Texas Redeemed

by Isla Bennet

  Be a grownup, right? But she wasn’t a grownup at all. She was barely thirteen and was losing touch with everything she cared about: school, friends, family … and where she belonged.

  A knock on the door made her jump so violently that she thought she’d hit her head on the ceiling. She scraped the magenta pencil over the paper.

  “How’s the design coming along?” Nathaniel asked, his face forever serious-looking despite his smile as he came striding into the study with his cane tapping on the floor.

  She held up the drawing for his critique. After he offered revision suggestions and listed ideas to consider in her next sketches, she started returning the pencils to their proper slots in the container.

  Nathaniel sat in the chair opposite the desk, as if settling in for a long discussion. He gestured with his weathered, tanned hand to the display case … to the empty spot where her father’s pocket watch had been before she’d swiped it. “Of all the things in my study to take, you chose Peyton’s pocket watch. Any reason in particular?”

  Lucy dropped the pencils, and they clattered onto the desk before freefalling to the floor. “Gramps, I didn’t …” There was a lie inside her somewhere, but she couldn’t get it to surface. “I’m sorry.”

  “That I caught you?”

  “Uh-huh,” she confessed, the raw honesty feeling a little strange. “I shouldn’t have taken it.” She retrieved the pocket watch from her bag and handed it to her great-grandfather. The displeasure in his steely gray eyes was plain. She could only imagine her parents’ reaction.

  “How do you feel, Lucy?”

  “Freaked out.”

  “Now wasn’t that articulate.” Nathaniel waved his cane about the room. “Don’t Peyton and Valerie and I provide well for you?”

  Lucy trembled as his booming voice seemed to bounce off the walls. “I said I’m sorry.” She returned to the leather chair, feeling like an ant sitting before a giant. “The pen you gave my dad for Christmas, and the antique you went crazy looking for? I took those, too. I want to get them back, but they were pawned and I don’t have enough money to buy them.”

  “Pawned.” Nathaniel drummed his fingers on his knee and the signet ring glittered. “Who pawned them?”

  “My grandmother.”

  Nathaniel went completely still, and for a second she feared he was going to have a heart attack sitting in the chair. “Marin Beck?”

  Lucy went on to explain Marin’s visits to the middle school and the threats and blackmail. “Everything she said was bogus. I thought she would love me and not see me as a screw-up, but she’s whack.”

  “We’re all screw-ups in one way or another, my girl,” he said blithely, holding up the gold pocket watch. “Peyton told me he’d give this to you one of these days. It’s a sad thing if you don’t value it the same way he does.”

  “But why would he give it to me anyway?”

  “Tradition? Love?” Nathaniel opened and closed it. “Maybe he believes you’re capable of guarding it the way he has.”

  Lucy frowned. “How come? I was so bratty to him when he first came back, and I thought he was a jerk.”

  “And then he got to know you.” Nathaniel shrugged. “Furthermore, would I mentor you in fashion if I didn’t care about or believe in you?”

  “You’re just being nice.”

  “Rubbish. People describe me as many things. ‘Nice’ isn’t one of them.” He pointed to the drawings on the desk. “There’s talent there, and there’s potential in you. My boy, Anthony, rose and fell too soon in this business. Peyton’s a square peg in a round hole when it comes to fashion or fame—just as well, since his heart really is in medicine. But you can be a fit for this.”

  “As a career? Not just some big dream?”

  “It takes talent, brains … courage. You’re not tough enough. Not yet.” He stood, paced the room with a slightly hunched gait. “I revised my will a few months ago, wanted your father to meet you first and your mother to get used to the idea, so they’d understand my decision.”

  “What decision?”

  “To see to it that your skills are honed, that you’re educated in business and finance and are prepared for your future in fashion—in Turner Menswear. There will be changes to the brand, a women’s line incorporated. I want you to play a significant role.” Nathaniel stopped pacing, and now stood beside the desk. “I never imagined my grandson would be with a woman like Valerie. I never imagined you, Lucy. But you’re here and … well, I’ll be damned, I trust you with my legacy.”

