Her Best Friend's Brother

by Kay Stockham

  “Wow. From what you’ve said about him, he’s never struck me as the humanitarian type.”

  “I think it’s his way of taking a break and getting out of town for a while.” He didn’t go into detail about how Ethan had been overlooked and the big promotion to chief of surgery that he’d wanted was given to someone else.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want you to miss his send-off. But we do need to figure out our strategy.”

  “We can add that to the list this week.”

  Anne-Marie crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head to one side, her oversize earrings dangling nearly to her shoulder. “Or I could go with you,” she suggested. “I’ve never been to Tennessee. What do you say? We could make it a working weekend. It would be nice to put faces with the names I’ve heard.”

  Luke hesitated, unsure of what to say. First she wanted to come to his apartment, now to Tennessee with him? She wasn’t suggesting they spend the weekend together, was she? “Uh, no need to do that. I’ve been working on the presentation. We’re good. Besides, you need to be here. Unless there is something else going on?”

  Anne-Marie paused for a slight moment, then she smiled at him and shrugged. “Nothing major. It, um, would’ve been our anniversary but—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, not a problem.” Standing, she tugged the lacy bottom edge of her top and revealed more of her breasts in the process. “Have fun. But don’t even think about extending your time there. I expect you to be in that chair first thing Monday morning.”

  “No problem.”

  “And my notes?”

  Those he definitely had a problem with. “I’ll go through them and take a closer look.”

  “That’s my boy. Pay close attention to the story suggestions. I think they’ll make the scenes really pop.”

  “The story is perfect. We’re at the tweaking stage, not rewriting.”

  A funny look stole over her features. “Careful, Luke. Your ego is showing.” She reached up and patted his cheek. “It’s perfect when I say it’s perfect.”

  SHELBY SPENT Monday and Tuesday trying to distance herself from her thoughts and avoiding Luke’s phone calls. He’d left several messages asking her to call him back and check in, just to let him know she was feeling okay, but she’d ignored his requests and erased the messages. Listening to him sounding so concerned and masculine, his voice rough with an edge that made her shiver, threatened her resolve so she’d done what she’d felt was necessary.

  She’d talked to Alex briefly when her friend had called to check on her and Shelby found herself battling guilt. Things were going to be so awkward when Alex found out. She should’ve come clean from the beginning, but how does that come up in idle conversation? Yeah, we need to do lunch, and, oh, by the way, I did your brother. Shelby used work as her excuse to keep the call brief and ended the misery.

  She would’ve liked to have disclosed to her best friend the news about her mother’s confession, but she still couldn’t wrap her mind around her paternity. How could she expect other people to understand when she didn’t?

  Basically it all led Shelby back to her life-learned conclusion that keeping things in perspective was the only way to control uncontrollable situations. Focus on a single problem, a minute detail, fix what was able to be fixed, and just deal.

  Yes, she was pregnant. But pregnancy was a process, one that took months and would require her to do no more than eat and rest properly. Women worked right up until their delivery these days and with her father promising to spend as much time as he could helping her finish the interior of the mill house, she had seven months to get things done. The question was whether to time the opening before or after she delivered?

  In seven short months.

  “Ms. Brookes? You have a phone call. It’s Rosetta Tulane. I don’t know what’s going on, but I could hear someone screaming in the background.”

  Her heart jumped into her throat. Luke’s grandmother? Oh, no. Had Luke told them? “Ah, thank you, Michelle.” She took the portable phone and held it to her ear, walking away from the hostess’s podium so as to not be overheard. Thankfully the hallway leading to the meeting rooms was clear. “Hello? Rosetta?”

  “Hello, dear. Can you hear me?”

  Shelby pressed her finger to her ear. Someone was indeed screaming. “Yes, I can. What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry for bothering you at work but it’s an emergency. You need to come right away.”

  “Come where?” Wait a minute. She recognized that screech. “Is that my mother?”

