Serious Cowboy (Cowboys of Duncan Ranch #2)

Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was like seeing a ghost. An impossible apparition. As Joy stood there gaping at the man she hadn’t made visual contact with in literal years now, she wondered if she might be hallucinating. Because this man couldn’t be here. Not after all this time. Not after everything that had happened.

Joy hadn’t known how she would feel should this moment ever come, but now that it was here, what she experienced was pure horrified shock. Because somehow, this man who’d been absent for so long had shown up unannounced at her door.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” were the first words out of his mouth. Then, he offered her one of his slick smiles. “What? Aren’t you gonna give your man a hug?”

She didn’t, though. She merely stood there feeling numb. Paralyzed, almost. How could he be here? How? And…

“Where have you been?” she finally managed, her throat seeming to take forever to work correctly. “It’s been right at two years now, Wayne. Where have you been?”

But Wayne waved away her question as if it were nothing. Inconsequential.

“Oh, baby, don’t fret your pretty head about all that. You’ve gotta come back with me. Back to Hollywood. Exciting things are going on, and I want you to be a part of them. And Kara. Where’s my darling little angel girl?”

And as if staged, that’s when Kara appeared from the bedroom where she’d been drawing, her small face hopeful as she stared at the man in the doorway. Her biological father.

“Daddy? Is that you?”

“Of course, it’s me, silly. Come here.”

Kara did, almost as if in a trance. He gathered her into his arms and spun with her as if he’d only been gone for a week on some fun trip. Not like he’d basically vanished as if he’d never existed. She giggled like any other eight-year-old who was experiencing her father’s unexpected return and attention.

Joy couldn’t blame her. How often had she hoped for this? Prayed for it? Yet to have it transpire at this point…

“I’m all set up now,” he went on. “It’s all done. That soap opera job I kept trying for? I got it. I finally got it, Joy.”

But Joy’s thoughts were spinning out of control. Only as an afterthought did she remember the phone in her hand and that Aaron had been on the other side of that connection. She glanced at the screen to see that it was blank, the call ended. She must’ve bumped the disconnect button or something. Or maybe in her stunned state, she’d accidentally hung up on him.

She’d call him back.

“ Futile Passions had to ultimately recognize my talent and sign me on. It was just a matter of time. And that time is now, baby. Woohoo!” Wayne whooped in delight to Joy even while still swinging their daughter around the limited confines of the above-a-garage apartment.

Joy merely stood there staring at the spectacle in disbelief. It took her a minute to even register that she was shaking her head at him.

“No.” The word left her at a whisper, and Wayne didn’t even seem to notice, so she increased her volume. “ I said no .”

He quit spinning with Kara, setting her down. She clung to him, dizzy.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“No means what it’s always meant, Wayne. You pop up out of the blue without calling or attempting to contact me in any way after so ridiculously long…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he stated with a placating tone, his hands motioning as if fluffing a pillow. “I know. Things kind of went off the rails for a little while. You know how life can get a bit messy sometimes. But I’m back. So I came to tell you in person. I’m back.”

He smiled and opened his arms as if she should fall right into them. She didn’t.

“You haven’t answered my question yet. Where. Have. You. Been?”

His smile dropped off his face. “Come on. Don’t get all bent out of shape over it.”

Joy shoved her hands onto her hips and wordlessly gestured for Kara to step behind her. Her daughter glanced back and forth between Joy and her father and slowly obeyed.

Wayne didn’t even seem to notice.

“I’m beyond bent out of shape,” Joy informed him. “Bent out of shape doesn’t even begin to cover it?—”

“Hold up, it’s not that bad,” he interrupted her, so she cut him off right back.

“Hold up nothing. I didn’t know where you were or what might’ve happened to you. I searched for months and months and even went to the police to file a missing persons case. But there was no sign of you anywhere. I thought you might be dead. After so long, I had to assume that you were.”

“Aww, that’s sweet that you worried about me, baby. But I’m fine. Fantastic, even. That’s why you two have gotta come back home with me. Life will be just like I always promised it would.”