  Lucy leapt from the chair and made a beeline for him. She didn’t care what anybody said—he was nice in his own way. “Thanks, Gramps.”

  “Your whole life is in front of you. But lying and stealing and betraying your people aren’t the ways to go about things. Sometimes you just don’t get a do-over.”

  “IT’S CALLED SURVIVOR’S guilt.” Doctor Helene-Ming Fish, a therapist from Memorial, hefted the moving box marked Attic Junk into the U-Haul and crouched to pick up another. When Valerie had shown up at Peyton’s hotel room and admitted what had gone down with Lucy, he had hunted up the Memorial mental health department business card his emergency-room colleague Marlon Greer had given him months ago. He’d refused to call Helene-Ming for his own sake, had instead relied on training at Diego Aturro’s gym to keep his mind anchored. But he didn’t want Lucy to cope that way, or to eventually take up a “pack-a-day” habit … or to drown her problems in alcohol or avoidance or lies.

  The therapist had responded to his page even though it was after-hours and she was very newly wedded and in the middle of moving out of the hideously colorful Victorian she had shared with two other single women.

  “Essentially,” Helene-Ming said as Peyton handed off yet another box, “Lucy’s had these symptoms since the death of her sister. She either feels responsible for Anna’s death, or believes she’s the one who should’ve passed away.” She turned away from the truck to look at him and Valerie with sincerity in her almond-shaped eyes. “She’s a trouble magnet at school, forces herself not to cry and keeps secret the nightmares that send her to a bathroom for safety or escape. Peyton, you said the song she listens to the most often is ‘Tears in Heaven’ and that she would choose to be a bird just to fly away somewhere to fit in.”

  Yet he’d done nothing about it, not even when he’d first been concerned about their daughter’s nightmares. How could a doctor miss the obvious signs that his own child was depressed?

  He swore, and muttered something to that effect.

  “This isn’t about anyone’s failure,” said Helene-Ming, reaching for a laundry basket filled with bonsai trees.

  “Why would she choose now to chop off her hair and start sneaking off?”

  “Any new upset or feeling of being out of control would intensify the condition.”

  His child had a condition, and he hadn’t realized it through all the months of her strange behavior and his suspicions. “I came to town a few months back. We got close, the three of us. We were starting to be a—”

  A family.

  Beside him, Valerie inhaled sharply and busied herself touching the blooming flowers on the bushes flanking the Victorian’s old wrought-iron gate.

  “But you’re not anymore? Is that it?” Helene-Ming inquired. At his nod, she continued, “Not getting what she wanted could’ve further fueled her problems, but I’d say the damage was really already done and there’s something more at play here. May I meet Lucy for an evaluation? I’d like to get her—and both of you—through this. I don’t usually do sidewalk therapy—” As if to punctuate her point, a loud trio of kids on ten-speeds zipped down the cracked, aged street. “—but knowing that a listener is readily available can help.”

  The Lincoln was deafeningly silent as they rode to the hotel, but before Valerie could jump out and hurry off in her own car to pick up Lucy from his grandfather’s house, he said, “We need to talk—without a referee.”

  Valerie shrugged. “Yeah. Fine
.”

  In his suite he tossed his keys onto the espresso-finished buffet in the sitting area and turned to see her just behind him, her gaze washing over his stacked suitcases on the sofa. “You’ve been here a while and haven’t unpacked. Tying up loose ends before you go?”

  Are you asking me to stay? he wanted to volley back. “What if I was?”

  “Oh, you’re baiting me? That’s why you asked me up, to provoke me?” She stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “Please, let’s quit here. Thanks for connecting me with Doctor Fish, but your job’s done now. Congratulations, you’ve got your freedom back. Goodbye.”

  Goodbye wasn’t something he ever wanted to say to her, but …

  “Are you turning this on me? You sent my mother out of town and were lying to me all the while I was falling in love with you. Damn it, you’re the one killing me—every time you look at me like I’m the enemy. Every time I think about you and know I can’t touch you. That’s killing me.”

