Phoenix Aflame (Alpha Phoenix Book 2) Read online

  “See you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I’ll be glad to have you join us here in San Angelo, Cameron.” Tasha said briskly. “Becky and I are still newcomers. We can play tourist for a week. And if you can get here, you’re welcome. Becky will certainly be disappointed when she finds out her dad let her down again, but seeing her Uncle Cam would make up for it.”

  “I’ve got nine days’ furlough. I’ll see what I can swing.” Cameron’s voice was confident and cheerful. “I’ll just have to arrange transport out of Yuma. I might not be able to make it for the full nine days. It’s going to be hard to get flights around Independence Day. You know how it is. Everyone and his brother will be traveling this weekend. But I’ll find a way.”

  Her eyes filled up. Tasha tried to choke back the sob in her throat. “Thank you for being so calm about having all your plans upset. I really appreciate it. I know you were looking forward to getting together with Donny, Tom and Rory.” Donny, Tom and Rory had played football with Cameron in high school.

  “They’ll keep, sis. What I care about is that mindless jackass upsetting you again,” Cam growled. “Don’t let him get to you, Tash. He does it on purpose.”

  “I know.” It felt better to have Cam remind her of what she already knew. “Hang on, I’m just going to cancel my flight – thank heaven I sprung for the cancellation insurance.” She began to tap on her keyboard.

  “Good to know,” he growled. “But you shouldn’t have to.”

  “Between kids getting sick, and Blaine being so unreliable, I figured it was worth the extra money. There. Done. I should get a credit.”

  “You get your lawyer to get the money out of that weasel.”

  “You bet. I emailed them before I called you. Sent them a recording of my conversation with Blaine. I don’t think he believed me when I told him I was going to record all future conversations. But I meant it, and I have.”

  “Good. Chin up, Tasha. I’ll be there tomorrow or the next day and we’ll have a fun time exploring Texas. Bound to be a bunch of stuff going on for Independence Day. I can’t wait to see Becky.”

  “That kid is going to be crushed. She was practically floating on cloud nine thinking that she was going to have a daddy for a little while. No matter how many times Blaine lets that child down, she never gives up hope. I’m not looking forward to telling her this.”

  “Typical. But the poor kid is better off without that useless son-of-a-biscuit-eater in her life.”

  “Bless his heart, he always leaves it to me to break the bad news,” she said.

  “Put her on, I’ll tell her,” he offered at once.

  “That’s a kind thought, but she isn’t here now. Caroline D’Angelo took her and Quincy to the park so I could pack. They should be back any minute.”

  “How’s that working out?”

  The D’Angelos were an older couple who had been friends with their late parents. George D’Angelo had been at the Air Force Academy with Adam Reynolds. He and his wife lived just outside of town and had taken Tasha under their wing when she had moved to San Angelo. Becky’s new best friend was their granddaughter Quincy.

  The only catch was that Quincy’s father Col. Harrison D’Angelo was the officer Cam’s Special Forces squad reported to. Tasha hadn’t met Harrison since she was a girl – except for a time or two when they had exchanged waves while he was chatting to Quincy on Skype. But her friendship with the D’Angelos shaded into awkwardness for Cameron because of Harrison.

  “We get along really well – considering the age difference,” Tasha said, deciding to ignore the whole issue. She infused cheerfulness into her voice. “I think Caroline and George are glad to have another child around Quincy. They have been looking after her since her mother died, and they like having a sort of pseudo-cousin for Quincy. And it helps that Becky and Quincy are BFFs.”

  “Yeah?”

  Tasha chuckled. “Those two hit it off the second they met. And I really like having someone I can trust to leave Becky with occasionally. It’s like she has another grandmother.”

  “That’s good. I didn’t like to ask the colonel how it was going. I mean, there’s stuff you just don’t ask a superior officer.”

  “Becky loves having sleepovers at Quincy’s. Or having Quincy here. Your Col. D’Angelo – Daddy Danger to your niece – always reads Quincy a bedtime story. And he just rolls Becky into the deal when she is around. You’d think if a guy who is hot stuff in Special Forces and being sent all over the states by the military can manage to read his kid a bedtime story every night without fail, Blaine could call his daughter once a week.”

