Chasing Serenity (River Rain 1)

“What’s with the patented Chloe Death Stare?” he asked. “Are you seeing him?”

“No.” That hurt to say, but I pushed through it. “But it would have been nice if you,” or Mom, “had shared you’d met him before.”

“Once, when he was four. That said, Jamie speaks of him a lot,” Dad stated. “You’re not seeing him?”

“No,” I bit off.

“Too bad,” Dad mumbled.

Of course Dad liked Judge.

Of course.

I kept at him. “Mom didn’t mention you’d met him either.”

“I’m not sure she would know. She was still doing Rita’s Way back then. She was at home in California. I was in New York doing a fundraising thing. That’s how I met Jamie. There was a ball the night before the match. He introduced himself. It was the next day during the match I met Judge.”

Hang on a moment.

“Wait, during the match?”

“If you Google it, there might be pictures,” he noted. “The crowd loved it.”

Good Lord.

There were pictures of Dad and Judge on a tennis court?

“He wandered out on the court,” Dad went on.

And there it was.

Yes.

There were pictures.

Dad kept speaking.

“He’d grabbed one of my rackets before anyone noticed he was out there. The crowd started tittering, he nabbed a ball and lobbed it at me. I had another racket in my hand. We had a five-minute play match. He won. Natural backhand, by the way.”

“He was four and had a backhand?”

Dad shrugged. “Saw me use it and emulated me. Almost picture perfect. It was uncanny. I told his dad to get him lessons.”

“Judge didn’t mention this,” I murmured, thinking it was absolutely something you mentioned.

Maybe even in your top five things to know about this person you were making out with copiously.

For instance, Say, when I was a toddler, I played tennis with your dad.

Or, I beat your father in tennis. I was four.

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t remember it,” Dad said. “At least, he didn’t mention it.”

Seriously?

“Even if he doesn’t remember, I can’t imagine his father doesn’t have a picture of him playing tennis at four with the Great Tom Pierce,” I drawled. “Or hasn’t told that story a thousand times since that day.”

Dad’s lips quirked at my title for him, but they did this as he studied me closely.

“Or, say, you might have mentioned it,” I kept at him.

“He didn’t grow up with his dad, honey.”

Oh Lord.

Judge hadn’t mentioned that either.

“Jamie married his high school sweetheart,” Dad continued. “I met her that night. She was gorgeous. And totally vacant. Seen it before, Valium trance. She was zoned out.”

Oh my God.

“Big scandal.” Dad shifted in his seat. I’d know why when he said uncomfortably, “Jamie cheated on her. But honestly, until very recently, I didn’t know if she divorced him, or he divorced her. But it was the latter.”

I stared at him.

Judge hadn’t shared any of this.

Then again, I didn’t ask.

I’d been all about me.

All about pretending I wasn’t attracted to him.

All about my Cooking Club. My friends. My brunch. My shopping.

My issues.

And, I had to admit, my varied tests for him.

All of which he had passed.

I had asked the five top things about him, and I could understand why one didn’t choose to reveal in that short discourse, “My dad cheated on my mom and then we split New York City.”

He’d been very attentive, inquisitive, he seemed to enjoy meeting my friends, being at my side as I lived my life.

But he’d never volunteered a single thing.

“Jamie and I were more than acquaintances,” Dad told me. “But we weren’t quite friends either. We were in that in between. Until, I should say, recently.”

Until recently.

“Why recently?”

“He called after Sam did what she did on that gossip show.”

Wonderful.

But that made sense.

Judge’s cheating father called my cheating father after my father’s cheating became public.

We’d quashed it.

Still.

“He had some advice to share,” Dad said carefully.

“Well, good.” I reached for my water. “It’s nice to have friends who understand.”

“Right,” Dad said quietly.

I sipped my water.

Mercifully, Dad returned to the subject at hand.

“When Judge didn’t say anything, I didn’t mention meeting him when he was young because his relationship with his father is strained.”

More I never bothered to find out.

Dad kept speaking.

“Jamie didn’t want to lose his boy, Chloe, but he did. The divorce was acrimonious. Out there. Picked over. Ugly. And the ensuing battles were lengthy. She fought for custody. She fought for money. She won. Then she kept fighting at every turn. It’s my understanding she moved with Judge back to Texas, where she and Jamie grew up. It’s also my understanding things did not go well there, and Jamie was not happy she’d moved his son that far away from him. He was less pleased that she used every dime she won in the settlement to keep Judge from him, when she wasn’t using it for other things. And even worse, how it ended up that the only father figure Judge really had was his granddad, AJ.”