by Francis Ray
“Brandi?”
“His girlfriend’s little daughter.”
“Claire, the woman Derek dates doesn’t have any children, but I think her sister does. Derek was fired a couple of weeks back for poor performance and coming to work late and leaving early.”
Claire plopped down in a chair. Same story, different employer. “He’s not at home.”
“When I saw him the other day he said he and his lady were going to Myrtle Beach for a few days before he started looking for another job.”
Claire felt utterly stupid. “Did he mention which hotel?”
“The Sheraton.”
“Thank you.” Claire hung up the phone and dialed information. In minutes she was connected to his room.
“Where are those extra towels I asked for? I didn’t shell out good money for lousy service.”
“You didn’t shell out any money,” Claire told him.
“Claire,” he said shocked, fumbling for words. “I—I can explain.”
“Don’t bother, Derek. Just know that Claire’s Bank and Trust is permanently closed.”
“Now, wait a minute. I just needed a little down time before looking for another job. You know how it is when you’re let go and it’s no fault of your own.”
“I do, but you don’t have a clue. Stop the lies, Derek,” Claire said, her voice quivering. “All this time you’ve been trying to denigrate Gray’s character when it’s you who have taken from me, lied to me. It stops now. From now on, you’re on your own.”
“Claire. No.”
She talked over him. “If you ever get your act together give me a call, but in the meantime, I wish you well. You’ve conned your last penny from me.” She slammed the phone down.
It rang almost immediately. She picked it up, heard Derek’s frightened voice and down it went again. He had used her for the last time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Bliss is a success, but our lives could certainly use some,” Claire commented as the three women sat around the table after closing Friday night. They’d told Lee Roy they needed to discuss business and to return in thirty minutes. Derek had called back several times. From Gray there had been nothing.
Brooke brushed a tear away from her eye. “I miss John and the children so much.”
“Hamilton grows more distant each day,” Lorraine said. “I’m not sure how to reach him, but at least I’m not leaning on Thomas any longer.”
“At least Hamilton is back in town for you to keep trying. Gray is in Columbia.”
“I think he’s hiding,” Brooke commented. “He’s afraid if he sees you he’ll weaken.”
Claire brightened. “You really think so?”
“Immediately after he calls it off, he gets out of town. I’d say it was to keep temptation out of the way.” Brooke lobbed another tissue in the wastebasket.
Lorraine nodded. “It makes sense.”
“Then you think he cares?” Claire asked, wanting to believe they still had a chance.
“The question is, are you willing to go find out?” Brooke asked, then swallowed. “But be prepared if you don’t get the answer you want.”
Claire placed her hand on Brooke’s. “John is a good man.”
“If he weren’t I wouldn’t waste all these tears over him.” Brooke reached for another tissue. “After I go to Atlanta tomorrow to return the airline ticket and bracelets, I may give him another chance. Whatever happens, I’m not shutting Mark and Amy out of my life.”
“Once he hears you’ve given Randolph back the jewelry and paid for your own way to do so, he should come around,” Lorraine suggested hopefully.
“I don’t plan to tell him. He has to have faith in me or this will never work. If I didn’t know how cruel it is to break up with someone on the phone, I wouldn’t go.”
Lorraine sniffed and grabbed a tissue. “I’m going home and take an aspirin and go to bed. Hamilton isn’t coming home until late tonight from a business meeting. I’ll open in the morning.” Lorraine came to her feet.
Brooke stood with her. “I’ll be back in time to close.”
“Neither of you will do any such thing,” Claire said, picking up the day’s receipts. “Lorraine, stay and have a leisurely breakfast with Hamilton. When you get back, Brooke, you find John and make him listen.”
“What are you going to do?” Brooke asked.
“Work on a strategy to make Gray realize I’m the best thing that could have happened to him,” she said. “He won’t know what hit him.”
Despite the somber mood of moments ago, they all laughed.
