If John William Graham turned out to be his son, was it possible Sharon was his mother? From the private investigator’s initial findings, Johnny Mack had learned that Lane and Kent Graham had adopted Will shortly after his birth on April 20, fourteen years ago. That meant he had probably been conceived in late July. Pike had said the investigator would do his best to discover the name of the boy’s birth mother. He had told Pike he wanted that information—whatever it cost and no matter what had to be done to get it.
Johnny Mack lifted his tan Stetson off his head and held it against his leg as he ran his hand through his hair. On the flight in from Houston, he had sorted through the limited knowledge he had about the boy who might be his son. Fourteen. Straight-A student. Played baseball, basketball and football. Adopted as an infant by newlyweds Kent and Lane Graham. Parents divorced four years ago. By his own choice, Will lived with his mother.
Of all the men on earth to have raised a boy who might be his son—why Kent Graham! From first grade on, they had been rivals, Kent the golden boy, always winning, always superior. Until they’d grown up. Johnny Mack had had either the respect or the fear of all his male peers, and the undying adoration of just about every female in town. Kent had both envied and hated him.
Then Kent had heard the ugly rumors that had been floating around Noble’s Crossing for years. The whispered innuendoes, the murmured gossip about John Graham having fathered Faith Cahill’s son. The thought that they might be half brothers had amused Johnny Mack and enraged Kent.
But the death knell had sounded for Johnny Mack when Kent found out that Lane Noble, the girl he had chosen for himself, had a crush on his despised enemy. Their boyhood rivalry had burst into an unquenchable flame of warfare. And that flame had been kindled to a white-hot intensity the night Kent had found Johnny Mack with his mother. Edith Graham had been out for revenge against her womanizing husband. And what better way to get it than to bed his illegitimate son?
After what this town did to him, Johnny Mack had sworn he would never return to Noble’s Crossing. He had known then as he knew now that if he had returned, he would have killed Kent Graham.
Had Kent suspected Johnny Mack was his adopted son’s natural father? Obviously not. Kent never would have accepted a child of his into the prestigious Graham family. And Miss Edith would have drowned the boy at birth if she had known Johnny Mack had sired him. Unless…. Was it possible that Edith was Will’s natural mother? She had been in her early forties fifteen years ago, not young, but young enough to have gotten pregnant.
Edith Graham Ware, her slender hand gripping the portable phone, gazed through the French doors leading to the patio and gardens. Mary Martha sat beneath the shade of a willow tree, silent and unmoving, as traumatized today as she had been since the day after Kent’s funeral. Jackie Cummings, the private nurse they had recently hired, sat across from Mary Martha, reading to her from one of her favorite books. Despite the warmth of the summer day, Edith thought an hour outside might do her daughter some good. At least it had put a little color in the girl’s pale cheeks.
Edith hated waiting on anything or anyone, and being put on “hold” by her husband’s secretary did little to soothe her irritation. How dare James call and leave her such an outrageous message on the answering machine!
Someone using the name Johnny Mack Cahill phoned our new district attorney to ask questions about Kent’s murder and Lane’s part in the crime. And he asked about Will, too.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Ware, but the mayor went out for a bite of lunch and I’m afraid he didn’t mention exactly where he was going,” Penny Walsh said. “Perhaps you can catch him later.”
Without so much as a thank-you, Edith punched the Off button and flung the telephone down on the seat of the Chippendale arm chair to her left. Johnny Mack Cahill, indeed! It wasn’t possible that Johnny Mack was still alive, was it? Kent had been so sure his half brother was dead. Even Buddy Lawler agreed that there was no way the man could have survived. But what if he had? And what if he had found out about Will? What if he wanted revenge?
Other than the fact that the young man had possessed a certain charm—in bed—Johnny Mack never had been anything but trouble. And if, by some miracle, he was still alive, he would be even more trouble now. In fact, he would be downright dangerous.
If he was alive and if he came home and tried to help Lane, Edith would have to put a stop to him. And she could do it. After all, she was Edith Noble Graham Ware and this was Noble’s Crossing. Her town. She still possessed enough power to have the likes of Johnny Mack put six feet under, if she had a mind to. The movers and shakers in Noble’s Crossing were either relatives or people who owed her favors.
