The Slow Burn Read online

  Then they clamored down the steps.

  “You have . . . you have a lot of dogs, Johnathon.”

  “Johnny,” Johnny said tightly.

  “Sorry, I . . . we called you that when you were little but—”

  “Only Margot calls me Johnathon,” Johnny told her.

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  “Come in,” Johnny invited.

  She nodded, climbed the rest of the steps and walked into the house.

  As she passed, he got a whiff of her perfume and noticed she didn’t wear the same one.

  For some reason Toby felt that was a huge relief.

  The brothers followed her.

  She was looking around in amazement.

  “This has changed a lot,” she noted.

  “Have a seat,” Johnny said, moving to the dining room table.

  Toby followed.

  They sat with their beers.

  Margot would have a conniption, their asses in their seats before the lady in the room sat.

  Sierra floated into a chair just down from Johnny not having any clue someone in their life taught them manners and she wasn’t getting them.

  Her head was turned. “The kitchen seems the same. Except the appliances.”

  “It is,” Johnny grunted.

  Her eyes came to her eldest. “Are you and uh, Eliza intending to raise a family here?”

  “How about we get to the part where you explain why you’re here, Sierra?” Johnny suggested.

  She closed her mouth.

  For something to do, Toby reached out and wrapped his fingers around his beer.

  Sierra watched him do that, she opened her mouth but shut it again, probably wisely thinking better of asking for a drink.

  But she did lean into her crossed forearms on the table.

  She took her time taking a good look at both of them.

  And right before Toby was going to tell her to get on with it, she began.

  “You both are very handsome. You grew up so tall. I shouldn’t be surprised. Lance was tall. So very tall. I am too. But for some reason you seem . . . even bigger than your dad.”

  Neither of them said anything.

  “And you both look a lot like him,” she murmured. “So much like Lance. I don’t see me in you at all. Except,” her eyes drifted to Toby, “you kind of have my nose.”

  It sucked, but he kinda did.

  “Is you tellin’ us this why you’re here?” Johnny prompted.

  She shook her head at Johnny.

  “I wanted to explain to you boys why I left you and your father,” her gaze shifted quickly to Toby and she added, “my husband.”

  “You didn’t have it good at home growing up, so you were worried about ruining us like you were ruined, therefore you took off,” Toby said. “Is there more?”

  “Well, that’s putting it very simply,” she replied.

  “So there’s more,” Toby prompted.

  “It’s just that, every day, I would . . . think things, and every day I would . . .” she drew in breath and let it out, finishing, “worry. About you boys. About living up to your father’s expectations. He . . . I don’t want to speak ill of your dad, but he expected a lot from me. Too much.”

  “Like what? You making two sons with him and then sticking around?” Johnny asked.

  Toby was a little surprised at his brother’s question and how he worded it.

  Though anyone said anything that could be construed as even a little against Lance Gamble, Johnny didn’t like it.

  Toby didn’t like it much either.

  And he liked it less coming from her.

  “No, he was . . . actually, he thought I was—”

  “Beautiful? Perfect? The love of his life? Worthy?” Johnny queried.

  “Brother,” Toby said low, shocked as shit he was the one calling Johnny down.

  Johnny shut his mouth and his beard ticked against his cheek.

  “I’m not sure, you boys being all you are, which was how Lance was, that you’d understand.”

  “And what do you think we are?” Johnny asked and kept pushing with, “What did you think Dad was?”

  “You’re very much . . . men,” she answered.

  Well, you couldn’t argue that. They were men.

  “Right, you’re here to explain why that was a problem,” Toby pointed out before Johnny could say anything more.

  “That’s a lot of pressure,” she told them. “Expectations like that. For some people, marriage and motherhood doesn’t come naturally.”

  “So you give up and take off, is that the key?” Johnny asked. “A note that says nothing and you’re gone?”

  “Johnny—” she began.

  Johnny didn’t let her get far.

  “He tried to find you.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  Interesting.

  “You actively made sure you weren’t found,” Toby murmured.

  “I met someone who was, um—”

  “Able to buy you a BMW that costs a hundred thousand dollars,” Johnny finished for her. “And he could also help you stay buried so your husband couldn’t find the mother of his sons.”

  She straightened in her chair, body language no longer eager and open toward them. This wasn’t going as she’d planned so now she was back against the chair, hands in her lap.

  “He’s a good man,” she stated.

  Fucking hell.

  “Do we have siblings?” Toby asked.

  She shook her head. “No. He . . . had kids already.”

  “So you raised them,” Toby said.

  She shook her head but said, “They were older. Almost in their teens. He’s older. He’s now in his late seventies.”

  Almost their teens.

  She raised them.

  “Dad was well-off. Not enough for you?” Johnny asked.

  Her chin lifted. “Yes, my current husband is wealthier than your father was, but that wasn’t why I fell in love with him.”

  Fell in love with him.

  Jesus.

  “You’re married to him?” Toby asked.

  “We were . . . aware of Lance’s passing. We . . . made things official after your father passed.”

  Jesus.

  “Were you with him while you were with Dad?” Johnny kept at her.

  She grew visibly cagey.

