Undone by Deceit

by Falon Gold

  “What call?” Mahogany asked worriedly. “I didn’t call the cops, certainly not on myself!”

  I ensnared Mahogany’s hand in mine then walked us both forward to greet the tiny package of a woman wrapped in different shades of brown and came with a ponytail that had more hair than she had body. “Hey, Sheriff Powers. I’m Chance Middleton, and I called her, Mahogany.”

  Mahogany palmed her chest. “You called her on me?” Her tone was high-pitched and filled with horror as was her face.

  “Sweetheart, calm down. I did this for you. I know you worry about the amount of sweets Majestic eats, so I called Astrid on my family.”

  “What are they going to do?” she shrieked, losing it big time, and it was impossible to not smile as her unnecessary hysteria grew.

  “Astrid’s going to collect the candy off my family. If they get in here with it, Majestic will smell it, then the older ones will give it to her. They also won’t give it up for anyone but an authority figure. They think they are the authority figures. Trust me on that.”

  “Chance, your family is going to think I called the sheriff on them. They already hate me. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I promised they won’t think that, Mahogany. I got this. Take a chance and trust me. Please.”

  It was low of me to use her own words against her again, but I meant to help not harm her.

  She slammed her mouth shut, exhaling out of her nose. “If this backfires—”

  “It won’t, baby,” I assured, pitting my forehead against hers. “Stay in here with Majestic while I threaten to have my own relatives turned around at the door if they don’t turn over their candy.”

  “This is highly weird,” she noted dryly.

  “I know, but it’s more of an expensive joke for my father to get a kick out of; the rest of my family is used to being collateral damage. You’re gonna have to get used to this too, babe. My father is ruthless with the pranks. Wait for me here.” With any luck, she’d marry into the pranks.

  Astrid and I quit the room just in time to meet the loud mob coming down the hallway, my sister and mother at the forefront of the group. They all quieted down as they noticed the sheriff standing beside me, more like under me. Colorado must attract short people.

  My family drew near, most frowning, some open-mouthed.

  Astrid stepped in front of me. “Before you enter this room, you all should know that you’re subject to ‘search and seizure’ for anything sweet. This is probably highly illegal, but Majestic will rob you of the candy, then eat it, so her father has resorted to drastic measures. Dr. Blane doesn’t want her to have sweets right now. So, if you have candy in any form, hand it over please. It’ll be returned to you when you leave.”

  The older generation sighed and thanked heaven that it wasn’t anything more serious going on. Cena smirked, knowing it was truly not above her brother or her father to go over and beyond to get anything done. All began to pat themselves down or open purses, extracted the contraband from wherever it was concealed, then passed it over. More chocolate bars than pieces of individually wrapped toffee was deposited in Astrid’s hands. I whipped a sack from Tommy’s out of my jeans for her to dump the goodies inside.

  “That’s definitely your kid in there, Chance,” my father, Lenox Middleton, commented in his deep, gravely tone as he navigated around the crowd.

  The younger family members ranged from college students to freshly-graduated high schoolers all the way down to teenagers who hadn’t grown into who they’d be yet. The youngsters from Utah were in Western gear like my father, some from Mumbai in custom Indian gear. The rest wore pieces from each country and were making one hell of a fashion statement, but my father was the oddball: built like a Viking, muscular in t-shirt and jeans with midnight-black hair that was gray at the temples. Whereas my Indian relatives where brown-haired, slim, and preferred the custom kurta, a colorful loose top that reached to the knees with leggings underneath. My dad had no Mumbai-blood to speak of, the only one with no hidden sweets on his person, and an orphan like Mahogany. Only his parents died in a car accident when he was three.

  “Congratulations, son, on the new baby and good joke calling the sheriff for the candy, but I would’ve done better. There would’ve been fake Homeland security agents with earpieces out here. By the time the in-laws figured out no one really thought they were candy-toting terrorists, half of them would have been admitted as patients.” A prankster down to his steel toe work boots and completely unremorseful about possibly causing someone a heart attack just to get a good laugh.

  “You are horrible, dad. Majestic’s not a baby, she’s two going on thirty, and this sheriff is real. Talk to me when you can get authentic agents in on one of your pranks.”