Still, he refused to mention anything about all the time that she and Kara suffered without him. No explanation. No apology. No apparent regrets. It was too much, and Joy was completely done with him. She couldn’t possibly continue in a marriage where her supposed partner couldn’t be bothered to not only show up for two years but to come clean about it after the fact, either.

Who did that? And how could he think it would be okay with her?

And that wasn’t even considering Aaron and how she felt about him.

“I wondered if you’d abandoned us, then I wondered if you had died or been killed,” she continued as if her former husband hadn’t spoken. “So, recently, I started the procedure necessary to separate myself from you. To legally divorce you.”

Wayne’s eyes widened as if his mind had never formulated any such possibility.

“Divorce me?”

“What else was I supposed to do with a husband who had been gone for so long? If I’d received a call, a message, an email, a letter, a carrier pigeon— anything at all —then I would’ve kept looking. I wouldn’t have stopped at anything until I’d located you. Until I’d tracked you down.”

It was the truth. Despite all the turmoil with his addiction and him not being a good provider, she would’ve offered him a second chance. Maybe multiple second chances. But when she came to a certain crossroads, she at last understood that she had to cut her losses.

“But you gave me nothing, Wayne. No signs of life. Not even a cryptic lead that could’ve amounted to something. That’s why I moved back to Rocky Ridge. So I could continue to raise Kara and move on with my life. My attorneys sent the official papers by certified mail to California last week.”

“Official papers?” he repeated at a shout.

“Don’t fight,” Kara cried out, moving to the space between them, tears flying down her cheeks. “Please don’t fight.”

“Kara, come here,” Joy told her, but her daughter was too upset to listen.

It struck Joy all the sudden that Wayne had found her here. How had he done that?

But before she had the chance to ask, he strode up to her door and with a terrible roar, thrust his fist right through it. Joy stiffened in terror as Kara screamed.

Wayne ignored their daughter. Acted as if she weren’t even there.

“Divorce me? Divorce me ? How could you?” He dragged his fist back through the splintered pine, knocking the entire thing halfway free of its hinges. Shards and slivers of wood rained across the linoleum, and Kara dropped to her knees and covered her head right there in the middle of the floor. But he just went on ranting as if endangering his little girl was no big deal. “How could you, Joy? You’re my wife, and you swore that you always would be.”

Scared to death for her daughter, Joy seized her around the shoulders and tugged her away. Kara didn’t resist her, clinging to her mother as much as she had clung to her father minutes before. Placing herself between Wayne and her daughter, Joy did her best to figure out what to do.

Ultimately, she didn’t correct him or continue to raise her voice at him. She didn’t reiterate that he’d been the one to ruin their marriage with his drug use, undependability, and endlessly long absence. It wouldn’t do any good in this less than rational mindset. She knew there was no way he could be reasoned with right now. If anything, he was a menace to her and her daughter’s safety.

So, she did what she could to deescalate the situation.

“I did love you once,” Joy conceded to him, keeping her voice purposely calm and even. “And I did make a vow to stay with you forever. But after such a long time without you, I had to assume you were gone. Then, I chose what I thought would be best for Kara and me.”

Wayne was standing there seething, and since she couldn’t tell what he might do next, she knelt in front of her daughter while maintaining sight of her former husband. “Kara, why don’t you go back to the bedroom, okay? This is a discussion meant for only Mommies and Daddies.”

The little girl’s eyes were noticeably red and swollen now and quiet sobs still rattled her petite form, but thankfully, she nodded and vanished into the bedroom.

The instant that Kara disappeared, Joy heard steps jogging up the stairwell. And the next thing she knew, Aaron had materialized there at her threshold, his features taking in the damage from the broken door and the unwelcome man who’d appeared. Then, her childhood friend’s face became as hard and relentless as she’d ever seen it.

Unforgiving.

“I don’t know who you are,” Aaron said with a steadiness that belied that tautness of the muscles in his arms and how each of his hands had now clenched into fists. “But if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get yourself away from Joy.”

And in a nightmarish sequence that she wished she could halt, the man she married took a massive swing at the man she’d grown up with, and Joy couldn’t help but shriek in panic.