“Good. That’s why you’re growing so big and strong.”
“I got an A on my spelling test.”
“You did?” She ruffled the cap. “See? Veggies make you smart, too.”
“Nope. I’m already smart.” He hefted his backpack from his shoulder to Gretchen’s feet. “Did you bring me something?”
“I might have something for you in my suitcase. Go on in the house and grab a snack while I talk to Mrs. H.”
“Mom…” he complained.
“You’d better give her a big hug for taking such good care of you while I was gone.”
Elise’s eyes watered when the boy tackle-dived at her knees. “Thanks, Mrs. H. You and Mr. H. are the best. Tell Mr. H. next time I’m going to beat him at poker.”
“Poker?” Gretchen asked as Alex bounded inside the house.
“You know Robert. He says it’s a life skill. Alex is pretty good.”
“I’ll bet.” Gretchen linked her arm with Elise and turned toward Elise’s waiting BMW. “Thank you so much for everything.”
“You know we love him.” They took two, then three steps while Gretchen tried to gather her thoughts. “Are you going to tell me why you had me drop your custody agreement off at a fancy law firm downtown? And why,” Elise continued before Gretchen could answer, “your smile is brighter than I’ve ever seen it?”
Gretchen stopped and threw a hand to her stomach. “So much has happened. So much.”
“Is it good?”
“It could be the best, the absolute best. It could be more than I ever dreamed possible.”
“Could be?”
“I’ll explain soon.”
Elise shot her an exasperated glare. “Is there a man involved?”
“Yes. The most wonderful, understanding, gorgeous man in the world. I promise I’ll explain everything after I talk to Alex.”
Elise hugged her. “Go. Talk to your son. He missed you.”
“I missed him, too. Thank you so much for everything.”
“You can thank me by telling me all about this gorgeous new man in your life.”
“I will. I promise.” First she had to tell Alex.
***
Tommy was glad he’d asked Gretchen to drop him off in downtown Bickford. He needed some time to breathe and get his thoughts in order before he talked to his mother. He was more worried about Ryan Lowry than he’d let on. The guy was an egomaniac with a God complex. He’d probably scoffed at the papers—if he even read them. They’d know soon enough. The clock was ticking, and Tommy needed his mom and stepdad as backup. If Ryan did refuse to sign over his parental rights, Tommy needed the statements from his mom and Gretchen’s dad as evidence.
He needed to get back to the place he’d been in Colorado when Gretchen had woken up scratching, punching, and fighting Ryan out of her memory. He needed to feel that anger, let it flow through his veins, and fester into a boil near bursting. He needed to use that anger to scare his mother into testifying.
How could she have not recognized the shock on Gretchen’s face? Seen the terror in her eyes? And all for football? He deliberately loosened his jaw when he realized he was grinding his teeth.
Gretchen was right. Things were moving fast. Last week, the thought of strolling along the streets of his hometown after visiting the neighborhood coffee shop, preparing to confront his mother about the past, would have seemed absurd. He swallowed his last sip of coffee and tossed the cup in a trashcan before heading into the residential section of town. He was glad for the cold. His thoughts had heated his blood; the cold kept him from boiling over, running up their driveway, pounding on the door, and yelling in his mother’s face. He would remain calm. He would let her offer an explanation as if he weren’t banking the instinct to slap her face.
She answered the door wearing black slacks, a white and black striped sweater, and a stunned expression. “Thomas?”
“Hello, Mom. May I come in?”
She looked over his shoulder into the empty drive. “How did you get here?”
“I walked from town. The Coffee Bean still has great coffee.” He brushed past her into the marble foyer. The house smelled of her perfume, something old and sickly sweet.
When she spun around, the sun highlighted the streaks of gray in her chin-length dark hair. “You didn’t tell me you were coming to town. I would have made up the guest room and picked you up from the airport.”
“I’m staying with Gretchen.”
She took only a moment to clear the shock from her face. She walked past him and fluffed a pillow on a chair. “I didn’t realize you and Gretchen stayed in touch.”
Tommy watched her every move. She was nervous. Who stopped to fluff a pillow when the son she hadn’t seen in over two years stopped by unexpectedly? “I guess you wouldn’t, considering you haven’t seen or spoken to her in years. Me either, for that matter.”
She huffed as her eyes turned hard. “Did you stop by for a visit or an interrogation? Let me guess, your father’s wife introduced you to therapy and you’ve come to clean our slate?”
Tommy should have expected her to dig at Nadine. His mother had never understood how his dad could have left a born-and-bred society woman for a mountain hippie. Of course she didn’t understand. She’d have to know what it meant to find love. “No therapy for me, Mom, although I might need some to help me understand how you could have let Gretchen shower off the evidence from the man who raped her.”
“What?” she sputtered. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“Do you know she still has nightmares? She wakes up clawing her way out from under him.”
