“Okay. I’ll stop by and then head home.” I tossed my stuff into the car and then climbed behind the wheel. I was exhausted, but I wasn’t going to tell Hawk that. I’d only just gotte
n him to let me go back to school and work. I didn’t want to give him any reason to think I wasn’t ready to be doing all the things I needed to be doing. Seriously, as much as I loved that man, I was sure that I would end up shooting him with his own gun if he didn’t stop babying me so much.
“Okay. Be careful,” he ordered. “And, Gracie?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
I closed my eyes and smiled. Those were three words I knew I would never get tired of hearing. “I love you, too.”
It was a quick drive over to Jack Riley’s garage and bike shop. The place looked deserted except for the two hogs in the parking lot. I recognized both motorcycles immediately. One was Jack’s, but the other belonged to Trigger who was one of my grandfather’s mechanics.
Taking my coffee with me, I headed for the office. When I opened the door it was to find both men standing around, waiting on me. Both of them? Whatever they were saying was cut off as soon as I walked into the room. Jack stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me as I came closer. In the past I wouldn’t have hugged him back, but now I did without even really thinking about it. “Look at you. Pretty as always. Hawk taking good care of you, honey?” His brown eyes drifted over me from head to toe, as if looking for some sign that I wasn’t better.
With a smirk I nodded. “You have nothing to worry about there, Jack.” I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to have him worry about me. After what had happened with my paternal grandfather, the way he hadn’t had any regard for whether I’d lived or died as long as he’d gotten his damn money, it was nice to have a family member actually concerned for my wellbeing.
I lifted my travel mug to my lips and took a small sip of the strong brewed coffee. “Hawk said you wanted to talk to me,” I reminded him, hoping this would only take a few minutes so I could get home to Hawk.
Jack’s jaw clenched and he turned toward Trigger. “No, me, honey.”
My brows lifted when I glanced at Trigger. I didn’t know much about the man, although I’d come to trust him and care about him, but I did know enough to realize that if Trigger wanted to speak to me it must have been important. Looking at him now, I realized that his face was tense and he looked pale. Was he mad?
Uh-oh. Was I in trouble?
“Okay then.” I gave him my best smile, hoping to ease some of the man’s tension. I liked him and didn’t want him to be so serious around me.
Trigger thrust his hands into his front jeans pockets and took a half step toward me. “What I have to tell you isn’t easy for me…Gracie.” He said my name in such an odd way that my need to make him lighten up a little evaporated. I instinctively knew then and there that whatever was going to leave this man’s mouth was going to change my life.
Suddenly I wanted Hawk. Needed him there to hold my hand. He wasn’t there, though, and I found myself at a loss, floundering for steady ground.
“Here, honey. Take a seat before you fall over.” Jack guided me into one of the chairs in front of the desk. I sank down onto it gratefully.
Trigger crouched down in front of me instead of taking the other chair, making me frown. One of his big hands clasped both of mine, swallowing the whole. His touch was warm, kind of soothing, but I still felt like my world was suddenly turned on its axis and I had no idea why. “I want you to know, that if I’d known about you, I would have found a way home and stopped your mom from going with Morgan.”
I frowned. “What?” Out of everything I feared he was going to tell me, that wasn’t one of them. What the heck was he talking about?
He blew out a frustrated breath. “Remember I told you that I knew your mother? We…I would have married her if she’d stuck around. I loved her, Gracie. So much.”
“R-really?” He’d loved her? For some reason that thought eased some of the ache I still had over the loss of my mother and I found myself smiling down at the big man. I’d always thought she’d gone through life having to live with my father for my sake, never knowing what real love was like. That thought had only gotten worse when I’d fallen in love with Hawk. I’d wished she could have experienced something close to what I had with him.
Trigger nodded. “I was in the army back then. I loved her before I left, and I loved her when I came home on leave. I still love her…” He grimaced. “I don’t know if I can forgive her for keeping you a secret from me, though.”
Okay, this was getting weirder and weirder. What the heck was going on? “I’m sorry, Trigger, but I’m kind of lost here.”
“I’m sorry. I should start from the beginning.” His hand tightened on both of mine, as if he were offering me his strength, but from the look on his face I was pretty sure he was the one who needed it. “I came home on leave for a few weeks and your mother and I… She fell in love with me too, Gracie. We had an affair.”
“Oh…” Good choice, Mom. Trigger was still a very handsome man. As beautiful as my mother had been, I knew that these two would have made a great looking couple. The fact that I knew Trigger was a good man, would have protected my mother to her last breath, only made me sad because I could almost picture what her life would have been like if she’d married him.
Maybe she would have still been alive. That thought made me flinch and Trigger’s eyes darkened, as if he thought I was flinching away from him, but before I could tell him that wasn’t why, he spoke again.
“When I went back to active duty she promised me she would wait, but when I got back she was gone. Jack told me she had married some Yank from college and had moved back East with him.” Trigger clenched his jaw. “I was hurt, but didn’t really think anything of it. I figured she had fallen for someone else and started a life with him. I loved her enough to want her to be happy, and as long as she was, I wasn’t going to chase after her. A few years later Jack mentioned his granddaughter and that cut like a white hot blade, but still I didn’t think anything of it, never expected Shannon to have kept my daughter a secret from me.”
My heart ached for Trigger as he continued. How could my mother have been so stupid? She’d had someone who loved and obviously adored her waiting right here in Creswell Springs. Why would she put up with my father’s crap for so many years when she could have been happy with...?
Maybe I was still recovering, after all, because it took nearly thirty seconds for my brain to catch up. “Wait…What? Your daughter?” I shot to my feet, unable to stay seated a second longer. What the hell was going on? “Jack?” I gritted out, turning my gaze on him.
The old man lifted his hands, as if surrendering. “I didn’t know anything about it, honey. Neither of them dropped so much as a clue about their relationship and I had no idea that he could possibly have been your dad until…recently.”