* * *
The ride to Cunningham Oil & Gas was suffocating. Max turned on the music and didn’t utter a word to me the entire ride. Every once and a while the air would shift, and I’d see him tighten or loosen his grip on the wheel. It made me think he was going to say something, but then he’d exhale and focus on the road again.
When we exited the truck, he still came around to my side, ever the gentleman, and helped me out of the vehicle. The suit I’d worn fit like a glove. I felt strong, powerful, and ready to take on a bunch of stodgy businessmen. The pencil skirt reached an acceptable length with a slit in the back at a decent height. Nothing too provocative. The blouse I’d paired it with was a mint green, showcasing my eyes. The blazer nipped in at the waist and the gray color set off my hair beautifully. Whoever picked it out had done a great job.
As we entered the building, every woman within a fifty-foot radius checked out Max. He did look scrumptious in his black suit and pristine white dress shirt. At his neck, a bolo tie of black twisted leather met at the top in the shape of a star, one that matched the company’s logo. He’d finished off the look with a perfect pitch black Stetson, his blond hair peeking out the back. I smiled and clasped his hand. He inhaled sharply and curled his fingers around my hand. A jolt of electricity and familiarity sizzled at the center of my palm.
“Do you feel that?” I asked, wanting more than anything to know he felt that connection between us. It wasn’t sexual in nature like I’d experienced with other men I’d been intimate with. It just felt right, holding his hand. As though the universe had stuck us together and we were supposed to be there at that moment, unified—connected in a way I couldn’t seem to fathom.
He tipped his head toward me. “Sugar, I’ve felt the connection to you for eons. Ever since I met you that first time when we were little.”
I swallowed down the sob that wanted to tear through my lungs. “You knew?”
He nodded. “I remembered you the moment you got off the plane, but it’s more than that. A tug, if you will. Like a missing part of myself is somewhere else, moving around the earth. A piece I can’t touch or see, but I know is there.”
I shook my head and squeezed his hand tighter. “I don’t understand. It’s like I know you, but I don’t know you.”
Max put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close to his chest. A warm sense of peace and serenity filled my heart and my entire being. “It will be okay. We’ll figure it out. First, we need to get through today and this meeting. It’s go-time, darlin’.” He ushered me off the elevator. My mind was a mix of nostalgia intermingled with the present.
I briefly closed my eyes and saw the boy from my dreams, his eyes so closely matching my own. Shaking the thoughts away, I lifted my chin and tightened my jaw. Jutting out my ample bosom while straightening my spine, I readied for battle. No matter what was going down between Max and me and our convoluted past, the present was now. His birthright, the company his family had owned for generations and built from the ground up, depended on these investors believing I was his sibling. I clutched his hand tightly as he opened the glass door to the enormous boardroom that overlooked the lush landscape and campus beyond the acres of trees.
“Bring it,” I whispered, and he chuckled.
Max led me to a chair at the front of the room. There were only two empty ones left, and at least two dozen more filled with bodies also wearing suits. In the seat three down from the one that Max held out for me was Sofia Cunningham. Her sneer and distaste for me was palpable as I smoothed down the back of my skirt and sat tall. Max didn’t sit. Instead, he stood behind his chair and placed his hands on the backrest.
“Ladies and gentleman, I have called today’s meeting to bring to light a most exciting development. As you all recall, several months ago, my father, Jackson Cunningham, surprised us all with his will. At his passing, we were informed that forty-nine percent of Cunningham Oil & Gas was bequeathed to my biological half-sister, a woman five years my junior who I’d not known existed.” Murmured chatter picked up between small groups throughout the room.
“Quiet, please!” Max spread his arms out wide, and the talking stopped. “My father’s last wishes noted the name and birth date of the woman with whom I share a lineage. Her name is Mia Saunders. Born July fourteenth, five years after I was born. This person to my left is that woman. I am immensely proud to introduce you to my sister, a woman I have only recently begun to get to know, but already feel that familial bond, Ms. Mia Saunders. Stand up, Sis.”
