by Shelly Ellis
“Focus more on catching a rich husband and popping out babies?” Dawn said, finishing the sentence for him. She took a bite of her scone.
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I don’t wish to insult your mother, Dawn. That isn’t why I’m here.”
Too late, she thought flippantly as she chewed. Though the truth was, her father wasn’t far from the mark on this one. Yolanda Gibbons considered lessons on how to ensnare a wealthy man as important as any algebra class Dawn had taken. She expected the same level of excellence in both endeavors.
“How is your mother, by the way?” he asked.
She appreciated his attempt to be polite. “She’s fine . . . very busy, actually. She’s getting married in a few months.”
Her father gaped. “Married? Again?”
Dawn nodded.
“When I met her, she had already been married twice.”
“Oh, she’s had a few more since then. This will be her fifth . . . no . . .” Dawn paused, closed her eyes and counted off the long list of her mother’s ex-husbands. “I think this is her sixth husband.”
“Sixth husband?”
“Don’t look so shocked,” Dawn quipped as she sipped her orange-scented herbal tea. “It happens. I’ve been married twice myself.”
“Twice?” She could see him struggling to control his features, struggling not to judge her. “Well, perhaps number three will be Mr. Right.”
Dawn shook her head and chuckled, setting down her teacup. “I highly doubt that.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t believe there is such a thing as Mr. Right, and frankly I don’t have time to find out. I certainly don’t have time for a third husband.”
When it looked like her father was about to mount an argument in reply, she held up her hand. “Anyway, enough about me and my love life. Tell me something about yourself, Herb. I’d like to know more about the man who made me.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Where did you grow up, for one? What were my grandparents like? What were you like as a teenager? Are you married? Do I have brothers and sisters?”
He smiled. “Well, I’ve been married for thirty-one years to a lovely woman. Her name is Raquel. We have a daughter named Constance.”
Constance and Raquel . . . Dawn didn’t like the sound of those names. They sounded better fit for the villains in soap operas than extended family that she might meet in the future.
“What are they like?”
“Oh, Raquel is wonderful, just wonderful! When I met her at a country club thirty-two years ago, I knew she was the woman for me. She used to be a television correspondent before she retired. She’s very poised, yet very direct. Constance didn’t fall far from the tree. She’s a beautiful, delightful girl.” He laughed. “I’m afraid I spoil my Connie mercilessly. I have since she was little. But I love to give to the ones that I love, and she’s my only child, so . . .”
Dawn flinched. Her father paused at her reaction, suddenly realizing what he had said. He looked horrified.
“I’m so sorry, Dawn!” He reached across the small bistro table and placed his wrinkled, dry hand on top of one of hers. “Sweetheart, I didn’t mean that. I know I have two daughters. I really meant—”
“That’s all right, Herb.” She shook her head and pulled her hand away. “I get it.”
She got that she had been pushed to the back of his mind for the last thirty-seven years while he lived his life and built a family of his own. She was trying to be adult about it, but part of her envied Constance, and she hadn’t even met the woman.
It wasn’t that Dawn felt neglected. She had her own very sheltered childhood. Her mother had made sure that she and her sisters got everything they needed and mostly everything they wanted, but Dawn had always felt the emptiness of not having her father around. She had once wanted the affection and protection of a father that money couldn’t buy. Meanwhile, her real father had been doting on Constance, showering his “only” daughter with his adoration and attention.
Dawn shoved aside her hurt for now. What’s done is done. The past is in the past, she reminded herself.
“Please keep going. Tell me more,” she insisted.
He wavered, looking as if he wasn’t sure if he should continue.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked, trying again to draw him out.
“Well, I’m . . . I’m a boy from Detroit who made good. I grew up poor in this little run-down . . .”
