The Moment of Truth

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Give your Josh a chance to explain....

  Dana’s phone vibrated against her thigh where she’d dropped it. Glancing down at the display, she didn’t recognize the long-distance exchange.

  As long as it wasn’t Josh. Or Cassie.

  She flipped on the speaker phone. “Hello?”

  She made a turn, and another one. And passed a place she knew she’d seen before. Because she was getting closer to home? Or because she was going in circles?

  “Is this Dana Harris?”

  She glanced around, looking for anyone who might be out there, watching her. It was odd to get a call from a stranger out in the middle of nowhere.

  But the voice was female.

  “Yes, who’s calling?”

  “This is Barbara Redmond, dear. I believe you know my son?”

  The car swayed to the side. With a jerk on the steering wheel, Dana guided it back to the center of the road. If she’d have been holding her cell phone, she’d have dropped it.

  “Yes,” she said. Had Josh called his mother? Was the woman calling to buy her out?

  Oh, God.

  Be calm, she reminded herself. She hadn’t known Josh was an heir to a fortune when she’d had sex with him. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Joshua is going to be furious with me,” the woman said in a formal tone that left Dana feeling as if she was talking to royalty. “I’ve debated this call for several hours and believe that for once in my life I must interfere in my son’s life.”

  She’d been right. Here came the buyout. Dana remained silent, prepared to let the scene play itself out.

  She wasn’t selling her baby. Or taking any money to disappear, either. She had enough problems without creating more.

  “I am understandably prejudiced, but my son is a good man, dear.” The woman sounded as though she thought she had to justify her actions.

  “I agree,” Dana said. Because she did. She made another turn. Passed a dirt road she hadn’t seen before. Other than some run-down shacks and a dark hogan or two, she hadn’t seen any sign of life in miles. Every road in Indiana led someplace, eventually. These roads had to, as well.

  “Yes, but the thing is, Joshua doesn’t agree,” Mrs. Redmond was saying. “His father drove him hard, you see. There were problems when Josh was born and we knew he was the only child we would ever have. From the time that boy came home from the hospital his father was determined that Josh was going to be the best at everything.”

  The trouble with being the best was that you were setting an impossible goal. She’d tried it herself. For so many years. To be the best daughter. The best student. The best furniture store manager. It had never been enough for Daniel.

  “I should have stepped in sooner, but J.P., that’s Joshua’s father, Joshua Phillip II, Joshua is III...”

  Her head spinning, Dana looked at the long stretch of empty road in front of her, and out to the darkness on either side. She’d heard there were mountain lions and coyotes and javalina and rattlesnakes and all kinds of other things in the desert. All of which came out at night.

  “As I was saying, J.P. is very good at knowing how to get people to do exactly what he wants them to do. He pushed Joshua, but he gave him a lot of freedom to do as he pleased, as well. I told myself that the two balanced each other out. And then Josh showed such a talent for the investment business his father had groomed him to take over. What was more, he loved the business as much or more than his father did. They had that in common and I thought it was good. Maybe it made matters worse.”

  She liked Barbara Redmond’s voice. And couldn’t think about the fact that the refined woman on the other end of the line was grandmother to the baby inside her.

  She also appreciated hearing the truth about the father of her baby. Finally.

  “Things were fine until Josh asked Michelle Wellington to marry him.”

  The Boston heiress. “I knew things weren’t right. Joshua didn’t act like a man in love. But I wasn’t privy to their...private life. J.P. isn’t a demonstrative man, either.”

  “Mrs. Redmond, I—”

  “I’m sorry, dear, I know I’m going on, but I must ask that you humor me just a minute or two longer. I am getting to my point.”

  Dana wasn’t sure she could take much more hurt at the moment. At least not while she was in the desert. In the dark.

  “Michelle always had a thing for Josh. Since they were kids. He’d never seemed to notice, and truth was, he hadn’t. He asked her to marry him because it was time. He was of an age when the business needed him to have a wife on his arm. A proper wife. Because Josh’s duty to his father and me, to the family, had been engrained since birth, he didn’t consider any other option.”

  So he hadn’t loved her? Dana was confused now.

  And then she wasn’t. Josh didn’t need to love his wife. He just needed to marry a woman who was “proper.”

  And buy a house for the woman who wasn’t.

  She thought she saw lights in the far distance. Another car? Hopefully a good Samaritan as opposed to someone up to no good.

  Maybe she should instruct her baby’s grandmother to dial 9-1-1.

  “Michelle misunderstood Josh’s proposal. She assumed he’d chosen her over all the other women because he was in love with her. No one but her sister knew how much Michelle loved him. But I should have known. Should have seen. The night of Josh and Michelle’s joint bachelor-bachelorette party, Josh made some comment that showed her how very little he really knew her, and she had a bit of a breakdown. She drank everything she could get her hands on, mixing alcohols and consuming far more than her body could handle.”

  The lights were definitely coming toward her. It seemed like more than one car. After hours of seeing no vehicles at all.