I stood and every single pair of eyes in the room zeroed in on me. A bunch of whispered comments reverberated through the room.
“They look nothing alike.”
“I can see it in the eyes.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“The resemblance is there.”
“No way that’s his sister. Look at her.”
“Her hair is black. His is blond. They are not related.”
This time, when Maxwell quieted the room, it was on a mighty roar. “Enough!”
The faces around the table looked chagrinned and some completely put out. Finally, Sofia raised her hand.
Maxwell tipped his head. “Sofia? You have a comment?”
Sofia placed her hands delicately in front of her on the mahogany conference table, the perfect picture of reason. “As a member of this family and an investor, you cannot expect all the members of the committee and investors around the room to take your word as fact on this matter. There are billions at stake, and generations of Cunninghams have put their good name to this. What proof do you have that this is indeed your blood relation?”
I stared at Max and watched he tightened his fingers, digging into the black leather chair enough to leave crescent-shaped indentations from his nails. “My word, and my honor as this company’s CEO and head of the family, should be enough, is it not?” He challenged Sofia in front of a roomful of their peers.
Her eyes were blazing hot, and her devilish smirk proved what I already had guessed. Nothing but solid, irrefutable proof would be enough to get her to back off. The woman was out for blood and her share of the money. A shockwave of fear scuttled down my spine as I worried my fingers in my lap, twisting them back and forth, wondering how Max was going to get her off the trail.
He tipped his head and stared at his cousin. “If proof is what you need, proof is what you’ll get.” He waved a hand and little Diane, his cheerful personal assistant, briskly entered the room with a remote control clutched in her hand. She was followed in by a sharply dressed African American woman in a winter-white suit. The suit was so bright against her ebony skin that a wave of jealously stole across me. Black women had the best skin, and this woman was breathtaking. Her hair was done in a series of braids tight to the scalp and tied back at the nape, where they fell in ropes down to her bum. Beautiful.
“Thank you, Diane.” Maxwell smiled, and she beamed, patted him on the chest directly over his heart, and crossed over to the two chairs in the corner of the room and sat in one of them. The gorgeous black woman followed, sliding her briefcase beside her chair, and taking her seat, her back ramrod straight. The bright red sole of her sky-high Louboutins gleamed when she gracefully placed one knee over the other. I needed hot “sista” girlfriends. They always seemed to know how to dress. I could take some serious notes on business chic from a woman like that.
Max clicked a few buttons on the remote control, and an LCD screen zipped down from the back wall, the light at the center of the room shining onto the blank screen. A few more presses and a picture of my Nevada driver’s license popped up.
Without missing a beat, Max spoke. “You want proof. Exhibit A. Mia Saunders’s driver’s license proving not only her name is exactly the same as what was written in the will but her birth date as well.” That confused me. I’d thought Millie and Max confirmed that the name was written in a way that you couldn’t confirm what was stated. I’d have to check on that after the fact.
“Is t
hat enough for you, or do you need more?” His question was directed at Sofia.
“Anyone can fake a license.” She waved a hand at the screen, seeming utterly put out.
“Okay, then, Exhibit B. Mia Saunders’s social security card proving her name and her citizenship. Shall I continue?”
Sofia huffed and responded haughtily, “By all means. You’re doing such a great job. Though I haven’t seen anything that couldn’t be refuted in a court of law.”
The next slide stole my breath. Tears built and threatened to fall. I tapped the corners of each eye and stared at the screen, lost in a tornado of memories.
“That is a picture my father had of my mother holding me, next to a picture of Mia. The resemblance is uncanny,” he croaked and cleared his throat.
How could that be? That image was absolutely my mother, much younger, but her nonetheless. I would know her anywhere. And in the picture, she was holding a toddler, perhaps around a year old with blond curls like a halo around the baby’s head. I shook my head, and the tears fell unchecked.
