Chapter 11
"Is there a reason for this visit?" Aaron faced his dad. The last time he laid eyes on the older Dozier man, it had been around last Christmas...almost ten months ago.
"Actually, there is," Richard said, picking up a photo frame off Aaron's desk. That particular photo portrayed the day Aaron passed his Captain's exam and earned his current rank. Seeing that memory in his father's fingers sullied the thought of that day.
"Well? I don't have all day."
Richard beamed a bright grin at his son, looking more like George Hamilton than anyone should have the right to. "You remember that little real estate venture I started last spring?"
Considering he had not spoken to or seen his father in a good long while, Aaron had no idea what he was talking about. But instead of answering and getting an earful on that subject, Aaron rested a hip on the side of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest...waiting for the point to all this.
"Anyway, when the market started bottoming out a few years ago, I looked into acquiring a few properties. And I discovered a gem of a side-business in rent houses."
Richard wandered around the small office as he spoke, lightly touching the collection of awards and merits on Aaron's shelf and studying the assortment of hanging photographs along the back wall. His father didn't seem to be in hurry on explaining his visit, however Aaron felt no need to express any curiosity. That would only prompt him to extend his small stay.
Small stays were all Richard was capable of. After Aaron's mother died when he was a child, his dad picked up and moved every few years. Until the age of ten, they lived near the Missouri border. When Mary Dozier finally allowed the breast cancer to claim her life, he and his dad moved to the Memphis area. They lived there for three years. After that, Aaron entered ninth grade in a little town called Mayflower, and by the end of his junior year, they were living in Little Rock.
Graduation came as a ticket to freedom and stability, and in the thirteen years since Aaron left the roof of Richard Dozier, they had made contact about as many times. Mostly, the reason was that Aaron despised his father, but a small -- not as important -- reason was that his dad still continued to move from place to place. . . woman to woman . . . job to new opportunity.
"And," his dad continued, breaking into Aaron's thoughts, "I've acquired a few homes in this area."
He turned then, to look at Aaron, and the gleam of mischief in the older man's eye was never a good sign. Aaron tilted his head up to better assess the person before him. An achy, funny feeling settled in his gut, not a very pleasant sensation, like the hairs on his neck standing on end just as he hears the screams coming out of a second floor window of a burning building.
"And?"
Richard smiled pleasantly. "And I've discovered that the land is worth more than the homes. Two of my properties are set to be vacated at the end of the month, but the other...well, the tenant just moved in, and she signed a six month lease." He sighed remorsefully and raised his hands, palms up. "I can't kick her out, so unless I can convince her to move on her accord..."
Aaron leveled his gaze on his father. The bastard. He knew exactly which home he was talking about. "Lainie signed a lease with Joseph Longstern. How is it you've acquired the property so fast?"
Richard hitched an innocent shoulder. "I haven't as yet. Joseph sold me the property last week, but my interest is in the land, not the house. We finalize the sale next week."
"Does Lainie know of this?"
"According to her lease agreement, she is to be notified soon," his father explained without going into further detail. Aaron had a good idea what those details enailed.
"No," he said. "I won't do it."
Richard kept his smile in place, stretching the skin of his lips uncomfortably. "You haven't even heard what I'm asking yet."
"You want me to ask Lainie to give up her lease," Aaron said, more calmly than he felt. "I won't do it. She just lost her husband, she's just settling down into a house, and her children have been through enough change and heartache as it is. If you need her to leave, then you ask her."
He watched as his father's face grew panicky. "I can't."
"Considering as how you don't own the property yet, I assumed as much," Aaron said. "But as you said, that will change. I won't take on your responisibilities, misguided and evil as they are."
Studying his son for a long minute, Richard quietly asked, "You think I'm misguided and evil?"
Not wanting to hurt his father, because the same blood ran in both their veins, Aaron slumped his stance. This was another reason he couldn't be around his dad very much. He might despise him, but he didn't have it in him to not love his father. Never before had the old addage, You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family, rang true. If that were the case, Aaron would have been shopping for new parents from the start. A mother without cancer and a father without a flighty nature.
Instead of answering and telling a boldfaced lie, Aaron said, "Just ask Lainie yourself. If you present yourself in the right way, she might understand, but I wouldn't count on it. She doesn't like you much." She doesn't like me much right now either, he thought to himself.
With that, Richard dropped down onto Aaron's napping cot and rubbed his graying temples. Aaron recognized the acting for what it was. He kept his expression nuetral, not allowing himself to feel manipulated or burdened by the deception of sadness.
