“I don’t understand. If you need me to spend the next week with PR, hashing out damage control strategies, I’m ready. If you never want me to meet with them again, I’ll do that too. I just need to know what direction you’d like to—”
“No direction,” he growls, cutting me off. “You’ve plotted your path, and I couldn’t blow you off course if I was Poseidon himself. I didn’t bring you here to spin you around. I want to sit back and watch where the wind blows.”
I’m so lost.
When I say nothing, he turns to me, his eyes rheumy and red today.
Christ. Is it his heart ... or has he been crying?
“Dad, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you delivered, Brady. We’ve been waiting for this for years. You made your mistakes, and you took them on the chin like a man. That’s massive.”
I almost rock back from the shock. His pale-blue gaze sweeps through me.
“You’re feeling okay, right? No new health issues?” I ask gently, shaking my head. “No offense, but you look kind of rough.”
He chuckles. Low and easy like I haven’t heard for years.
That’s when I know the person I’m dealing with may look like Alec Pruitt, but I don’t know him.
“You know, some days I blamed you for putting me in this damn chair,” he whispers, shifting to sit up straighter. “When I had the attack, I was under the gun with that big orchard deal. Your mother told you it pushed me over the edge—and it certainly didn’t help. But it wasn’twhat I was looking at in my office when I had a fit and they found me on the floor.”
I swallow thickly, waiting.
He sighs. “I was reading about you. That model blowing her stack when you blew her off—the tabloids ripped you to pieces. And you just carried on posting about dog food.”
“Okay,” I snap. “What’s your point? We know what happened. Are you blaming me for your heart attack now?”
My veins feel like they’re clogged with lead, this paralyzing mix of hot anger and disbelief. Just when I think he can’t shit on me any harder, he proves me wrong.
“I’m blaming myself for panicking over you, Brady. When that thing with the model came down, I thought you’d never change. I didn’t see it in you.” He pauses, staring out at the calm water again. “Then you walked into the biggest bear trap of your life. Instead of flailing, you rose to the occasion. I don’t say this often, but ... I’m proud of you.”
Holy fuck.
I stand there, gutted, as he smiles at me warmly. I swear there are tears in his eyes as he looks at me.
“You’ll continue making us proud, and maybe you’ll give an old man a chance to move past his pride,” he says roughly. “I don’t just mean with Lena, with your projects, with everything. I have to get past the things I never told you. I had a dog when I was a boy. A big white Lab named Klaus. He was my best friend for eleven years.”
A dog? I have to pinch myself to make sure this is real.
Only there’s no mistaking the warble in his voice, the way his eyes glaze over with a bittersweet smile. His breath rattles.
“I was a jackass to deny you the same joy when you were little, the kind every kid should have. When that dog died, it broke me. I stuffed up my grief, my fear that another animal might remind me of the one I lost. I was selfish as hell, and I’m sorry.”
“Dad, shit. You’re welcome to meet Queenie anytime. The black Lab we’ve taken in.” I have to fucking cough to keep my throat from sticking. “I think she’d like you.”
I’ve never seen the old man cry, and he doesn’t today, but he comes dangerously, dangerously close.
Without another word running through us like knives, he extends a hand.
And my father gives me the lightest handshake of his entire life, free from fifty metric tons of emotional baggage.
By the time I leave him, I’ve met the man I didn’t know he could be, and I hope like hell to see him stick around.
The next few weeks are a rush like one long flight of top-shelf whiskey.
Somehow, while I was busy trying to unfuck everyone’s lives, my lab worked a miracle with the latest formula and a little help from Wendy’s farm.
