by Isla Bennet
Valerie crouched to organize the rain-dampened boots, scarf and umbrella her daughter had left in a heap near the door. Then she picked up a throw pillow from the wooden bench just to have something warm, dry and comforting to hold. “Lucy’s father is here.”
“Are—are you kidding me?”
She wished she could kid about something like this. “He’s coming to the ranch in a couple of hours. Lucy doesn’t want to see him, but he and I obviously need to talk, so ….”
“No, I get it.” Cordelia studied her closely, concern swimming in her green eyes. They’d first met during the reading of Uncle Rhys’s will ten years ago, when Valerie had learned he’d left his entire ranch to her—no doubt out of spite toward his estranged wife and children. How they’d wound up becoming Valerie’s friends when they had an arsenal of reasons to resent her still baffled her from time to time. “Val, are you holding up okay?”
“I have to,” was the most honest answer. She set the pillow down and led the way to the kitchen. While Valerie rubbed her hair with a dish towel, Cordelia hunted up a wineglass and selected a bottle of wine from the built-in cabinet in the marble-topped island. “Aren’t you more of an ice-cold beer person, Cordelia?”
“Yes. This is for you.”
“No, thanks. I should probably keep a clear head tonight.” She eased onto a stool and gazed at the bowl of cherry tomatoes in front of her while her cousin put away the glass and wine. “He’s Peyton, but he’s different.”
“Older, you mean.” Cordelia hopped onto the island and crossed one leg over the other. In skinny jeans, a white tank and a hunter-green sweater with too-long sleeves, and with her dark hair hanging loose, she seemed more like a teenager than a ranch hand with her fortieth birthday creeping around the corner. Time often changed a person’s looks—and Peyton was no different, with harder lines to his face and more muscle to his body—but there was something unfamiliar and altered about him that probably had nothing to do with aging.
“Of course older. But something else, too.” She shrugged and was grateful for the distraction of Lucy loping into the kitchen with her laptop.
“Hi, Delia!” This ball of energy and noise was the polar opposite of the brooding girl who’d sat slumped over stiff as a brick the entire drive home. She’d combed her hair and traded the borrowed scrubs for a velour sweatshirt and black cropped pants with sport stitched across the seat. She set the computer down, grabbed a handful of cherry tomatoes and launched herself at Cordelia. “How come you’re hanging out here? The other day Mom said you were stoked about going on a date with Jack. But I still don’t get why married people go on dates.”
Valerie’s eyes widened. What Lucy didn’t know was that Cordelia and Jack’s “dates” were scheduled on nights during which Cordelia, who was having trouble conceiving, would be ovulating. “Your date! Cordelia, I’m sorry. I forgot all about it. I shouldn’t have asked you to take Lucy tonight.”
“No worries, Valerie. Jack and I decided to order a pizza, and, of course, Luce’s favorite cinnamon bread.”
Lucy’s brows drew together in confusion. “Mom, why do I have to leave?”
“Your father’s coming here tonight. We have things to discuss privately, okay? So you’re going to the carriage house, and I’ll pick you up for school in the morning and you’ll take the bus home since I’ll be tied up with work all day.”
“Oh, super. It’s too huge of a situation for me to sleep in my own house but I still have to go to school tomorrow and take that lame test.” Lucy sauntered to the laptop where Valerie could see an open instant messaging program on the screen.
“Pretty much.” Valerie ignored the eye roll that earned her. “So type goodbye to your friends and pack an overnight bag—quickly. And don’t forget your history book.”
Mouth full of tomato, Lucy protested, “Why’s he coming here anyway? To be some father figure? I don’t need him, ’cause I’ve got Jack and Gramps and Uncle Jasper and all my friends’ dads. And even without all those guys, I’ve got you, Mom.”
All the budding frustration about Lucy’s flaring temper seemed to evaporate. I’ve got you, Mom. Valerie slid off the stool, wrapped her arms around her daughter and kissed her cheek whether she liked it or not.