Herb then began to tell Dawn the story of his life. She found out that the album he brought with him contained pictures of dozens and dozens of relatives. They hunched over the pages together, examining the pictures and laughing at the stories he told. She found out that he was a man who had pulled himself up out of poverty. He had worked his way through college and grad school and eventually started a multimillion-dollar software company back when most people didn’t own computers. And she was shocked to find he dabbled in art back in the day.
“My work was nothing compared to the ones you sell in your gallery,” he admitted humbly, “but I’ve handled a paintbrush or two in my day.”
He told her more about Raquel and Constance. She wished she could say the more she heard about them, the more she looked forward to one day meeting them, but in actuality, she felt the opposite. His wife sounded overbearing and his daughter sounded like a pampered princess who was accustomed to getting her way. He added that Constance was getting married in the spring, and when he started to rave about how beautiful the wedding and bride were going to be, Dawn had to quickly change the subject. She just couldn’t take it anymore.
Dawn told him a bit more about herself and her family. She avoided talking about her mother, since it seemed to be a touchy subject. She regaled him with stories about her sisters and their antics that made him almost delirious with laughter.
“Would you look at that sunset?” he said softly after she finished one of her stories. His gaze was focused over her shoulder at the shop’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
Dawn turned in surprise to see a bright orange sun descending behind the darkened city landscape. “Sunset? We haven’t been sitting here that long, have we?”
Her father pulled back one of his shirt cuffs and glanced at his Rolex. He raised his gray eyebrows in surprise. “We’ve been here for three hours and fifteen minutes, to be exact. I didn’t know it was that late either.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” She pushed herself away from the table. “I didn’t meant to—”
“No! No, please don’t apologize. I enjoyed myself.” He grabbed his cane and bit by bit rose to his feet. “But I really must be going.” He grinned. “Dawn, I had a wonderful time today.”
She tugged on her coat. “So did I.”
And she meant it. She did have a good time speaking with him and learning more about him. She thought he was a fascinating man and very humble, despite his many accomplishments. He also had a great sense of humor. She was glad she had come to meet him.
“We should do this again,” he said, leaning on his cane and gazing up at her.
“We should.”
They began to walk toward Big Ben’s glass door, stepping aside for a couple who had walked into the tea shop.
“Why not next weekend?” her father asked.
“Why not what next weekend?” Dawn answered distractedly. She tugged on her calfskin gloves then buttoned her coat. She pulled out her cell phone.
“You should come to Windhill Downs!”
She looked up from the messages on her phone screen. “What’s Windhill Downs?”
“My property . . . my estate . . . that’s what we call it. You should come there! In fact, why don’t you come next weekend and have dinner with the rest of the family? We throw a Christmas Eve bash every year, but we try to also have an intimate dinner—family only—the night before that.”
Dawn stopped midmotion. Her slender fingers hovered over her phone. She gaped. “An intimate dinner?” she choked
. “Next . . . next weekend?”
He nodded eagerly.
Oh, hell, Dawn thought. It was one thing agreeing to meet her long-lost father. It was a completely different matter having dinner with her father, stepmother, and sister at “Windhill Downs.” Shouldn’t she be slowly eased into this? She wasn’t sure if she was ready to take on the whole family right now.
Dawn stared down at her father, trying to find a delicate way to decline his invitation.
“I’d be honored to have you there, sweetheart,” he said softly.
Dawn grimaced. Damn it, she thought. How could she possibly say no?
“Sure, uh . . . give me the address and the time and I’ll be there.”
“Wonderful!” her father exclaimed.
Dawn lowered her phone back into her purse. She wished she could be equally excited. She wondered what her sisters would think when she told them about this one.
Chapter 5
“Now, we can hold the wedding ceremony here,” Cynthia Gibbons said as she pointed to the front hall and walked swiftly across the marble-tiled floor. Her voice and the sound of her high heels echoed off the front hall’s coffered ceilings and forest green walls. “Mama, you can enter the ceremony this way, down the left wing staircase. It would definitely be dramatic.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” Yolanda said before turning to the squat man who stood beside her. Her arm was looped through his. “What do you think, honey? Does the staircase sound nice?”
