by Rachel Cross
“Does Asher know you notified him?”
“I told him I would.”
He was silent for the count of three heartbeats. “Maddy, he won’t forgive this,” he said, gently.
Maddy wiped her streaming eyes. “I know.”
“If you didn’t have any success persuading him to do the right thing — ”
“You have to try.”
“Do I?” His voice was cold.
Anger surged through her. “Yes. You do. He’s your son. Ella’s your granddaughter. Work it out. This is a chance for you to do the right thing for a change. I tried and failed. Now it’s your turn. If you really want what’s best for Ella — ”
“Of course I do.”
“Then you know what you need to do. What’s wrong with you people?”
Chapter 21
The intercom buzzed a few minutes before midnight and Asher leaped to his feet in a surge of hope and longing. Maddy had come to her senses.
“Asher, let me in,” Sterling Lowe’s voice commanded over the intercom.
The bottom dropped out of his stomach, leaving him hollow, numb and vaguely nauseous.
He couldn’t muster anger. Emptied of fury after Maddy left, Asher was left with sorrow and self-pity. He pushed the button to open the gates, turned off the security code and opened the front door to wait as the motion detecting spotlight flicked on to illuminate a black car approaching.
The limousine driver hopped out and tipped his hat to Asher. The man opened the door and helped Sterling out of the car, then went to the rear of the vehicle, popping the trunk to pull out a large suitcase.
Asher narrowed his eyes. If his dad thought he was staying, he had another think coming.
His father climbed the steps slowly.
Asher’s scowl relaxed into a frown; the man was in his seventies after all. “I’ll take that.” Asher took the suitcase from the driver at the top of the steps, thanking him.
He waited until the driver had made his way back down the steps. “What do you want?”
“Maddy called me.”
Of course she had, damn her. He followed his father across the threshold into the house. Asher shut the door forcefully and punched in the alarm code to arm it.
“Come on in.” Asher led his father into the living room and switched on a light. “Can I get you anything?”
“A drink would be welcome.”
Walking over to the cabinets across the room, Asher pulled out an amber bottle and two glasses. He had moved his liquor into the cabinet when Ella arrived. One of the many concessions he made to having a child in the house.
He poured them each a drink and handed one glass to Sterling, who had seated himself in the armchair. His father examined it as Asher lowered himself gingerly onto sectional. Taking a sip, Asher savored the initial almost spicy taste, the harmonious blending of oak and honey and countless other flavors too complex for him to identify and unique to this particular fifty-year-old single malt Scotch.
Sterling took a healthy swallow. “Balvenie,” he said approvingly, raising his glass.
Asher gritted his teeth. “You were expecting Jägermeister?”
His father put the glass down on the side table with more force than was strictly necessary. “What do you want from me, son?”
What did he want from the old man? He didn’t know anymore. “You’re the one who showed up at,” Asher glanced meaningfully at his Anonimo watch, “midnight.”
“Would an apology cover it?” Sterling asked.
“Cover what?”
“My parenting? The email hacking? All of it.”
He sat up on the sectional, lazy affect forgotten. “What?”
“A blanket apology?” Sterling asked, his voice not quite steady, “or a specific apology for all the times I mistreated you, neglected you, underestimated you … ”
Asher narrowed his eyes. Is he mocking me?
“I’m serious.”
“How about for threatening to take Ella from my custody? You could start there.”
The room was silent as his father considered him. “I think that would fall under the ‘underestimated you’ category,” he said. “I was sure you weren’t up to the task. I apologize for not understanding the depth of your character, your ability to care for and love your five year-old niece, and change your life to accommodate hers. I don’t know why I thought you incapable of that, since you took care of your sister all those years. I guess I wanted to believe it so I could keep Ella.”
Asher’s throat thickened and he took a slug of Scotch.
Sterling leaned forward, hands on his knees. “You must understand now why I was willing to do anything to make sure Ella was well taken care of. Today of all days.”
“If you came here to convince me to give Ella to her father — ” he said fiercely.
“I didn’t. I came here to try to repair our relationship.”
Asher stared. “Odd timing.”
“Yes,” Sterling replied.
He examined his father. Still sharp, but aging rapidly. No longer hearty, yet not quite frail. What the hell. Other than Ella, he didn’t have any family left. He refused to count Jacqueline. She was worse than no family at all.
“So I apologize.” Sterling pulled a sheet of paper and his reading glasses from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
“What is that?” Asher asked.
“It’s a list of my transgressions,” he replied, his expression deadly serious.
Asher recoiled and raised his hands, sloshing the amber liquid in the glass. He took another desperate swallow. “Not necessary.”
“I think it is,” he asserted with quiet dignity. “First on the list is Jacqueline. I’m sorry I saddled you with such an unbalanced person — ”
Asher snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“ — for a mother. She gave me you, and that part I can’t regret.”
His eyes bored into Asher, who refused to meet them. God. This was torture. Baring souls when he was emotionally raw from Maddy’s defection? “Sterling, please. Not now.” He didn’t need this, couldn’t handle this.