* * *
Hamilton opened the front door and closed it behind him. It was a little past nine. The house was eerily quiet. Perhaps Lorraine hadn’t gotten in from work. He’d ended the business meeting early because she’d sounded so tired this afternoon on the phone. After hanging up he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind that perhaps it was him she was tired of.
If he lost her, he wouldn’t know what to do. Gripping the briefcase tighter, he started up the stairs. They couldn’t go on like this. Both of them were miserable.
He pushed open the bedroom door and stopped. Lorraine was in bed. The covers tossed back as if she’d kicked them off … or someone else had. Fury swamped Hamilton. He recalled his mother’s affairs, his father turning a blind eye so long as he had enough beer and whisky to drink. Dropping the briefcase, he started across the room.
Lorraine jumped and sprang up in bed, her eyes filled with fear until she saw who it was. “You startled me.”
His knees were already on the bed when he saw her red puffy eyes. A different kind of fear took hold of him. “Lorraine, we have to talk.”
She threaded her fingers through her already tousled curls. “What good will it do? We’ve talked and we’re both miserable. I guess there is only one thing left to do.”
“No!” He grabbed both her arms in desperation. “You can’t leave me. I won’t let you.”
“Ham—”
“No, listen to me. I know you care more about the shop than our marriage, but … but if that’s the way it has to be, I’ll accept that.”
Her eyes widened. “Care about the shop more than you? Why would you think such a thing?”
“Because with it, you don’t need me.” He swallowed, then continued. “You don’t need me anymore. I’ve always worked hard so you wouldn’t think I was a failure, so you wouldn’t miss having the things you were used to, the things I desperately wanted to give you.”
“You dolt.”
His head fell forward, and she lifted it up none to gently. “Listen to me, Hamilton Averhart, I’m proud of you. I always have been. I admit that since I opened Bliss there have been times I wanted to brain you, but that’s beside the point. You don’t have to give me things. All I’ve ever wanted is your love.”
“You have that.”
“Do I?” she questioned. “Then why can’t you see that Bliss makes me happy? The same way your business made you happy. I didn’t make you choose a nine-to-five or denigrate you when I had to raise the children mostly by myself. Why are you making me choose?”
He drew back. It was time to tell her everything. “My parents didn’t die in an automobile accident the summer I graduated from high school. My mother had a succession of lovers for as long as I could remember. When I was a sophomore in college she dumped my father in a nursing home after his heavy drinking led to cirrhosis and left town. I haven’t heard from her since. I didn’t even know how to contact her when he died six months later.”
Stunned, she stared at him. “Why did you lie?”
His face filled with pain. “Didn’t you just hear me? Why would you want me after you learned what type of people I came from? My father never worked a day. He might have once cared about her, but not enough to try and stop her as long as she kept a bottle of booze in his hand. The whole town knew exactly what kind of ‘work’ she did. I grew up ashamed and studied hard so I could leave all that behind me.
”
“Look at me, Hamilton.” Slowly his head came up. “I’ll say this once and then we forget it. First, you were wrong to lie to me—”
“Lorr—”
“I haven’t finished.” She waited until he slowly nodded. “You should have known me better, trusted me not to judge you because of what your parents did. But you committed a worse sin in my sight by thinking I could be like your mother. And if I didn’t love you so much, I might hold it against you.”
His eyes widened, and she went into his arms.
“I’m sorry, Lorraine. So sorry.”
Her hand rubbed up and down his back. “It’s over. We move on.”
He set her away from him. “Can you forgive me?”
“I already have.”
He shook his head. “I mean about Bliss? I hope you can. From now on, you have my full support.”
“Hamilton—”
“Wait.” He came off the bed, opened his attaché case, then came back with a magazine in his hand. “Best magazine is one of my clients. What if I put a full-page color ad in here for Bliss? The circulation is over nine million.”
Her eyes rounded. “Hamilton!”
“I have Marion’s private number in San Francisco. I’ll call in the morning.”