  “Sometime after midnight her sister found Josh, who’d been partying with some of his friends in another part of the suite, and told him he’d better take Michelle home. She expected Josh would know to stay with her. But as I guess was normal for them, Josh hadn’t seen Michelle all night. He had no idea the state she was in. He knew she was drunk, but didn’t think anything of it. He took her home, put her to bed and left her there to sleep it off, returning to the party. Her sister stopped by to see her the next morning and Michelle was unconscious.”

  The woman had died. Dana could hear it coming.

  And had never ached as she did at that moment. What Josh must have put himself through...

  All of the times he’d told her he couldn’t be relied upon came crashing down on her as she sat there.

  She knew him well enough to know he’d have seen Michelle’s choice to drink so much as a failure on his part. A failure to do his duty. And, as his mother had just said, and as Dana had witnessed during the weeks she’d known him, duty was everything to him.

  “Michelle lived.” Barbara Redmond’s words broke into her thoughts. The lights ahead were still pinpricks, but getting closer. The distance in the flatness of the desert was deceiving. She had no idea how far she was from Shelter Valley. Or the California state border, either. How far was Mexico? She’d been told only a couple of hours from Shelter Valley. Had she been driving that long?

  “Did Josh marry her?”

  “No, dear. She had alcohol poisoning, went without oxygen for too long. She’s in a vegetative state, living in a long-term care facility.”

  Oh, Lord. Oh, my Lord.

  “When word spread about what had happened, people talked. Everyone had opinions on whether or not Josh should have left Michelle alone that night. And about his lack of attention to her in general.”

  In other words, Josh thought it was his fault that the beautiful Boston heiress had lost all quality of life. So many things made sense. Except the lies...

  “When Josh came to me to tell me that he
had to leave town because he believed his presence there was bad for the company, for the family, and too painful to Michelle’s family, I didn’t believe he was making the right choice. Gossip happens. Especially to people with money—folks like to point fingers. But it also passes.... Josh is a rarity among our crowd. An honest man who tries to make business deals a win-win even at the cost of losing a few. His father is that way, as well. People know that. The talk would have stopped and life would have gone on. The Wellingtons, Michelle’s parents, were distraught, of course, but they never actually blamed Josh. Because, ultimately, the decision to overindulge was Michelle’s, not his. She’s an adult and Josh was not her keeper. He wasn’t even in the same room, where he could have seen her behavior. Her sister was, though.”

  She understood.

  Everything but Josh’s lies to her.

  “Josh visited Michelle every single day when he was in Boston,” his mother said. “He insisted on paying for her care, including the three full-time caregivers. And now, I hear, trips to gardens, as well, even though she doesn’t appear to have any sense of being there. Michelle doesn’t even recognize him. She’s not aware of her surroundings at all. But Josh still went to see her. And didn’t go out anymore, socially, at all. That’s why I finally agreed it might be best for him to leave. Because I couldn’t bear to see what being here in town was doing to him.”

  As Dana watched the lights grow closer, and made out at least four vehicles, seemingly all traveling closely together, she listened to Barbara Redmond tell her about having recently found the branch of her family that had settled in Shelter Valley, Arizona. She’d been at peace with Josh’s leaving as long as she knew he was with family, and so he’d agreed that Shelter Valley was where he’d go.

  They’d come full circle. She still didn’t understand why Josh had pretended to be something he was not. Why, even after he’d known about their baby, he hadn’t told her who he really was.

  But Mrs. Redmond had done what she’d set out to do. She’d raised Dana’s sympathy for Josh to the point where she was ready to agree to whatever his mother thought was best for him. At least in theory.

  If the woman was determined to buy her out, she’d at least try to reach a compromise with her. Something that would serve all of them.

  “You can’t imagine how thrilled I was to receive his phone call this afternoon, telling me that he was going to be a father.”

  What?

  Frowning, Dana pulled off to the side of the road. She kept the car running. And locked. She’d start moving again before the vehicles approaching in the distance got too close.

  “Then he told me about buying you the house,” the woman was saying. “And the other things, and I’m afraid that he’s going to blow his one shot at happiness.”

  She didn’t follow.

  “And that’s why I’m calling,” Mrs. Redmond said. “I’m going to interfere just this once....”

  And then it occurred to her. They weren’t going to try to buy her silence. They were going to take the baby from her.

  All of the blood drained from Dana’s face, and it felt like her extremities, too. The Redmonds were richer than the city of Richmond. She’d have no chance in a legal battle with them.

  Josh must have known. Which was why he hadn’t wanted to tell them about the baby.

  Or maybe he’d told them, but hadn’t wanted her to know who he was, the power he had, until he had his custody arrangement all wrapped up.

  “My son is in love with you, my dear. I assume you’re in love with him because I’ve yet to meet a girl who didn’t fall for him, and I just want you to know, right now, that he loves you, too. But he said he’s not going to marry you, and I don’t think you should settle for anything less.”

