Not that he blamed them. He wanted to scream, too. Oh, yes he did. Never in his life—even when he was about to face the meanest bull on the rodeo circuit—had Rafe Beauford wanted so badly to scream. But he didn’t. At age ten, he’d set up a few rules for himself, and chief among them—Rule One—was don’t fear. And if you failed at Rule One, as he was doing right now in the worst way possible, there was Rule Two to get you through: don’t show fear.
He hadn’t pulled over since daybreak. The name of the game now was power through and get to his childhood home, Beauford Bend Plantation, where there would be help and hope.
Funny. He’d always prided himself on not needing any help; in fact it was one of the rules. Hope had been such a foreign concept that there was nothing about it one way or the other in the rulebook.
The night he’d watched his parents and baby sister die in a fire—a fire that had been caused because he’d been a coward—Rafe Beauford had learned there was no point in ever worrying about anything again because the worst thing that could ever happen to him had.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
This time last week, all he’d had to worry about was the next eight seconds on the next bull’s back.
Then the call had come from Tawny’s sister, Fawn. He barely remembered Tawny, and with good reason. It had been nearly three years since their unmemorable one-night stand. Still, he was sorry to hear she’d been killed in a motorcycle accident—but not nearly as sorry as he’d been to hear he was being summoned for a paternity test. Fawn was just giving him a heads up before the court order came.
Things like this didn’t happen to him. He was careful, had never been in trouble, never even been in a real relationship. His agent and lawyer, Kevin, had pointed out that it didn’t take a relationship to make a baby.
So they’d hauled ass to Denton, Texas, to discover not one, but two babies—baby girls that stopped him in his tracks and robbed him of all rational thought. Though he hadn’t quite believed it before, the moment he saw them, he knew they were his. They looked like him and his twin, Gabe—and Camille, their sister who had never seen three years old. In that moment, the only other thing Rafe was sure of was that he could not be a father. Impossible.
He’d offered to leave them with Tawny’s family, but even with his generous offer of support, they had all they could handle. The only thing left to do was take the girls to Beauford Bend. Long ago, Beauford Bend had meant home, help, and comfort. And he had no choice but to find those things again. He had nowhere else to go.
“Cookie!” That would be Bella. Or maybe Alice. He couldn’t tell the difference. At least Tawny had given them normal names. Though he had hardly known her, Tawny had seemed like the type to give her kids names like Cheyenne or Diva.
“Cookie!” Bella/Alice screamed again. Apparently, he’d taken too long.
“Coming right up, kid.” He reached into the bag of Oreos sitting beside him and flung a handful over the back of the seat. It probably wouldn’t work. It hadn’t before. Neither had the M&M’s or the potato chips.
The screams escalated.
He should have sent for his brother Jackson’s private plane. Unlike his twin, Gabe, Rafe had never made use of the plane. That came under that not needing any help rule. Gabe, on the other hand, said there was no point in having a country music superstar for a brother if you couldn’t enjoy the perks.
Of course, Gabe, an elite NFL quarterback, could have bought his own plane if he’d wanted. Not so Rafe, though he couldn’t complain. Bull riding could make you rich or leave you flat broke, sometimes both within the same year. Since he was one of the best on the circuit, Rafe had been luckier than most, but a cowboy’s life was full of surprises—a broken shoulder in the middle of Cowboy Christmas, getting stranded in a Montana snowstorm with a big cash prize five hundred miles away, two years worth of back child support for a surprise set of twins.
It all added up. He was still a million or two to the good, but he’d never have the kind of money Jackson and Gabe had. Not that he needed it.
“Juice box!” screamed Bella/Alice.
Or hadn’t needed it. What the hell was a juice box, and how much did it cost?
“Hang tight, kid,” he said. “I’m taking you to somebody who knows all about juice boxes.”
And she would. Jackson’s wife, Emory, would know. And with her kind, soft heart, she’d fall in love with these kids on sight.
With any luck, he’d be in Tulsa by Tuesday, where there was a bull waiting on him. He drove faster.