She launched herself into his arms. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too.” His hold tightened. He knew he’d have a lifetime to prove it to her. His mouth took hers as they tumbled onto the bed. He felt as if his life was starting all over again … just like the first time he’d held her.
* * *
“When do you plan to tell Mark?” John’s father asked as they stood behind the catcher’s box at the softball field waiting for Mark’s team to take the field to warm up Saturday afternoon. “The coach is putting him in since Kerry didn’t do so hot the last game. This is Mark’s first time pitching. She wasn’t at his practice Wednesday. He wants her here and keeps looking for her.”
John’s fingers clamped and unclamped on the wire fence. “I don’t know how. He was so excited about starting today. I wish I’d never met her.”
“Son, that’s a lie and you know it.”
“We’ll forget her,” he said.
“Another lie.”
His father never pulled punches. John straightened. “She wasn’t cut out for hamburgers and dresses from Sears. We couldn’t have made it work.”
His father put his hand on his son’s tense shoulder. “You just described a vain woman and that’s not the Brooke who played mud pies with Amy, took off work to be with you or your children, was happy to sit at an old card table with me or whose eyes lit up when she saw you.”
“Leave it alone, Dad.” He didn’t want to think or talk about her. He hadn’t had a good night sleep since she left. There wasn’t an hour in the day that he didn’t think about her.
“Wish I could, but there’s Mark and Amy to consider. He’s taking the field now.”
John turned around to see Mark walk to the pitcher’s mound. With almost every step he looked back, first at them and then into the stands where his grandmother and Amy sat. The hopefulness in his face and eyes was replaced by disappointment by the time he reached the mound. “I should have never let her into our lives. This is what I get for forgetting Linda.”
“That’s nonsense, and you know it,” his father told him with some heat. “Don’t you go blaming the mess you made of this on Linda. She loved you and the kids more than anything. She’d want you happy and, if that meant another woman in your lives, so be it.”
John felt ashamed. He had put the blame on Linda because, as much as he’d loved her, he loved Brooke more. And that shamed him, scared him that he couldn’t keep Brooke happy for a lifetime. He should have fought to keep her. Now it was too late. Misery weighed heavily upon him, because his children would have to pay the price as well. And for that, he didn’t know if he could ever forgive himself.
He watched Mark throw the pitch half-heartedly. “Put some fire into it, Mark!” he yelled.
Mark nodded, but the next warm-up pitch didn’t have the zip it had the day before as they’d practiced at home.
“You gonna call her?” his father persisted.
“She’s with him,” John said tightly, then gripped the wire fence. “Come on, Mark. Straight down the middle.”
“Mark, you heard your father. Send one over the plate.”
John’s head whipped around. Brooke was standing directly behind the catcher. She wore a red jacket trimmed in black and red braid, black pants and a white shell. Chunky gold and black jewelry glinted around her throat and on her ears. A slim gold chain belt hung loosely from her tiny waist. He knew squat about clothes, but he knew the outfit was high dollar.
Mark’s head came up. He grinned from ear to ear.
“Show me what you got!” Brooke encouraged. The next one zoomed over the plate. “Whoo!” Brooke yelled, her hands in the air. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Seems she got back. Dressed fancy for a game. I guess she’d rather be here than wherever it was she was at and didn’t take time to change,” John’s father said mildly. “It takes a good woman and a loving one to come here today knowing you don’t want to see her, but she’s doing it for Mark. You think she hadn’t figured out he can’t buy her anything? The only thing he can give her is his love and trust.”
“You’ve made your point, Dad.”
“Hope so, but can you make yours?” Whistling, he strolled over to Brooke.
* * *
The sultry heat had long since demanded Brooke remove her jacket. She’d purposely worn St. John’s couture to see Randolph. She’d wanted him to see she didn’t need or want him. His mouth had gaped like a fish on the bank when she’d given him his bracelets and the plane ticket back two seconds after she’d walked through the door of his parents’ Georgian mansion.
