Wanted A Real Family(65)

“I never promised to stay here. I never promised to take it over someday. In fact, you never asked me if I would.”

“Asked you? You’re my son!”

“Am I?”

The question had hung in the air between them...all of the conversations they’d never had, his father’s remoteness, the childhood he couldn’t escape. When he’d arrived at Raintree, his father had kept a distance between them, and that distance had stayed all these years. It was still there now.

“You’re going to do what you want to do. You always have,” his father said with a bit of resentment.

Then Jase had asked the one question that had burned in his mind, that had been stinging there all these years. “After you adopted me, did you really want to keep me? Didn’t you want to send me back where I’d come from?”

Ethan actually looked shocked, then dismayed, then sad. “The idea of adopting a child was different than the reality of it.”

“So you did want to send me back.”

“No, I didn’t. But I also didn’t know how to relate to you. I didn’t know how to comfort a child who didn’t want any comfort.”

“Don’t lay your coldness on a twelve-year-old who had no place else to go.”

Jase had walked away from that conversation last night feeling as he had when he was younger—with the need to find his own place in the world.

And now he’d found Sara.

He rapped lightly before he opened the cottage’s door. After he did, it took a few moments for everything he saw to register.

As it did, he took a step back.

He saw Liam, shirtless and fit. He saw Sara’s hands moving over Liam’s shoulder as if she was enjoying touching him. They were gazing at each other. There were flowers on the counter beside them. In that instant, the picture of Dana kissing another man flashed before Jase’s eyes. Everything he’d felt when he’d seen it, when he’d realized and then heard Dana say she’d been unfaithful came roaring back—the betrayal, the resentment, the bitterness.

He remembered Liam’s wink at Sara at the soiree, their easy conversation whenever they were together. He recalled Liam’s hand on Sara’s arm before the search for Amy had begun, as well as Liam saying, “I’m glad to see she’s taking my advice,” when she was considering letting her interview go into print.

A sense of betrayal hit Jase again—even sharper and more painful than what he’d felt with Dana. The ache he experienced now was so deep it was worse than the gunshot wounds.

Disappointment in Sara and everything they’d shared forced words out of his mouth. “I guess you really do prefer older men. I guess what happened between us doesn’t matter at all.”

Liam and Sara had both been focused on each other, but now they turned to him and stared at him as if he’d grown two heads.

Liam stepped forward. “Jase, you’re wrong. Whatever you’re thinking is wrong.”

Sara took a step toward him. “Jase!”

“Wrong? I can see exactly what’s going on,” he said to Liam. “You don’t have a shirt on. Sara’s hands are on you. Two and two make four.”

“And maybe you’re looking through a distorted lens,” Liam suggested calmly.

Now Sara seemed frozen...stricken.

Plucking his shirt off of the chair, slipping one arm into it, Liam just threw the other sleeve around his shoulder. “If you really think it’s the rotator cuff,” he said to Sara, “I’ll drive to the E.R.”

Sara had paled at Jase’s words. She was practically sheet-white as she now glanced from him to Liam. “I can’t tell for sure. You’ll need tests, probably an MRI. I don’t think you should drive yourself.”

This conversation wasn’t making sense to Jase, not with the flowers and the way they’d been looking at each other. “Rotator cuff?” A foreboding began in his solar plexus and spread through his chest.

“It’s probably better if Sara explains herself,” Liam said, and exited the cottage.

Face-to-face with Sara, Jase asked, “What was going on?”

Her face began to take on color again as she crossed her arms over her chest. “It was obvious what you thought was going on. How you could even imagine I’d be attracted to Liam after what you and I—” She stopped as if embarrassed by the thought.

“You don’t even want anyone to know we’re seeing each other.”

“Because of gossip. Because of the winery’s reputation. For the sake of my reputation.”

“Oh, Sara, is that all it is? Maybe you’re not ready to start anything new.”