  “Yes, dear. We’re at Mason Cemetery, attending the burial of Zacharias Bennington.”

  The burial? Oh, Lord, no. Please, no!

  “Your mother is here and she’s quite upset.” Rosetta’s voice dropped. “Shelby, you need to come quickly.”

  She didn’t want to. She hadn’t talked to her mother since her big confession and she didn’t want to talk to her now. “I—”

  “She threw herself on top of the casket—”

  “What?” Shelby pressed a hand to her mouth when her stomach threatened to heave.

  “—and had to be removed. She keeps babbling something about…Well, I’ll fill you in when you get here.”

  Rosetta knew. Shelby could tell by the tone of the older woman’s voice. Alex’s grandmother knew all about her mother’s affair with a married man, how Shelby was the unfortunate by-product. All because the Drama Queen had made a spectacle of herself—again. “I’ll be right there.”

  It was a busy day and Mr. Long wasn’t pleased that she had to leave due to a family emergency, but he handled the news with frowning concern and told her to drive safe. She was going to have to give the man more credit. In the right moments, he appeared quite nice, nearly human, and less like the guy on Hell’s Kitchen.

  It took her twenty-two minutes to get to the cemetery, and during every one of them she pictured her mother telling Zacharias’s mourners every lurid detail of their secret affair. Finally Shelby topped the rise where the road leveled off and slowed to a stop. The funeral was obviously over but, from appearances, the attendees had lingered to see the encore. All of the guests stared at her mother, who’d apparently thrown herself full tilt into mourning her former lover by dressing in widow’s black and…a veiled hat? Where on earth had she gotten that?

  “This can’t be happening.” It was like a scene out of a movie where the best friend/mistress showed up with her face veiled so the wife couldn’t recognize her. The only problem was that her mother had lifted the veil and draped it so that it flapped in the breeze, and at this moment she was holding court beside the casket surrounded by Luke and Alexandra’s parents, the matriarch of the Tulane family, Rosetta, and quite a few of the country club’s patrons. “Oh, crap. Oh, crap, oh, crap, oh, crap.”

  All her life Shelby had fought to keep her chin up, to ignore the talk and speculation about her parents and their on-again, off-again marriage, to rise above the drama her mother so loved and to create the persona of a professional, normal person.

  But in a matter of minutes her mother had ruined everything.

  Shelby got out of the car, her entire body on fire as humiliation and degradation coursed through her veins. This was what her father meant when he said he’d had to separate himself from her mother. The time had come. As soon as she got her mother away from the casket, she’d have to keep her distance—or go to prison for strangling her.

  Prison just might be worth it.

  Maybe you could run the kitchen.

  Every eye was on Shelby as she made her way to the burial plot. She’d removed her crested uniform jacket on her way to the car due to the heat, but her lavender-colored blouse and white linen pants stuck to her skin and the hives that had almost gone away returned with a vengeance. She felt them but she kept going, one foot in front of the other instead of what she really wanted to do, which was turn tail and run the other way. How could her mother do this? Hadn’t she done enough to
embarrass them?

  Her mother was sitting dead center in the front row, and Shelby tried hard to think of the positives. First, there truly weren’t that many mourners at the burial. Apparently, her biological father didn’t have many friends or else he’d outlived them. Second, her mother was no longer atop the casket. And third and best of all, the casket was closed.

  She couldn’t imagine viewing her biological father’s face for the very first time since finding out he actually was her father at a moment like this.

  “What are you doing?” she growled as she stopped just shy of stepping on her mother’s feet. Stilettos. What woman wore four-inch, open-toed stilettos to a funeral?

  The same kind who dressed like Zsa Zsa Gabor.

  “Shelby! Oh, baby, I’m so glad you decided to come. I know he treated you wrong, but turn around, honey, and at least say goodbye to your fath—”

  “Will you please, for once in your life, shut up and not make a scene?” Shelby forced herself to glance at the people around them, unable to make direct eye contact until her gaze met that of Rosetta Tulane’s. Shelby faltered, wondering why she hadn’t realized before that Luke inherited his eyes from his grandmother. “I am so sorry.”