  Fucking hell.

  “I knew him growing up,” she allowed. “He was older than me. But I knew him. We . . . knew each other.”

  “And then he got shot of his wife or she died or whatever and he was available, so you had a clean go,” Johnny surmised.

  Her face turned pointy. “That’s not how it happened.”

  Lie.

  The woman was fucking lying.

  Sitting in the mill, Johnny’s home, her dead husband’s property, a property she knew the kitchen had not been fully updated because she’d been there, repeatedly, probably before she was married, definitely after she was married, undoubtedly while she was pregnant with one or both of them, and she was fucking lying.

  “Can you understand how we might not believe that?” Toby asked.

  “This isn’t how I wanted this to go,” she returned snappishly.

  Losing patience.

  Quickly.

  He knew her type. He’d seen that type again and again.

  She was gearing up for a tantrum if she didn’t get what she wanted.

  “How about you just lay it out there so it can go how it goes and gets done,” Toby suggested.

  “I just want to get to know my boys,” she said shortly.

  “Why now?” Johnny inquired.

  She turned her head and looked out the wall of windows that led to Johnny’s balcony, beyond which was the creek.

  “Sierra,” Johnny called.

  She turned back. “I’m your mother. I never gave you permission to call me by my name.”

  “You did the minute you walked out the door of our home, fell in love with another
man, actively made sure you were never found until you were ready to come back, and then you made the approach the way you made it,” Johnny returned. “So you got a choice. You’re Ms. Whatever the Hell You Call Yourself, and I hope like fuck it isn’t Gamble, or you’re Sierra. Which one is it?”

  “Clearly Lance didn’t teach you any manners,” she bit.

  “No, but Margot did. It’s just that you’re sitting in the home I share with my fiancée, lying to my goddamned face, so I’m seeing I don’t have a lot of patience with you,” Johnny returned.

  “I’m not getting any younger,” she declared curtly.

  “And he hasn’t put you in his will,” Toby guessed.

  “I don’t need your money,” she spat.

  The other thing you didn’t do with Johnny Gamble.

  You didn’t spit words at his brother.

  Johnny shared this by pushing his chair back, standing and announcing, “Okay. We’re done here. You’re not gonna be straight with us, give us answers we fuckin’ deserve, this is over.”

  “We fought, my . . . my husband and I. He wanted me to get a divorce so he could marry me. We had to wait until . . . until I was ready. Then Lance passed unexpectedly, and I was free. He had to . . . make arrangements so Lance’s investigators couldn’t find me. All of that annoyed him. But I didn’t want to see your father again,” she told them.

  Shit.

  Fuck.

  With the way his dad treated women, Toby wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.

  Johnny was always sure of their dad.

  “Why?” Johnny demanded.

  “If I did, he might make me see you.”

  Everyone fell silent.

  Sierra broke it.

  “I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t . . . wasn’t . . .” She shook her head hard. “I’d walked away from you. I wasn’t ready—”

  This wasn’t about Lance Gamble.

  This was about Sierra Whoever the Fuck She Was.

  “For this,” Toby finished for her. “You weren’t ready for this. You weren’t ready for us to learn you’re a narcissistic, money-hungry bitch. You left mills and shacks and garages and four-bedroom houses to have BMWs and work done on your face when it was needed. And you’re so up your own ass, you couldn’t handle us not worshiping you because you couldn’t handle some of Dad’s attention shifting from his wife to his sons. It’s gotta be about you. With him gone, you think you can pretend to eat shit and that you want to meet Johnny’s fiancée, and we’d be so relieved you were back, it’d be all about you. A very Merry Christmas, Mom’s finally home. Dad couldn’t say shit, he’s gone. It’s your story to tell. Problem with that, Sierra, is we both got dicks. We’ve met women like you. So you’re not foolin’ anybody.”

  “I cannot believe you’d speak to me that way,” she said in a hushed, offended tone.

  “Did you leave Dad for your current husband?” Toby demanded to know.

  “Yes, but I’d been in love with him for years,” she answered sharply.

  Fucking hell.

  “Get out.”

  Toby’s head shot back to look up at Johnny when those words came from his brother.

  “Johnny, you don’t understand. I’d loved him for years and his wife left him. Please—” she started to beg.

  “Get out,” Johnny repeated.

  “This wasn’t supposed to—”

  Toby stood. “Sierra. Go.”

  She stood too. “You’re aware that Phil won’t live forever, and neither will I, and you both have chosen women and will likely make families, so if we work things out you’d be in line to inherit—”

  “Woman, Dad expanded the garages, so did I, and bought property, and other shit. Toby and I got millions. Don’t let the mill and Tobe’s condo, and us actually working for a living we don’t need to work for fool you. We don’t need dick from you,” Johnny shared.

  And that was news to her if Toby read her head giving a weird shake and her chin going in her neck right.

  She’d expected that to be collateral. The carrot she could dangle to insinuate herself into their lives.

  And she was not only thrown that it was not, she was thrown that they had what they had, which was what she would have had if she’d stuck around. He could tell this just by looking at her.

  “He was . . . wanting to concentrate on you boys, not building up the garages, when we—” she began.

