The Slow Burn

  The Slow Burn

  Copyright © 2019 by Kristen Ashley

  First ebook edition: April, 2019

  First print edition: April, 2019

  Cover Art by:

  PixelMischiefDesign.com

  Interior Design & Formatting by:

  Christine Borgford

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Contents

  THE SLOW BURN

  Dedication

  A Note from the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Books by Kristen Ashley

  Connect with Kristen Ashley

  For Mom . . .

  Granite and Steel

  I miss you.

  For Gram . . .

  I still wonder what

  the poor people are doing.

  Thank you for teaching me

  what it means

  to be rich.

  I miss you too.

  I GREW UP in a house where we had government cheese.

  If you don’t know what that means, it means that you’re in an income bracket where you can look to the system to give you some necessities, like food. And one of the things they gave you was this enormous block of better-living-through-chemistry cheese.

  Often, at our farm, we had occasion to sit around our big, rectangular dining room table. Christmas. Birthdays (and there were a lot of birthdays with seven of us in that house). Easter. Or just to play games. Just to be with family.

  We didn’t eat filet mignon at these dinners. We had chili. Stew. Pork cutlets, fried potatoes and corn (the corn was also fried, it’s an Indiana thing and we now consider it a treat). Homemade potato soup. Chicken and dumplin’s.

  If I wanted to listen to the stereo, I listened to my sister’s.

  If I wanted to watch TV by myself, if I could get away with it, I watched the miniscule black-and-white television in my brother’s room.

  If they wanted to play a record, they did it on my turntable.

  We didn’t have a lot.

  So we shared.

  In so many ways.

  I did know we didn’t have a lot.

  The other thing I knew was that we had so much more than many.

  On more than one occasion, my grandmother would sit back in her chair at her place at the foot of that table, and she’d watch her family happy to be doing nothing but sitting together and being together.

  And on more than one occasion, when she sat back, she did it with this contented smile curling her lips, and she’d remark, “I wonder what the poor people are doing?”

  As a child, that always confused me.

  It wasn’t until I grew older that I understood I was then, and I am now, the richest girl in the world.

  See, when we’re all together, not at our farm in Indiana, but in one of our homes in Phoenix—my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law, my nieces—on occasion my brother or my sister will sit back and ask, “I wonder what the poor people are doing?”

  We never forgot what our mother gave us through love and sacrifice when, out of necessity, she moved us in with my grandparents.

  She gave us family.

  An embarrassment of riches.

  Thus, my fictional Daphne Forrester taught her daughters Eliza and Adeline what true wealth really meant.

  And it was an honor being in this series to give that through them to my readers.

  I hope you enjoy Toby and Addie’s story, the end of Moonlight and Motor Oil.

  And I wish you wealth beyond your wildest imaginings.

  The real kind.

  Rock On

  ~Kristen

  She Was Going to Be Just Right

  Toby

  Thirty Years Ago . . .

  TOBY SAT ON his rump in the middle of the room and stared.

  His big brother Johnny was standing by their daddy’s leg and patting it.

  Daddy was sitting on their couch, bent over, head in his hands, his shoulders heaving.

  He was crying.

  Toby had never seen his daddy crying.

  “Daddy,” his big brother said, his voice funny.

  Their daddy lifted his head, his face red, and looked at Toby’s big brother.

  Then he lifted one of his big hands and wrapped it around Johnny’s neck.

  “It’s okay, son,” he said, his voice funny too. “It’s okay,” he repeated.

  His eyes strayed to Toby.

  Toby felt his lip wobble, his belly all funny when he saw his daddy’s face.

  “We’ll all be okay,” his father whispered.

  Toby didn’t believe him.

  He didn’t believe him at all.

  This was Tobias David Gamble’s first cognitive thought.

  It was also his first memory.

  He was three.

  And when it came to his dad, Toby’s thoughts on that particular subject would turn out to be right.

  Ten Years Later . . .

  “She’s ruined him,” Margot snapped.

  Toby was about to go in the back door.

  It was after school.

  His dad and brother were at the garage.

  If Toby didn’t feel like working on some car, and sometimes he didn’t, he’d go to his Grams and Gramps’s after school.

  That is, if he didn’t sneak out to the mill and pretend he was a fugitive from justice. Or a cop hunting a fugitive from justice. Or a scientist discovering a new kind of moss that would cure cancer. Or a sailor stranded from his ship on a desert island (that had a mill with a water wheel).

  Everyone had freaked the first time he’d walked all the way out to the mill to do his own thing.

  He’d been eight.

  Now, if he was in the mood, he just went. And if they didn’t know where he was, they went out there to get him.

  But Grams and Gramps were in Germany for a vacation, visiting Grams’s family.

  Since he didn’t want to go to the garage, like always when his Grams and Gramps were busy, Toby went to Margot and David’s after school.

