Promise Broken (The Callahan Series) by Mitzi Pool Bridges Page B

“You looked scared.” He’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. Would he ever get the boy to understand? Or Phyl, for that matter? He’d let his emotions propel him into doing the wrong thing. Would he be like this the rest of his life? Would he wonder if he was more like his biological father than the man who raised him? Would he always doubt his actions because of it?
    He wiped a hand over his face. It still felt strange with the whiskers gone. “I’ll find him and apologize. Then I’ll see if he’ll come back.”
    She shook her head. “An apology may not be enough. Even if you thought he was hurting me, why didn’t you just yell at him to stop?” She searched his eyes. “I think you scared him. I was afraid you would hit him.”
    Phyl wanted an explanation, but he wasn’t ready to tell her the truth. He couldn’t lie either. “I thought he was hurting you,” was all he could admit to.
    ****
    “‘Bout time you shaved,” Dugan grinned thirty minutes later. “Getting tired of seeing that fuzz on your face.”
    “Too hot.” Donovan paced Dugan’s office. “Have you seen Cal?”
    Dugan leaned back in his chair, looked at his older brother. “He roared through town a while ago. I was tempted to ticket him.”
    “Why didn’t you?” That would have slowed him down.
    “He wasn’t speeding. A Harley is a loud machine. Every person in town turned to watch him.”
    Donovan headed toward the door. “Which way did he go?”
    “Looked as if he was heading for San Antonio, but you’ll never catch him.”
    “I have to.”
    “Sit down, Don. Tell me what’s going on.”
    Donovan took another couple of turns around the office, then sank into the chair at Dugan’s desk. “I fired Cal and Phyl thinks I’m crazy.”
    Dugan chuckled. “That’s all? Hell, I thought something was wrong.”
    Donovan leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. “I really screwed up this time, Dugan.”
    Dugan turned serious. “You screwed up when you left home. Nothing can be as serious as that.”
    “This is. I went to the barn and saw Cal and Phyl at the far end. It looked as if they were struggling, like she was trying to pull away and he wouldn’t let her. I shoved him around. Fired him. Told him he had five minutes to get off the ranch.”
    “If Cal was hurting Phyl, I’d do the same,” Dugan admitted. “Sounds like you were protecting her.”
    “That’s the problem. He was just trying to get a splinter out of her hand. I should have found out what was going on. Instead, I went blind with rage at the thought he might hurt her.”
    Dugan was silent.
    “You know what I thought.”
    Dugan squirmed in his chair.
    “You can say it. I thought Cal was trying to force himself on her.” The rest hung in the room like an ugly fog.
    “You made a mistake.”
    Donovan wasn’t pacified. “If I wasn’t your brother, what would you think? As a sheriff? Say it. I lost it.”
    Dugan’s eyes clouded with anger. “Yeah, you’re my brother and you’re an idiot. The only thing wrong with you is you won’t put the past where it belongs and get on with your life. You can’t judge every word and every action against an incident that happened thirty-five years ago.”
    “I’ve had this anger issue before. I inherited it from…” He swallowed—couldn’t say it, couldn’t say he’d inherited anything from his biological father. Just the thought made his throat close and his heart thump hard against his chest.
    Dugan shrugged. “I don’t think science has figured out how we end up with the particular genes or personality traits we’re born with. Whatever we get, we deal with. But I’ll tell you what I learned in college. Two factors figure in here. Nature and nurture. Sure, you got some of Carl Perkins’ genes, but you got Mom’s too. Add in our upbringing and I think you’ve got a lot more pluses going for you than you give yourself credit for.”
    So why couldn’t he accept who he was and