Under Threat by B.J. Daniels (reading the story of the .TXT) 📕

idea how he’d gotten out of the bar. He found himself standing outside, bent over, gasping for breath, Mary at his side.

The bar door opened behind him. Sucking in as much air as he could, he straightened and turned. He was a good two inches taller than his father, but the similarities were all too apparent. He stared at the man who was staring just as intensely back at him.

“I didn’t know,” Jim said, his voice breaking. “I had no idea.”

“You didn’t know my mother was pregnant? Or you didn’t know you had a son?” Chase demanded, surprised he could speak.

“Neither.” The man suddenly dropped to the front steps of the bar and put his head in his hands. “When Jason told me...” He lifted his head. “I didn’t believe him until I saw you.”

“How was it you didn’t know?” Mary asked. For a moment, Chase had forgotten she was there.

“She never told me...” Jim moaned.

“You weren’t at all curious why she left?” Chase said, his voice breaking. His strength was coming back. So was his anger.

“I knew why Muriel left,” the man said, meeting his gaze. “I separated from my wife when I met your mother. We fell in love. I was in the process of filing for divorce to marry Muriel when...” His voice broke and he looked away. “My wife was in a car accident. She almost died.”

“And you decided not to leave her,” Chase said, nodding as if he could feel his mother’s pain. She’d been young and foolish, fallen for a man who was taken only to realize all his promises had come to nothing—and she was pregnant with his child. So she hadn’t told him. What would have been the point since by then she knew he was staying with his wife?

The door behind Jim opened. Chase heard a creak and looked up to see a woman in a wheelchair framed in the doorway. The woman had graying hair that hung limp around her face. She stared at him for a long moment before she wheeled back and let the door close behind her. He looked at his father, who was looking at him.

“She’s been in a wheelchair since the accident,” Jim said quietly as he got to his feet. “I blamed myself since she had her accident after an argument we had over the bar. The bar,” he said with disgust. “We both wanted the divorce. That wasn’t the problem. It was the bar. I wanted to keep it. She wanted it sold, and half the money. If only I’d let her have it...” His voice dropped off. “I wanted to be with your mother. Muriel was the love of my life. If I’d known she was pregnant...”

“But she didn’t tell you after she heard about your wife’s accident,” Chase said more to himself than his father.

Jim nodded. “If I’d known where your mother had gone...” He didn’t finish because it was clear he didn’t know what he would have done.

Chase thought of how close his father had been in the years from fifteen on that he’d lived and worked on the Cardwell Ranch. All that time, his father had been not that far away. But there was no reason for their paths to cross. His father’s bar was up on the mountain at the resort and Chase had lived down in the canyon.

He looked at his father and could see that the man had paid the price for all these years, just as his mother had. Jim Harris stood for a moment, his hands hanging at his sides, a broken man. “I’m sorry you didn’t find a better father than me.” With that he turned and went back inside.

Chase felt Mary touch his arm. “I can drive,” she said, and took his pickup keys from his hand.

Hours later, she and Chase lay curled up in her apartment bed, his strong arms around her. They’d stayed up and talked until nearly daylight, and finally exhausted had climbed into her bed.

Chase had found his father. Not the man he’d thought he was going to find. Not a man he’d wanted to punch. A man who looked like him. A man who’d made mistakes, especially when it came to love.

Mary had told him what she knew about Jim and his wife, Cheryl. They’d gotten married young when Cheryl had been pregnant, but she’d lost the baby and couldn’t have another. It had been a rocky marriage.

“Jim said they were separated when he met your mother, but they must have kept it quiet. She wandered down in Meadow Village and he lived up on the mountain behind the bar.” She’d called her mother to ask her what she knew and Jim and Cheryl.

Dana had said she remembered that Cheryl had been staying with a sister down in Gateway near Bozeman when she’d had her accident.

“So no one knew about my mother and Jim,” Chase had said.

“Apparently not. I guess they hadn’t wanted it to be an issue in the divorce, especially since the bar was already one.”

When it got late and they’d talked the subject nearly to death, she’d suggested they go to bed.

“Mary, I—”

“Not to make love. Sleep. I don’t want you leaving after what you’ve been through. Also, it won’t be long before morning. We both need sleep and you have to leave for you carpentry job tomorrow.”

Now as they lay in bed, Chase said, “I don’t want to be like him, a coward, a man who never followed his heart.”

“You’re not like him.”

He made a groaning sound. “I have been. Out of fear. I should have stayed in Montana and fought for you. Instead, I left. I was miserable the whole time. I missed you and Montana so much. I didn’t think I was good enough for you. I’m still not sure I am.”

She touched her finger to his lips. “That’s ridiculous and all behind us.”

“Is it? Because I still feel like you don’t trust me,” Chase whispered in the dark room