by Leanne Davis
Diversions
by
Leanne Davis
www.leannedavis.net
Table of Contents:
Copyright
Dedication
Other Titles by Leanne Davis
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dear Reader
My Other Titles
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Diversions
COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Leanne Davis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: [email protected]
Publishing History First Edition, 2014 Digital
Digital ISBN: 978-1-941522-04-2
Edited by Sophie Logan: [email protected]
Cover Design by Steven Novak: [email protected]
Dedication:
To anyone who’s ever had a dream and gone for it.
This was the start of mine.
Other Titles by Leanne Davis
Diversions
River’s End Series
River’s End
River’s Escape
River’s Return
River Road
River on Fire
River’s Lost
River of Change
The Sister Series
The Other Sister
The Years Between
The Good Sister
The Best Friend
The Wrong Sister
The Years After
The Broken Sister
The Perfect Sister
The Lost Sister
The Remaining Sister
The Step Sister
Daughters Series
Christina
Natalie
Melissa
Emily
The Zenith Trilogy
Zenith Falling
Zenith Rising
Zenith Fulfilled
The Seaclusion Series
Poison
Notorious
Secrets
Seclusion
Chapter One
“What is this?” Christine Andrews smacked the manila file folder down on the desk in front of her fiancé’s nose.
Trent Gallagher jerked his shoulders back as coffee sloshed from the cup he’d been lifting to his lips. He tilted his head up. “Christine? What the hell?”
She ignored his shock and his spilled coffee seeping into his gray slacks. “This? What is it?”
He leaned across his desk to grab tissues, which he blotted his pants with. He cursed under his breath as he finally sat back down and shifted his gaze to the folder.
“You want to tell me why you’re coming at me like I’m a prisoner to be interrogated? What’s wrong?”
She glared at him as she tapped the folder. “This. I want to know what this is.”
He visibly swallowed and stared her down. He didn’t glance at the folder again, for she was sure he had noted the label on the side of the file: Jason Malone. He had to know exactly what this was and why she was so pissed off. She stiffened her spine and crossed her arms over her chest. Trent’s assistant was eyeing them. She had stormed into his office, leaving the door wide open, and her voice was loud.
“You have a brother?”
He sighed deeply and finally dropped his gaze. “Why don’t you shut my door?”
She had to bite her tongue to keep from saying a nasty retort. Instead she quickly turned and slammed the door shut for privacy. No doubt reputation-conscious Trent didn’t want anyone to know he had lied for years about the fact that he had a brother.
“Fine. We’re all nice and private. What the hell is this?”
“Where did you find this?”
“Your apartment.”
He sighed heavily at her sarcasm. “I know where. But how?”
“Oh, nice try. Try to deflect what you’ve hidden by distracting me. You sent me there, remember?”
“I sent you to grab the Reddington file.” He had called her an hour earlier asking her to please run by his apartment and grab a file he needed for a meeting later today. He had forgotten it at home, and since she had almost nothing to do, she was, of course, available to do so. She had graduated from college only three weeks before. Since then she had packed up from the condo she had lived in for the last four years in Seattle, while attending Seattle Pacific University to move back home to Almstad. And now, home, living with her parents, she had nothing to do for the first time in her entire life.
“Well, I didn’t listen to where you said it was. Being the college graduate that I am, I assumed the big gray file cabinet might be a likely location for where the Reddington file was. Little did I mean to stumble on to the fact that you have a brother.”
He leaned back in his chair and considered her with a hard gleam in his eyes. His mouth tightened. “Yes, but why did you look in a file marked anything other than ‘Reddington’?”
“I was searching through the files. They open as you flip, I happened to see Terry Gallagher. It caught my eye, so I slipped open the file. It’s not like I was doing a search and seizure on your apartment. I accidently saw this. But that is so beside the point. The point is, why the hell don’t I know that you have a brother?”
Trent pulled at the tie around his neck. He wore slacks, a white shirt and blue tie. He was her father’s assistant. Therefore, here at Andrews Enterprises, he was important. Far more important than even the vice president or senior production manager because Trent Gallagher had a direct vein into the great and powerful Aaron Andrews, her father. Aaron had started the video gaming design and production company so-titled Andrews Enterprises in the mid-seventies. He had started out of his garage, and he now owned the multi-use twenty-story building that housed his empire. He was a huge force in the local economy.
“Sit down. I’ll tell you.”
She tapped her toe, tempted to not sit down. Tempted to yell at him some more. But that would be childish and beneath her. So she sat down to wait out whatever excuse he could have for lying to her.