“What about the guests waiting?”
“Tell them it didn’t work. Tell them anything.” She glanced at her watch. “I have a plane to catch.”
He caught her arm as she started out the door of the home in the exclusive Buck Hill division in Atlanta. True panic was in his face and in his voice. “You can’t do this to me. I can have any woman I want.”
Her smile was cold and baiting. “I wasn’t going to go there but since you insist, I know all about your affair in London. Jana was all too anxious to tell me.”
His mouth gaped again. His hands came to his sides. “She didn’t mean anything to me.”
“Your problem and hers. I’m leaving.”
“Brooke, it doesn’t have to end this way. We’re both sensible,” he cajoled. “With the right kind of financial backing my father’s bank can provide, Bliss can go nationwide. I can help you do that.”
She stared at him in his ten-thousand-dollar suit, his heart and soul bankrupt. She stared at what she had almost ended up marrying. She might have if she hadn’t lost her job. They’d both seen dollar signs instead of each other. “You won’t use Bliss to make a name for yourself.”
“Think of all we can have together.”
She opened the door. “Goodbye, Randolph.”
“You’re making a mistake by walking out that door.”
“I’d make a worse one if I stayed.” The door closed behind her.
Coming out of her musing, Brooke cut a quick look at John. He was talking to the father of one of the other boys. She caught him watching her, but he’d made no move to come over as his father had. Even his mother and Amy had come down. Stubborn mule.
The roar of the crowd brought her attention back to the game. Mark’s teammate had struck out and they were taking the field for the bottom of the ninth and last inning. The score was one even. It was up to Mark.
“You can do it, Mark!” she yelled.
Mark nodded, then glanced at his father, then back at her.
Brooke didn’t know if he was seeking reassurance or wondering why they weren’t together. She did know he didn�
��t need any distraction. Taking her jacket from the wooden bench, she started for John. As if sensing her, he lifted his head.
“Hello,” she greeted. “This is for Mark.”
John’s gaze flickered to the mound. Mark was watching them. John reached out and pulled Brooke against him. “Might as well make it look good.”
She’d kick him if her knees weren’t so weak. How could she love such a sneaky, overbearing rat? Her legs might be weak, but she glared up at him. How could he have done that to her? Making her fall in love with him and then not love her back? He would though, or suffer the consequences.
John had felt Brooke tense and it had gone straight through him. She didn’t even want him to touch her now. Tough. She was in his life, the life of his children, and she wasn’t getting away.
The first batter came out of the dugout. Brooke stopped glaring at John and grabbed the fence. Behind her, John did the same, bracketing her body. “Just like we practiced!” John yelled.
“You can do it!” Brooke joined in.
Mark nodded, studied the batter, then let the ball fly straight across the plate. The batter swung so hard he turned in a half circle. He struck out in three swings as did the next batter. The third batter came to the plate, stared at Mark and when the pitch came he stepped into the ball and sent a line drive straight at Mark.
Brooke gasped.
John tensed, pressing closer to Brooke.
Mark’s hand came up. The ball smacked into the center of the glove. He seemed amazed to look down and see the ball in the glove.
The crowd went crazy. Mark’s teammates swamped the field and him.
It took John a few moments to notice Brooke was silent. “Brooke?” When she didn’t respond he turned her to him. She was trembling. “Brooke, what’s the matter?”
“The … the ball was going so fast … I was afraid.” She swallowed. “If he hadn’t caught it…”
His hand tenderly cupped her cheek. “You love him, don’t you?”
Her eyes snapped. “You can be such a doofus.”
He looked over her head at Mark’s teammates, who still surrounded him, then found his parents with Amy coming out of the stands. “We have a few minutes. Come on.” Without waiting he pulled her to a clump of trees a short distance away. As soon as they were out of sight he took her into his arms. “Stop squirming or you’re going to get a response that will embarrass both of us.”