If Johnny Mack wasn’t dead and he decided to come back to town and stir up a stink, he’d be sorry. She would see to it personally.
“Harder, baby, harder,” Arlene panted, her long red nails biting into her lover’s fleshy buttocks. “Give it to me, Jimmy boy!”
With his round belly slapping against Arlene’s flat, stretch-mark-scarred stomach, Mayor James Ware thrust into the luscious woman lying beneath him. God, how he loved to fuck Arlene. She was all woman, and made him feel like a real man.
“You’ve got the sweetest pussy in the state and you know it.”
Arlene lifted herself up, wrapping her long, slim legs around James’s waist. With one final plunge, he spilled himself into her. She scored his buttocks with her nails. He groaned as he shook in the aftermath, then smiled when he felt her trembling and heard her cry out as she climaxed.
When he lowered himself to her side on the small cot in the back of her beauty parlor, half his butt hung off the edge. Scooting closer, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her shoulder. “I can’t get enough of you, sugar,” James whispered in her ear, then nipped the lobe.
Arlene shivered. “You’re going to have to get your clothes on and get out of here, Jimmy boy. I have customers coming in right after my lunch break.”
“I can slip out the back way, into the alley.” James licked the moisture from Arlene’s left breast.
“One of these days, somebody’s going to see you sneaking out of here and tell Miss Edith.” Arlene traced the curve of James’s spine with the tip of her sharp fingernail.
“Nobody’s going to see me. Besides, I could think up some excuse to tell Edith. Right now, she’s so wrapped up in Kent’s murder that she hasn’t got time to be bothered with anything else.”
“If I was Lane, I’d be throwing myself a party to celebrate that bastard’s death. If she did kill him, I can’t say I blame her.”
“What did Kent ever do to you?” James jerked Arlene up against him so hard she gasped.
“Not a damned thing. I never had anything to do with Kent Graham, but everybody in town knows why Lane left him.”
“Didn’t your mama ever teach you that it wasn’t polite to speak ill of the dead?” James grinned.
“All my mama ever taught me was that the way to a man’s heart wasn’t through his stomach.” Slipping her hand between their damp bodies, Arlene fondled James’s limp penis.
“I never knew a gal who enjoyed sex as much as you do, except maybe Sharon Hickman.”
“Yeah, I suppose Sharon spread her legs for just about all you Magnolia Avenue boys, didn’t she?”
James chuckled, remembering the stunned look on Edith’s face when Kent told the family about the letter Sharon Hickman had sent him. A letter written on her deathbed.
“What are you thinking about, Jimmy boy, screwing Sharon?”
“No, ma’am, I was thinking about the next time you and I can get together,” James lied.
He wasn’t fool enough to tell her that he had been thinking about Sharon, nor did he dare mention what weighed most heavily on his mind—the call he had received from the district attorney this morning. Wes Stevens had said that someone claiming to be Johnny Mack Cahill had phoned him and asked a lot of questions about Kent Graham’s death and what the odds were th
at Lane would be arrested for the crime. He had asked about Will, too. And this man had implied he was returning to Noble’s Crossing.
But how was that possible? Johnny Mack Cahill was dead, wasn’t he? He’d died the night Buddy Lawler had dumped his body into the Chickasaw River.
“Why don’t you figure out a way for us to go off on another weekend trip the way we did in March,” Arlene said. “I like it when we don’t have to sneak around.”
“I’ll see what I can do, sugar.” James stood, picked up his boxer shorts from the floor and slipped into them.
While he finished dressing, he glanced over at Arlene, and his sex grew hard again. Damn, what he would give to have her in his bed every night. He had been married to Edith for ten years, and for the first four he’d wondered if she had emasculated him completely with her position of power in their marriage. Then he had renewed his affair with Arlene, right after her second divorce. It had started out as nothing but a good time for both of them. Somewhere along the way, they had gotten serious.