“Jason Malone is my half-brother.”
“Half-brother?”
“Yes, he’s my dad’s son.” Terry Gallagher, Trent’s dad, was the mayor of Almstad. He and her father went back over a decade from when Terry’s law firm had been Andrews Enterprises lawyers.
“Terry has another son? How? I mean, who did he have it with and when?”
“It all happened before I was born. Dad cheated on my mom with some woman he met in a bar. It should have meant nothing. Only...”
“He got her pregnant.”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
Trent sighed. “And he’s paid his debt for this mistake, believe me. The woman is crazy. Her name
is Irene Malone. She’s been in and out of jail for the last twenty years. Everything from drug possession to stealing. She came at my dad for money. He’s had to spend plenty on her just to keep her quiet.”
Christine shut her eyes in horror. First because Terry Gallagher had paid a woman to keep quiet about his own son, and second because she could tell Trent thought Terry was the victim here.
“Wait. He paid to keep this woman quiet about his own son?”
Trent shook his head. “No, it’s not like that. He was married to my mom, and I was on the way. It was never his son.”
She blinked in utter shock. “His sperm, his son. What don’t you get about that? He simply paid the woman off?”
Trent shrugged. “At first. But she kept coming back to him. She was never satisfied. She—”
“Wanted child support?”
“No. It was never that cut and dry.”
“Well, it kind of is. He didn’t want anything to do with his own son? This Jason Malone?”
“Jason was never his son. I am.” Trent’s voice rose in frustration.
She shook her head at the childlike simplicity of his argument. “Do you really believe that? That Terry had no obligation to this child he made, even if he didn’t intend to?”
“I believe he paid the mother.”
“Yes, but what about taking care of the child?”
Trent shrugged. “Dad made one mistake. Why should have to pay for it with the rest of his life?”
“Yes, Trent, he should have, when that mistake was another human being.”
“You just don’t understand.”
“Why have you never mentioned this to me?” She felt like she’d recently ripped off sunglasses and was glaring into the sun. How could she have missed that Trent could so easily, so callously disregard another human being? A person he was related to. Brothers with. And how could he so successfully hide it from her?
Trent rolled his office chair back. “Because Jason is nothing. Nothing to me. Nothing to us. And certainly, nothing to our future. There was no reason to mention him.”
“Why do you have a file on him? If he’s so nothing, why would you have a file on him like he’s a criminal you’re investigating? I mean, it lists his address, his employer, his yearly income, his Social Security number, it goes on. Why, Trent, do you have a file like this on the half brother you don’t have contact with?”
Trent ran a hand through his neat, shiny brown hair. His blue eyes sparked with frustration. “We have some contact.”
She froze. “So, this Jason Malone knows Terry is his father? Have you met him?”
Trent frowned. “Of course, I’ve met him. Irene Malone made sure everyone in a five-mile radius knew Terry was his father.”
“Everyone except your fiancée.”
“I meant when we were younger. Of late, we’ve…handled him.”
She full-on gave up. What the hell was Trent talking about? Handled him? Paid the mother off. An estranged half-brother. Who was the man before her? “Handled him? How? Tell me exactly how you’ve handled him.”
He pressed his lips together. She could physically sense his hesitation. There was something more he did not want to tell her. Trent shook his head and hunched forward to lean on his desk as he said, “Okay, the thing is when my dad decided to run for mayor, we knew Jason was going to be a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Yeah, we couldn’t have this guy suddenly shouting it from the rooftops he is Dad’s son. His mother is a drug addict and a petty thief. We can’t be associated with such things. My dad’s election was based on bringing safer streets and core family values back to Almstad. To promote such values, we could not have a Jason Malone in our closet. So we tried to protect ourselves from what his existence would mean about my dad.”
Trent had started working for her father directly out of college as a low-level manager. He had quickly shown a proficiency for details and a meticulous nature that appealed to her father’s anal, perfection-seeking way of doing everything. Plus her dad and Terry were good friends, and even better business associates. She had met Trent while coming to visit her father one day in her freshman year at college. And it was that same year Terry had started his campaign for mayor of Almstad. A relatively minor political position in some towns perhaps, but being mayor of the town that hosted Andrews Enterprises made Terry someone important in the state.
“Protect yourselves how?”
He picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers. He was stalling and obviously did not want to tell her how. “We bribed him.”
“You…what?”
“We had him sign a confidentiality agreement we had drawn up stating he would keep quiet that he was Dad’s son in exchange for thirty thousand dollars.”
