“Everything’s fine, Miss O’Brien,” he called out, refusing to glance over at her. “Mr. Rafferty is just taking himself and his damned dog and leaving.”
“Keep your voice down,” Saul suddenly snarled. “You’re stupid, boy, do you know that? Ain’t got an ounce of the sense your daddy had.”
“Don’t.” Logan was in Saul’s face faster than he would have thought possible, definitely before he could consider his actions. He was almost nose to nose with the old man, staring down at him as fury pounded in his blood. “Don’t mention my father. Don’t mention either of my parents. Don’t say their names. You’ve pretended they didn’t exist for over twenty years, and now, as far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist for you.”
“Sucks don’t it, boy?” Saul responded, refusing to back down. “Knowing we share blood.”
“We don’t share a damned thing, Mr. Rafferty,” Logan sneered.
Saul didn’t even have the good grace to flinch. “Keep hating me, boy. It’s the best thing for both of us.”
“Then stay the hell off my property and keep your damned animals away from me.”
“Your grandmother’s dying, Logan.”
Saul’s comment, so out of character, so outside of the conversation, caused Logan to still, to stare back at him, confused.
“What the hell did you say?”
“She’s dying.” Saul’s voice thickened as he lowered his gaze and stared the pup that suddenly sat next to Logan’s foot, its wrinkled face filled with happiness as it panted up at him. “That one’s from the last litter of her favorite little bitch. The runt. She wanted you to have her. She begged me to bring her to you.”
Begged him?
She’d wanted him to have it for what reason? She hadn’t cared if he lived or died for over twenty years and now all of a sudden, she gave a f**k?
He highly doubted it.
He should tell Saul that he didn’t give a damn, Logan told himself, but he couldn’t get the words past his lips. There had been a time, long ago and far away, when he had idolized this old man and his wife. He had spent hours playing with their puppies and had sat on his grandfather’s knee as Saul read to him.
He’d convinced himself he only imagined those years. They couldn’t have happened.
But they had.
“Take her back,” he ordered. “You’re not doing this to me again.”
Again. He’d been ten when Saul and Tandy had given him his first pup. Three months after Saul’s daughter—Logan’s mother—and his son-in-law had died in a blazing crash on a mountain road, that pup had been poisoned.
It had died in Logan’s arms, the vet refusing to answer his door, to help the boy who stood outside screaming for help. Begging the son of a bitch to save that dog.
“I didn’t do it to you.” Saul met his gaze. “I had no reason to try to kill you, Logan.”
“You killed the dog.”
Saul shook his gray head. “The pup ate your food at that damned Social, in the community center. Your food. I wasn’t there and I sure as hell didn’t hire someone to kill a kid. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t a’ killed an innocent animal just to get to you. It broke your grandmother’s heart—”
“Nothing about me ever broke either of your hearts.” It wasn’t possible. They would have had to care first.
“Boy, you don’t know shit.” Contempt filled the words, then Saul glanced to his side.
Skye was still standing in the doorway. She couldn’t hear what was being said, but she seemed to be keeping watch.
Her arms crossed over her br**sts, a glare on her face. She didn’t look the least bit happy to see Saul Rafferty there.
“That girl’s worried about you.” Saul lifted his lip as though to sneer before giving up the effort and shaking head wearily. “Tandy wanted you to have her. I brought her to you. It’s that damned simple.”
“Take it back. She didn’t want me and now I don’t want either of you or your f**king dogs.”
“No, all you want is your be-damned pride and your certainty that you have all the answers,” Saul bit out furiously, his aged body seeming to tremble. “That’s why I say your daddy was a damned sight smarter, Logan. He knew better than to just listen to his own f**king pride.”
“And whatever he listened to got him killed,” Logan snapped. “Didn’t it, Saul?”
It was their suspicion. Logan, Rafe, Crowe. They knew their parents’ deaths hadn’t been an accident. Their fathers had grown up on that damned mountain, had learned to drive on that road. They would have never headed across it during a blizzard.
Unless they’d had no other choice.
“You’re a fool.” Saul lost the anger in his tone. “A fool, boy, and you’re too damned blind and filled with pride to see it.”
“Oh, I see it.” Hatred burned inside him and clashed with the memories of the boy he’d once been and had hung on to for so long. “I’ve seen it for a long time, Mr. Rafferty. Seen you for the monster you, Marshal Roberts, and John Corbin always have been. Tell me, did you kill my father’s parents like you killed your own daughter?”
The old man flinched then. Agony filled his gaze, and though Logan wanted to deny it, wanted to convince himself that Saul Rafferty didn’t have enough feelings to know grief, still, he couldn’t deny it was there.
It twisted his lined face and tightened his lips and caused the other man to shake his head slowly.
“No,” he finally whispered, his voice so rough Logan could barely understand the words. “No, Logan. I didn’t kill them like I killed my own child.”
Stunned, not by the non-admission so much as by the single tear that slipped from Saul’s eye, Logan could only stand in shock and watch as, head down, shoulders weighed low, Saul turned and walked quickly out of the yard.
The sound of a vehicle starting up at the side of the street pierced the darkness long moments later and reminded Logan that the old bastard had forgotten something.
“Son of a bitch,” he cursed as he stared down at the pup. It had curled against the side of his shoe and was now asleep.
“Logan?”
Turning his head he watched as Skye made her way across the short distance between their patios, her expression worried as she watched him.