Page 146 of Crash Course
He shook it off. Sarcasm wouldn’t help him. Particularly since he’d caused this mess. Bad enough he had to deal with his own humiliation over the entire fucking episode, now he had to face Mom’s disappointment.
Maybe that Asheville Craftsman wasn’t such a bad idea.
"I know you’re there," Mom said. "I heard your footsteps."
Dang.
Here we go.He drew a breath, stepped into the kitchen, and strode toward her, stopping a few feet from where she sat at the island, a plate in front of her with a discarded napkin sitting on top.
She swiveled, met his gaze, then shook her head. "Cruz Blackwell, if I weren’t so happy to see you, I might have to kill you. How’s Priscilla?"
Ouch.Cruz shrugged. "She’s okay. Zeke dropped me at her place for my truck, so I stopped to see her. They released her this morning. Her mom is there."
"Good," she said casually. "Too bad you couldn’t be there for her. Considering youspentthenightinjail. I thought you’d grown out of this nonsense."
Yeah. So had he. "Apparently not. I’m sorry."
"You should be." She stood, picked up her plate and walked to the sink where she set the plate down before turning back to him.
Then she did it. Folded her arms across her chest in that way she always did when about to hand one of them their heads.
Already his ass cheeks clenched.
"I don’t understand," she said. "You attacked Priscilla’s father. I won’t bother asking what you were thinking. Clearly, you weren’t."
Taking his life into his hands by moving closer, he walked to the island, dropped into the stool at the end. "Guessing Zeke filled you in?"
Across from him, Mom shifted and leaned back on the sink. "He gave me the highlights."
"Zeke said Rohan grabbed security video from the garage. Some guy drove up to the gate in the middle of the night, punched in the code and went straight to her car. He knew what he was looking for and crawled underneath. Probably planting the bomb. Randolph all but admitted he arranged it. To teach Cilla a lesson."
Mom gawked. "How a man could have his own daughter’s car blown up, I can’t comprehend. Pure evil. He’ll be dealt with. Either in this world or the next. Now, I need to hear from you. What on earth possessed you?"
Good question. "I was mad. Lost it a little."
"Alittle?"
He threw up his hands. "Hey, it was a one-time thing."
"That landed you in jail." She shook her head, let out a huff. "I want to be furious with you. Part of me is. I’m . . . I don’t know." She held up a finger. "Actually, Idoknow.Youare a carbon copy of your father. In every way. When we met, he had that fire in his belly, just like you. He told me watching you was like watching his life play out all over again. It terrified him. We tried so hard to avoid this, Cruz. All he wanted was for you to live a decent life and not . . ."
She clammed up, folding her lips in and clearly holding something back.
Well, he was here and ready to face whatever lecture she’d level on him, so they’d might as well hash it out. He rolled one hand. "And not what?"
Finally, she shook her head. "We never wanted you boys to know. Ever. But I had to tell Ash. He wanted to join the FBI and I knew they did background checks. I couldn’t let my child be blindsided."
What the hell was his mother talking about? "Mom? Why are we talking about Ash and the FBI?"
"Because when I met your father, he’d just gotten out of prison. He’d been paroled six months earlier."
Wait. What?Parole?
Cruz stared at her for a solid ten seconds.
"Breaking and entering," Mom continued. "He’d done two and a half years and swore he’d never go back."
"Dad was inprison?"
