Page 16 of This Time Around (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #3)

Another glance at the guard. Allie’s hands felt clammy, and she wished she’d worked out some sort of secret code with her dad before they’d hauled him away. How the hell was she supposed to know she’d find a huge chest of money and need to covertly discuss it?

Allie took a deep breath. “Are you talking about that old steamer trunk Grandma used to have in the blue bedroom downstairs?”

Her dad frowned. “Steamer trunk? Oh, you mean that thing she used as a coffee table in the blue room?”

“Right.”

“You found that upstairs?” He shook his head. “Wonder how she got that up there. It had a lock on it, right?”

Allie nodded, not sure if he was testing her or genuinely unsure. “Yes. It had a combo lock.”

She waited for him to ask if she’d gotten into it. Her brain raced with how best to answer, how not to arouse suspicion with the guard.

But that’s not where her dad took the conversation. “Nah, the thing I’m talking about is a cardboard box. With some stuff inside that might be a little—” He cleared his throat. “Embarrassing.”

A little ripple of queasiness moved through her. “Oh.”

She waited for him to fill in the blank. To confirm what she’d just realized and give her an indication how willing he was to discuss it.

But he said nothing.

“So you’re talking about what was in the other box,” she tried.

She fixed her face into an expression of nonchalance and neutrality. No judgment here , she tried to telegraph. None at all.

“Right.” Her dad looked uncertain. “The other box.”

“Look, it’s no big deal,” she said. “Plenty of people have stuff like that lying around. Heck, I used to have these silk scarves?—”

She stopped herself, not sure why the hell she’d brought that up. She’d forgotten entirely until Jack mentioned it the day before. Now here she was discussing her history of bondage with her father.

That’s what you get for letting Jack Carpenter back into your head.

Allie took a shaky breath and looked her father in the eye. “Don’t worry about it, Daddy. I only glanced at it quickly, but it doesn’t make me think any less of grandma.”

Her dad frowned. “Why would it?”

“Um—I guess I assumed it all belonged to her. I mean, I saw her initial on something. Just a quick glance, though. Maybe I was wrong.”

He frowned. “Could it have been an N instead of a V? Nathan Ellington Ross?”

“Uh—I guess so.” Christ, what was her dad suggesting? And did she really want to know this? “Look, Daddy, I don’t need to know details. If that stuff belongs to you?—”

“Of course it belongs to me.” He lowered his voice, adopting an almost reverent tone. “Well, your mother and me.”

“Oh.” Allie bit her lip. “Right. Well, plenty of people are into that stuff.” She tried a casual laugh, not wanting her dad to feel embarrassed. “Paddles, whips, toys—all that stuff is pretty mainstream right now.”

Her dad blinked. “What?”

He looked genuinely baffled. What the hell? Allie leaned forward, lowering her voice again. “The sex toys. That’s what you meant, right?”

His eyebrows rose like white caterpillars arching to climb a tree branch. “What are you talking about?”

“Um—nothing.” Allie laughed, hoping it sounded less stilted to him than it did to her own ears. “I was kidding. Just—you’ve heard about Fifty Shades of Grey ? Or Panty Dropper by G.G. Buckingham?—”

“I’m aware of it.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “A few of the inmates got their hands on a copy last year. Let’s say it was well-read.”

“Right. I was just making a joke. An erotic romance joke. A highly inappropriate?—”

“Sweetie, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve gotten a little weird lately.”

Allie sighed. “Thank you, Daddy.” She cleared her throat. “So what box were you talking about?”

“It’s not a huge deal or anything. Just—some old letters, okay?”

“What kind of letters?”

“Love letters.”

Allie felt her pulse kick up again. “You mean you had a mistress?”

“What? No, of course not! I’d never cheat on your mother.”

His voice was loud enough that several inmates and their guests looked over. A man with tattoos up both arms stared for a long moment, then shook his head and went back to his own conversation.

“Who are the love letters from, Daddy?”

“Your mother and me.” A faint flush had crept into his cheeks, and Allie watched with curiosity as he dropped his gaze to the table. “They’re from when we first dated, back in college.”

“I don’t understand. Why is that a secret?”

“You know how your mom is.” He shrugged and gave a small smile, meeting her eyes again. “Not very sentimental. She was always throwing things out, doing spring cleaning and fall cleaning and purging. You remember when she threw out your old teddy bear?”