• • •
“No, Mama!” Abigail Brooks Whitman’s son, Phillip, cried when she lifted him from his crib.
“Shh.” She settled him against her shoulder and whispered. “Sorry, baby. I know it’s early, but you’re going to Beauford Bend today while Mama works.”
“No, Mama!” Even though that was Phillip’s favorite phrase this week, regardless of what was being offered him, guilt washed over Abby. Five o’clock was too early to get a two-year-old up and out of the house, but this morning was the monthly Rotary Club breakfast at Mill Time, where she worked as a waitress, and she couldn’t afford to turn down the extra work—plus, Rotary tips were great. She was lucky that her friends, Emory and Gwen, at Beauford Bend were willing to help her out when she got extra shifts, because there was no way she could afford to pay the daycare one more cent than she was already paying.
“Want Poppy.”
That she could do. Poppy was paid for. As Abby retrieved the stuffed pony from the crib, a new thought assaulted her. How long was Phillip going to be able to sleep in that crib? It was just a matter of time before he would start trying to climb out, and she couldn’t afford a youth bed. She could put the crib mattress on the floor for a while, but he couldn’t sleep like that until he left for college.
If he left for college. How was she going to manage that when she couldn’t even buy a bed?
Abby changed Phillip’s diaper and picked up the bag she’d packed for him the night before. Thank God for Gwen and Emory. Gwen was the catering manager for Emory’s events business, Around the Bend, and lived on the plantation, along with her two children and her husband Dirk, who was head of security. Gwen would bathe, dress, and feed Phillip along with her two kids. Since there were no parties today, Emory had assured Abby that she would also help out with Phillip.
“Ready to go?” Abby kissed the top of her son’s blond head.
“Yes!” She smiled. Yes was a rare and welcome thing these days.
But he was the only one who had decided to be positive. When she buckled him in his car seat, she could only think of how he would outgrow that soon, too.
She could just hear her mother’s finishing school, Boston voice now. It doesn’t have to be this way, Abigail. You can move home.
Except Boston wasn’t home anymore. Beauford was home—where she wanted to live and raise her child. Abby understood why her parents and her late husband Gregory’s parents wanted her back in Boston. Phillip was the only grandchild they would ever have.
Plus, they wanted to run her life like they’d always done.
Both only children, Abby and Gregory had grown up next door to each other in two- hundred-year-old inherited houses in elite Beacon Hill. Gregory’s parents had been Aunt Meg and Uncle Nate long before they’d become her in-laws. The parents had never expected Abby and Gregory to pick up and move to Beauford three months after the wedding or for Gregory to leave the family investment firm to apprentice to a master stained glass artist in one of the most respected artisan communities in the country. And, frankly, Abby hadn’t expected it herself. But after so many years of doing the right thing at the right time in exactly the right way, she’d been up for a little adventure.
What she hadn’t been up for was Gregory’s spelunking accident that had left her a widow with one month to go in her pregnancy—nor her guilt over her unreasonable anger at Gregory for doing such a foolhardy, dangerous thing in the first place.
It had been easy to let the parents take her hand, lead her back to Boston, and put her to bed in her old room. It had been easy to lay there and grieve until Phillip was born, and easy to return to that room to recover from the difficult birth and the news that she wouldn’t have any more children.
So easy, until the morning she’d woken, gone to the nursery, and found Phillip gone.
She must have looked like a lunatic standing there barefoot, in her nightgown, with her hair falling in her face as she screamed down the house.
“Calm down, Abigail! Whatever is the matter with you?” her mother had demanded in a quiet whisper as she looked over her shoulder to see if any of the servants were coming out of the woodwork.
“Where is my baby?” Abby wasn’t so quiet with her question.
“Is that all? He’s fine. Meg and Nate took him to Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend.”
Suddenly, a calm that Abby hadn’t known in a very long time settled over her—the kind of calm one has to summon to take control.
“They did what?” Though she didn’t really need it repeated. “They took my two-month-old child three hours away for the weekend without consulting me?”