Cordelia hid a smile as Lucy squirmed away, complaining, “Your hair’s wet.”
“How about you pack and go with Cordelia, and I get cleaned up?”
“Who’s gonna feed the cat if I’m gone?”
“You know I will, Lucy.”
“What about Titania and Mimas?”
“Cozy in the kennel. I took care of them before picking you up from school. All bases are covered.”
“Fine,” the girl said reluctantly, shutting the laptop. “C’mon, Delia. I want to show you the brochures for the country club Gramps wants to rent for my insanely cool party—if Mom says it’s okay.”
Valerie sighed, watching the two hurry up the kitchen stairs. Not only was her daughter stubbornly hung up on the idea of Nathaniel throwing her an “insanely cool”—and unimaginably expensive—party, she didn’t realize that Peyton’s return was going to change her relationship with Nathaniel. Peyton would likely be staying in his childhood home, and it would be impossible for Lucy to frequent the place without running into her father. Unless Peyton didn’t plan to stick around longer than a day or two.
There was no way to assume what he would do. Their exchange at the hospital earlier had shown her that he was capable of catching her off guard. He was determined, unpredictable. A stranger.
Across the room on the counter the double frame displaying Lucy and Anna’s kindergarten photos took her attention.
He wasn’t to be underestimated. Neither was she.
EPISODE TWO
CHAPTER THREE
AFTER RESCHEDULING THE meeting he’d missed with Chief Lindsey, Peyton tipped the parking valet and hauled ass to his grandfather’s house. Nathaniel had known—there was no doubt about it. When they’d briefly spoken while he was in Côte d’Ivoire, his grandfather had been cryptic, accusing him of being “nowhere near close” to realizing what he’d left behind in this town.
Now he knew. Two daughters—twins. And one was gone. He didn’t know when or how or why Anna had died, but he would soon.
A security gate had been installed around the perimeter of the meticulously groomed Turner estate—made of wrought iron and hidden by rose bushes and climbing ivy, but a gate nevertheless. In a neighborhood with Wellesley Lake and steep-shouldered hills in the distance, composed of a handful of jaw-dropping homes and a touristy luxury ranch that appeared to have expanded in the years he’d been gone, security was always a staple. He didn’t think his grandfather needed the extra boundary, but maybe something had happened to make the standoffish high-reaching gate and high-tech panel more of a necessity than added peace of mind.
At the edge of the driveway that circled a stone three-tiered fountain, he lowered the window to identify himself through the intercom. On the outside his grandfather’s estate looked updated, evolved, but structurally it was the same Georgian mansion that had felt like a fancy prison after the death of his grandmother Estella. Back then he’d wanted to break away, to carve out a life that wasn’t under his grandfather’s tyranny. When he’d slunk out of town to join that first mission, he’d found it freeing to be an anonymous hero. It had cost him material possessions—all but his father’s pocket watch had been sold for cash that would help him survive untraceable—and it had cost him, for a while, a sense of his own identity. He’d been stripped of everything but a bone-deep need to be a part of something bigger than the Turner name and all the trappings that came with it.
This house was not his home. At his core he was a nomad, with no permanent place to go and no one to belong to. Nathaniel had been his guardian out of obligation; his mother hadn’t seen him as anything more than a meal ticket. He and Valerie weren’t friends anymore, but were connected through a girl who wanted nothing to do with him.
He was sure he’d handled things with Valerie poorly at the hospital. Maybe he’d even scared her, which he hadn’t wanted to do. But this morning he was free in every sense of the word, and now he wasn’t. Having that freedom taken away, and replaced with something as unfamiliar and daunting as fatherhood, hurt.
So did the idea of losing the daughter he’d just met—and the reality that he’d already lost another.
“Maybe things could be more screwed up than they are,” he mumbled, leaving his luggage in the back of the SUV and walking to the two-storey portico. But at the moment he couldn’t conjure any scenario that would actually surpass this situation in the “screwed up” category.