A smile creased his dark, bulldog-like face as he warmly patted Yolanda’s hand. “Whatever you want, baby.”
Whatever you want, baby.... Those seemed to be the only words that came out of Reginald Whitfield’s mouth since Cynthia started giving him and her mother the grand tour of the recently restored historic mansion, Glenn Dale. Cynthia had spearheaded the renovation of the mansion herself as head of the historic preservation association in Chesterton. Yolanda and Reginald planned to hold their nuptials there in March. Reginald didn’t seem to have any opinions on the venue, the ceremony, the reception, or the décor. He was leaving all the decision making to Yolanda.
Which is just as well, Cynthia thought wryly. Her mother was marrying him for his willingness to write checks, not for his opinions.
“Another thing you two may want to consider is where you’ll hold the cocktail hour for the reception,” Cynthia said as she walked across the front hall and pointed to the adjacent rooms. “You can hold it either in the front parlor or one of the sitting rooms.”
“Hmm, I don’t know.” Yolanda turned to Reginald expectantly again. “Any preference, sweetheart? One of the sitting rooms or the parlor?”
Yolanda was in her mid-sixties, but she looked several years younger and was still a very beautiful woman. Her salt-and-pepper hair was upswept today, though soft curls fell around her face. She wore a trim tan Michael Kors suit and a simple string of pearls.
Reginald looked out of place standing next to her. Though his clothes were just as expensive, they didn’t complement his rotund frame quite as well. The buttons of his single-breasted suit were pulling so tightly they looked as if they could pop off at any second. He kept tugging uncomfortably at the starched white collar of his dress shirt.
He stuck his finger in his collar even now and tugged at it again as he shook his head. “Whatever you think is best, baby.”
Cynthia stifled a groan. If neither of them made a decision soon, they would be wandering around this mansion forever.
“Well,” Cynthia ventured, “if neither of those options work, you could even—”
Cynthia stopped when she suddenly heard a light melody tinkling, letting her know her cell phone was ringing. She glanced down at her phone screen and saw that Dawn was calling her. Considering that Dawn was probably calling to talk about yesterday’s meeting with her father, Cynthia guessed it would be better to answer this one without their mother around.
“Mama, I have to take this call,” Cynthia said, pasting on a smile. “Would you guys excuse me?”
Yolanda and Reginald were just walking into one of the sitting rooms. At Cynthia’s words, Yolanda turned away from her fiancé.
“Is everything all right, honey?” Yolanda asked.
“Oh, everything is fine. Just fine! Why don’t you guys continue to look around? I’ll be right back.” Cynthia then walked toward the front hall, tossing her sun-kissed locks over her shoulder.
“Hey,” she whispered after pressing a button on the glass screen.
“Hey! Sorry I didn’t call you yesterday, girl. I got home a little late,” Dawn answered.
“Yeah, I was wondering why I didn’t hear from you.” Cynthia walked farther away, hoping their mother couldn’t hear her in the echoing, vacant rooms.
Though Dawn knew Cynthia didn’t approve of her clandestine meeting with her father, they both knew Cynthia still counted on being the first person Dawn called after the meeting. The two oldest siblings in the Gibbons clan had always been the closest: best friends as well as lifelong rivals.
“So how’d your ‘date’ with Daddy go?” Cynthia asked.
“Well, it was . . . Wait. Why are you whispering?”
“To cover your ass.” Cynthia took a cautious glance over her shoulder. “Mama and Reginald are nearby. I’m giving them a tour of Glenn Dale today. Mama’s thinking about holding the wedding ceremony and reception here. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah! Totally forgot. Well, anyway, the ‘date’ went pretty good, I guess.”