  David was his dad’s best friend.

  Margot was Dave’s wife.

  She was also a pain in the butt.

  This was because she was super strict. It was always, “A gentleman does this,” or, “a decent man does that,” or, “you offer a lady a cookie first, Tobias, before you eat fifteen of them.”

  Her cookies were the best.

  Who wouldn’t eat fifteen of them?

  And if you offered them to some girl first, she might eat fifteen of them, not leaving you enough when she was done.

  But okay . . .

  He’d never tell anyone this, not anyone in the whole world, but he liked it when Margot got all cuddly with Dave, her eyes getting soft, like he built some big cannon and pointed it to the sky and lit that thing, filling the heavens with stars.

  He wished his mom had thought that about his dad.


  But he liked it that Margot gave that to Dave.

  He wouldn’t tell anyone this either, but Toby liked it when she got all soft in the face sometimes, when she looked at him when he got an A on some paper or after he helped his team win a game (and she’d know, she always went to his games, Dave too) or after he made her laugh.

  And he liked it a whole lot when she’d run the backs of her fingers down his jaw.

  But right then, Toby didn’t turn to the screen door and push it in when he heard Margot in the kitchen talking on their phone.

  He stood at the side of the door and listened.

  Margot’d get ticked, she knew he was there. She was big on manners, and eavesdropping was not something she was keen on. So eventually he’d have to retrace his steps, give it time and come back.

  But now he was gonna listen.

  “I can’t begin to imagine what’s wrong with Rachel, except for the fact she’s not Sierra.”

  Toby’s eyes closed and his shoulders slumped.

  His dad was scraping off another girlfriend.

  That sucked.

  His dad seemed better when he had a lady around.

  This time it sucked more because Toby really liked Rachel.

  He’d learned not to like them. They never lasted long.

  A lot of them tried real hard to last as long as they could, and Toby could see this. His dad had money. He was a decent-looking guy. And he had that low voice Toby had overheard one of his father’s girlfriends say was “sexy.”

  Lance Gamble was a catch.

  A lot of them tried to get to Lance through his sons.

  Most of the time it was sickening, and it bugged the crap out of Toby and Johnny (it was just that Johnny was the kind of guy who’d learned to keep his mouth shut about stuff that bothered him or find a time he could talk it out with Dad so it wouldn’t tick Dad off, Toby . . . not so much).

  But Rachel was real. She was pretty and she was sweet. She didn’t give off that fake vibe.

  And she cooked awesome.

  He’d wanted her to stick around.

  Apparently she wasn’t going to do that, and as usual with his dad and his girlfriends, that was not her choice.

  “If that woman ever came back, I’d slap her right across the face,” Toby heard Margot go on. “That is, before I tore her hair out, scratched out her eyes and ran her right back out of town on a rail.”

  Now Margot was talking about Sierra.

  Dad’s wife.

  Johnny and Toby’s mom.

  She was still his dad’s wife, as far as Toby knew.

  Even though his dad tried to hide it from the boys, he’d tried to find her, but she was nowhere to be found. A couple of years ago, when an effort at this had failed, Toby had heard Dave suggest he get an ex parte divorce (whatever that was). But his dad had said, “Just gonna give her more time. If I know my Sierra, she won’t be able to stay away from her boys for too long.”

  He was wrong, seeing as she’d stayed away by that time for eight years.

  Toby still didn’t think his mother needed more time. She’d had enough time. Now it had been ten years.

  She hadn’t come back.

  Because she wasn’t gonna come back.

  And if she did, no one wanted her back.

  Except his dad.

  And Toby.

  He didn’t remember a lot about her. He’d been too young when she’d gone.

  Except he remembered her being pretty. He remembered her smelling good.

  He remembered how happy she made his dad.

  Though Toby wasn’t feeling that so much anymore.

  Mostly in this moment because he liked Rachel.

  “I don’t know,” Margot was saying. “David will talk to him, I’m sure. But he won’t listen. I think he thinks he has to be available when she comes home. But that woman is never coming home. Dave knows it. I know it. The whole town of Matlock knows it.”

  As Toby had noted, he knew it too.

  “No,” Margot snapped. “I can’t even begin to understand what was in her head. But I’ll tell you this, we’re all having the last laugh.”

  Toby straightened after she said this.

  How were they all having the last laugh when his mom had up and left them?

  Margot told him.

  Well, not him. Whoever she was talking to.

  “Johnathon is fifteen and he’s already one of the finest men I know. Good. Decent. Kind-hearted. Strong. Knows his own mind and how to speak it. Sharp as a whip. And she’ll never know what a fabulous man her boy turned out to be.”

  Yeah.

  Well, sure.

  Johnny was awesome.

  Everyone knew Johnny was awesome.

