Deciding he deserved a day in court no matter how damaging things might look, she parked her carry-on at the foot of the stairs and moved toward the sofa. She would wait for Brian to come home as she’d originally planned and then she would ask him to explain.
She moved toward the sofa and stopped when she saw a piece of red cloth sticking out between the cushions. She quickly strode over to the sofa and snatched up the panties that had almost gotten buried between the cushions. Panties monogrammed with the initial D.
She threw the panties down and then dropped on the sofa. Feeling the pain of a broken heart, not only in her chest but in every part of her body, she buried her face in her hands and cried.
With an inward sigh April kicked off her shoes as she walked out of her bedroom. She appreciated the fact that the makeup shoot had ended early today and she would spend the rest of the day relaxing. A soak in her Jacuzzi sounded nice for later, but first she needed to go into the kitchen and find something to eat.
Moments later she was in the middle of preparing a salad when her intercom went off. She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and she moved across the room to answer it. “Yes, Denny?” she greeted her doorman.
“There’s someone to see you. A Ms. Sanders.”
April blinked. Why was Erica in Los Angeles when she should be in Dallas by now? What could have happened to make her change her plans? “Yes, please let her come up.”
April placed the salad in the refrigerator and quickly moved to the door when she heard the doorbell. She hurriedly snatched it opened and gasped in disbelief, almost losing her balance in shock. “Mrs. Sanders! What are you doing here?”
Without waiting for an invitation to come inside, the woman walked past April then turned around with a cold look on her face. “It’s time that we have a talk, April.”
The minute Brian opened the door to his condo, he found it hard to believe his eyes. Erica had consumed his mind and thoughts all day, and now she was here. But instead of the sexy greeting he expected, she crossed the room and pounced on him.
“How could you do this to me? To us? I loved you! I trusted you!”
A shocked Brian reached out to grab Erica’s hand before it could make contact with his face. “Erica, what are you doing here? What’s wrong? Why are you upset?”
She snatched his hand from hers. “Like you don’t know. I arrived today to surprise you and I found out about your little tryst. How could you do this to us, Brian? How could you?”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded furiously, not knowing what the hell she was talking about.
“This!” she said, hurling a piece of fabric in his face. “Remember these?”
The item fell to the floor and he reached down and picked them up. Ladies panties? He glanced back at her, confused. “What are you accusing me of, Erica?”
She placed her hands on her hips. Fire was blazing in her eyes. He had never seen her this angry before. “You tell me, Brian. I found them sticking out of your sofa cushions. Do you want to tell me who they belong to?”
He stiffened visibly. “If they were stuffed under my sofa then I would assume they are yours, Erica. The last time you were here we made love on that sofa several times, or have you forgotten?”
“They aren’t mine,” she almost screamed. “I would not wear panties monogrammed with the initial D. So tell me, Brian. Who do they belong to? And as you’re trying to come up with a name, you might as well tell me why a woman’s perfume is all over your room, who slept in the bed with you last night and whose red lipstick is on your shirt collar on the floor in your bedroom.”
He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “No one slept in my bed last night and there is no fragrance in my room other than my aftershave and there is no red lipstick on my shirt in my room.” He hadn’t made his bed this morning, but there definitely hadn’t been any perfume on anything and his white shirt had gotten tossed in the laundry bin as usual. What the hell was she talking about?
“Come on, Erica, let’s go up to my bedroom and you can show me what you think you saw.”
“What I think I saw? Oh, so now you want me to believe I’m crazy and that I’m imagining things?”
“No, that’s not it at all, but if things are like you say then there has to be a reason for it. One I don’t know about, like those panties. If they aren’t yours then I truly don’t know who they belong to.”
“I don’t believe you!”
He stared at her incredulously and then anger seeped into his body. “How in hell can you say that you don’t believe me when I’ve never given you reason to doubt my love or my honesty? What kind of crazy thoughts has your mother been feeding you these past three weeks?”
“My mother has nothing to do with this. She hasn’t mentioned you and she thinks I’m visiting April in L.A. I lied to her to come here.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why would you have to lie to your mother to come see me? You’re a grown woman who doesn’t need permission to come see the man you’re supposed to love.”
She glared thunderously at him. “Please don’t try shifting the blame from you to me. My mother had nothing to do with me finding out the man I’d planned to marry is screwing around on me. I know what I found here today, Brian. And you can have this back because there won’t be a wedding!”
She pulled off her engagement ring and threw it at him, hitting him on the cheek before it fell to the floor. He grabbed her before she could get out of his reach and jerked her to him.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on here, Erica, but don’t end things like this. If things are as you say then something is going on that I know nothing about. I love you, baby,” he whispered gently, close to her ear. “Please believe that I would not destroy our love or cheapen it in any way.”