Susan Brooks looked a little chagrined, but Abby doubted if she felt it. “Now, Abigail. It was spur-of-the-moment, and it seemed a shame to wake you. Meg and I thought you could use the rest.”
Meg Whitman had never done anything spur-of-the-moment in her life, and neither had Susan. They just hadn’t seen fit to tell Abby. But Abby didn’t point all that out to her mother. Instead, she calmly dressed and went after her child. That night, she was on a plane back to Beauford.
Though she’d had droves of acquaintances growing up, from birth her life had consisted of her family and Gregory’s. Neither she nor Gregory had ever made real friends, because they’d always had each other. She had never entertained the thought of so much as having a cup of coffee with anyone else, and she doubted if he had either. Their marriage had been a foregone conclusion.
She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that their parents had signed a blood document in the Brookses’ palatial library on the day she was born—which was exactly three months after Gregory’s own world debut.
Life on her own in Beauford was hard, but it was rich, too. Before moving here, she’d been wispy and transparent—though she hadn’t realized it, because she’d never known anything else. It had been an ordered tea party of a life with no chance of escape into a rabbit hole. But Gregory had found a rabbit hole and had brought her along for the adventure. Living in Beauford among people who fought, loved, and worked hard had shown Abby there was something else in life—even if she didn’t have it for herself. She mourned Gregory—how could she not? She’d loved him her whole life. But she knew in her heart their relationship had not been the grand passion that her friends, Gwen, Emory, Noel, and Neyland had—though she suspected that had more to do with her basic nature than anything lacking in her relationship with Gregory. Some people were just not cut out for grand passion.
But grand passion or no, Abby was tired of their parents treating her like an eight-year-old who’d been sent to the wrong summer camp. Even now, they were trying to control her with their wealth. After facing that she was not going to move in with either set of parents, they’d offered to buy a brownstone and hire a staff for her if she’d just come back—all the while making clear that they would not enable her in this continued, crazy insistence of living a thousand miles from anyone who cared anything about her.
Except there were people here who cared for her—lots of them. Of course, having friends was costly, too. There were lunches, birthdays, and she’d been a bridesmaid in Emory’s wedding last spring. Emory had insisted on buying the attendants’ dresses, but there had still been parties and incidentals. And now, Noel’s wedding was coming up in a couple of weeks, and Neyland was engaged. But in spite of the problems, Abby liked the slow pace, the weather, and the sense of community in Beauford. She wanted that for herself and for Phillip.
However she also wanted a big boy bed for him when the time came, and things were getting tougher and tougher. Though they had come from very old and very abundant money, and though Gregory had briefly been an investment banker, they’d had no money of their own. And that Harvard PhD in Shakespearean studies wasn’t doing her much good in Beauford.
Sometimes she wondered why she had pursued the degree. She was competent and intelligent, but she had no passion for the subject matter, at least not the same way her classmates and professors had. They thought Shakespeare all the time, lived it, quoted it. As for the advanced degree—Gregory had wanted to finish his graduate work before they got married, and she’d been filling her time.
But despite her lack of passion, she had been a competent student who achieved, and she knew she could be a competent teacher who achieved. Last year, she had applied for teaching jobs at Belmont and Vanderbilt Universities in Nashville. They’d been impressed with her, and she could have easily made the half-hour drive every day, but there had been no open positions.
So she just kept hanging on, waiting tables, and hoping for a teaching job or a miracle—which amounted to about the same thing. But wasn’t it a shame to equate a miracle with obtaining something she didn’t even want very much except as a means to an end?
Though it was it was scarcely five-thirty when Abby approached the Beauford Bend guardhouse, there were a few reporters and die-hard Jackson Beauford fans hanging around the gate. As the guard waved her through, someone snapped her picture. It wasn’t the first time. They’d all gotten a big laugh when she and Phillip had appeared on the cover of a grocery store tabloid as “Jackson Beauford’s mistress and secret love child.”
The Beacon Hill set hadn’t been amused, however—not one bit. It had been tempting to tell them it was too bad it wasn’t true, since Jackson’s child wasn’t likely to want for anything. But they would have just reminded her that Phillip didn’t have to want for anything either. They were willing to help her—just not on her terms.