They’d been secret lovers when they were teenagers, but he had known he could never marry her. They were from different sides of the Chickasaw River. His parents would never have accepted a girl like Arlene. Now he wished he had told his parents and the whole town to go to hell. He wished that he’d had the balls to defy his family. If they had married and left Noble’s Crossing twenty years ago, Arlene’s two kids would be his, and they wouldn’t have to sneak around to be together.
There were times when he thought he really had the guts to ask Edith for a divorce, but then he would remember all her beautiful money. The old bat would chew him up and spit him out in little pieces if he ever left her, especially for someone like Arlene Vickery Cash Motes Dothan, a three-time divorcee who came from the other side of the river.
For now, he was trapped in a loveless, childless marriage. He would have to wait a little longer, until he had enough money stashed away so he, Arlene and her two kids could leave Noble’s Crossing and never look back. By the time Edith found out about what he had done, it would be too late for her to do anything about it.
Driving along Magnolia Avenue in broad daylight for the whole world to see, Johnny Mack wondered if he was a fool. His last memory of Rich Man’s Land, as the locals often called this area, had stuck in his mind for fifteen years. As much as he had tried to forget everything and everyone associated with Noble’s Crossing, she had been the one and only thing he’d never been able to forget. She had saved his life that night—the night some good ole boys, headed by Buddy Lawler, had beaten him senseless behind the Nobles’ house, tossed him into the Chickasaw River and left him for dead.
He wondered if she still lived on Magnolia Avenue. Had she gone home to her mother after the divorce? Of all the women he had known in Noble’s Crossing, of all the women who had played a part in his life back then, it never ceased to amaze him that Lane Noble was the one who haunted him to this day.
Not Sharon Hickman, despite the friendship and hot sex they had shared. Not grande dame Edith Graham, who had bedded him as an act of revenge against her husband. And not even Mary Martha Graham, with all her pale strawberry blond beauty and her heartbreaking sadness.
Why Lane Noble? Lane Noble Graham. The mother of a boy who might be his son.
She had been a smart, quiet girl with the kind of looks a guy wouldn’t notice. But he had noticed her. He’d noticed how different she was from her friends, those snobby little blue-blooded debutantes. When around their social set, the others never had acknowledged their acquaintance with him, although sooner or later he had fucked them all. But Lane, whom he’d never touched, always had a shy smile and a warm hello for him.
The night Kent Graham had stood on the sidelines, watching while Buddy Lawler and his cohorts beat the hell out of him, Johnny Mack had known in his gut that they meant to kill him. And he would have died that rainy September night if shy, sweet little Lane Noble hadn’t found him on the riverbank, after he had dragged himself out of the cold, deadly water.
Johnny Mack slowed briefly in front of the Noble home, a house built before the Civil War and occupied by the Noble family for six generations. He had spent three days and nights in that house, fifteen years ago. Lane had hidden him away, nursed him back from near death and given him the only good memories he had of Noble’s Crossing.
One by one, the stately mansions along Magnolia Avenue came into view as Johnny Mack eased the rental car down the street. Even if other things in this one-horse town had changed, been improved and modernized, nothing—absolutely nothing—had changed on Magnolia Avenue. Same fine homes, neatly manicured lawns and an invisible sign telling the rest of the world, “Private Property, Keep Out.”
That was where he had made his mistake all those years ago. He had trespassed. And no one, especially Kent Graham, had ever forgiven him. Hell, nobody had cared what he did or who he screwed as long as he stayed on the other side of the river, with the likes of Sharon Hickman. But once he had set his sights a little higher, all hell had broken loose, and his flirtations with the Noble’s Crossing debutantes had nearly cost him his life.
Fifteen years ago he had sworn he would never come back to this goddamn town. But that had been before he found out he might have left behind a child.
Chapter 4
“They say his head was smashed in so bad his own mama wouldn’t have recognized his face.” Arlene Dothan lifted Jackie Cummings’s silver blond hair and twisted it into a neat French twist. “Lord knows Kent Graham wasn’t one of my favorite people, but it gives me shivers thinking about how he died.”
