Page 61 of Once Upon a Holidate
“That’s the rational argument.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I really was unreasonable with Sandy. She begged me to make changes in some of the holiday rituals Joylyn and I had. So the three of us could do them together. But I said what we did was important and I wanted everything to stay the same.”
“Like?”
“Like we spent every Christmas Day at Alisha’s house.”
“That’s very modern of you.”
“Yeah, well, Sandy had family in the area. She said we should at least alternate so she could sometimes see her family on Christmas.”
“She’s not wrong.”
“I know. I just...” He looked at her again. “I wanted to spend every second with my daughter. I wanted her to feel safe and loved.” He shifted his gaze to the front window. “When I got a job on the Phoenix police force, I talked to Alisha about joint custody. She didn’t want to do that. I even went so far as to talk to a lawyer. She said I had a good case—that I’d agreed to the parenting plan when I’d been a minor and my situation had completely changed. She thought I could get more time with Joylyn.”
“Why didn’t you pursue it?”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“Because your lawyer said you had a good case, so if you had, the parenting plan would have changed. If it changed, Joylyn wouldn’t have been a position to refuse to see you. So why didn’t you?”
“Joylyn didn’t want me to do it,” he said. “I talked to her about it. She would be testifying in court. She got upset and said she didn’t want to hurt her mom. That it would be hard for everyone. She liked how things were.”
“Which must have hurt to hear.”
“Some,” he admitted. “In my head, I got her point. Joylyn had a routine she liked. She had brothers and a stepdad. Mitch is a good guy. Why upset everything? So I didn’t move forward, and then I met Sandy and you know the rest.”
“You’re a good dad. I’m sorry you lost so much time with Joylyn.”
“Me, too. I told her about Colombia. She was asking questions and it came out.”
“She’s twenty-one, married and pregnant. I think she’s mature enough to handle the information.”
He turned to her. “I told her I’d been captured because somebody who knew who I really was betrayed me, but I didn’t tell her the rest of it.”
Questions bubbled up, but she held them inside. She had a feeling Garrick needed to talk about what had happened, but that would go better if he went at his own pace, and not hers.
He rubbed his thumb against the back of her hand. “I was sent into Colombia as an American with a drug distribution connection. I had a good identity and a partner. Raine. She was a DEA agent—one of their best. We were supposed to be newly married and very happy together. Everywhere I went, she went. She played dumb, so eventually the men started ignoring her.”
Wynn felt a knot form in her stomach. Whoever Raine was, Wynn hated her. Pretend married? So they’d slept together.
“Was she beautiful?” she asked before she could stop herself.
He chuckled. “Yes, but that’s not the point.”
“Still, it’s interesting information.” She cleared her throat. “Go on.”
“We gathered information and sent it back home. It was a dangerous lifestyle.”
She thought of the scars on his torso. “I’ve, ah, seen you mowing the lawn without a shirt.” She made a vague motion with her hands.
His humor faded. “The guys in the cartel liked to prove themselves with knife fights. I trained before I went on assignment, but it took me a while to get good.”
She winced. “They could have killed you.”
He nodded. “But they didn’t. Once they trusted me, we started to set up the distribution chain. We were about to put it all in play when someone told them who I was, and Raine and I were taken prisoner.”
“That must have been hard.”