And they didn’t have to. Phillip was her child. So far, he was healthy, fed, clothed, and sheltered. The fear inside her was much worse than the reality.
Though lately, when the fear became terror, Abby had begun to comfort herself with the knowledge that she could move back to Boston—and that scared her almost as much as the thought of not being able to care for her child. She’d move if she had to—even if it meant regressing back to her wispy, transparent self until she faded into nothing.
Abby gave herself a rest from her fears and let herself enjoy the sight of the Beauford Bend Plantation house. The noble, brick structure was especially beautiful in the golden September light.
She would have passed the house and turned down the road to the renovated gristmill where Gwen and Dirk lived, but a bit of bright blue near the rear family wing entrance caught her eye. It looked like Rafe Beauford’s truck, but he shouldn’t be here. He was off riding bulls, and according to Emory, they wouldn’t see him until Thanksgiving. Something must be wrong.
Gabe had left yesterday for Dallas where the Titans were playing the Cowboys on Sunday, but if something had happened to him, Neyland would have called. Jackson and Emory were fine. That left Beau—the special ops soldier and the baby of the family.
Abby backed up and turned toward the house. If something had happened to Beau, everyone would be up, and Gwen and Dirk would likely be with them. If this were Boston, Abby would have turned around and left, not wanting to intrude—but this was Beauford, Tennessee where it was expected for everyone to do all they could in times of trouble.
She parked beside Rafe’s truck and said to Phillip, “Just sit still for a minute, baby. Mama needs to check on something.” She’d stick her head in the kitchen. If there was no activity, she’d proceed on to Gwen’s. If there was trouble, she’d come back and get Phillip.
But when she stepped out of her car, something in Rafe’s truck caught her eye—and it appeared to be Rafe Bea
uford, himself, slumped over the steering wheel. At first she thought he was sick or—even worse—dead, but he shifted and pushed his hair away from his eyes before settling back into what had to be the most uncomfortable sleeping position ever thought up by man, woman, or acrobat. He was asleep, or maybe drunk—though she’d spent a little time with him at Jackson and Emory’s wedding last spring, and he didn’t seem to be the kind to drink and drive. But he wasn’t driving. Maybe he’d done his drinking after arriving. But if that were the case, why not go inside? Each of the brothers had his own suite of rooms in the family wing of the historic mansion.
When Abby looked around the truck cab for signs of drunken debauchery, what met her eyes instead was evidence of gluttony gone bad. There were open packages of Oreos, Chips Ahoy!, Nutter Butters, Fritos, and chili cheese fries flavored potato chips. And it was all tossed around willy-nilly with half-eaten Happy Meals and open bottles of chocolate milk.
She didn’t know what was going on here, but it was nothing good and time Rafe Beauford woke up.
It was when Abby opened the passenger door and put her head in with the intention of rousing Rafe that she saw what was in the back seat—a set of sleeping twin girls about the same age as Phillip. They were strapped in their car seats, leaning toward each other so that their bright blond heads almost touched. Their faces were covered in what looked like mustard, ketchup, and chocolate milk. From the smell of things, they both badly needed diaper changes.
And—even if their dresses hadn’t been filthy—clothing changes. There was plenty astounding about this situation, but what those babies were wearing might take the cake and the crystal stand it sat on.
Their matching bright turquoise satin dresses were covered with enough spangles and glitter to light up a New York sky, and there couldn’t be a ribbon, flounce, or rosette in the particular shade left in the universe, because it was all here filling the back seat of Rafe’s truck. One of the girls still wore a headband with a huge turquoise organza flower accented with feathers and crystal beads, but the other girl had apparently liberated hers and thrown it onto the seat among the broken cookies, cheese puffs, and melted ice cream cones. The baby seated directly behind Rafe idly kicked the back of his seat in her sleep. Who knew they made crystal-encrusted shoes in that size?
Heath's Hope (The Brothers of Beauford Bend Book 5) Page 8