Her jaw popped open and her eyes bulged. Was he for real? “That is the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard! Is that even legal?”
“It’s legal in that all parties agreed. If he breaks it, he has to repay the money. It’s not like we threatened criminal action or anything. Just an incentive for him to simply let Dad proceed forward without fearing what Jason may or may not do.”
“An incentive for him to pretend he’s not your dad’s son? On how many levels do you not get that is a repugnant way to treat someone?”
“He’s estranged from us anyways. There was no victims here, Christine. It’s not a tragic situation as you are making it out to be. It’s adults simply formalizing what was already so.”
“Still—”
“Christine?” Her father’s voice interrupted her as he swung open Trent’s door. “I thought I heard your voice.”
She stood up abruptly. “Dad, hi.”
He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. He glanced at her and then to Trent. Trent had risen at her father’s entrance. He always treated her father with the upmost respect and deference. “Is everything okay?”
She forced a smile. Trent’s eyes held hers in a silent plea. He obviously didn’t want her father to know what they’d been arguing about. “Yes. I was just delivering the Reddington file.”
Her father stood a foot over her. He was tall, dark-haired, and had the bearing of a supreme commander of an army more than an ordinary business man. He was very serious, intense, and intelligent. Most feared or revered him. Her included.
She adored her father. She truly did. But he was also the one person in the entire world she could never totally please, and the one she most wanted to. Yet, she could never fully explain why it was she didn’t please him. By most other parents’ standards she’d always behaved as the ideal daughter. She was well-spoken, polite, attractive enough, did well in school and extracurriculars. She was well-groomed and well-read. But if she brought home an A, it was, why hadn’t she bothered to take the advanced class? If she was accepted to SPU, why didn’t she want to go somewhere more prestigious?
“Ah, I see. Good. We need to go over the numbers on that, Trent. Are you available right now?”
“Sure, of course.” Trent nodded, grabbling around his desk for the file she’d thrown to the side of the more important issue: his estranged half-brother.
“Do you mind, Christine? We need to get to it before the meeting, so we don’t have long.”
She smiled and waved her hand. “No. Go. I was just leaving.”
He smiled and exited the office. She swung her fierce glare to Trent. “We are not done discussing this.”
He exhaled deeply and rushed around his desk to kiss her cheek. “I know. I know. We’ll discuss it. Just…don’t get too into this. It’s just not that big of a deal.”
****
Jason walked into the waiting room after Bill, his boss, yelled that he had a visitor. Who the hell would be visiting him at work? And who could it be that Bill didn’t know? Bill knew everyone around Almstad.
He paused in the doorway and stared inside. A twenty-something girl stood looking out the storefront windows, her profile to him. She had long curly hair that reac
hed her elbows and skirted around her shoulders and back. She wore jeans with a crease ironed through them, and a long black rain coat that reached her knees. There were diamonds sparkling on her ears and at her neck. Who the hell was she?
He stepped inside. She turned at the scuff of his shoes on the concrete floor. It wasn’t the typical setting for a woman like her. Usually this time of day, the waiting room was full of harried-looking mothers or retired people waiting for their cars. Primarily they did oil changes and tune ups. Kelso’s Auto Garage, which Jason was the head mechanic at, didn’t typically have women sporting diamonds that looked to be worth his year’s salary.
She checked him out from head to toe. Her gaze came back to his, strong and sure. “Jason Malone?”
Her voice was crisp, cool, and confident. Unflappable. If she was nervous to be so obviously out of her element, she didn’t show it. No shuffling of her feet or twisting of her hands.
“Yeah,” he said, leaning casually into the door jamb, his gaze running over her. “Who are you?”
She came towards him, her hand outstretched. “My name is Christine Andrews.”
He blinked. That couldn’t be right. The only Andrews he knew appeared sporadically on his local news channel. “Andrews? As in...?”
She sighed as the side of her mouth lifted. She was obviously used to the instant recognition her name inspired. “Yes, as in Aaron Andrews. He’s my father.”
Okay. He was shaking hands with the daughter of one of the richest men in Washington state. What the hell was she doing here, and what did she want with him? Andrews Enterprises single-handedly put the small town of Almstad on the map, and employed three quarters of the once-fledgling, used-to-be logging town. If not for Aaron Andrews basing his company here, Almstad would have long died away as a forgotten relic of past times. Instead, Andrews Enterprises had revitalized and saved the town so that businesses like Kelso’s Auto Garage could thrive.
He had never heard any mention of Aaron Andrews having a daughter.
“And what can I do for you? Does your car need work?”