  “He changed his mind,” Johnny told her.

  For some reason, the woman kept trying.

  “There are things you don’t understand. Even at your ages, so young, you boys were very into your father. Three peas in a pod. I was just the little woman. I cooked food and did laundry. I wanted girls. Lance said we could keep having babies to try for a girl. He wanted to do that. Tobias was getting older and your father was putting pressure on, he wanted a daughter, or another son, he didn’t care. But he kept talking about having a little girl, giving his sons a baby sister. I didn’t want to have more babies. What if they weren’t girls? Phil has girls and—”

  Christ, their dad had wanted more kids.

  Fuck, but that was a punch in the gut.

  And it all finally came out.

  Like usual with women like her.

  She buried the lead.

  His father’s expectations were that he was happy, loved building a family with her, and wanted more.

  Instead of saying no, which he would have accepted, she found some sugar daddy who’d kiss her ass and do anything she wanted, like wait nearly three decades to marry her and probably pay off investigators who came looking for her.

  “You aren’t making this any better,” Toby warned in order to stop the woman from talking.

  “Can you imagine your own children treating you like a nurse and a maid and a cook?” she demanded to know.

  Jesus Christ.

  Was he hearing her right?

  “For shit’s sake, Sierra, we were five and three. We were treating you like our mom,” Johnny said impatiently.

  She lifted her chin. “Phil’s girls didn’t treat me like that.”

  “This man’s girls were not five and three,” Johnny pointed out. “They were old enough to no longer be as dependent. For shit’s sake, at our ages, neither of us could even reach the washing machine, much less should be using it, or probably even knew what the damned thing was.”

  “And did you have a maid?” Toby asked the second his brother was done.

  She didn’t answer Toby or Johnny.

  She’d had help.

  But none of this shit mattered.

  She was what Addie said she was.

  A pathologically self-absorbed waste of space.

  “Right, so good. Thanks, Sierra. This is good. It’s appreciated,” Toby declared.

  “It . . . it is?” she asked with surprise.

  “Yeah, because you were right. Though it wasn’t about not knowin’ how to be a mom. It was that you were just a shit mom. You split. Saved us from your . . .” he flipped a hand to her, “whatever and left us to Grams and Margot. So we got what we needed.”

  “That’s another thing,” she stated coldly. “Your grandmother and Margot treated me—”

  Oh no.

  Johnny got there before him, which was good.

  “Do not say another goddamned word,” Johnny rumbled.

  She read right away that was a line she couldn’t cross and clamped her mouth shut.

  “Toby’s right. We got what we needed from you. It’s jacked, but at least it’s answers. So now you can go,” Johnny declared.

  She looked between them.

  And again.

  Then she said, “I still don’t think you understand.”

  “Nope. We understand perfectly,” Toby told her.

  She studied his face.

  Then hers turned spiteful.

  And that was in her tone when she said, “I see, still Lance’s boys.”

  “Yes,” Toby agreed.

  “I think you can find yo
ur way to your car,” Johnny put in. “I’ll call the dogs up from the balcony. You’ll be good.”

  “This was a waste of my time,” she hissed.

  “You know what’s funny, you not once mentioned the abuse of your parents which ruined you for marriage and motherhood. Sierra, trust me, really, trust me,” Toby stated pointedly, “when a parent does you wrong, that settles in deep. So now we know what you took from us, we weren’t missing much. Good to have that confirmed. But you not letting us have our grandparents, tellin’ Dad they weren’t fit to be in your life or ours, were we missing something?”

  “They were vile,” she spat.

  “Because they refused to spoil you or because they were assholes?” Toby pushed.

  “I don’t need to answer that question, and anyway, they’re dead so what does it matter now?” she returned.

  “You clearly don’t know the importance of family, but we do. Though, since they’re gone, you’re right, there’s no going back. There’s also no point in making this last any longer,” Toby replied.

  “I wish I hadn’t come,” she murmured, moving to the door.

  “Well that’s too bad, because I found this all pretty fucking enlightening,” Johnny muttered, starting to move toward the doors to the balcony.

  “You shouldn’t curse in front of a lady,” Sierra snapped at his brother.

  Johnny put his hand to his chest, bowed to her and said, “My apologies.”

  “Why do I think that’s sarcastic?” she asked.

  Johnny dropped his hand. “Why are you still here?”

  “That’s why I think it was sarcastic,” she bit.

  Johnny sighed.

  “Call the dogs, brother. We need to get to Margot and Dave’s. They’re all probably worried,” Toby said.

  “Please do not give my regards to Margot and David,” Sierra called from the door bitchily.

  Toby pinned her with his eyes. “Believe this, we’ll talk about you for five minutes and then you’ll go back to bein’ what you’ve always been. A bad memory.”

  She glared at him, turned to the door and stormed out, slamming it behind her.

  The dogs went crazy outside and they heard her muted screech.

  “Fuck. The dogs,” Johnny muttered, then hustled to the balcony doors, opened one and let out a loud whistle.

  Toby nabbed his beer and threw back a long pull.

  The dogs made a ruckus rushing into the house.

  A few pets and some murmured commands and they cooled it.