  Rosetta tilted her head to the side, her expression one of sympathy and love. Compassion. In an instant Shelby saw Luke, because Rosetta wore the same expression as Luke after she’d taken the test.

  Shelby blinked and tore her attention away from Rosetta, well able to imagine what Luke’s family thought of the spectacle, and addressed the portly minister holding his Bible in front of his belly and frowning at them with hell and brimstone disapproval. “Please forgive the intrusion. As you can see my mother is…not right.”

  “I’m right as rain, Shelby Lynn. Why, you make it sound like I’m—”

  “Mother, let’s go.” Shelby bent and tried to pull her mother from the seat.

  “Shelby, dear, why don’t you and Pat come with us?” Rosetta placed her hand on Shelby’s shoulder. “You’re both upset. Let us drive you home.”

  “I’m fine.” She could only imagine how she looked. Her blouse covered her arms, but bright red splotches the size of quarters now covered the tops of her hands. She felt them on her neck, her scalp, didn’t doubt they were beginning to form on her face, which only happened under the most extreme of stressful circumstances for which this apparently qualified. Bennington’s Spotted Illegitimate Daughter. There was a caption and photo for the newspaper. “I just want to go. Mother, get up.”

  “You’re angry with me again.” Big tears flooded her mother’s eyes and trickled past her fake eyelashes. “I can’t ever do anything right with you.”

  Shelby managed to keep from rolling her eyes, somehow. Here we go again. “We’ll talk about this in the car.”

  Her mother didn’t move. “I’m sorry, Shelby. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I should have but I knew you’d be hurt and upset and you are, because that man—”

  “Isn’t able to defend himself. Can we please discuss this in private?”

  “I tried but you won’t return my calls. I had to do something to set the record straight.”

  “Shelby, perhaps—”

  Shelby held up her hand when Marilyn Tulane spoke. “Thank you, but I’m fine. We’re fine, aren’t we, Mom?” She bent closer to her mother in the hopes her voice wouldn’t carry. “Do you have any shame whatsoever? Get. Up.” She grasped her mother’s other arm and pulled, trying to find purchase even though her heels kept sinking into the grass. Seeing what she was doing, Luke’s father, Alan, stepped forward and together they managed to get her mother to her feet. Without a word, they headed toward the parking area. Rosetta and Marilyn followed behind them.

  And so did the whispers. The snickers. The stares and the shaking of heads. Her entire childhood repeated itself in an instant. Teachers at school, classmates and their parents. PTA meetings, the Grand March at prom. Scene after scene.

  Shelby did her best to ignore them all but she was aware of every word being said. With Alan’s help, she shoved her mother into the passenger side of her Beemer and managed a strangled thanks to the Tulanes. Rosetta tried to stop her once more, but Shelby put her head down and marched around the car to the driver’s side. She had to get out of here before she committed a crime with witnesses around who’d testify against her later.

  She started the engine and pulled away with a jerk of the wheel, acutely aware of her mother lifting her hand to those watching and executing a textbook-perfect pageant wave.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “DID YOU GET what you wanted?” Shelby demanded quietly on the way down the mountain toward Beauty. The scenery would have been breathtaking if she’d had any attention to spare it. The slightest touches of orange, yellow and red could be seen in the trees, but distracted as she was by her mother’s abominable behavior, it took everything in Shelby to keep the car under control on the curvy road.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “That was a man’s funeral.”

  “That was your father’s funeral and I had to have my say.”

  “You made it a sideshow.” Shelby squirmed in the seat, attempting to scratch the itch on her back. When that only created more itches, she glanced over at her mother. Her stomach coiled like a snake ready to strike. Please don’t throw up now. The last thing she needed was more drama if her mother found out about the pregnancy. “Take off that stupid hat. You look ridiculous.”