"I meant what I said," Richard sighed forlornly. "I can't go anywhere near Lainie Moon."
That brought a frown to Aaron's brow. "Why not? She file a restraining order that I don't know about?"
His dad laughed harshly. "You could say that." When his eyes met Aaron's, Aaron saw something inside them that he had never seen before...regret.
"I upset her, didn't I?" Richard asked. "All those years ago."
"You upset everyone," Aaron pointed out.
Richard stared at his hands. "I never told you what happened afterward, did I?"
"After what?"
The man shook his head slowly, not raising his head. "After what happened with Genna...Lainie was very upset about it. When she found out and confronted her mother, I received another visit from a very angry Genna Moon."
Aaron had a hard time picturing Lainie's mom as angry. He barely knew the woman, but she seemed more ditzy and scatterbrained than anything. In all these years, Aaron never knew there was more to that fateful day. "What happened?"
His dad snorted a rough laugh in his throat and turned a ruddy color. "I was told, at the end of a butcher knife, that I was never to see, speak to, or come into any contact with Lainie ever again, and liking my intestines inside my body where they belong, I never did. I never had reason to."
Wow, Lainie's mom threatened his dad? Aaron had to blink a few times to get the mental image in his head. When it solidified with a whole scenario of Genna backing Richard into a corner in their old kitchen, Aaron bit back a laugh of his own. He wondered if Lainie knew about that. Probably not, or she would have said something...right?
"But now you have reason to?"
His father raised his head then, searching his son's face. "That property is worth a couple of hundred-thousand dollars."
So, they were back to Richard's selfishness again. "Then it seems you have a problem," he said, not all that kindly, to boot.
"You're not going to help me...why?"
Did he really just ask that question? Aaron closed his eyes to even out his breathing. Yes, he really did ask.
"I know you've seen Lainie," his dad went on. "You were never able to stay away from that girl. And I can see why. She's all grown up now, and turned out to be a good-looking woman. Too bad, she's got those brats, but being a mother gave her quite a nice little figure, all rounded out in the right places now. She was always too skinny in my opinion."
Aaron's eyes flew open. "Don't."
His dad frowned and looked ignorantly at him. "Don't what? Tell you how pretty Lainie is? I'd figured you would have noticed."
Aaron's blood began a slow burn, threatening to overtake him if he so much as swallowed wrong. His father had no right -- no right! -- to speak of Lainie that way. And her children...those beautiful, precious, loveable kids... To call them brats, to even assume that Chris and Chloe were anything other than the wonderful tiny persons they were... And pointing out Lainie's body in such a racuous voice... The image of her warm, sweet figure entered his blurring vision...the soft curves of her...like a perfect hourglass...breasts fuller than he ever expected that once-skinny girl could possibly gain, a trim waist, rounded hips and a pear-shaped bottom...legs that moved across a room with a grace of a thousand dancers...an elegant neck that stretched from the bottom of her cute, pointed ears down to the gentle slope of her shoulders...
Hazel eyes so big and full of sadness...that mouth, begging to be kissed and forgetting what it was like to smile -- really smile -- again...
I shouldn't have allowed that kiss, he thought. But she looked so sad, so lost, so needing... What an ass I was...to just up and leave her after the kids discovered them kissing. He panicked, he knew that. He read the angry lines on Chris' small face, and the feeling of betrayal came over him. He liked the young boy too much to hurt him further. By kissing his mother, Aaron blatantly told Chris that the friendship they were building meant nothing as long as he could get in good with Lainie. From what he learned about the twin's father, Aaron assumed that he'd been another man who placed so little emphasis on a solid relationship with the children.
Gary had been a fool. Aaron was an even bigger fool for making the same mistake, by belittling his friendship with Chris. Lainie seemed to be the only person in their lives that put them first, and Aaron could understand why Chris was so protective of his mother and his sister. Even at such a small age, that young boy could teach the world of men a thing or two.
"Aaron!" Richard's voice boomed in his ears. His dad stood in front of him. "What's wrong with you, son?"
Aaron focused on the man that faced him, seeing him again for the first time. "Get out," he spit.
"What'd I say?"
"Get! Out!" Aaron yelled. "Don't you ever talk about Lainie that way! Haven't you done enough damage? Get out of my office, and don't you dare think about trying to coerce her and her kids out of their home."
Richard straightened slowly. "So, that's it, huh? You're choosing a woman over family."
"Like father, like son," Aaron returned in a dangerously low tone. The man -- Aaron refused to think of him as his father any longer -- tightened his expression and left. Aaron sat down at his desk and stared off into nothing.