Bad to the Bone

  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.

  Chapter Seven

  “’Scuze me. Trace, is it?”

  Trace had just stepped back outside from the vet’s office after returning the coffee mugs to find a man walking across the frosty grass toward him. When he reached the steps, he extended a hand to Trace.

  “Shane Kilcannon. Not sure we’ve ever officially met.”

  “Trace Bancroft.” Trace shook his hand, not surprised that a strong and confident shake matched the spark in eyes the same greenish gold as Molly’s and came with a broad, genuine smile.

  After the greeting, Shane stuck his hands in jeans pockets, sizeable biceps visible under thermal sleeves that stuck out from a fleece vest. With temperatures hovering near fifty in the sun, he looked a little warm with the vest. Training dogs would do that, Trace knew.

  “How’s Meatball?” Shane asked with real concern in his expression.

  “Getting a transfusion.” Which sucked. “Maybe needs more surgery.”

  “Don’t worry, man. Molly is the best vet in the county, and I’d say that right to my dad’s face.” He grinned. “Heard you’ve done some work with dogs.”

  “Some.” He wasn’t going to lie. “In a prison dog training program.”

  Shane didn’t so much as flinch, which didn’t surprise Trace. The whole place and the people in it were pure class.

  Wally would have told him that’s why he didn’t take Dr. Kilcannon up on his offer to help Meatball in the first place. And Wally would have also told him that’s why he should have. The crafty shrink would have called it “exposure therapy” or some such crap that always worked.

  “Want to see some of our dogs?” Shane asked. “We just got a few new ones in for on-site training. Come and give me your professional opinion.”

  “The prison programs aren’t professional,” he said. “I’m self-taught from books and videos.”

  Shane didn’t look convinced. “Still, I heard you trained service dogs.”

  Trace searched the other man’s face, wondering if this was a test of some kind. He’d already told Dr. Kilcannon what he’d done with two dogs in prison. “Yeah,” he said. “A couple.”

  “And they passed certification?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I think they would have, but in prison they don’t let you go out and finish the job. So I trained the dogs up to a certain point.” And, man, those had been a couple of shitty goodbyes.

  “And Meatball?” he asked. “You got to keep him.”

  “I did.”

  “That’s unusual, isn’t it?” Shane’s gaze was direct, unwavering, and Trace met it with one of his own.

  “Yep.”

  “So you must have been a model prisoner.”

  Trace lifted a brow, not at all sure how to answer that. He didn’t have to, since Shane gestured for Trace to follow as he trotted down the stairs.

  “I want you to meet a couple of new arrivals. Come on.” When Trace didn’t move, Shane turned around, then nodded as if he understood the hesitation. He pulled out a phone. “I’ll text Molly and tell her you’re with me. She’ll find you. Otherwise, all you’re going to do is sit there and stew about your dog.”

  True. He went along, silent as they walked around the training pen toward what he assumed from the shape and windows was a massive kennel. Shane opened a heavy door, and instantly Trace felt the temperature warm to a perfect seventy-something he suspected they maintained in here year-round.

  The structure broke off into a few different corridors, each one a wide hall of gleaming white tile floors all wash
ed in sunshine coming through skylights and windows.

  Like prison paradise, he thought with a wry smile. At least a thousand times better than the place he’d spent the last fourteen years.

  The echos of dogs barking at various pitches and speeds ricocheted through the hall, sounding like music to Trace. They passed several large individual kennels, almost all with sleeping, eating, or barking dogs. He recognized some as the ones that had been in the training pen earlier, now resting.

  “We have rescues and training, and the training consists of us doing the work or training the trainers,” Shane told him. “My brother Garrett is in charge of the rescues. You know him?”

  “We went to high school together,” he said. Not that they ran in the same circles.

  “He got two puppies from the same litter last week, brought over from Greensboro from a family friend who volunteers in shelters.” Shane slowed his step as he reached a corner they were about to turn. “I have a feeling about these dogs,” he said.

  “A feeling?”

  The other man’s mouth slid into an easy grin, one that Trace imagined he wore a lot. Why not? Life had been kind to this tall, good-looking guy. From his expensive haircut down to his pricey boots, he was pure confidence.

  “I do know dogs,” Shane said. “Maybe better than anyone else here. Oh, my brother Liam can turn a German shepherd into a beast of a guard dog, and Garrett’s got a knack for finding the right homes for rescues. Normally, we’d get these two out for adoption, like, yesterday. But I think if we held on to them, trained them for therapy first, and tested them, we’d have top-notch golden retrievers ready for intense service training.”

  Trace stared at him. “Not every dog qualifies.”

  “I know, that’s why I want your opinion on these goldens.”

  “Purebred?”

  “Sure looks that way. Our friend, Marie, was at a shelter when a very pregnant mama was abandoned about ten minutes from delivery.”

  Trace winced.

  “I know, people suck sometimes. Anyway, Mama had four pups. The minute they were old enough to separate, Rocky and Bullwinkle got adopted. Marie snagged the other two and brought them here for special training. Come on, meet Natasha and Boris.”