The volume of chatter had reached a fevered pitch.
Sofia’s voice was strained yet she plowed ahead. I had to give it to her. She was the definition of tenacious. “A lot of people look alike, Max.”
He nodded. “True, but there’s more.” He held a hand out to the smart-looking woman and waved her over.
“Members of the committee, my name is Ree Cee Zayas, and I’m the attorney for the late Jackson Cunningham and Maxwell Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham hired me to prove the legitimacy of Mia Saunders’s birthright and familial lineage.” Her voice was cool, calm, and educated. I liked her instantly, but immediately feared the next words she was going to say.
“If you will look at the screen, you will see a copy of Maxwell Cunningham’s birth certificate from Dallas, Texas next to Mia Saunders’s birth certificate from Las Vegas, Nevada. As you can see, the woman listed as mother—one Meryl Colgrove and her social security number, shown clearly on both legally binding documents—is exactly the same. This document would be binding in a court of law and proves that Maxwell Cunningham and Mia Saunders share the same birth mother.”
The room went silent. Absolutely nothing could be heard. A shockwave of sensations hit me hard. I stopped breathing and trembled under the proof staring me in the face. Unaware of the tidal wave of emotions battering me into a loopy mess, the tears poured down my cheeks. Maxwell heard the shift in my voice as I swallowed a sob. He crouched next to me, one knee on the floor, clasping my hands painfully. I didn’t care. I was numb, shaken to my core.
Max placed his lips over my hands and kissed the tops over and over again. “I should have told you the truth,” he whispered. “For-Forgive me.” His own feelings overwhelmed the words so much that he stuttered with the effort to get them out.
I was incapable of responding, but that wasn’t the end. No, the beautiful woman I would later come to think of as the “dark angel of life-changing events” didn’t stop there. “Due to the extreme nature of the birthright and the monetary amount at stake within the company, I felt it prudent to go deeper and a DNA test was done. A sample of hair was taken from Ms. Saunders’s hairbrush and the results were compared to the results from Mr. Cunningham. You’ll see on the screen that the results are conclusive: Maxwell Cunningham and Mia Saunders share identical maternal genetic markers that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are indeed half brother and sister, issue of the same mother.”
That’s when I lost it, as did the rest of the room. I couldn’t hear myself think over the roar of conversations at the table. I just sat there, unmoving, trying to pull the pieces of my life into something resembling a reality I could understand. Nothing came. No amazing bouts of wisdom, no perfectly placed analogies to explain away how the little boxes and lines on the screen in front of me had ultimately changed my life…forever. I was no longer Mia Saunders, the girl who raised her baby sister, whose mother left her at ten, with a father who was a knock-down drag-out drunkard. I wasn’t just the woman who was ass-over-tits in love with a man far better than she was. It was all becoming clear to me that I was more.
I, Mia Saunders, was Maxwell Cunningham’s biological sister. A man at the helm of an empire and family I knew absolutely nothing about. The documentation could not be denied. Max was my half-brother.
“Mia, Mia, sugar, please, say something. Anything,” Max pleaded from his position on his knees in front of me. I looked down into the exact same pale green eyes that my mother gave to me, to Maddy, and also to him.
“You’re my brother.” The words came out of my mouth on a gasp.
Max nodded. “I am.” He scanned my face, as if he were looking directly into my soul and seeing a piece of himself.
“My real brother,” I repeated.
“Yes. And you, you’re my baby sister.” He swallowed and licked his lips. The lines around his eyes seemed more pronounced, under the weight of what he’d been keeping hidden inside.
“Oh my God. I can’t…” I sucked in a breath. “Maddy!” Tears fell down my cheeks, and he cupped my face and wiped them away with his thumbs, caressing my cheekbones.
“Yes. Now you understand why it was so important to get her here. She deserves to know the truth.”
