The Wedding Garden by Linda Goodnight

question inside him, he deserved an answer.
    “I’m a straight shooter, Justin. So here it is, as straight as I can give you.”
    The tension radiating off the boy was painful to watch. “Yeah? Are you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Justin’s head jerked once. “So you could be.”
    Sloan figured he’d let that one go. The boy wasn’t stupid. “If this is eating you up, you should talk to your mom. She should be the one to answer a question this important.”
    The silence told Sloan what the boy thought about that suggestion.
    Okay, try again. This was way too crucial to the kid’s mental health to leave it dangling.
    “Want to tell me where you got this idea? Ronnie Prine, maybe?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Might as well tell me. There aren’t any secrets between us now.” He held the boy’s eyes, waiting for the acknowledgment to sink in. Justin could be his son. The possibility was there, however slight.
    At the thought seeping in like rainwater through cracked walls, Sloan felt a strange mix of hope and despair. What if Justin was his son?
    Justin’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He fiddled with the label on the bottle. “Ronnie’s a creep. His mom said you and my mom…back in high school…well, you know.”
    Sloan huffed one hard, disgusted huff. Yes, he knew.
    “Will it help to know I loved her?”
    Justin’s head jerked up and his eyes gleamed suspiciously damp. “Did you? Really?”
    “Yeah,” Sloan said, almost grimly. The kid was killing him. “Really.”
    “What happened?”
    Ah, now, there was a slippery slope. “Your granddad didn’t like me. I joined the military.” Close enough to the truth.
    “He still hates you. I heard him griping at Mom about you.”
    The heaviness in Sloan’s chest expanded. Some things never changed. No matter how he’d felt or was feeling about Annie now, Dooley Crawford would stand in the way. He’d make Annie miserable again, as he’d done before. There was no way Sloan was going to ask her to choose. She had enough to deal with.
    “Talk to me about your dad.” When Justin just stared at him, he said. “Joey. Why do you say you hate him?”
    “He’s a jerk. He cheated on Mom.”
    “You get that from Ronnie Prine, too?”
    The kid gave a short mirthless laugh. “Everybody knew but Mom. Even me. Kids talk. They teased me.”
    Not good. No wonder the kid was boiling on the inside. “You know what your dad did was wrong, don’t you? Your mother is a good woman. She deserved better than that.”
    Justin managed an embarrassed grin. “I’m not a little kid. I know about…that kind of stuff.”
    Sloan remembered thinking the same thing the night his mother left.
    “Your mom’s a real special woman. A man lucky enough to marry her should treat her like a queen.” He bumped the boy’s knee. “Her son should treat her that way, too. She deserves your best.”
    “You gonna tell her? I mean, about what I asked you?”
    “I think I should, don’t you?”
    Head down, Justin rubbed a hand over his damp hair. “If you do, will you tell me what she says?”
    The implication of his little chat with Justin rocked Sloan’s world. He wasn’t sure what he felt. Pure terror, for certain, but also a kind of longing he couldn’t fathom.
    What would he do if this was his son? If he were a father? He, who was tormented with Clayton Hawkins’s blood running in his veins, was now tormented by the thought that he may have abandoned his kid the way his mother had abandoned him.
    Maybe he was as worthless as Dooley claimed. Maybe he was a bad seed.
    But then where did that leave Justin?
     
    Annie was vacuuming the living room when Sloan came storming in with thunder in his face and yanked the electric cord from the wall. The loud motor fell to a whine and then ceased.
    “We gotta talk.”
    Her heart bumped, the way it did every time Sloan came striding in with that swagger and the heat of summer steaming off his tanned skin. He was dirty from head to toe, his face streaked