She tossed her hair out of her face and glided to the bar. Ah, yes, mother. Take a drink. Ease the sting of the truth. “I don’t know what Gretchen has told you, but she’s lying. After all these years, you’d think she’d just admit she slept with him and move on. She’s not the first girl to get pregnant in college, and she sure won’t be the last. Why, just last week I was reading a study about—”
“Do you want me to tell you what you can do with your statistics?”
“Why are you here?” She pulled a highball glass off the shelf and tossed in ice. “What’s this about?”
“It’s about a girl, an eighteen-year-old girl, who came to you after she’d been raped and what you did to her.”
“What did I do? I told her to shower and put her to bed after she admitted to sleeping with a man who was rougher with her than she was ready for.”
“Rough? How is someone supposed to prepare herself for rape, Mother?”
“She wasn’t raped. She put herself in a situation she couldn’t control, and then she didn’t know how to handle the consequences.”
“You know this how?”
“I was here. I saw her. She was upset because he got a little rough and they hadn’t used protection. I calmed her down and sent her to bed before she did something stupid and involved the police and her father and the university.” She splashed amber liquid into the glass and carried it to where he stood barely inside the room. “I remember clearly that she didn’t want you to know. She begged me not to tell you.”
“And you listened. Well done, Mother. I didn’t have a clue.”
“So now she’s spinning tales and asking for your help, is that it?”
“Why weren’t you concerned that your stepdaughter was treated roughly? You said she was upset.”
“Football is a barbaric sport. Women who throw themselves at players should know what they’re getting in return.”
“I played football, Mother, and I’d been sleeping with Gretchen for months. Did she ever complain that I was too rough?”
She set her glass down in a deliberately controlled move. “The little slut deserved what she got, parading around in those skimpy outfits and showing all that skin. I don’t blame you for being tempted, Thomas. I wasn’t about to jeopardize everything we had to cover for her mistakes.”
“You should have taken her to the po
lice! You should have helped her.”
“I did help her. I didn’t tell you what happened. I lied to my own son to protect her. And look at how she repays me.”
“You forced her into marriage.”
“We guaranteed she’d have an income while she raised her bastard child. If it wasn’t for her father and me, she would have nothing.”
“He’s still doing it—Ryan, he’s raping women. He’s done it three times that we know of. The last was with a minor. It’s going to come out. He’s probably going to jail.”
Tommy thought maybe he’d pricked her armor when her face drained of color. “That’s his sick problem, and it has nothing to do with me.”
“It has everything to do with you. If you’d believed your stepdaughter when she came to you in shock, with ripped clothing and bruises, you would have taken her to the police. He wouldn’t have been able to rape again. You’re as responsible for what happened to those girls as he is.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“Nonsense or not, I’m going to have quite a story to tell the press. Should I start with the university paper, or go straight to the Sun Times and let it trickle down? I’m not sure. There’s also cable news. He’s a big enough celebrity that I think they’d be interested.” Tommy tapped his chin. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’d be interested. Let’s face it, I’d look damn good on camera.”
“Are you blackmailing me?”
“I’m communicating with you in the only way you understand.”
“What do you want?” She slugged back her drink.
“Your sworn deposition about what really happened that night.”
“Why?” She let out a humorless chuckle. “What can you possibly hope to gain?”
“You let that son of a bitch force himself on Gretchen and did nothing to help her. You manipulated her into marrying him and giving him visitation rights to the son he fathered when he raped her. Do you have any idea how she lives? How afraid she is he might take her son?”
“She barely communicates with her father and me, so no, I don’t know.”
“She wants to terminate his parental rights. He’s been as active a father as you’ve been a grandparent. I’d say Gretchen and her son would be better off without all of you.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll go to the press. This is going to hit the fan. It’s not a matter of if, but when. If you don’t tell the truth, under oath, your part in it will be as public and humiliating as his.”
She stared at him, breathing in and out through her nose like a horse trying to calm down after a run. “What do you get out of this other than humiliating your mother?”
“I get what I should have had from the start. I get the woman I love and the family I deserve. I get to be happy.”
Chapter 53
Gretchen grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and cut slices to go with the cookies Alex had gotten from the pantry. Her growing boy had a monster sweet tooth.
“What’d you bring me?” he asked with his mouth full of chocolate chip cookie.
“Take a swallow of milk, wipe your mouth and your hands, and eat some of this apple. I want to talk to you for a minute.”
“How was Colorado? Did you see any mountains?”
“I saw lots of them and a whole lot of snow.”
“Did you make a snowman?”
“No.” Gretchen slid the apple slices onto a plate. “The snow there is different. There’s very little humidity, so the snow doesn’t stick together.”
“What’s humimity?”
Gretchen set the plate on the table and pulled out a chair to join him. “Humidity. It’s moisture in the air. You know how when we go outside in the summer, the air feels thick like you could slice it with your hand, and it makes us sweat a lot?”
He shrugged and took a slice of apple. “I guess.”
“In Colorado, the air is dry.”
“So you don’t sweat there?”
“Not as much, no.” She placed her hand over his. “I need to tell you something. Something important.”
“Okay.” He looked up at her with his brownish-gray eyes. She needed to explain everything in a way that protected his innocence.