“Right. Well, I was sixteen, so?—”

“Doesn’t matter. Sometimes you want to hold on to things like that.” He shrugged again and glanced down at their hands. “Anyway, I didn’t want her to chuck those in one of her cleaning binges, so I hid them up there in Grandma’s attic maybe seven or eight years ago.”

“So that’s it?”

He frowned. “What were you expecting?”

She shook her head. “Not that, I guess.”

He gave her hand a squeeze. “Thought maybe you’d found them and read them. You had kind of a funny look on your face earlier. Like you were hiding something.”

“Right.” Allie shook her head. “I wouldn’t read your private letters, Daddy.”

He laughed and bumped her knee with his beneath the table. “Nah, you’re welcome to read ’em. Heck, you might even learn something. Good stuff about life and love and courtship—all the stuff your mom and I were still figuring out back when we were eighteen.”

“Did you figure it out?” The question came out breathless, and Allie realized she genuinely wanted the answer.

He laughed. “At eighteen? Nah, we were all dumb hormones and lofty ideals back then. We didn’t really figure it out until we were well into our mid-twenties. After you came along and we started to get our careers underway.”

“Oh.”

“But those letters—those early bumbling attempts at love? They’re worth remembering. Even if it’s not where we ended up, they’re part of how we got where we were going. That means something.”

Allie nodded, not sure what else to say.

She’d been witness only to parts of her parents’ love story.

The parts that included her, and the ones she saw through the trial and their prison separation.

Her chest felt tight as she considered how much more there was to the story.

Those long ago memories that belonged only to the two of them. Wasn’t that the core of intimacy?

Her dad squeezed her hand again, and Allie felt something twist in the center of her chest. “You sure there’s nothing else, Alliecakes? You seem like you have something on your mind.”

She hesitated. A movement in the corner of her eye made Allie turn to see the guard had changed positions. He’d moved four or five feet down the wall, a better position to keep close watch over the heavily tattooed couple holding hands across a gray table identical to theirs.

Allie looked back at her dad. If she kept her voice low, she could probably confess what she’d found. What she was really hiding.

But the words that came out of her mouth had nothing to do with the money. “Jack Carpenter is back in town.”

A look of understanding flashed across her father’s face. “Ah. That makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

“Why you seemed so—undone, I guess.”

She started to argue, but took a deep breath instead. “He got married,” she blurted, not sure why she was confessing all this to her father. She knew she’d never tell her mom any of this, and it felt good to confide in one parent. “But his wife died a couple years later.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he murmured.

“They had a kid. A daughter. She’s ten years old and Jack’s been raising her alone. I think he’s grown up a lot.”

Her dad nodded, and gave a soft little laugh. “That’ll change a man. Having a daughter.”

She smiled back, relieved to see him looking happy again. “Yes. I imagine it would.”

“Always felt sorry for the guy, truth be told,” her father said. “That’ll do a number on a kid, having his dad walk out like that. What was he, six, seven?”

“Six,” Allie said, surprised her father remembered, since she and Jack hadn’t known each other then. But she’d told her dad the stories, wanting her father to care about Jack the way she did. Wanting her parents to love and accept him.

“It definitely shaped his personality,” Allie said. “Always expecting people to walk out or disappoint him.”

Her dad squeezed her hands. “You can’t blame yourself for any of that, sweetie. You were right to break things off when you did. The two of you were just kids.”

“I know,” Allie murmured, but her voice sounded small. She wanted to change the subject, and felt a wave of relief when her dad did it for her.

“Listen, sweetie—maybe you should stay out of the attic for now. Are those rickety old boards still up there?”

“Yes, but I’ve been trying not to step on them. I’m being careful.”

“Still.” His forehead furrowed. “I’m not sure it’s safe. I’d hate to have you go crashing through the ceiling or something.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. “Besides, I’m not sure I have much of a reason to go up there again anyway.”

“Good.” He squeezed her hands. “Always such a good girl, Allie.”

She smiled and tried to ignore the knot in her gut.

Of the items on Jack’s list of quintessential Portland experiences to have now that he was back in Oregon, getting a straight-razor shave from a heavily tattooed guy wearing lumberjack plaid and sporting a Fu Manchu mustache ranked right up there.

“Dad! Hold still. I want to take a picture for Instagram.”

Okay, having his ten-year-old photographing the experience added an extra element of weirdness. Maybe that made it more Portlandesque.

“Make sure you get a good shot of all my gray hair,” he said as Paige angled up on her knees in the adjacent barber chair. “Since you’re responsible for most of it.”