“If you ask me, the boy was somehow at the root of all Lane and Kent’s problems. People are saying that Kent and Will fought like cats and dogs. That’s what comes of adopting a child.” Jackie preened in the wall-wide mirror over the beauticians’ work stations. “No telling what sort of people that boy came from.”
“I never could figure out why Lane and Kent rushed into adopting a child so soon after they married.” Arlene slipped in the hairpins to secure Jackie’s French twist. “I’ve heard folks say they thought Kent was probably sterile. What do you think, Jackie? You’re bound to have heard something, now that you’re living there on Magnolia Avenue and working as a nurse to poor little ole Mary Martha.”
“I have no earthly idea whether Kent Graham was sterile or not,” Jackie said. “I do know Miss Edith doesn’t want to believe that boy isn’t her grandson. Seems she thought he was Kent’s child by one of his old girlfriends. But right now her main concern seems to be Mary Martha. You know that woman hasn’t said a sensible word since the day after Kent’s funeral. Of course, she’s been unstable for years, and we all know she doted on that brother of hers. No wonder she went off her rocker completely.”
“I used to think what a lucky little boy Will Graham was to have been adopted by Lane and Kent, to be a member of those families,” Arlene said. “You know a lot of folks in Noble’s Crossing are of the opinion that Will could have been one of John Graham’s bastards, and he got his own son to adopt the boy to keep him in the family.”
“I’ve never believed that tale,” Jackie said. “It’s true that John Graham couldn’t keep his pants zipped, and he probably left a few bastards spread out over the state; but he never bothered bringing any of them into the family.”
Arlene picked up the bottle of salon hair spray. “You know, I’ve seen Will now and again over the years. He’s a handsome boy and quite a young gentleman.”
“He’s awfully close to Lane,” Jackie said. “She made him a good mother. Of course, that didn’t surprise anybody, did it? But Kent surprised us all, the way he turned out. He sure had us fooled, didn’t he?”
“Some people blame Lane. They say when she left him four years ago, his drinking got worse. But I think they’re wrong to blame her. Those folks don’t know beans about what Lane might have put up with for those ten years she was married to him.” Arlene shook her head, lamenting Lane’s fate. She knew w
hat it was like living with a bad man, a man who didn’t mind using his wife’s face for a punching bag.
“Anyone who knows Lane knows she didn’t kill Kent. She’s just not the type to murder somebody.”
“I understand she’s holding up real well, all things considered,” Arlene said. “Guess you’ve heard what some folks are saying—that the boy killed Kent and she’s just covering for him.”
“She’s spoiled him rotten, that’s for sure. And it doesn’t help people’s opinion of him that he’s so good-looking and such a charmer, even at fourteen. Folks are bound to be jealous of a boy like that who seems to have everything.”
Biting softly into her bottom lip, Arlene looked down at Jackie. The woman was a loyal customer and an acquaintance of long-standing, and for those reasons, she wouldn’t correct her misconception of Lane’s son being spoiled rotten. “Will Graham is a good-looking boy, now that’s for sure. And the last time I saw him, he put me in mind of somebody. There’s something awfully familiar about him. I can’t quite place who he reminds me of, but sooner or later, it’ll come to me.”
The entrance door opened. A rush of hot air swept into the cool comfort of Arlene Dothan’s Kut and Kurl beauty salon.
“Glenn! You’re early,” Jackie whined. “Arlene hasn’t finished making me beautiful for tonight.”
Glenn Manis, short, stocky and sweating profusely, wiped his face with a white handkerchief and flopped his wide butt down on the Kmart wicker sofa in the waiting area.
Arlene had known Glenn since they were kids. He was a nice guy, with a good job as a maintenance man for the city of Noble’s Crossing. He seemed to be hog-wild crazy over Jackie. The two had been dating nearly a year now.
“I’m in no hurry.” Glenn smiled at his girlfriend, the action adding a few character lines to his amazingly youthful face. At forty, Glenn didn’t have any noticeable wrinkles, and his once blond hair had darkened to a light brown. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re already beautiful enough for any occasion.”
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