  “It’s designer and it’s beautiful.”

  Only a drama queen. Of all the mothers in the world, why did she have to be hers? I won’t do that to you, kid. I promise. Grandma, on the other hand… “Why, Mom? Why did you do it? You don’t think you caused enough pain this week? You had to cause more? Rosetta said you threw yourself on top of the casket.”

  “I was angry. It just…hit me. All these wasted years.”

  “There wouldn’t have been any wasted years if you had stopped acting like a child and taken responsibility for your life.”

  Her mother sniffled. “That’s easy for people to say, but they haven’t walked in my shoes.”

  No one could.

  “Shelby, don’t you see? I had to have my say. I had to see for myself that he was gone.”

  “Dead usually means dead.”

  “I also wanted to give those stuffed shirts a piece of my mind. It’s their fault he was so uptight about our affair.”

  “He was a married man. Those people had nothing to do with him being embarrassed over what happened. Anyone would be. It’s called morals.” That, and the fact he was probably embarrassed by her mother’s antics. If she was embarrassed by her mother, a straitlaced, married banker would most certainly be embarrassed given all he had to lose. And with her mother’s flight-of-fancy mood swings, he’d probably realized pretty quickly that anything was possible.

  “But they’re the reason he wouldn’t divorce his wife. He said it would look bad on him and on me.”

  She didn’t want to think about the man who’d refused to acknowledge her, but her mother’s comment made her believe that Zacharias had tried to spare Pat’s feelings by blaming the situation, not her flamboyant personality. “And it would have. Don’t you remember the part about in sickness and in health? You’ve said it enough times you should have it memorized by now even if you’ve never kept your vows.”

  Pat shook her head stubbornly, her earrings clinking together. “But if they’d supported him and left him alone, he could have acknowledged you. That’s the important thing. You would’ve been able to grow up as a Bennington, gotten to know him.”

  “Why would I want to know a man who was ashamed of my existence?”

  “I know you don’t understand my behavior but…he could be kind. Zacharias was deathly afraid of scandal, and he said his father would have him removed from the bank if anyone ever found out.”

  Shelby glanced across the interior of the car, knowing there had to be still more to the sad, pathetic st
ory she told. But did she really want to know?

  Curiosity killed the cat.

  She jerked her attention back to driving and slowed as she approached a curve. Her mother’s words repeated in her head, bringing more questions. “Dad said you wanted him to take money from Zacharias. Is that what you did?” A thought struck and she swore softly. “Is that how you bought the salon?” Shelby glanced at her again, and released her breath in a huff when she saw the truth on her mother’s face.

  “Shelby…now, it’s not what you’re thinking.”

  Shelby gripped the wheel tighter. Oh, but it was, wasn’t it?

  “Jerry got upset about it, too, but like I told him, I had to be able to support you. I’m glad I took that money. After Jerry walked out, things were tight and—”

  “You sponged money off him.” Her tires squealed as she entered the S-shaped curve. “You were mad that he wouldn’t acknowledge me or you, so you made him buy your silence. Dad blamed Zacharias, but what he was really doing was protecting you because of what you did. You extorted money from the man.”

  “I did no such thing. I accepted money from him, yes, but it was to help you. You were best friends with Alexandra Tulane, of all people. Zack might not have acknowledged you, but do you think he wanted his daughter to not have the things Alex had? How do you think I bought those pageant dresses?”

  Her ears popped as they descended and the ground began to level out. Beauty was ahead. None too soon, either. She’d despised her mother forcing her into those pageants for everyone to ogle and talk about her. Had her mother hoped someone would figure it out? Wonder where the money came from for the gowns and the lessons?

  “It was the same as child support.”

  Child support? “Dad paid child support when you split up. I remember seeing the checks. Did you give his money back?”

  “Shelby Lynn, don’t give me sass over things you do not understand. Since Zacharias wouldn’t acknowledge you, Jerry made sure no one thought you weren’t his.”