  Tears blurred her eyes again. The lights in the distance were growing so close they appeared as a kaleidoscope of colors through the tears. Dana blinked. She had to pull out into the road.

  Had she heard the woman right?

  “He’s in love with me?”

  And she remembered her insistence that Josh make his parents believe their story. As she recalled, her cooperation had hinged upon his ability to do so.

  The tears continued. The cars came closer. The kaleidoscope grew. And then she saw part of the reason for the sudden rush of color—a police bubble on the top of the first car. It was almost upon her now.

  Followed by a vehicle she recognized because it had been parked in the driveway of her duplex many times over the past couple of weeks. And had a spot in her new garage, right next to her car.

  Give your Josh a chance to explain....

  Or a chance to be free.

  “Mrs. Redmond? Josh is here and—”

  That was as far as she got before Josh was pulling her out of the car and into his arms, to the squealing chorus of two puppies who’d just peed all over the front seat of her car.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE ROAD WAS ABLAZE with color. Headlights from at least six vehicles. The blue-and-red flashing bubble from the top of Greg Richards’s car.

  “If you ever do anything like this again...”

  He held Dana’s body up against him. Or perhaps it was she who held him up. His relief was so great he couldn’t be sure who was holding whom at the moment. Leaning her back against her car, he pressed his body against hers, placing his shaking hands on either side of her face.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay, Josh. I was lost. Not hurt. I have plenty of gas and would have found my way back. I always keep a bottle of water and some hard candy in the car, and I had my phone.”

  He had the whole blooming town out looking for her and she hadn’t needed him?

  “You’ve been crying.”

  “I was on the phone.”

  He wanted to ask with whom. “You didn’t answer any of my calls.”

  “I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  But she was holding him. And letting him lean on her. In front of the whole crowd gathering behind him.

  They’d wait. He was Josh Redmond—and a Montford.

  “I was engaged,” he said. Knowing he might only have this one chance to explain.

  “I know all about Michelle, Josh.”

  “I haven’t told anyone here.”

  “Your mother called me.”

  His mother?

  “She thinks you love me, and that you’re going to get so caught up in your sense of duty that you’ll blow things and lose your one shot at happiness.”

  His mother thought that?

  Yes, he had a strong sense of duty, but he was also...

  Without a lot of time.

  “I asked you to convince them and you did.”

  Dana was so calm. Even with her cheeks still wet with tears. And he was like a blind man struck dumb.

  “But you don’t have to lie anymore, Josh. You’re a good and decent man, just like your mother said. And from what I can tell, you’re blaming yourself for something that isn’t your fault. Michelle was a grown woman....”

  In true Dana fashion, she was going on and on without pausing for a breath, seemingly unaware of the small crowd gathered behind them. They’d all agreed to give Josh however much time he needed. Before they got their turn.

  “Michelle should have told you how she felt,” Dana was saying matter-of-factly, as if she wasn’t pressed up against a car in the middle of nowhere. “She also knew, which you didn’t, how much she’d had to drink that night. Whatever problems she had might have been exacerbated by you, but not caused by you.”

  She and his mother had obviously been talking for a long time. And he could tell by the look in her eyes that he’d hurt her.

  “I just want you to know, Josh, that I’m not going to hold you to any of this. Your
whole plan, the money you’re spending... We’ll work something out, but you are not beholden to me, or duty-bound to give up your life to—”

  Putting his finger to her mouth, Josh applied pressure. He couldn’t take any more.

  “I love you.” It was the most honest thing he’d ever said. And as uncomfortable as the words were for him to hear, they also freed something inside of him. Something far bigger than any mountain-climbing high or multimillion dollar deal.

  He hadn’t needed to hear his mother say he loved Dana to know. He’d just needed to think, if but for a second, that he’d lost her.

  “I...”

  “The proper response would be ‘I love you, too,’” he quipped.

  When her eyes welled over, Josh took his first easy breath of the day.

  “I love you, too.” Her voice broke.

  “But?” He heard it there, in the tenuous threads.

  “Josh, there are at least a dozen people over there, watching us.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “They’re speaking among themselves,” he said. “And you can bet every single one of them is going to be telling this story, one way or another, for the rest of their lives.”

  “What story?”

  “The one where the billionaire begs the most popular girl in town to forgive him for coming to the party so late and asks her to marry him.” He paused. His whole life rested on this moment. The deal he couldn’t close.

  He had to wait for her to do that.

  “Josh—”

  “You said you love me.”

  “And you lied to me.”

  He’d known it was coming. And knew that if he didn’t get this right, he was going to lose her. He’d been thinking of how he was going to explain things to her for days. And had come up empty.

  He was still empty. Of everything but the truth.

  “I didn’t come here to fall in love, Dana. I told you from the start that I couldn’t be in a relationship with you. Or anyone. Because of the lie I was living. I had to make good with the life I’d been given. Had to find who I was without the money and privilege that had made me so insensitive to those around me.”