For a moment he thought he had gotten through to her, but then she twisted out of his arms. “No,” she said, with tears streaming down his face. “You couldn’t love me and hurt me this way. I warned you about that woman who works at your office, but you evidently didn’t heed my warning.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That day I was here and she was jogging by wearing red lipstick and Allure perfume. And the panties had the initial D. Didn’t you tell me her name was Donna?”
He clenched his jaw. “I have not been having an affair with Donna, Erica. How could you think that of me?”
“Why shouldn’t I? Like mother, like son.”
He flinched as if he’d been slapped. “You’re wrong for that, Erica,” he said, as hurt filled his lungs to a bursting point. His body ached and he felt wounded all over.
“And you’re wrong for what you did,” she replied. “Just stay the hell away from me. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
She grabbed her carry-on and stormed out of the house.
Chapter Thirty-One
April crossed her arms over her chest. “I doubt there is anything we have to talk about, Mrs. Sanders. And why are you here in L.A. and not Wyoming?”
Karen sneered. “Maybe I should be asking why Erica is in Dallas and not here. The two of you thought you were smart to pull something on me, but me being here shows I’m a lot smarter than either of you.”
April shook her head. She could so clearly remember the day Erica had brought her home from school for dinner. Mrs. Sanders had acted as if April was no better than the mess on the bottom of someone’s shoes. She hadn’t even pretended to like her and, in fact, she would go out of her way to let April know just how much she detested her. Erica always said it was just the way her mother was and not to take it personally, but for some reason April had always taken it that way.
“My visit won’t take up much of your time,” Karen said, placing her purse on the coffee table and sitting down.
She glanced around. “Nice place you have here. You have certainly come up in the world, April.”
“I would say thank-you if I thought for one minute you meant it.�
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Karen smiled. “You and I are more alike than you think. You see something you want and you go after it. You’ve always wanted Griffin, haven’t you?”
April saw no reason to lie about it. This woman couldn’t hurt her and she most certainly would not let her intimidate her any longer. “Yes, that’s right.”
Karen shook her head with a sad expression on her face. “I wished I had known before now. I could have saved you a lot of pain.”
“Could you have?”
“Yes. You can’t have Griffin.”
April glared. “Why? Because you refused to give up your obsession that he and Erica get together?” The woman had a smug look on her face and April could feel her flesh beginning to crawl.
“Yes, but that’s not the only reason.”
“Is there another?”
Karen smiled. “Yes. Have you ever wondered about the identity of your father?”
April shrugged. Even if she had she would never admit it to this woman. “Not really.”
“Then maybe you should have. It would have spared you a lot of grief now.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Karen threw her head back and chuckled. “That doesn’t surprise me. You were never very bright, and your mother had even less intelligence.”
April filled with rage. “How dare you say such a thing about my mother. I want you to leave.”
“Not until I have my say. You can hear the truth from me or you can read about it in the Hattersville newspaper when I tell everyone, which will ruin any chance of Griffin becoming a politician.”
“What truth?”
The smile that appeared on Karen’s face was so cold that April felt chilled to the bone. “The fact that the two of you share the same daddy. In other words, April, Griffin is your biological brother.”
The woman’s words were like a hard blow and April felt her head spinning. She lost her balance and sank into the chair beside her.
She closed her eyes, thinking this was all a bad dream and when she reopened her eyes Karen Sanders wouldn’t be sitting across from her with a smug look on her face, looking as if she had finally delivered the fatal blow to destroy her forever. A question rang through her head—one that had always been there, where Mrs. Sanders was concerned. Why did she hate her so much?
April had once mentioned it to her grandmother, who’d merely shrugged and said the woman had issues, always had and always would. Nana had told her to ignore her and her ways, and most of all to pray for her. For a while April had done just that, asking God to somehow change the woman’s heart. But so far he hadn’t.
“That’s not true,” April heard herself say over the rush of blood in her head. “There’s no way Herbert Hayes is my father.”
“Oh, but it is true and I have everything I need to prove it. You are just another of his bastards, trust me. He’s got them spread all over town. Imagine what the people of Hattersville will think when they find out you and Griffin have been engaging in incestuous activities. It will destroy any chances he has for ever becoming mayor. As for you, well, the tabloids will have a field day with it.”
April fought back the bile coming up in her throat. She needed to make it to the bathroom. She needed to get the woman out of her home.
She stood on wobbly legs. “Get out, Mrs. Sanders.”
Karen stood. “Oh, I’ll leave as long as we understand each other. I want you out of Griffin’s life. I also want you out of my daughter’s life. You are not and never were fit to be her friend. I don’t care how you do it, but do it. Because if you don’t, I will make good on my threat.”
“You are crazy. You are a demon. You are—”
“A woman who intends to get what she wants, which is a marriage between Griffin and Erica.”
April was at that moment convinced the woman was crazy. “But Griffin and Erica don’t love each other. Why can’t you see and accept that? Erica loves Brian.”