I closed my eyes and thought about Maddy and what this information would do to her, to our family dynamic. In a flourish, I pushed back the chair, Max’s hands going to the floor to catch the weight of his large frame. Standing, I scanned the area for the nearest exit.
The need to flee was strong, a prickly, painful sensation, like an exposed nerve being zapped with electrical pulses, and I realized the full severity of the situation. This was no longer pretend. Max had brought me here because he’d known this information all along and waited until we were in front of all of these strangers to disclose the truth.
I’d wanted to be Maxwell’s real sister. Had contemplated it several times over the past ten days. At that moment, things were so jumbled up in my brain I wanted to scream, scratch, and howl until everything, my life, but more importantly, the truth was put back together and Pandora’s box closed tight and buried never to be found again. I bolted out of the room with the single thought—be careful what you wish for, because it might come true and leave your entire world hanging in the balance.
Chapter Nine
The hood of the truck was cool to the touch, chilling my palms as I leaned against it, bending over at the waist, looking down at my feet.
Just breathe. In…Out…In…Out. Repeat. It will all make sense soon.
I repeated the mantra over and over until the sound of gravel crunched underfoot behind me and a pair of black cowboy boots entered my vision. He didn’t speak for a long while, which I appreciated. Eventually the jack hammering of my heart dulled to a normal rate, and I stood and turned around, allowing the front of the truck to hold me up.
Max stood before me, shoulders slumped, and a deep frown marring his otherwise handsome face. His eyes, mirrors of my own, were cloudy and uncertain. “Mia, I—”
I held up a hand to stop any further excuses. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
He inhaled, brought both hands in front of him, and cracked his knuckles. “There’s no excuse. It’s just I wanted to get to know you, spend time, maybe allow the truth to come out naturally…”
“Naturally, as in a room full of fucking strangers when I can’t react! What the hell were you thinking, Max?” I yelled, not holding a lick of anger back. “Right now, all I can think is why would you want to hurt me?” I sucked in a harsh breath as the tears threatened again.
Max lifted his hands and walked over to me. I couldn’t back up or flee as his arms bracing me in against the hard metal of the truck prevented further movement. “Mia, I’d never willingly hurt you. That wasn’t supposed to come out like that. I didn’t know Sofia was going to ask all those questions, and it all happened so fast.” He shook his head. “Christ on a cross. You’re my sister. Sugar, I alr
eady love you.” His pale eyes turned dark and stormy as his jaw clenched, and a muscle at the dip of his chin ticked. “Mia, I’d die before intentionally allowing anything to hurt you.”
I closed my eyes, not able to watch the honesty break us both. He loved me. My brother. I had another living, breathing sibling. Holy shit, this was intense and I didn’t know the first fuck how to handle it. All I knew is that I had to get out of there. “Take me home.”
“To Vegas?” His voice broke.
“No. God!” I blew out a breath. “Back to the ranch. I need time. And I need to figure out how the hell I’m going to tell Maddy about this.”
Max nodded, unlocked the truck door, and opened it for me. He got in and started up the truck. When we were about ten minutes from the ranch, he covered my knee with his hand. “I know this doesn’t mean much right now, and I know you’re trying to digest all this, but I’m really glad you’re my sister. After Dad died, before we found his will, I was completely lost. When I found out I had a sister, someone who shared my blood, it gave me a new purpose. Something good and right to focus on. When I saw your picture on that site, looking exactly like my mother… I knew it was all going to come together as it should. That finally, I wouldn’t feel alone.”
“But you have Cyndi and Isabel, and soon, your son. You’re never alone.” I covered his hand over my knee and squeezed, the ice in my heart melting at his admission.
He nodded. “Yes, and they are the most perfect part of my future. But there’s something special ’bout sharing a parent. Like we’re two sides of the same coin. I also had this feeling, like I told you. Then when I saw you and remembered that we’d met a couple times a long time ago, I just knew it was true.”
August: Calendar Girl Book 8 Page 9