  “You never wanted any of this—love, kids, a future with me. You want to be a doctor without borders, right? A doctor without attachments.” Valerie snorted, crossed her arms over that old flannel shirt with its scratched snap buttons. “And Marin was right. The second you found out that I’m not perfect, you dropped me. So go to Africa. Go to hell, for all I care.”

  “It’ll be hell without you.” Peyton curved his hands over her shoulders, even though he’d lost the right to be this close when he’d chosen to keep from her his choice to continue aid work … and when he’d hurt her with the demand for a paternity test. “What if I did go? You’d react like this? Get scared that I won’t come back? Are you that damaged?”

  “I’m not damaged,” she seethed, skirting around him and encountering the buffet.

  “You are.” He leaned close. “So am I. So’s our daughter, and everyone else roaming this planet. If they’re not, then they haven’t lived long enough yet. It’s called life, and we’ve got to deal with it.”

  “That’s it? We hurt each other, you get the urge to take off, and we’re supposed to deal with it? Forget that.”

  Peyton’s hands ended up in her hair. “It’s not an urge to take off, Val. It’s an urge to help people in need. And I would always—” he roughly kissed her forehead and temples “—always—want to come back to you. You think I want to throw away what we mean to each other? To give up the chance to touch you … and taste you?”

  He did just that. His hands slid from her hair down to her hips, and he kissed her. There was no finesse, just the eager, frantic mating of mouths.

  Peyton reached for the front of her shirt and yanked hard, and the sharp sound of the buttons unsnapping was music. Then his temperature spiked when she kicked aside her shoes and peeled off her jeans. “Why would I let this go?” he ground out between clenched teeth as his fingers drew the crotch of her panties aside and found the slick heat between her thighs.

  Valerie moaned his name, her fingernails digging into his shoulders like talons as she grew hotter and wetter, and he drove his fingers deeper.

  He lifted her onto the buffet, and she leaned forward to kiss him as he shed his clothes. And then he was naked in front of her, bringing her to the edge of the buffet, nudging her legs open wider for him.

  Valerie raised her arms and braced her palms on the wall behind her, and she groaned with closed-eyed abandon as he filled her with one hard thrust to the hilt.

  “Watch,” he said to her, the word firm, his voice husky with his own arousal. When she opened her heavy-lidded eyes, he withdrew almost to the tip of his erection, then thrust again to be rewarded with a throaty whimper.

  “Trust this.” He pushed relentlessly, faster, and the force of their bodies had the buffet striking the wall in tempo with their movements. “Trust me.”

  “I want … I want you out of my system.” Her back arched and her thighs tensed as she let go. Then he took what she offered, bracing his hands on her knees and plunging deeper … closer … until he groaned into her mouth.

  They stayed locked in that position, her on the buffet with her legs wrapped around his waist and her hands cradling his head to her shoulder, for several minutes—not speaking but breathing heavily.

  Peyton’s tongue wicked away a droplet of sweat from her throat, then his mouth took hers in a deep, dark kiss. “I’ll never be out of your system.”

  Valerie’s hands dropped to his shoulders. “But I’m out of yours? Remember, you don’t love me anymore.”

  He didn’t want to go there, didn’t want this to be about anything more than instinct, simple need … and maybe weakness. Sex was what they got right together. But the consequences of it—expectations, children, love—tripped them up. “I didn’t say you were out of my system, Valerie.”

  When his phone rang inside his discarded pants, he stepped away from her with a pang of regret and hunted for the phone. A glance at the screen had him grabbing the pants off the floor and pulling them on quickly.

  “Grandpa,” he greeted with every effort to hold his voice steady, and, hearing that one word, Valerie sprang down from the buffet and gathered her own strewn clothes. “Is everything all right with Lucy?”

  “It’s not,” Nathaniel said. “She’s been stealing from the house. Your ink pen, that old antique of Estella’s that went missing after one of her visits. Today I put your pocket watch in the study, left her there alone, and when I came back it was in her bag.”

