Operation Mountain Recovery by Justine Davis

Author:Justine Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-09-04T15:00:54+00:00

Chapter 20

Brady felt the tingle at the back of his neck that told him someone was there. His fingers tightened around his cell phone reflexively.

He didn’t need to look. The quickening of his pulse told him who it was. Her voice, that voice that did crazy things to the nerves along his spine, whispered over him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude on your call.”

“It’s all right.” He tapped the icon that ended the call. “We were done.” He turned around and managed a smile and a gesture toward the snow still surrounding the patio. “It’s weird, sitting here amid this, talking to someone who’s in Arizona in eighty degrees.”

“Some would say they’re wiser.”

“My mother among them,” he said, gesturing with the phone before he slid it back into his pocket.

“You’re close, you and your mother?”

He nodded. “Oh, we had our moments when I was growing up, but since I hit the age where I realized I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did, and she knew a lot more, we’ve done great. Especially since my dad died.”

“That part still sucks,” she said.

“Yours was worse,” he answered quietly.

“Because he left me by his own choice? Maybe. The end result is the same, though.”

“I had mine a lot longer, too. I was an adult when he died. You were only a child.”

“Even more pitiful, huh?” she said with a grimace.

“You’re a lot of things, Ashley Jordan, but you’re not pitiful.”

She smiled, although it looked like an effort. “So did you tell your mother you’re harboring a fugitive?” That caught him off guard, and he looked away. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“If this blows up, I don’t want it to touch her.”

He looked back when he heard her gasp. “I didn’t think of that,” she said, her eyes wide. “Could it? It’s bad enough for you, but—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t start worrying about that on top of everything else. She’ll find out eventually, but she’ll be fine.”

“Will she be angry with you when she does find out? Will it damage your relationship with her?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “They couldn’t accuse me of anything big enough to make her turn on me.”

Ashley smiled back, but it was a sad smile. “That’s how I used to feel with my dad. He told me once I could never disappoint him.”

He felt one of those clicks in his mind. “Why?”

“What?”

“What brought on him saying that?”

“Oh.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “I got into a fight with a girl at school. My mother was furiously upset because I made a scene, but my dad just said he’d have been angry if I hadn’t stood up for myself.”

“Was your mother always...critical?”

“Kind of,” she said, although she sounded uncomfortable. “Back then, anyway. But like you and your mom, after my father died, we did much better.”

He wasn’t sure he liked the analogy. He and his mother had bonded together because they were all they had left. But he wondered, given the way she’d said her parents often argued, if her mother hadn’t been glad.

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