Tyler O'Neill's Redemption

“What’s up?” Juliette asked, a little surprised to see Lisa away from her FreeCell game.

“Mayor wants to see you,” Lisa said.

It had been approved? She’d just turned in that paperwork last week. The squad car requisition? Man, the mayor was totally on her side—

Lisa’s eyes flipped over to Miguel. “About the boy.”

“DAD!” TYLER CALLED, slamming the front door shut behind him.

“Yeah?” Richard stepped in from the kitchen into the hallway, a sauce-splattered apron tied around his trim waist. Good God, the man was playing house.

“Let’s go,” Tyler said to Richard’s blank face. “Let’s go back to Vegas. Play some cards, get a steak as big as our heads.”

“I’m making lasagna.”

“Screw the lasagna!” Tyler cried. “It’s time to go.”

“But we just got here. We haven’t found the gems.”

“Dad, if it’s about money, I’ve got more than—”

Richard shook his head. “I’m not taking your money.”

Tyler blew out a long breath and stared up at the ceiling. This totally misplaced sense of honor his father had could be such a pain in the butt. “You will live in my suite, charge meals to my room and wear my damn clothes, but you can’t take money from me?”

“Hey—” Richard wiped his hands off on the apron “—that’s taking care of one another. You’ll remember I did the same thing for you for years after you found me in Vegas.”

I was a kid! Tyler wanted to yell. I was your kid! It’s part of a father’s job description.

But the truth was, Richard often got the job description for father and sperm donor confused.

I should just leave. Leave him here to find these nonexistent gems. Tyler’s feet twitched with the urge to turn around and walk away, leave Richard behind like he’d done to his family. Shuck them all like so many dirty socks.

If he could leave the best of them behind, why the hell couldn’t he walk away from the worst of them?

“I need you, son,” Richard said, his voice getting earnest, his eyes slightly damp. The old caring father routine—I may have been absent, but you were never absent from my thoughts. Tyler fell for that story hook, line and sinker more times than he’d like to admit.

“You need me to help you look for gems,” Tyler said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You could hire someone for that. Hell, we could get a cleaning crew in here and they’d—”

There was something off on Dad’s face, something raw. Something not manufactured and it looked like worry.

“What?” Tyler asked, feeling his stomach fall into his shoes.

“It’s not a big deal—”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“I was in a…thing…back in Los Angeles.”

“Oh, my God,” Tyler breathed, turning away from his father, fisting his hands in his hair. “Oh. My. God.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Richard said. Tyler heard him step forward and Tyler put up his hand. If the old man got closer there was a good chance Tyler would knock him out. “I swear to you, son, I didn’t do anything. But the friend I was staying with was arrested for credit-card fraud. I didn’t know what he was doing, but because—”

“But because you were staying with him, the police think you do.” Tyler sighed and looked his father hard in the eye, willing his father to tell the truth.

“I was questioned and released. I swear, son,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it. Credit-card fraud is for lowlifes.”

Tyler’s laughter was a hard bark that hurt his throat. “Good to know you have standards.”

“I just need…a change of scene, until things cool down. Just for a little while.”

“What if I decide to leave?”

“Then I’d wish you well,” he said, “but I better stay. Empty house and all.”

Empty house full of gems.

“It’s not your house.”

“Not yours, either.”

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

There was no way Tyler could leave now. It would be like walking away from a bomb with a lit fuse. There was simply no telling what kind of trouble Richard would get into unattended. And if he wasn’t here, Juliette would drive by, checking on The Manor. It was only a matter of time before she found Richard.

“I need a drink,” he muttered.

“WHAT WE NEED IS A PLAN,” Richard said an hour later, pouring another finger of whiskey in the old crystal tumblers. Tyler picked his up, loving the paper-thin edge of the glass against his lips and the solid heft and weight in his hands. Made him want to bite it and hurl it against a wall.

Sort of how he felt about his father.

About Juliette. Lord, how was he going to be able to avoid her now? In a town this size? Impossible.

“What we need is to stop drinking, start looking,” Tyler said, drinking anyway.

“I’ve been looking,” Richard said, stretching back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles.

They sat on the back porch, the early afternoon sunlight a bright warm blanket across their legs, the whiskey a warm blanket in his stomach. Thoughts of Juliette like a sore tooth he just could not leave alone.

More whiskey would fix that, he thought, taking a half inch from the glass. Which was why he was drinking instead of looking, because first things, after all, were first.

Gotta get Juliette out of my head.

“Yeah? Where have you been looking?”

“I started in the basement,” Richard said, looking out over the maze and the greenhouse. “Boxes of paperwork. I tell you—” he smiled, shaking his head “—that little girl of mine is a packrat—”

Tyler stiffened, his skin suddenly too tight. Bright sparks in his head. Don’t call her that, he wanted to yell. You don’t get to call her that.