Chasing Serenity (River Rain 1)

(Don’t worry, at the time, we’d lied and said she lied. Still, that fix was far too easy in the midst of the brouhaha when stuff like that could go underground only to surface at a later date, strike, and then you’re dying of venom poisoning before you knew the snake was even there. And one thing I hated most in this world was snakes.)

So, no.

I did not want any of this.

Even so, I turned off my phone, shut down my laptop and put it away, cleared my desk, grabbed my bag and headed out to my car.

Chapter 8

The Greenway

Chloe

I wanted to hate it.

But it was impossible.

Dad’s flying-solo house was everything.

Situated in a posh, quiet, golf course community with a club that had tennis courts he could use, large lots for the houses and a strict HOA policy that decreed you could not park on the street, it was located in an up, up, upper scale area between Scottsdale proper and North Scottsdale.

My favorite parts of the house were the wall of windows that faced Dad’s black-mosaic tiled pool with adjacent hot tub and a minimalistic water feature that ran in a soothingly slow river in a raised section down one side of the pool to peacefully fall into it at the far end. This as well as Dad’s enormous kitchen that had solid ash, smooth-front cabinetry topped with white quartz that was three inches thick.

His firepits (both of them) didn’t suck either.

I had, in the many mental ramblings I’d been assailed with since their marriage disintegrated, wondered if the move to the high-rise Mom kept when they split was one of the blows their marriage had suffered.

Dad was a house man. He never quite fit in Mom’s condo. And I thought of it more as her condo even when Dad lived in it with her, also even before she gutted it after he left and made it all glamor. It had been beautiful and roomy when Dad was there, and the views were insane, but he’d always seemed like a fish out of water.

Nevertheless, Dad had been all-in to move from LA to Phoenix. Tennis. Golf. Cycling. Hiking. Wide open spaces that weren’t an hour and a half’s drive away, and some of them were right in town. It was an active person’s haven, regardless of the sweltering summer heat.

In fact, thinking on this as I pulled into his drive, he never fit in LA either.

We were there, thus he was there because Mom’s work, for the most part (unless she was on location), was there.

If it had been his choice, we probably would have grown up in Phoenix, or somewhere in Florida. Not Cali at all with its traffic, mudslides, wildfires and earthquakes. Definitely not LA.

Tom Pierce was private. He hated the traffic. He detested the smog. And even if he had politically liberal tendencies, he leaned toward a conservative lifestyle.

I parked with these new thoughts uncomfortably tumbling in my head, because I wanted to be one of those women who were one and done with cheaters.

But my dad was not that man.

And it forced me to face the fact that there were reasons behind anything, including betrayal.

Which brought me to now, considering how much he gave of himself so Mom could have what she needed in ways none of us realized.

Including Mom.

Also, maybe, Dad.

I was so stuck on these thoughts, until that moment when I’d angled out of my car, I hadn’t noticed that not only was Bowie’s Tesla SUV parked in Dad’s drive, a velvet-red Jeep Cherokee was parked there too.

Apparently, someone else was coming to dinner, or at least they were at the house, because I had looked at Cherokees when Dad helped me buy my car (thus knew the term “velvet-red,” which I thought was lush, the name and the color). And though Dad had helped, and he’d favored the Cherokee, he didn’t own a Jeep.

The garage door was open, so I went through the space, hitting the interior door, which I went through too.

I entered a tidy mudroom that had Dad’s running shoes lined up with his golf shoes, plus his clubs, as well as a large, bespoke bag I knew contained no less than five tennis rackets.

Just Dad’s collection of sports stuff seemed to belie high-rise living, which didn’t afford mud rooms and tons of storage space.

I passed the door to the utility room on my way into the kitchen, calling, “Je suis ici!”

I hit Dad’s kitchen and the first person I saw standing there was…

Judge.

What the hell?

“Are you stalking me?” I demanded.

He grinned.

“Word was, you two knew each other,” Dad said, and I dragged my gaze from Judge to watch Dad approaching me wearing faded jeans and a lightweight, dove gray sweater.

Tall, lean but broad along the shoulders, incredibly handsome, threads of silver in his dark hair, he’d given me that (mine without the silver…yet, though, mine could have also come from my grandmother, either way worked for me) and his eyes.