“When I was in Colorado, I ran into a man I used to know. We were friends. Good friends.”
“You ran into him?”
“I saw him. I wasn’t expecting to see someone I knew.”
“Okay.”
“This man and I used to be in love. I loved him.”
Alex’s brow furrowed. “Was he my dad?”
Her heart ached. He would eventually discover the truth, many years down the road. “No. His name is Tommy Golden. We dated a long time ago. We broke up, but I’ve never forgotten him and he never forgot me either. Turns out we still love each other.”
He chewed slower and slower until his mouth was full of half-chewed apple and hanging open. “What does that mean?”
“It means he’s going to be a part of our lives from now on. He wants to meet you. He’s very excited about meeting you.”
Alex swallowed what was left in his mouth, anxious to ask a question. “Do I get to go to Colorado?”
“Maybe, at some point. He’s here now. In Chicago. He’s going to come to the house in a little while.”
“Oh.” He looked down at his plate as questions swirled in his head. Gretchen couldn’t tell if he was excited or scared or a little of both. “Can I have what you brought me now, please?”
She laughed as relief swamped her. The beauty of being a child was that a present trumped all other aspects of life. He probably needed a few minutes to think about what she’d said. “Yes. I’ll get my suitcase out of the car.”
When she opened the front door, she ran into a silk tie, a large chest, and a scent that sent nauseating spurts of adrenaline through her veins. She glanced up and recognized the absolute fury on Ryan’s face. She absurdly wondered how he’d found her, considering he’d never been to her home. She stepped back, but he grabbed her arms and yanked her forward.
“Hello, Gretchen. Going somewhere?”
He seemed bigger than he did on television. On the few occasions his image appeared on TV before she could change the channel, she’d always thought he looked smaller. She’d been wrong. He towered over her, and his grip confirmed he was as strong as ever.
Her mind went back to that day when he dragged her inside his apartment and shut the door, locking out all chance for her to scream or run or change her fate. She shook her head and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she saw her lawn, the tree where Alex wanted to hang a swing, and her mailbox—reminders that she was in a different place and she was a different person. Gone was the innocent victim. He might think he could hurt her again, but she’d never let that happen. She was too close to holding everything she’d ever wanted in her hand. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” he asked with bitter contempt. “Well, let’s see. I got a little letter this afternoon from a lawyer requesting that I relinquish my parental rights. So I thought I’d come on over and assert my parental rights and tell you just what you can do with your request and your threats.” He slammed her against the wall so hard a framed print fell and crashed onto the hardwoods.
“Mom?”
She gasped when Alex called out. Ryan’s head turned toward the hallway that led to the kitchen. “Don’t,” she begged. “This doesn’t involve him. Leave him out of it.”
He slid his hand to her neck and placed his thumb over the base of her throat. She struggled to drag air into her lungs as he pressed his thumb harder. His pupils swam in his gray eyes, and she wondered if he was hyped up on drugs. “You have no control over what I say to my son.”
She couldn’t move his hand away from her throat no matter how hard she pushed against his arm. If he held his thumb there much longer, she would lose consciousness. God only knew what he would do to Alex. The more panicked she became, the more her heart raced and the more sh
e struggled to breathe.
“You can’t take my son from me,” Ryan spat. “He’s not yours. He’s mine. From now on, he’ll only be mine. When I get done with you and your pissant lawyer, you’ll never see him again.”
The last thing Gretchen saw as she slid down the wall was Alex’s frightened face peer around the corner. She tried to scream as the blackness covered her like a blanket and pulled her under.
***
Tommy hit the send button on his phone after typing, “I’m on my way.” A text seemed redundant considering his taxi had exited the interstate and arrived in a residential neighborhood with houses similar to what Gretchen had described. He would arrive within minutes of his text, leaving her little time to prepare for the big meet.
He was too jacked up from his chat with his mother and the appointment he’d forced her to make with Peter Barnes for the next day. Peter informed her he would be happy to issue a subpoena if she was somehow unable to keep the appointment. Tommy knew she might make them go the extra mile, but he still considered their chat successful. Short of physically dragging her into the lawyer’s office, there wasn’t much else he could do. From her resigned expression, he knew his mother would probably be at the lawyer’s office in the morning.
The taxi pulled up next to the curb of a ranch with black shutters and a freshly mowed lawn. His brow furrowed as he gathered money to pay the driver. He wondered whose luxury sedan was parked in the drive behind Gretchen’s coup. Maybe he’d meet Holcomb in person and they could hammer out some details of the negotiation.
He’d just closed the taxi door and begun walking through the yard when his pulse jumped. The front door stood wide open. He ran full speed when he recognized Gretchen’s leg lying just inside the foyer. “Gretchen!” He skidded to a stop on his knees beside her. “Gretchen!” He ran his hands over her face and along her body, looking for signs of trauma. When her eyes fluttered, he brought his face to hers and encouraged her with soothing chants. “Come on, baby. Come on, Gretch, wake up. Honey, wake up.”
Taming the Moguls Page 22