Salvation in the Sheriff's Kiss(26)

When he had accepted the position of Sheriff of Salvation Falls, he thought it would help his father see him as a man in his own right. It hadn’t. Vernon had taken it as a betrayal, a slap in the face to everything he’d built.

Hunter stepped farther into the house. A mixture of stale air and cooking spices greeted him. He turned down the hallway leading to his father’s study, hoping he could make this visit a short one. He didn’t relish sitting through another strained conversation filled with undertones of accusation and recrimination about what a disappointment he was as a son, turning away from the family heritage. But his encounter with Yucton, and the insinuation he’d left hanging in the air, had him agitated and out of sorts. He wanted to ask his father about it, clear up the matter and leave. Maybe he’d stop by The Seahorse and share a shot of whiskey with Kincaid, provided the man hadn’t already drunk himself under one of the tables. He wanted to know what the bounty hunter was hiding. There was more to the story than what he was getting.

“Vernon?” He’d stopped calling him “Pa” a long time ago when he realized his father’s interest in fulfilling the role was minimal at best. Vernon hadn’t wanted a son for any other reason than he required an heir. He couldn’t stand the idea of the fortune he had built going outside of the family to a distant relative he didn’t know.

“Over here.” His father waved a hand from the tall wing back chair facing the fire. Low flames licked the hearth doing little to chase out the cold in the room. Hunter pulled off his hat and set it on the narrow table next to the door.

“How you been?” He took the chair opposite his father.

“Well enough.” Vernon didn’t bother looking up from the newspaper resting in his lap.

His father’s health had been in decline since last year. He’d suffered a small stroke and though he had recovered mentally, a little weakness on one side of his body remained. It made him even more difficult to deal with, as Vernon Donovan was not a man given to showing weakness of any kind. As such, he rarely left the house now save for the occasional town council meeting. Hunter suspected his pride wouldn’t let him. The town knew him as a robust and domineering man. To be felled by something he had no control over was a slight he had no desire to share with others. Best they remember him as he used to be, not as he was now.

Hunter looked for a way to open the conversation he dreaded having. Vernon didn’t like being questioned and Hunter worried he may not like the answers. “Big trial starting in town soon.”

Vernon made a grunting sound and pointed at the paper. Ollie Mathers had reported on little else ever since Bill Yucton had arrived back in town and the event was announced.

“Turns out someone hired some high-falutin’ lawyer to defend Bill Yucton. Man by the name of Wallace Platt.”

His father appeared nonplussed by the news. “Can’t imagine it will do the man any good. Guilty is guilty.”

Hunter’s sense of fairness bucked at his father’s words. “Pretty sure that’s for the judge and jury to decide.”

Vernon shrugged and fell silent, more interested in his newspaper than Hunter’s opinions on justice. Nothing new there. His father never did have time for him unless it was to criticize or argue or try to run his life in the manner he saw fit. Was it any wonder he’d left?

Hunter leaned forward in his chair. The low heat from the fire warmed the side facing the flames. “Thing I can’t figure is, who is bankrolling Platt. He says he has an anonymous benefactor.” There were few men in town who could afford to bring in a fancy lawyer from away. Fewer still who’d had a vested interest in the original trial seven years ago. But why would Yucton suggest it was his father? Vernon had been the victim of the crime Yucton was being tried for. It didn’t make any sense. Yucton had to be mistaken. “You know anything about that?”

“Can’t imagine why I would.”

Vernon continued to read his paper, but he was still on the same page and appeared to be staring at the same paragraph since Hunter sat down.

“So you have nothing to do with it?” he pressed.

“You deaf, boy?” The sharpness of Vernon’s voice lashed out at Hunter. Boy. His father had called him that for as long as he could remember. Sometimes he wondered why Vernon had even bothered giving him a name. He never used it.

His anger spiked and he pulled out the one thing he knew would get a rise out of Vernon. “Meredith Connolly is back in town.”

Vernon’s fingers crumpled the edge of the paper where he held it, his pale eyes finding Hunter’s. A seething bitterness radiated outward from his father and curled around them like an acrid smoke from a long-smoldering fire.