  “Col. D’Angelo is a stand-up kind of guy. Blaine Sutcliffe is not. End of story. If that son-of-a-beardless-goat was interested in Becky, he’d call.” He paused. “I do try – when I’m allowed to get on the internet or use a phone.”

  Tasha rushed to reassure him. “I was not criticizing you, Cameron. You are a wonderful uncle. I know Special Forces is a tough assignment. And I know you must go incommunicado when you’re told to. And yet you have never told Becky to stop calling you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Capt. Reynolds was at his most dangerous.

  “Before we left Savannah, Blaine told Becky not to bother him. That he would call her when he wanted to talk to her.”

  For a moment there was only the sound of infuriated breathing on Cam’s end. “Cold. Has he followed through?”

  She snorted. “Not so you’d notice. He’s talked to her exactly twice since we moved out here. Both times when he was at Peggy’s. And on Grammy’s phone. I think Peggy dials my number and hands him the phone and dares him not to be nice to Becky. How the hell did I ever marry such a rat?”

  “He fooled you. If I’d met him before the rehearsal dinner –” Cameron bit off his comment.

  Tasha thought back to that weekend seven years earlier. Cameron had shown up, exhausted, fresh from assignment, barely in time for the wedding rehearsal. He hadn’t even shaken hands with Blaine until after the entire wedding party had gone through all the steps that would be real the next day.

  Looking back, she could see that it had been a huge mistake to link her life to someone without having her family check him out. She had still been floating on a moonshiny high. Deep in love with Blaine. Deep in lust. Even if Cameron had told her of his misgivings, she probably would not have listened.

  She had adored Blaine. She had adored his family. She had thought she had found the perfect man and the perfect family to replace her dear parents, who had only recently died.

  She had walked down the aisle in her mother’s veil and Peggy Sutcliffe’s wedding dress. And she had worn Peggy’s mother’s pearls for something borrowed. She had looked forward to a happily ever after just like Mama and Daddy’s.

  She might have been adopted, but she had grown up with their rock-solid relationship as her foundation. Maybe she wasn’t a bearshifter, and had no fated mate, but she had intended to have as solid a marriage as her parents.

  Cam interrupted her reverie. “I took one sniff of Blaine and I knew he was up to no damn good. I should never have let you marry him.”

  What had she been thinking, not letting Cameron use his bear senses to vet the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with? That was the whole problem. Her brains had been drugged by lust.

  “You may be my big brother, but you aren’t my father, Cam. I was a lovesick idiot. I wouldn’t have listened.”

  He grunted. “You’re well rid of him now. I’ll figure a way to get to San Angelo, if I have to hitchhike. And you have Becky call me tonight if she’s upset about her father letting her down. Promise?”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  “Not another tear, Tasha. Blaine Sutcliffe isn’t worth a single one. Love you.”

  “Love you.” They hung up together as someone knocked at the door of her condo.

  * * *

  “Tell you what,” Caroline D’Angelo said, “Since you aren�
�t going to Savannah after all, and you’re already packed, you and Becky should come spend next week in Grape Creek with us. We have the guest house standing empty. Harrison and Grant are coming for the Fourth and maybe Frankie too.

  “We’re going to have a good old-fashioned Independence Day celebration. With fireworks and a march down Main Street. And a real honest to goodness Texas barbecue. You and Becky can swim. The girls can ride Princess. We’d love to have you.”

  “Yes!” cried Becky and Quincy. The two little girls held hands and spun deliriously. Becky’s distress at her father’s letting her down might never have been. Their mutual exuberance threatened the table and mirror in the condo’s small entryway. Tasha and Caroline moved in tandem to calm them.

  “That wasn’t very fair of me,” Caroline apologized. She gave Quincy a quick hug and let her go. “But you can see how happy it will make Quincy. And Rebecca. And me too.”

  “I can see,” Tasha replied. “And I appreciate your offer. But my brother has promised to come here instead of going to Savannah. I think we should stay here at the condo.”

