The Texas Tycoon's Baby(45)

When the old man heard him coming, he forced a smile that seemed to wobble in its uncertainty. He also noticed how Chet gave a pointed glance to that orange juice glass.

“Nothing toxic mixed in,” Eli said, picking up the drink and offering it to Chet so he could sample it.

Chet held up his hand. “No, thanks.”

“I just thought that maybe, after last night…”

“You already told us that you weren’t near that keg to nip a drink.”

“Yes, I did. But what matters is that I think you still don’t believe me.”

Chet wanted to. Lord, did he ever.

Eli sank to a stone bench, which sat near an empty fountain, sapped of water.

“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I’m not sure what the hell I was doing. One minute I was walking into that dance, the next I was by that keg.” His face was ruddy again, but not from anger. “Maybe you boys saved me just in time. I don’t know. It might’ve only taken a few more seconds before that beer was really calling to me.”

His candidness struck Chet.

Eli continued talking. “I’m going to go back to rehab tonight, and I’m going to make every one of you proud. Before I leave though…” He put down his juice. “Chet, I’m not asking for you to really think of me as your father… But I’d like you to know that I love you just as much as I can love any son.”

Chet mulled that over for a second, a sense of wrongness creeping up on him until he understood just what it meant.

He sat down on the bench, too, but there was still a space between him and Eli. “One reason that I’ve had such a hard time coming to terms with you is that I feel like accepting you is a betrayal of Abe.”

“He wouldn’t feel that way, Chet.”

“That could very well be. But Abe was the victim in all this, and the last thing I’d ever do is stop backing him up, even if he’s gone now. Abe and I had our tough times when I went off to Montana, but I never fully turned my back on him. To do it now is…unthinkable.”

Eli apparently knew better than to offer his own opinion. But, then again, he knew Chet pretty well, because when he’d first moved down to Texas, Eli had been the first to welcome him home, the first to seemingly understand him. He’d been every nephew’s dream of an uncle until he’d turned out to be something else altogether.

“I think,” Chet said, his tone lowered, pained, “that when I left my parents all those years ago, I might’ve done it for more reasons than just wanting to experience some freedom. There was always something unspoken between my parents, and now that I know what it was, I wonder if that was why I wanted to go. So I wouldn’t have to endure those looks between them anymore.” He shook his head. “Even then, I knew there were lies going on, and it’s the lies that have bothered me the most about any of this.”

And he couldn’t stand any more of them. They’d nearly ruined so many people around him.

“I did the most lying, Chet,” his dad said. “You need to put the blame squarely on me.”

“Don’t forget my mom.”

“She was saving her marriage. I kept my silence so I could maintain my marriage, too, but…” Eli wilted a little. “I was also doing it so I could save face. Your mom didn’t care about that as much as she cared about you and Abe.”

When Chet looked into his father’s eyes, he knew that Eli meant everything he was saying.

And, the thing was, they were the same eyes that Abe had: blue, forthright, clear as a Texas sky now that Eli was sober.

“I’m not going to put anything on you,” Chet said. “Not anymore. You need to know that, and I should’ve been able to say it sooner. Resentment hasn’t gotten me anywhere.”

“Stop it, Chet. You have nothing to apologize for, especially after going through the scandal, then…”

Eli choked to a halt, and Chet knew why. He had the same rock in his throat that the other man probably did.

Abe’s death.

Would the grief ever stop? It’d gotten buried these past months, a dusting of ground over the agony, a shallow grave where Chet had stored his sadness.

But what kept him from fully turning away from that grave was that he’d never gotten to know Abe as well as he could’ve as an adult. He’d been the one who’d blown that chance when he’d left his family behind, going off to Montana, telling his father he didn’t want to be cooped up in an office.

Utterly leaving him until the cancer had come.

How could he get over that? When?

What scared Chet was there was even a chance that, if he didn’t help Eli to bury his own sorrows, he would suffer from even more regret someday. He would’ve denied yet another father.