Jacob stiffened as if she’d punched him again. Actually, he’d rather she punch him than call him stupid. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why? You’re a fucking idiot. You don’t understand anything.”
“Maybe if you tried explaining it to me in small words,” he said tersely. But he wasn’t interested in what she had to say. He wanted to com
fort his daughter, who was still screaming for him in the back of Amanda’s car, not listen to more of Tina’s bullshit.
“You never fought for me, Jacob,” she said. “For us. We had—what?—one big argument about your infidelity before you left me.”
“You accused me of cheating on you all the time, Tina. Even when I hadn’t cheated.”
“But you did cheat, Jake. You admitted it.”
“Yeah, I admitted I wronged you and I left. That’s what you said you wanted.”
Tina shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. Jacob didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her. She’d driven him away. Made his life so miserable he had to force himself to go home. If Julie hadn’t been there, he’d have avoided going home at all.
“Maybe I wanted you to fight for me.”
“Who the hell was I supposed to fight for you? Were you cheating on me with some guy?” He kind of hoped she had been. Then he wouldn’t have to feel so low about his own infidelity. God knew the woman needed to get laid.
Tina blinked at him and shook her head. “You’re so dense, Jake. There wasn’t anyone else. Ever. There still isn’t anyone else.”
“I’m taking Julie home,” Amanda interrupted. “I’ll call Mom to come watch her, and I’ll leave.”
“You’re goddamned right you’ll leave,” Tina spat. “I never want to see your whore face again.”
“She’s not a whore,” Jacob said.
“Did you fuck her?” Tina asked. When Jacob didn’t dignify her question with an answer, Tina snorted. “Then she’s a whore.”
“Go to hell, Tina,” Amanda said before climbing into her car, starting the engine, and driving away.
“Somebody call the police,” Tina screamed. “She’s taking my child!”
“Will you just stop?” Jacob said, releasing both of Tina’s wrists now that Julie and Amanda were gone and safe from her wrath. “Julie didn’t need to see you blow up like that. She’s probably scared to death. You know Amanda would never take her from you or harm her. Why don’t you try acting like an adult for once in your life?”
“Like you can talk,” she said.
Jesus. Why had he ever thought this woman was attractive? She was nasty. Rotten to the core. He hoped her influence didn’t rub off on Julie, but he’d witnessed Tina’s effect on Julie’s thought processes more than once.
“I’d like to talk, not fight,” he said, raising both hands in truce. “Just talk. Do you think you can calm down enough to do that?”
Jacob scowled at the sound of approaching sirens. “I think someone called the cops on us,” he said. He wiped his bleeding temple with the neckband of his T-shirt. He wasn’t surprised the neighbors had called the police. He just wished they’d arrived when he’d been trying to break up the fight and gotten knocked around by his ex-wife.
“You’re not going to see Amanda again,” Tina said.
“I plan to see her this evening, as a matter of fact.”
“Then you’ll never see Julie again.”
Jacob’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Promise you won’t see Amanda again or I’ll . . .” Her eyes narrowed maliciously. “I’ll send the cops after her for kidnapping Julie. She’ll go to jail, Jacob. Do you want that for her? How do you think that will affect her life? Her career? She’s a teacher. They’ll fire her over this for sure.”
Tina’s cold smile turned Jacob’s blood icy in his veins.
“You wouldn’t lie to the cops just to keep us apart,” Jacob said. Hoped.
“It’s not a lie. She took my daughter without my permission. That’s kidnapping.”
“Amanda had my permission to take Julie,” Jacob reminded her. “She’s my daughter too.”
“Maybe. But which of us is the custodial parent? Whose decision will matter to the court?”
Jacob wished he’d fought for split custody, but at the time, having Tina as the custodial parent seemed best for Julie. Tina had been the one to convince him of that, so maybe she was right; he was incurably stupid.
He didn’t want Amanda to get in trouble, but Tina’s threat didn’t hold water. “They won’t keep Julie from me because her aunt took her home without your permission.”
“But they will if her father is physically abusive and her mother has a restraining order against him.”
“You don’t have . . .” It occurred to him that she was threatening to tell the police that he’d done the attacking, not her. And who would they believe, the gorgeous blonde with bruises on her wrists, a torn shirt, and scraped-up legs and arms, or the hard-muscled metal singer with a small gash on his forehead, but was otherwise unharmed? Amanda would back up his story, but did he want to put his faith in the legal system and risk losing Julie?
With lights flashing and sirens wailing, two police cruisers pulled up his driveway and screeched to a halt. Jacob didn’t even have a chance to explain what was going on before he was face down on the asphalt with his arms handcuffed behind his back. Someone hauled him up into a sitting position, and he glared up at Tina.
“Don’t do this,” he warned.
“Are you going to keep fucking her?” Tina asked.
“Who I fuck is my business, not yours,” he growled.
“What happened here, folks?” one of the officers asked.
“He grabbed me,” Tina accused, thrusting her reddened wrists in the officer’s direction.
“Self-defense,” Jacob said.
The officer lifted an eyebrow at him. “You needed to crush her wrists to defend yourself? You must outweigh her by a hundred pounds.”
“Would you rather I had punched her in the face?” He was mad enough to do it now.
“Are you threatening her?” the officer asked.
Jacob took a deep, calming breath and released it slowly. His shoulders were starting to ache from the position the handcuffs held his arms in. And he sure didn’t want to take a trip downtown to the police station. “No. She attacked her sister, and I was trying to break up the fight.”
“Her sister?” The officer glanced around. “And where would she be?”
“She took my daughter,” Tina said, suddenly acting frantic. “Without my permission.”
“Is that why you attacked your sister? To prevent her from taking your daughter?”
Tina blinked. “Uh . . .”
“Is the child in danger?” the other officer asked. Immediately he spoke into the communication device at his shoulder. “We need to issue an Amber Alert.” To Tina he said, “Can you give me a description of the child, the kidnapper, the vehicle?”
“This is ridiculous,” Jacob said. “Amanda took Julie home. To her own house. Just go there and you’ll find our daughter safe and sound in her room. There’s no reason to issue an Amber Alert. She wasn’t kidnapped.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” the officer said. He took Tina aside and questioned her out of Jacob’s hearing. He had no idea what Tina was telling the officers, but Jacob’s only means of defense was to stick to the truth. He knew he wasn’t in the wrong, but would the law see it that way?
He needed to call Amanda and warn her that her sister might do the unthinkable. He tried shifting his arms so that he could reach the phone in his front pocket. He wasn’t sure how he thought he’d get a call to connect if he actually managed to reach the device, but he was desperate.
“Do you have something in your pocket?” one of the officers asked.
“No.” Jacob realized a second too late that he shouldn’t lie to cops who thought he assaulted women and was an accessory to kidnapping a child. In the blink of an eye, he was face down on the asphalt and being frisked.
“Nothing in your pocket, huh?” the officer said.
Jacob cringed when his phone thudded on the ground in front of him.
“Nothing illegal or dangerous in my pocket,” he clarified.
“Who were you trying to call?”
“His whore, I’m sure,” Tina said snidely.
>
“I told you not to call her that!” Jacob bellowed. It was hard to keep his cool in the humiliating position he currently found himself in.
“Is that why you attacked your wife?”
“Ex-wife,” he said between gritted teeth. Currently he didn’t even want to claim her at all.