The butler, Jasper Thaxton, swung the heavy double doors open before Peyton reached the bell. “I have one question for you.”
Peyton’s shoulders stiffened. Jasper had always been one for formalities and diplomacy, and his closed-off expression and clipped tone displayed neither. “Yeah?”
“Did you do what you had to do?”
Peyton relaxed into a grin. “Yeah.” He offered his hand for a shake and was surprised when the man hauled him into a back-clapping hug.
“All right, old man,” Jasper said, taking his jacket and leading him through the vaulted-ceilinged foyer to the parlor that was still filled with the rich-colored Victorian sofas and armchairs and period tables Estella had collected during her lifetime. “Should I address you as Doctor Turner now?”
“Hell, no. And who’re you calling ‘old man’? For God’s sake, Jasper, is that gray hair at your temples?” After a moment their laughter faded and Peyton hitched his chin upward. “Grandpa in the study?”
Jasper nodded.
“Then give me a bottle of brandy. I’m going up.”
Peyton went to the grand staircase, intentionally avoiding even a glance in the direction of the solarium where he and Valerie used to hang out and watch the sky through his grandmother’s telescope.
He found Nathaniel in the parlor that had been converted into a study long before Peyton’s birth. His grandfather sat in a burgundy club chair with a sketch pad and charcoal in his hands. The room, with its oak walls, heavy draperies and towering bookcases, smelled of leather and wood polish and Nathaniel’s imported cologne. On the nearby table the crystal lily-shaped ashtray that had once been constantly filled with cigarette ashes and cigar stubs was now filled with coins.
“I come bearing liquor,” Peyton said, surprised at the sudden thickness in his voice. Hell, had he missed his grandfather this much? He offered the bottle.
With the aid of a cane, Nathaniel rose from the chair, propped the pad and charcoal on an easel and took the brandy. He glanced at the label, nodded with approval. “Damn good stuff. Too good to be wasted on a man who’s in town on a pit stop.” His voice was rough and as dry as the brandy he held. He looked directly into Peyton’s face with a pair of steel-gray eyes set into a stony, weathered face that drooped slightly on the right. “Are we drinking, or not?”
Translation: Are you staying, or not?
“Where do you keep the glasses?” Peyton replied. He’d returned to see for himself how a stroke had affected his grandfather, and to heed the old man’s cryptic warning regarding his will. But there was no way he would ride out of Night Sky without getting to know his daughter … and Valerie. Long ago he’d known everything about her, but she’d changed and he wanted to find out exactly how much.
Nathaniel pursed his lips, indicated the modest bar across the room and let Peyton pour. Brandy in hand, he returned to his seat and offered Peyton the chair behind the massive black-trimmed cherry desk.
“Can we talk, Grandpa?”
Nathaniel settled comfortably in the chair, inspecting an invisible flaw on the sleeve of his starched white shirt. “Go.”
“Tell me about the stroke.” Had Nathaniel, who in his prime had been larger than life, been trapped in pain so intense that it had stolen his consciousness? Thinking of his grandfather in that situation brought him back to when he was seventeen and had come home from baseball practice to find out that his grandmother had collapsed during her garden club social at Wynthorpe Place. The row house that had once been remembered as a well-preserved tearoom was now more colorfully remembered as the place where Junior League humanitarian Estella Lee Turner had fallen on a tray of quiches du jour and suffered the heart attack that killed her.
“I’d just come home from a business trip to L.A., got hit with a headache straight from hell. I reached out for the aspirin, then my face started to twist and I pissed my pants.” Nathaniel touched his affected right jaw. “Rose found me.”
“Rose?”
“Assistant. Michael passed a few years back.”
Peyton nodded, recalling a pencil-thin man who’d helped keep his grandfather’s business affairs in order. “How’re you now?”
“I’m alive.” The finality in his tone suggested he’d delved as far into this strand of conversation as he would go. “The company’s well. Nora’s executive chairman.”
