Recipe for Romance by Olivia Miles Read Free Book Online Page B

once bronzed from days spent on job sites, was now an alarming shade of grayish-white. Propped up on two pillows, his eyes were hollow and dark.
    Scott crossed the room, his body numb.
    “Dad.”
    “I knew you would come home.” His father’s voice strained with effort, but it was still deep, still authoritative. “I knew someday you would put this business with the Porters behind you and finally come home.”
    Scott’s pulse hammered.“I haven’t put this business with the Porters behind me and I never will,” he said evenly.
    “Scott!” his mother cried out, but he couldn’t stop now if he wanted to. Even now, after all this time, the man still refused to acknowledge what he had done. The part he had played.
    “A man died,” Scott insisted, silently pleading with his father to set things right once and for all. “A man with two daughters and a wife. And I was the one who took him from them,” Scott said quietly, feeling the anger uncoil in his stomach as the words spilled out. “You knew I was responsible for the accident that day and you kept that information from everyone. From the police. From Lucy. Even from me.”
    “You were nine years old, Scott. We were just trying to protect you—”
    “No.” Scott shook his head forcefully, trying to drive out the words, the excuses. “I should go, Dad.” Before I say anything I’ll regret. “You need your rest.”
    Scott paused with his hand on the door, and then slipped into the hall. His mother grabbed him by the elbow.
    “Thank you for seeing him, Scott. It means so much to us.”
    Scott’s eyes flashed on his mother. “Why can’t he just admit it, Mom? Why can’t you? You denied the Porter family insurance money that was owed them.”
    She visibly paled and looked away. “It was an accident, Scott.”
    “Maybe so, but it didn’t have to happen. I had no business being on the machinery that day. A nine-year-old kid shouldn’t be on a job site.” He shook his head. “If I had never overhead you talking about it all those years later, would you ever have told me that I was the one responsible for the accident?”
    His mother hesitated. “Probably not. You were already upset by the commotion that day. And what were we supposed to tell you? You were nine, Scott. We didn’t want you or your sister to have to live with this. Lucy still doesn’t know,” she added.
    “I’m aware of that,” Scott said, “and I don’t intend to burden her with this.
    “Then you can understand how we felt. We were trying to protect you.”
    “By blaming the victim?” Scott cried.
    “We never could have recovered from a lawsuit. Richard Porter was gone. There was nothing we could do to bring him back.”
    “Then you admit it. You chose to protect yourself financially.”
    “We chose to protect the company financially,” his mother corrected him. “Nearly a third of the men in this town were employed by Collins Construction. They had wives and children—families of their own, depending on that paycheck. Would it have been better to make them all suffer?”
    “So it was fair for Emily’s family to suffer? They had nothing. Nothing!”
    It was a no-win situation, he knew that now. A man was dead, his family impoverished and the only way they would have been reimbursed was for others to suffer at their expense. The only way everyone could have been spared was if Scott had never been on that machine that day. If his father hadn’t let him tag along to work.
    “We covered the funeral expenses,” his mother offered, and Scott clenched a fist, willing himself not to lose his temper.
    “It doesn’t change the fact that we are all living this lie! The police took Dad’s statement for the events of that day. Collins Construction had just finished building that addition on the Maple Woods police station—at cost. He knew they wouldn’t pursue a criminal investigation when everyone was pointing the finger at Mr. Porter’s negligence, and so it all just