“It’s important, son. I got custody since it was pretty clear she wouldn’t take care of you. If I couldn’t live with her problems, a child certainly couldn’t, but I didn’t behave as a father should,” Sterling said formally. “I didn’t make you my top priority, and I’ve only had the sense to be ashamed of that the last few years. Since Dee and Ella came back into my life.”
This needed to stop. Right now. The raw emotions of the day combined with the alcohol made this degree of honesty intolerable. He would not lose it in front of his dad. His father continued down the list. “So I’m sorry for being a workaholic, a negligent and neglectful father to you and Delilah.”
Asher blinked rapidly. He drained the Scotch and put the glass on the coffee table.
Breathe.
“I’m sorry I was so dismissive of your career initially.”
Asher looked up at that. “Initially?”
A broad smile split his father’s face. “Only initially, son. I’m a huge Spade fan.”
What? Iron control kept Asher’s jaw from dropping.
“I can see you don’t believe me. Hmmm. What will convince you?” He brightened. “I have t-shirts!”
“Oh come on,” he scoffed, “you can’t expect me to believe that. You don’t even wear t-shirts.”
Sterling shook his head. “Oh I don’t wear them. I have them under glass, lining the walls of my bedroom.” He smiled, proudly. “I usually go to a couple of shows each tour, but I only get one shirt.”
Asher covered his mouth with a hand. Was he being punk’d?
Ster
ling rubbed his hands together. “The last one in Tokyo was amazing. That light show? Spectacular!”
“You like our music?” he said.
His father bobbed his head. “Oh yeah. Your sister dragged me to a show once, a few years before she had Ella, and I’ve been hooked ever since.”
“You went with Dee?”
“Only once or twice when you were playing in Los Angeles.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I knew you wouldn’t want people to know. Wouldn’t want that old press dredged up on how you wouldn’t have made it without my backing. I didn’t want it to be about me. But I am proud of you.” He dropped his eyes back to his list. “So I’ve covered Jacqueline, being an absentee father and not being supportive of your career initially. Dee was always telling me I should stop harassing you about your lifestyle.” He took off his glasses and sat back. “Once everything changed for me, once Dee had Ella and I became involved in their lives, I was worried that you were taking after me.”
“Taking after you?” Asher echoed, horrified.
Sterling gave him a long, sad look. “Yeah. That’s what Dee told me. You don’t see it. You don’t see that you’re a workaholic — ”
No. He wasn’t anything like the old man.
“ — afraid to create your own family because of the mess I made of mine.”
He fixed his father with a narrow-eyed glare. “Bullshit. The timing, my career — ”
“Asher, you’re almost forty.”
“And I have about a good life. Good friends.”
His father nodded. “Oh, I know. I know all about Alec and Kate, Shane, Justin. You have people you love and people who love you, but have you ever gotten to that place with a woman, where you wanted to spend the rest of your life taking care of her?”
Something in his face must have given him away, because his father’s expression registered surprise, followed by pity.
“Like you’d know something about that,” he said hotly, though immediately he regretted his outburst. He sounded like a teenager.
Sterling leaned forward. “Just because I made bad choices about women, son, doesn’t mean you have to. Is that the lesson you took from my poor choices? That it’s better not to love? At least I tried.”
“Did you? Did you love Jacqueline and Irene and Katherine?” Asher forced out through a stiff jaw.
“Yes, and that probably says more about me than about them. I loved all of them, maybe for the wrong reasons.”
“Even Jacqueline? I find that hard to believe.”
“Especially your mother.” Asher watched his father’s knuckles turn white on the crystal tumbler. “I’d made my first million, and there were a lot of women interested in me for my wealth. Your mother didn’t care about money. She had a career and money of her own. She was beautiful, smart, accomplished, and charismatic. At least that’s what I saw.”
Asher’s lips curled.
“It’s hard to reconcile what I thought she was with who she is.” He sighed. “She’s disturbed, Asher. She always has been. We had a whirlwind courtship. I was madly in love with her and thought she felt the same. People tried to tell me about her problems, but I wouldn’t listen. She was incredibly manipulative and highly intelligent, and I made excuses for her, tried to change my behavior to make her happy. After she gave birth to you, the writing was on the wall; there was no interest, no empathy, no maternal instinct — only manipulation and drama — and it was a lot more frightening with a child involved.”
Asher eyed him, suspicious. They had never discussed his mother’s problems. “She’s been diagnosed?”
“Oh yeah. Personality disorder, lack of empathy, call it what you will.”
“What about the other two?”
“I married Irene because I thought she’d make a good mother. She was emotionally stable and wanted kids of her own. She insisted I give custody to Jacqueline. Back then mothers always got full custody. I wouldn’t hear of it so that ended in less than a year.”
“Wow. Uh … thanks.”
“You don’t have to thank me, son. These were my mistakes, but I wasn’t going to compound them.”
“So, Katherine?”
He shrugged. “What can I tell you? She was the opposite of your mother. Contained and calm, but cold — about people, anyway. She gave everything in her to those damn horses. There was no room for anything else. I didn’t try too hard to make that work, and I was no great prize.”
“How can you say that?”