A mixture of regret and admiration coated the words. Nora Tolliver was a California-bred cousin with barely enough Turner blood but more than enough determination in her system to let her be groomed for the company role Peyton had never wanted. He could only figure she’d spend the rest of her career proving herself indispensible. “I wish her well, Grandpa.”
“Mean that, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Well.” Nathaniel examined his brandy. “For a while now, a girl in town’s been asking about you.”
Peyton took a measured swallow, then set his brandy down on the desk. “Which girl?” He picked up a drawing from the desk and leaned back in the chair. “Valerie Jordan or her daughter?” He turned the drawing around to reveal a colored pencil fashion sketch signed L. Jordan.
His grandfather stared at him, unblinking. The man had a mind for business, an eye for fashion and a hand for drawing. And right now Peyton could almost see him creatively calculating his response.
“My daughter,” Peyton went on, setting the drawing aside. “I saw Lucy and Valerie at Memorial today. I also know about the children’s foundation, in Anna’s name. Why didn’t you tell me about them when I called you from Côte d’Ivoire? Or—or when you found me in Baltimore?”
Nathaniel drained his glass. “Let’s take a walk.”
Peyton capped his temper and followed his grandfather to the garage that housed three new-model sedans, a Hummer, a Rolls-Royce and a tarp-covered motorcycle.
Peyton knew without uncovering it that the motorcycle was his escape bike, the MV Agusta he’d driven throughout Hill Country and beyond when he thought he’d die if he didn’t just get on and ride away.
He watched his grandfather peel back the tarp, revealing the bike he’d given up when he’d left Night Sky. Just one look at the black-and-silver steel made Peyton think of speed, of being twenty-one again—frustrated and simmering with wanderlust. He’d left the bike in the lot at Big Bros’ Cages to follow Valerie to her beater of a car during a rainstorm. The Agusta, the scuffed-up Grand Prix and the damn batting cage were all reminders of the balmy spring night he’d slept with his best friend.
“Remember this, don’t you, son?”
He didn’t answer and fought the urge to go to it.
“When you left …” Nathaniel cleared his throat “… I figured if there was one thing in this world you’d come back for, it was this. This was your freedom. You cared about your freedom more than you did anything else, including Valerie.”
Each word was a sharp needle of truth. The motorcycle helped take him away from his grandfather’s expectations and his mother’s clutches. He’d had friends at UT Dallas, but no one had known him the way Valerie did. But she was rooted t
o her bastard of an uncle’s ranch and couldn’t be extracted from this town.
“So now you’re, what, protecting Valerie from me, Grandpa? Because it seems to me that all the years she and I were friends you were just tolerating her while you paraded me in front of trust-fund society whores.”
An immediate burst of anger turned Nathaniel’s complexion ruddy. “Estella loved her, and she’s the mother of my great-granddaughters. She’s my responsibility now.”
“No, liability.” Peyton hesitated but asked the question to which he already knew the answer. “A Pittsburgh orphan with no breeding and money wasn’t good enough for a Turner, right?”
“Evidently you didn’t think so, not after you went off the deep end.” Nathaniel straightened the tarp over the motorcycle, having expertly deflected the question and thrust an arrow of poison into Peyton’s gut. “I didn’t tell you about those little girls because I didn’t think you’d come back even for them. And I didn’t want them or Valerie to know you were that kind of man.”
“So that was your call to make?”
“Damn right. What—you going to stand there in your wrinkled suit and tell me I should’ve known better? That I should’ve known what kind of man you are? Tell me who you are, then, because I don’t know the boy who made a fool of himself and then let go of his family and friends.”
Peyton stood stoically, but his grandfather’s words stung. He’d made a mess of his life here, and dredging up the memories now was like looking down at a dangerous stranger who looked a lot like him. But he’d had his reasons for staying gone the way he had, and he wasn’t going to apologize for becoming an aid worker and letting that work be the rescue he’d needed then and still needed now. Just like his grandfather wasn’t going to apologize for keeping him in the dark about his children. He’d had his reasons, too.