  Everybody.

  Even Toby, and sometimes Tobe wanted to hate his big brother, but Johnny was just that guy.

  You couldn’t.

  No one could hate Johnny Gamble.

  “And Tobias . . .”

  Toby perked up.

  “He has no idea his potential . . .”

  Right.

  His potential.

  “But when he learns . . .” she trailed off for a sec before she carried on. “I find myself struggling with him. Do you rein in all that audacity? Is it right to try to stop a boy from devouring life? He’s so bold, Judy, it sometimes takes my breath away. In another time, he’d be the first to walk on the moon. The first to corral fire. Johnathon will find a sweet girl, make babies with her, work in his father’s garages and live a good life, quiet and happy. Tobias will find a spitfire who challenges him and drives him insane, and they’ll go off and tear through the world, running with the bulls in Pamplona or uncovering hidden treasures in Egypt or something.”

  Toby blinked in the sun.

  Margot thought all that?

  About him?

  “And then what do I do?” Margot asked her friend Judy (who did not make cookies as good as Margot’s, but they were all right). “My last, not born of me, but my last boy? How does a woman handle her baby trekking through the Amazon or deep-sea diving to explore sunken pirate ships? I fear I’ll spend the rest of my life waiting for the phone to ring just to hear he’s all right. Lord, I hope he finds a woman who can communicate. At least she’ll check in.”

  Without him telling it to do it, Toby’s body slid down the siding of Dave and Margot’s house.

  All the way down.

  Until he hit his rump.

  Because she thought all that.

  About him.

  “And Sierra doesn’t get that,” she continued. “She doesn’t get the solidness of Johnathon or the fearlessness of Tobias. She’ll never know that. She’ll never hold the grandchildren Johnathon will give her in her arms. She’ll never hear the breathless excitement of Tobias’s children over the phone when they call and share what their father’s up to now.”

  Toby felt something hit his stomach, and it wasn’t what usually hit it whenever anyone mentioned his mom.

  It was something a whole lot different.

  “So I suppose I should thank her,” Margot declared. “Because she left and I got all that. She left and that became mine. And I suppose I shouldn’t be angry with Lance for breaking it off with Rachel. Because if he found a woman, she might claim those boys. Because what woman, outside Sierra, who’s no woman at all, wouldn’t claim those boys? And then where would I be?”

  Again, without him telling it to do it, his body got off its rear, took its feet and turned right to the screen door.

  Margot never missed a trick.

  So even though she was standing at the kitchen counter with the wall phone, with its long cord, held to her ear, her side to the door, she sensed him and turned.

  Toby didn’t move.

  He just stared at her with her pretty light-red hair and her big eyes, wearing one of her nice dresses (she was always in nice dresses) and he felt that feeling in his stomach.

  “I have to go, Judy. Tobias is home from school and if I don’
t get him an after-school snack, his stomach will eat through him.” She paused. “Okay. Yes, of course. See you then. Ta, Judy.”

  With that, she hung up the phone.

  But all Toby could think was she’d said he was “home.”

  And he was.

  He had three homes.

  His dad’s.

  His Grams and Gramps’s.

  And Margot’s.

  And she’d make him a heckuva after-school snack.

  She always did.

  Anytime he came to her for as long as he could remember.

  His mom gave him that. All of that.

  And she did it by leaving.

  Unmoving, he watched her walk to him.

  He only shifted when she pushed out the screen door.

  She held it open, stood in the door and studied him.

  “How much did you hear, darlin’?” she asked quietly.

  “A lot,” he answered.

  Her pretty face got that soft he liked so much before she whispered, “Child.”

  Toby said nothing.

  “I know you liked Rachel, Tobias, but—” she started.

  “I like you.”

  She stopped. Blinked.

  Then her hand crept up in front of her to cover her throat so he wouldn’t see it move as she tried not to cry in front of him, because ladies did not give in to tears or hysterics in front of others. It was rude.

  According to Margot.

  “When I find a woman, she’s gonna be like you,” Toby told her.

  “My beautiful boy,” she said quietly.

  “Though she’s gonna hafta be able to wear pants if she’s gonna run with some bulls or somethin’.”

  Her face got even softer, but she said, “Something, Tobias. Don’t drop your ‘Gs.’ You’re not a hillbilly.”

  “I’m totally a hillbilly. Everyone from Kentucky is a hillbilly, don’t you know.”

  Her mouth did that thing it did with him a lot. It got all shaky, like she was trying not to laugh, before it got stern.

  “I am not a hillbilly and I’m a Kentuckian born and bred. And you are not a hillbilly either,” she stated.

  “Are you gonna feed me, or what?” he asked.

  “‘Margot, I’m famished. Will you please make me a snack?’” she corrected.

  “I’m never sayin’ that famished word in my life,” he returned.