  Peyton stopped halfway through zipping up. “Why the hell would she steal anything—”

  “Steal?” Valerie repeated with alarm, rushing to him.

  Nathaniel said something inaudible and Peyton held the phone between Valerie and himself. “Say that again, Grandpa. We couldn’t hear.”

  “For Marin. She’s been stealing for your mother.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  PEYTON EASED HIS SUV to a stop in front of the rundown apartment complex, turned off the headlights and in dark silence scanned the rows of grime-and-grit-covered windows along the upper floors. Which one of them offered a view into his mother’s apartment—the place where she had routinely taken his daughter without anyone being the wiser?

  A shout and the crash of shattering glass came from inside an apartment on the ground level, and Peyton momentarily shut his eyes in barely controlled anger. The thought of his teenager spending time here on a daily basis—many instances with his mother passed out on a futon, according to Lucy—was a fresh welt on an age-old wound that had never really healed.

  Marin had used his daughter as a minion, a thief to do her bidding. But it wouldn’t happen again.

  Engaging the security lock on the SUV, he strode to the complex’s outer door and found that it lacked a doorknob. Its replacement was a crowbar affixed to the inside of the door, with its curved, pointed end protruding out of the hole in the door meant for a knob. He gripped it and pulled, and was inside the dingy building.

  Apartment 3E, his daughter had told him after he and Valerie had arrived at his grandfather’s house. They’d driven their respective vehicles; despite the passion that had drawn them together earlier, tension remained.

  As he ascended the stairwell to the third floor, he remembered Lucy’s stricken face and how her shoulders shook when she apologized for what she’d done. And he remembered that Valerie had been ready to hold her own, was hungry for a confrontation with the woman who’d manipulated an innocent child even as she agreed to just take Lucy to the ranch.

  In the beginning, and in the end, this was his war with his mother, and he didn’t need anyone to fight it for him.

  He found 3E and knocked—hard.

  The door swung open to reveal a woman he barely recognized. One of his father’s trademarks was his taste for high-caliber women; a beautiful face, graceful body and luscious hair could always turn his head. It was a story Peyton had known almost his whole life but hated to recall—how his mother, a young waitress, had bent over his father’s table showing cleavage and a smile
while serving his entrée, and had ended up as Anthony Turner’s hotel room companion by the end of the night.

  He couldn’t reconcile that woman, or the one who’d found him at Memorial and said all the right things to make him believe in her again, with the drunk Marin Beck in front of him. “Peyton … hi,” she said, opening the door farther.

  At her unspoken invitation he entered the threadbare apartment, storing the details of the place that his daughter had frequented for months. Utilitarian furniture, opened cupboards that revealed emptiness, a half-full bottle of Absolut on the counter and next to it a plastic cup brimming with the stuff.

  “Three guesses why I’m here.”

  Marin dropped the smile. “Want your Turner heirlooms back? Want to throw a fit because I spent a little time with my granddaughter?”

  Peyton had already been informed that both the pen from his grandfather and his grandmother’s antique were gone, though Nathaniel was still working to trace the items. “You took her from school without her parents’ permission. You took her to places in Meridien you know damn well a thirteen-year-old girl shouldn’t be!”

  “Grandparents have rights.”

  “Not the right to have her buy alcohol and cigarettes. Not the right to mess with her head just to feed your damn addictions.” He spat a humorless laugh. “If you hunted down Lucy, then no doubt you found out about Anna. Too bad you couldn’t use them both to steal for you.”

  “Shut up, goddamn you!” Marin pounded her fist on the ancient Formica counter, making the vodka bottle wobble. “It hurts every day to know Anna died. How can you think I don’t even care? She was my family! My fucking family.”

  “What does family mean to you?”

  “Ohhh,” she said, curling her lip the way he’d seen his daughter do, “there’s that Turner self-righteousness. Here’s the story. Your father used me, left me with a child I had no idea how to raise or support.”

  “You used each other. He got a good-looking woman and you got a meal ticket.”