“Asher, I was a self-absorbed, workaholic control freak until about five years ago. I was a lost cause. And I can’t be sorry about Katherine either; she gave me your sister, a gift I didn’t appreciate until it was almost too late.” Tears filled his eyes and he fumbled for a handkerchief.
For the second time that night Asher lost his own battle with emotion. He forestalled his tears through sheer force of will, but he covered his face with his hands.
His dad rubbed at his eyes, cleared his throat and twisted the cloth in his hands. “I’ll never be able to thank Delilah for keeping me close — no, for forcing me into her life after she got pregnant despite my initial resistance. I didn’t know how to be a father or a grandfather, but Dee and Ella showed me the way and it has been a humbling experience. So the least I can do Asher is share the love I feel for you the way they shared their love with me. I want to be a family with you again. I hope my apology is a first step. I know it can’t happen overnight, but I’ll do whatever it takes,” he gave his son a hard look, “with one exception.”
“And what is that?” Asher asked, but he already knew.
“We do what is best for Ella. Not you. Not me. Ella.”
“And I suppose you know what that is?”
Maybe this was one long, elaborate manipulation after all.
“No. I don’t,” he said. “I got wind that you were investigating Ben and his family, so I did too. By all accounts, they are church-going, loving, and close-knit. No skeletons in the immediate family, though there’s a cousin with a terrible meth problem.”
Huh. He hadn’t gotten information on the drug addicted cousin.
His dad smiled. “I’ve been at this a lot longer than you, son.”
“Why didn’t she tell anyone who the father was?” Asher asked. “If he’s such a great guy with a good family, why didn’t she want Ella to know her dad?”
“I can’t answer that and if her journals don’t, then I guess we’ll never know.”
“So, now what?” Asher asked.
“Now we figure out what to do.”
Chapter 22
When the cough started a week earlier, she hadn’t thought much of it. It was inevitable that she would get sick — after all, she lived with a five year old and it was winter. Everyone around her seemed to be sick.
After that scene with Asher, it was no wonder she was overwrought and exhausted. But why did her body ache so? These chills were new, and she’d had enough fevers in her life to know something was seriously wrong. Breathing was increasingly difficult and painful, and she couldn’t seem to stay awake. It was easier to breathe if she propped herself up on a few pillows so that’s how she’d been sleeping. Dozing really. Good thing she brought water in with her on her last trip back from the bathroom. The last time she’d tried to stand up, she almost ended up on the floor.
God, it was miserable being this sick and alone. She needed to get to her purse in the living room and make a call to her doctor. Later. She would do that later. Now she needed sleep.
It was dark when she woke again — early morning, evening, overcast? No clue. Time to get that phone. She fought the befuddlement, the pounding headache. Why was it so hot in here? Why was she back here at her apartment? Oh yeah.
; Asher. Had his dad arrived? Did he hate her now? It was too tiring to think about. She tried to sit up all the way. Nope. Too dizzy. She lay back on her stacked pillows, resting, then tried again to lever herself up incrementally. Not good. She needed to call the doctor. Maybe get someone to take her there. She certainly couldn’t drive in this condition. Slowly she swung her legs over the side of the bed, and slid out the side, ending up on her hands and knees on the thin, worn carpet.
Gingerly, half-crawling she made her way into the doorway, where she rested. Had she ever been so out of breath? She coughed to try to clear her lungs.
God. Instant, sharp, debilitating pain seared her chest. She continued to make her way toward the living room, crawling down the hall, panting. Her purse was there, on the coffee table. Not far now. She made her way over to it, reached inside for her phone, its weight comforting. She pulled it out and stared. Pushed the buttons. Nothing. Dead. Panic stirred. Her charger was at Asher’s. She had no landline. Maybe a neighbor?
She pulled herself up until she was leaning against the couch. A bone-jarring shudder went through her. Her hands rose to her face, hands that no longer seemed connected to her body. She was hot. Really, hot. Panting, she sat, stuporous with fatigue.
She swam up to consciousness to the sound of pounding. That damn neighbor blasting his music again. She sighed inwardly. She hated to go confront him about it, but it was really much too loud. Her walls were shaking. Hmmm. That had never happened before. She heard her name. More pounding. She tried to raise herself up from where she was, prone on the floor. No. Too weak. Ah. Asher. She could hear his voice now. Frantic. She tried to call out to him but couldn’t do more than whisper. That sent her into a coughing fit. Paroxysms of pain swept through her and she moaned.
There was a crash, then arms encircled her aching, ultra-heated body. Asher’s arms. She opened her eyes. “Asher,” she whispered.
He didn’t reply. He was talking to someone on his cell phone.
“Sick,” she said. She looked up into his face and saw tears in his eyes. His face was taut with grief and pain and something else. Fear. His eyes were wild with it. She could hear him talking, but the words slipped away, her feverish brain unable to decipher them. He adjusted her position until she was more upright. She gasped with pain, but she could breathe a little better. She wanted more than anything to raise her arm to stroke his beautiful, tortured face, but her body refused to cooperate as her hands laid listless against her body. Another chill swept through her. Bone-jarring like the last. He stroked her hair with gentle hands. Sometime later, through blurry eyes, she watched an endless stream of people in uniform come through her door. That was all she knew.