating away a conscience never meant for it.

I turned my glass in my hands and took a deep drink. Letting the pain then the smoothness roll through me, and found the best words I could, planted them on target.

“I used to respect you, sir.” I stood side on so I looked him straight in the eyes, if only he’d face me but of course after that, he couldn’t. “That was more bullshit than a rodeo clown deals with on a Saturday night.”

Grant huffed at the air. What might have been a laugh died in his chest cavity. “Quick wit,” he muttered. “She’ll like that.”

My throat tightened. This is why investigations and personal life should never clash. “I wasn’t here for her,” I murmured.

“No. You’re FBI now, aren’t you? S’pose you can’t tell me the case you’re working.”

My eyebrows shot up, a response I couldn’t curb if I wanted to. “Someone kept up with the local news,” I observed, finishing my glass in one.

He eyed me, finally. “They teach you to drink like that, too, son?”

I snorted. “I started drinking the day I went to your house, found the door unlocked, and your daughter’s phone on the bed, my messages and calls unread and unanswered. I woulda called the cops, but they were swarming all over your front lawn. You’re the reason I chose that career, Mister Little.”

He winced. “Lawson. It’s Lawson, now. We…changed it. To protect my wife.”

“Lawson.” I sucked in that extra piece of bullshit and filed it away for later. Archer’s cynicism was rubbing off on me. “I tried to open a file on Bonnie, but that got closed on me, time and again.” I met his gaze, refused to back down.

You wouldn't have anything to do with that, would you? With your money and friends and power?

I didn’t believe a word about everything being to protect the mother who took a turn. Sure, she was damaged as hell from trauma. I got that, loud and clear, and it was horrible. Bonnie wasn’t the same, either. Something happened to them, but no one talked to me, then or now.

“So you could look for her?” he challenged.

“So I could stop what the fuck ever happened to her from happening to any other girl,” I fired back. Swiping a hand through my hair, I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, honestly. What happened, happened. I can’t stop that. Hell, my family is a clusterfuck of its own.” He stiffened, but I barraged on. “I only just got back to Texas after walking away for years. Finally got the case I wanted after all this time. Because the FBI wouldn’t give it to me.”

He frowned. “You're not FBI anymore?”

I shake my head. “Texas Ranger, brand spanking new.” There was no keeping the pride out of my voice. I mightn’t have been sure when Archer first called me, but I damn well was by the time I walked out of his office, hat and badge in hand.

Grant stared at me. For the first time the edge of his mouth smoothed out of the permanent frown it had lived in since he entered the dining room. “Not a bad career choice after all. What’s the case you’ve been chasing all this time, then?”

Night air and sea salt filled my lungs on an inhale that made me wish I was back inside with Bonnie in my arms.

If she’d let me touch her.

“Taking my grandfather and his cohort out of their comfortable retirement homes and putting them into solitary where they fucking well belong. Lot of lives they damaged in their reign of terror. Apparently one of my key witnesses is a local for the season.”

Turning away from the horror on his face, I let the obsession that burned within my chest for too long as an ember take full root. Consume me.

“Thanks for the chat, Mister Lawson.”

I turned away from the man I could have called dad if all the stars aligned and headed back to find his daughter, if she’d see me. If not, I had work to do. Sleep was meaningless after all these years.

I’d learned to live on little of it.