  Becky and Quincy drooped like flowers that had been deprived of water for a week. “Aw.” They plopped down on the tiles, clinging sorrowfully to one another.

  Their matching T-shirts and shorts merged into one hot pink mass topped by a blonde and a brunette head. Despite their physical differences, the girls wanted to be just like each other. Becky’s silky white-blonde hair was in two thin braids. Quincy had charmed her Meemaw into attempting to tame her mop of curly dark brown hair into stubby plaits that stuck out but had the same purple bows as Becky’s.

  “Cameron can stay with you in the guest house,” Caroline said promptly. “George and I would be happy to get reacquainted with your brother. He was such a little charmer when he was a boy.”

  Tasha refrained from rolling her eyes at anyone describing her six-foot-three brother as ‘a little charmer’, and smiled politely. “But you have your whole family coming already. You don’t want to have your time with your children interrupted by strangers,” she protested.

  “The more the merrier,” Caroline assured her. “We have lots of room and three of my kids can’t come. We’re actually shorthanded. And you know we don’t consider you Reynoldses to be strangers. I was friends with both your parents before you were born. And here you are with your fridge emptied and your stuff packed. Do say yes. George will be thrilled to give Rebecca more riding lessons.”

  Tasha gave up trying to be considerate. “Thank you, Becky and I accept with pleasure.”

  “Yay!” The girls both hugged Tasha at once.

  Caroline waved a hand at Quincy and Becky who had jumped up and begun to spin once more. “We’re going to have a wonderful time. The girls are already in seventh heaven.”

  “I’ll just have to tell Cameron.”

  * * *

  The girl’s dance of joy continued down the hall and into the elevator. Caroline was parked outside in the lot but Tasha’s car was in its spot in the underground garage.

  “Who’s riding with me?” Tasha asked in the elevator.

  “Me,” shouted both children.

  Caroline nodded. “We’ll put your bags in my car,” she told Tasha. “And I can listen to my audio book on the trip home. It’ll make a nice change.”

  They loaded the suitcases into the back of Caroline’s SUV while she folded up the windshield sunshade and stowed it neatly. “I’ll just let the car cool off until you come out,” she said. Despite the sunshade, the Texas sun had made the interior red hot.

  Tasha shepherded the girls back into the elevator and into the stuffy dimness of the parking garage. Even though she had left work at noon, her mini SUV was nearly as hot as Caroline’s. She opened the rear doors and turned on the air. “In you get, girls.”

  Becky and Quincy swarmed into their car seats. Tasha had invested in a second car seat so that she could transport Becky’s friends when she had to. Of course, here in San Angelo that meant Quincy D’Angelo. Quincy snapped her armrest into place as quickly as Becky did. Tasha did up the seatbelts, giving them an extra tug to be sure that they had latched.

  The longest day of the year was just past, so at five o’clock the sun was still high. As soon as the door of the garage opened, brilliant light nearly blinded them. Tasha slipped on her dark glasses. As a Georgia native, they were as much part of getting dressed as putting on her shoes. The sky was clear. Caroline waved and got behind her wheel.

  Traffic was a little thick getting out of the city, but once they got onto the highway, the road opened up. Caroline’s SUV was visible in the rearview mirror. She stayed five car-lengths behind Tasha all the way to their exit. As Tasha turned off at the Grape Creek exit, the sun slipped under her visor and momentarily blinded her. Fortunately, she had driven out to the D’Angelos’ property many times and knew this exit.

  The ramp was short and sharply curved. Between the sun in her eyes, and the steepness, Tasha pressed a little harder than usual on the brake before she steered into the bend. Nothing happened. If anything, she sped up.

  Her tires screeched louder than the girls. She pumped her brakes. Nothing. The vehicle tore around the corner while the girls shrieked. She was out of control. Her car went into a skid and spun crazily. Trees loomed before her eyes.

