Page 5 of Brett and Rowdy
“Daddy!” She had to laugh again. “You’re so bad.”
“Hey, I can’t help it.” Truth was, he just didn’t care, but if it made Ashley happy, he would do it.
“Momma is all sorts of excited. I told her it didn’t matter what those people thought about her, and she said I was right, but that, every so often, it was good to be pretty and puttogether. She’s so successful, but I guess everybody thought she wouldn’t be?”
“There was never any doubt that your momma was going to be successful.” He shook his head. That woman had been created by the good Lord to be a winner.
“And so were you, right?”
He chuckled. “Well, I’ve been a lot of things. Some of them have been really cool, and some of them sucked. So I guess that just depends on who you ask.”
He’d done everything from selling ice cream cones to riding the rodeo. Some of them had been all right. Some of them had left him not as well off as he started.
But he was happy. He had his land. He had his critters. He had his little girl. He was in a good space.
“Okay, here we are. I brought Momma’s spare Caddy, because, you know, she’s a cushy real estate woman.”
They got the suitcases all locked up in the trunk, Barney settled in the back, and then there he was, snuggled back into leather seats. The car had the faintest smell of honeysuckle, which always would make him smile. Ashley loved honeysuckle, and everything that she had smelled like it somehow.
“It smells like your momma.”
Madison snorted, so delicate and ladylike. “Her and her damn honeysuckle. Yes, sir. She’s looking so much forward to seeing you, and I still don’t think I’ll ever understand why you two didn’t just get married and have more babies.”
He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Because, my dear, your momma and I weren’t in love. Your momma deserves somebody who loves her like your Daddy Dan does. That man thinks she hung the moon, and he is mad for her. Besides, I couldn’t have stayed here in South Carolina.” He’d hated living here with a fiery burning passion. There had been nothing about it—from the humidity to the fake Southern politeness that always seemedto drip with sarcasm—that he could bear. “You know, I didn’t even stay for graduation. I took my last test, and I was on the road by three thirty-five.”
They started moving out of the airport parking lot, Taylor Swift on the radio—the pop version, not the country.
“I can’t believe you did that. I mean, you were just eighteen, and Momma had to be so scared.” She’d heard this story a thousand times, but he guessed it was time to tell it again.
“Yes, but I didn’t leave your momma hanging. We weren’t together, and I had already made arrangements to fly her and you out during the summer for a couple of weeks. That was your first time on an airplane. There’s not been a summer in your whole life that you didn’t come to the ranch.”
“And so you just drove to see Pappy?”
“I did. I went home. He knew I was coming. I had all my stuff packed up and in my old pickup. I just walked out of school, and I left.” He hadn’t told anybody else that he was gone. There wasn’t anybody who cared. Him and Brett hadn’t spoken for months at that point. Him and his mother and the fuckmonkey she’d married had nothing to say to one another. Hell, nobody at that school was going to say anything to him. Not after he’d gotten a debutant knocked up…
He chuckled at that. Right. He was sort of a pariah, but it had worked out because he just really didn’t care.
“I can’t believe it’s been twenty-one years and you haven’t talked to your mom.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes you just got nothing nice to say. In this case, I had nothing to say at all. Your pappy wanted me back; you know that.”
“Yeah, I bet he was so happy to have you home.”
“He was, and not only that, he was so happy when we went and picked you up at the airport. Your momma got to come andstay, meet him for the first time. He got to hold you. He was over the moon, madly in love with hisnieta.”
“So why didn’t Momma stay?”
“Oh, baby girl, can you see your sweet magnolia of a momma in the harsh lights of a New Mexico sun? We both know that ain’t a thing. She belongs here. She’s happy. She was going to real estate school, and she was doing everything she was supposed to. Your mom and I, we were never a love affair. Not ever. We were good friends, the best of friends. Still are. I love her to death, but I have never been in love with her, and she has never been in love with me. That’s not what this is. She and I, we’re family. And your Daddy Dan. You know, I think that man is a good guy. But a love affair? Nope.”
Rowdy wasn’t gonna lie about that part. He might lie about every other damn thing, but not that. Ashley hadn’t wanted to marry him anymore than she’d wanted to marry the motherfucker who’d actually?—
“Well, I love you both, and I wish you were in the same place, but I’ll come see her a lot, and she can come see us.”
“That’s it.”
They chattered until she pulled off suddenly, and he blinked, trying to look around, which he’d never stopped doing. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Daddy, but your stomach is growling. You’ll never make it to Clemson, and besides, I took the Toccoa highway instead of 85. So we’ll go around to get home.” She slowed, the turn signal clicking.
