Page 60 of Once Upon a Holidate
Hunter sighed. “Parents are weird.”
“And yet you love me anyway.”
She headed for the front door and pulled it open just as Garrick stepped onto her porch.
He looked good. Tall and lean, with a hard edge to his expression. She thought about the events that had dominated the local news.
“Hi,” she said, stepping into his embrace and hugging him tight. “You okay after today?”
For a second he looked confused. “You mean the shooting.” He swore. “That’s not even what I wanted to talk about. Damn, it was a day.”
She led him into the living room where they sat on the sofa, facing each other. She tucked her feet under her.
“What happened?”
“With the shooting? From what I heard, the local news got all the details right. My guys are going to be okay. They’ll both be released in the morning. The suspect is dead, and based on what I saw he did to his own kid, I’m okay with that.” He held up a hand. “That makes me a bad person, I know. I’ll live with it. Should he have been shot in cold blood? No. But he drew first and injured two of my men. He could have killed them and more, so he got what he deserved.”
It was a lot to take in. She stayed quiet so he would keep talking. She didn’t know much about what it took to work in law enforcement, but she was clear on the fact that even in Happily Inc, Garrick saw things she couldn’t imagine. When she added in his time in Phoenix and the DEA, he was dealing with more than most.
He gave her a few more details about what had happened at work, then sucked in a breath.
“I talked to Joylyn.”
“Good talk or bad talk?”
“Good. Tough, but good.” He looked at her. “I found out why she stopped wanting to see me.”
Wynn leaned toward him. “Tell me.”
“It was my ex-wife. She lied. She said I’d dumped her and that I couldn’t wait to get Joylyn out of my life. She said my own daughter was a burden and that I didn’t really want to spend time with her.” Pain filled his eyes. “It wasn’t like that. Sandy left because she didn’t want to be married to me anymore. She’d always resented how close I was to Joylyn and how I made her a priority. At the time I knew I was probably pushing things in my marriage. I made sure all the holidays revolved around Joylyn without letting Sandy have input. But to lie to my daughter, to make her feel I didn’t care about her.”
His jaw clenched. “I want to do something, but I don’t know what. Finding her and confronting her all these years later probably isn’t a good idea.”
“No, it isn’t. Especially when you’re angry.”
“I’d never hurt her.”
“No, but you might scare her and that doesn’t help anyone. What did you tell Joylyn?”
“That I loved her and always wanted to see her. I reminded her I showed up every weekend, hoping she would see me.”
He leaned forward and took Wynn’s hand in his. “I missedher so much. Being with her was the best, and one day it was just gone. I didn’t know how to deal with that.”
“Which you also told her, right?”
“I did. I offered to give her the phone numbers of my friends back in Phoenix so she could confirm the story with them. I wanted her to know I was telling the truth.”
Which was just like him, Wynn thought. No one could question his affection for Joylyn.
“I’m sorry Sandy did that. She must have been really upset to lash out the way she did, which is an observation, not an excuse. Even if she felt justified to hate you, hurting Joylyn like that crossed a line.”
He shifted so he was leaning back against the sofa, but kept hold of her hand. “When we got married, we talked about having kids, but we wanted to wait. After a couple of years, I started bringing it up, but she always had a reason why now wasn’t a good time. Eventually we started fighting about it. I accused her of changing her mind.”
He looked at Wynn. “I wonder if my relationship with Joylyn had something to do with that. I wonder if she thought I wouldn’t love our child the way I loved Joylyn.”
“Did she ever say that?”
“No. I would have denied it. Of course I would have loved our kid just as much. It’s not like I have a limited amount of parental love and Joylyn got it all.”