  There was no time to think. She steered into the skid and when her tires finally caught, spun the steering wheel hard in the other direction and pulled up on the emergency brake. The wooded bank she had been headed toward disappeared. Bushes filled the windshield. The car juddered to a halt in the ditch on the opposite side of the road. The air bag exploded and knocked Tasha back against the seat. Behind her the girls began to cry.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “What do you want for your bedtime story, sweetheart?” Harrison asked his daughter.

  Quincy smiled with her usual delight, but she didn’t rush off to the bookcase. She brought her tablet close to her face. Her face blurred on his own screen. “We have to wait, Daddy,” she shouted. “Becky is still in the bath.”

  “I thought your friend was going away this week? Did I get it wrong?” He distinctly remembered Mom telling him that Tasha Sutcliffe was taking her daughter to Georgia for the Fourth so the child could see her father.

  “Becky’s daddy had to go to Why He,” Quincy said importantly. “So she’s staying with us instead.” She spun around the room in giddy circles still clutching the tablet.

  Her room whizzed around. Harrison always felt slightly dizzy when he had to talk to his four-year-old on Skype. Should he try to figure out what Quincy meant, or just ask his mother later on?

  “You’re not listening, Daddy,” she complained. “I was telling you.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ll pay more attention, sweetheart. Tell me.”

  “We went round and round and round and wham, we landed in the ditch. We went bang, and then pow. Mamma T had white stuff all over and we had to get out into the mud. And I got cuts from the grass, and so did Becky. And Mamma T had blood coming out of her nose.” Quincy held up her starfish hands. Her palms and fingers were scored with thin red lines. “Meemaw had to put stuff on them and on Becky’s too.”

  It was like his worst nightmare. Harrison drew a calming breath. He could do this. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not now. But Becky cried and cried.”

  “Can you go get Meemaw?” he asked as quietly as he could.

  “She’s already here.” Quincy bounced away and came back dragging Becky by the hand. Becky’s blonde hair was darkened from being washed and stuck out in two stiff skinny braids. She grinned at him and waved. “Hi, Daddy Danger.” Her palm was crisscrossed with red weals too. His heart stuttered.

  “We have to choose a story,” announced Quincy.

  “Inside voices please, girls.” He couldn’t see Mom but that was her most placid voice. The voice that meant Mrs. Gen. D’Angelo was at the end of her tether, but damned if she was admitting it. The warning lights of his pers
onal alarm system flared from orange to red.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” He kept his voice emotionless.

  “What did Quincy tell you?” Mom bent over the tablet and gently removed it from her granddaughter’s grasp.

  “That she was in some kind of a car accident,” he said between his teeth.

  Mom began walking out of Quincy’s bedroom. Twin beds and bookcases swung by in a blur. She turned at the door. “You girls choose a book, I just have to say a few words to Daddy Danger, and then he’ll read you your bedtime story.” She closed the door on the girls’ excited chatter.

  “What’s going on?” Harrison winced at the edge in his voice.

  “I guess Quincy told you there was an accident? Tasha’s brakes failed as we came off the highway. She spun out, and when she got control of the car she steered into the ditch. Car’s a wreck but everyone’s fine. Quincy’s okay. They are all okay. Tasha’s airbag went off. But the girls are okay. I’ve been trying to keep them calm.” She didn’t sound calm.

  “The Westford exit?” He could see the thick woods that had grown up at the corner where the ramp met the county road. “How did she manage to get into the ditch? There are trees in the way.”

  “She drove straight across to the opposite side and the bushes on that side stopped her – or the ditch – I’m not sure. It all happened so fast.” Mom pressed her lips together.

  Harrison closed his mouth and set his jaw. He couldn’t swear at his mother or in front of her. It was a moment before he could speak. “I still don’t understand,” he said.

  “I had invited Tasha to spend her vacation here with us. Oh, I forgot, you don’t know. It’s all happened so fast and I am still discombobulated.” Mom drew in a deep breath.

  “Her ex-husband canceled on them at the last moment. Said he wasn’t going to be in Savannah this weekend after all. He’s going to Hawaii, if you please. Tasha had already booked some vacation time, and Becky – well, you can imagine – and their suitcases were right there, packed and everything.” Caroline took another audible breath and struggled to compose herself.