“You guess?” Cynthia paused. “Why? What happened? He didn’t turn out to be an asshole, did he?” Cynthia slowly shook her head and sucked her teeth. “I knew it! I told you that it was a bad idea to agree to meet him again. There was something about that—”
“Calm down, Cindy! He’s not an asshole. He’s nothing like that. He seems . . . amazing, actually. It’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
“It’s just . . . weird, you know? I mean, this person was a total stranger to me a couple of weeks ago and now he’s my dad! My dad! He has all this history and his own family. He has a wife and a daughter. And listen to this, Cindy—he wants me to meet them!”
“Say what now?”
“Yeah, I know, right? We’re supposed to have dinner together around Christmas Eve.”
A dinner at Christmas Eve? Cynthia leaned against the foyer wall. She pulled back the thick velvet curtains and peered out the window at the mansion’s snow-dappled front lawn and pebbled driveway.
Though one part of Cynthia had worried that Dawn meeting her father would only lead to heartache, the other part of her had worried that it would lead to something much different: Dawn building a relationship with another family. Within the past year or so, Cynthia had already felt the strong bond between her and her sisters being tested. It was no longer just the Gibbons girls laughing over mani-pedis or conspiring over Saturday brunch how to seduce rich men. Now Lauren and Stephanie were madly in love, involved in their own relationships, and wrapped up in their budding families. They had little time for their sisters anymore. It was just Cynthia and Dawn left, and now it looked like Dawn was going to drift away too.
“A holiday dinner, huh?” Cynthia mumbled sullenly. “So I guess you got a good package deal out of this, then . . . an ‘amazing’ father, a whole new family, and a new sister too.”
“I don’t need a new sister. Believe me, honey, I’ve got enough!”
“You’re damn right about that.”
“Look, Cindy, don’t worry,” her sister reassured her, reading her mind. “You’re my sisters—you, Steph, and Lauren—and always will be. I love you guys. Having dinner with my father and his family isn’t going to change that.”
“I know, I know,” Cynthia said, though it warmed her heart to hear those words. She could breathe a little easier now. “So tell me more about the new relatives. What’re their names?”
Dawn sighed. “Constance and Raquel,” she answered flatly.
“Oh, Good
Lord, girl! Are you serious? Constance and Raquel? It’s like an episode of Dynasty!”
“I know. I feel like I should show up in a sequined gown and shoulder pads,” Dawn drawled sarcastically.
Cynthia cracked up laughing, then she quickly quieted. She made another hasty glance over her shoulder to make sure their mother hadn’t heard her.
“I’m the long-lost sister from the wrong side of the tracks!” Dawn exclaimed.
“Pardon me? Wrong side of the tracks? We didn’t exactly grow up in the projects.”
“Yeah, but we come from gold-digger money. You know people see it differently. They always look down on it.”
“Well,” Cynthia said, casually waving her hand and glancing at her nails, “I’ve never given a damn either way. You know what Mama always says, ‘A hundred dollar bill is a hundred dollar bill, whether it comes from your paycheck or your ex-husband’s wallet.’ ”
“True. Very true.”
“So, next question: When are you going to tell Mama about all this?”
Dawn moaned. “Oh, God, do I have to?”
“You’re the one who’s getting chummy-chummy with them! You can’t keep it a secret forever, and the longer you do, the more pissed she’s going to be when she finally finds out.”
“Please! Mama is more focused on getting married to Daddy Warbucks over there than she is on anything else. Hearing about my father would just be a distraction for her.”
“Yeah, right.” Cynthia chuckled. “Coward!”
“Call me what you want, but I think this way is best. And you will continue to keep it a secret until I say not to do so, won’t you, Cindy?”
Cynthia dropped a hand to her hip and rolled her eyes.
“Cindy?” Dawn repeated tersely on the other end of the line. “Promise me you’ll keep it a secret!”
“All right! All right! I promise. I just think it’s silly. You act like you’re having an affair with him or something.”
“Your opinion is appreciated, but I’ll follow my own opinion for now.” Dawn paused again. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting with the gallery staff. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”