Karen waved off April’s words like they meant nothing. “Love doesn’t do anything but cause heartbreak. Erica will soon find that out. And as far as Griffin is concerned, I can see how he could be infatuated with you since you are a pretty girl, but beneath that covering you are still the slut your mother was. You know what they say—the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“My mother was not a slut!”
“Oh, but she was. Everyone figured she was hopelessly and foolishly in love with Ivan Witherspoon, when she was really sleeping around with old man Hayes, so he would buy her the little pretty things that your grandmother could not,” Karen said snidely.
April knew about her mother’s love for Ivan Witherspoon only because of the one or two love letters she’d found while going through her belongings after she died. That’s why, although she’d never known the identity of her father, she’d always assumed he had been Witherspoon.
According to what she had been able to find out, Ivan and his family had packed up and moved away from Hattersville a short time after her mother got pregnant. April had heard some town people figured he was trying to escape his responsibility after having knocked up a girl from the Fifth Ward.
“I hope we understand each other, April. I want you to end things with Griffin and stay away from Erica or everyone will know the truth. And it will behoove you to keep my visit and our secret to yourself. If you tell anyone I’ve been here, I will have to tell them why and, trust me, that’s something I’d think you would want no one else to know, especially Griffin.”
Without saying anything else, Karen gathered her purse and strutted out the door with the same air of confidence and determination she’d had when she’d strutted in.
Brian stood at the window and watched Erica drive away, not believing what had happened here in this very house between them just moments ago. He closed his eyes wanting to believe it had been an out-of-body experience, a nightmare, and that all he needed was a stiff drink to come back to reality.
But when he reopened his eyes his gaze lit on the pair or red panties lying on his living room floor. If they weren’t Erica’s then where the hell had they come from? He crossed the room to pick them up and sure enough, they were monogrammed with the initial D.
He then moved quickly, taking the stairs two at a time, to take a look at his bedroom. Just like she’d claimed, perfume blasted his nostrils the moment he walked into the room. He glanced around, not believing what he was seeing. It looked like two people had had a sexual marathon in his bed. He saw his white shirt on the floor—a shirt he knew for certain he’d put in the laundry hamper yesterday.
Brian picked up the shirt and saw the red lipstick stain, not believing his eyes. At that moment something snapped inside of him and he let out a deep bellow of rage that erupted in the pit of his stomach and traveled through all parts of him, transporting fury in its wake.
None of this made any sense. Who would set him up this way? Did Donna have anything to do with this? But the woman had never gotten out of line with him. They barely communicated, and he couldn’t remember the last time she’d jogged past his house.
But if not Donna, then who? And why? The only person he knew who’d want friction between him and Erica was her mother. But he wouldn’t accuse the woman of going that far. Besides, Karen couldn’t be in two places at the same time and she was too emotionally torn with her own troubles to cook up something like this.
One thing was certain. Whoever had had the nerve to set him up this way had definitely underestimated him. If it took every penny he had, he would find the person responsible and when he did, there would be hell to pay.
April wasn’t sure how long she sat on her sofa curled up in a ball of pain so intense she’d never feel whole again. Anger and agony consumed her.
Somehow, she had known the one person she could never protect herself from in life was Karen Sanders. She had known it since that first day Erica had taken her home and the woman had looked at her with such loathing. At the age of thirteen, she
hadn’t known or understood why. She still didn’t, but today showed just how deep the hatred went. Karen wouldn’t hesitate to lash out at anyone who she thought was a threat to what she considered a dream match between Erica and Griffin.
Griffin.
The thought of him made more tears fill her eyes. They were sister and brother! The very thought sickened her. How had she gone through life and not known, not even suspected? Surely someone would have let the cat out of the bag by now. What about Colleen Wingate, the biggest gossip in Hattersville? Although Colleen lived in the Fifth Ward, she had connections since she had cleaned every house on Wellington Road.
And then what about Mr. Carroll, who owned the deli? For years he’d hinted at the possibility that Ivan Witherspoon could be her father like she’d always assumed…but never Herbert Hayes. It was no secret Mr. Hayes used to be a rolling stone in his day and had a number of illegitimate kids all over the place, but most favored him in some way. It had been easy to tell that Griffin and Marcus Stratlet, Paul Ringard and Omar Gates were siblings, although they never claimed to be.
She nearly jumped when her phone rang again and didn’t have to look to know the caller was either Griffin or Erica. From the tearful message Erica had left earlier asking her to call her as soon as possible, April could only imagine what was going on with her. Whatever had happened when Erica had arrived in Dallas had been Karen Sanders’s doing.
The woman was playing her game well, making sure everything she wanted fell right into place, and this was one time April couldn’t stop her or tell anyone what a cruel and heartless bitch she was, one who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.
“Sweetheart, I guess you’re still not home yet. Call me when you get this message. I love you.”
A Silken Thread Page 24