  He laughed as he pounded my back. We chatted until everyone had emptied their pockets, then I opened the door for them. The family descended on the room, surrounding the bed like locusts. My great-grandmother, the oldest but apparently the fastest, reached the sleeping Majestic first, claiming her for herself while my sister tried to talk her into passing Majestic to her. My mother didn’t even stop to speak to me or Majestic, instead browsed the room until she found Mahogany, who had backed into the wall at the rear of the room. Determined to become a part of the surroundings while my family was there, but her beauty and the white dress that stood out from the tan paint made her too damn noticeable. The second my mother found what she was looking for, she dashed across the room to stand in front of Mahogany, who looked terrified suddenly.

  Dania bent at the knees, grabbed two handfuls of the hem of Mahogany’s dress, inspecting it. “Oh no, no, no, dear, this is too summery and casual. We need elegance like lace and maybe pearls in the bodice. Or do you want diamonds? I can get a venue in Utah at last minute, but we can find something here for you guys to rent if you want. It must have a reception hall and hotel suites nearby though. My family drinks like they’re fishes.”

  Mahogany’s head whipped around to me, the ‘what the hell is she talking about, Chance’ look on her face priceless. Or maybe it was ‘save me now please!’ More than likely, she was projecting both, and leaving it up to me to intervene. I waved my hand in front of my mother intent on designing Mahogany a wedding dress right this instant, quite overwhelming when she wanted to be. Mahogany was totally overwhelmed.

  “Hey, mama. Do you not recognize your own son anymore? Where’s my hug?”

  If Mahogany didn’t run after I got my mother’s attention, she was never going to get away.

  Chapter Twelve

  ~Mahogany~

  Too stunned to move, I stared at the top of Mrs. Middleton’s dark, wavy hair with gray weaved through the strands and thought, What the hell just happened?

  She hadn’t accepted me in her son’s life before now. Now, she was speaking wedding lingo as if it was the most natural thing in the world to say to me of all people. What did Chance say to her on the phone the other day besides we had a child together? Whatever it was, he should’ve said it to me first, or warned me of what was coming next: a shotgun wedding.

  “Mama! Do you really not recognize your own son anymore? Where’s my dang hug?” he reiterated. Thank God for Chance trying to come to the rescue.

  His mother, the feminine, shorter and slightly plump version of him, twisted her head in his direction but held on to the skirt of my dress, and instigated a trapped sensation that spiraled throughout me. Oh, how I felt trapped. Weird that she was the only one making me feel that way when her son who had entombed me in a promise to ease his hurt and was utilizing my body to do it.

  Damn, I liked being trapped by him. That made me weird as fuck, and I should be telling his mother, ‘There will be no wedding, Mrs. Middleton, your son can’t stand me after what I’d done to him.’

  But you wish there would be a wedding. Shut up, conscience. Wanting a real wedding with the Chance I met years ago was much easier thought than saying out loud and would expose my vulnerable side, so I said nothing and ign
ored the catch in my chest. All the while, I prayed that Mrs. Middleton would forget that I was a human with feelings again and just go away. She didn’t.

  “Son, I’m busy working out the details of your wedding to the mother of your child.”

  Chance wrapped an arm around her shoulder, hauling her upright by his hand on her arm. The hem of my dress rose with her hands, which he tugged from her grip so it fell along my thighs again.

  “Well, you’re scaring her, mama. Look at her face. You wouldn’t even speak to her when you first met her or afterwards, now you’re accosting her clothes and pushing her down an aisle… and you still haven’t spoken to her,” Chance chastised, and I loved him for it.

  She glanced up at him, clutching her pearls over her own summer dress. “You’re right, son. I’m being rude and have some explaining to do to.” Her attention switched to me. “Mahogany?”

  “Hmmm.” Humming my acknowledgment to my name was the best I could do when totally shell-shocked.

  “Can I have a word alone with you later?”

  “I-I guess,” I stuttered, looking to Chance for aid because I didn’t know how to take his mother right now.

  The snobbish lift of her nose was absent, along with the dismissal turn of her head to look anywhere but at me when I was in the vicinity. Yeah, well, she was eyeballing me now and the regretful expression she wore was puzzling.

  “No, mama, you cannot have a word with her because you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Chance butted in. “We’re dating right now. It’s been years since we were together and we have to get to know one another again, so no wedding, no meddling. Just say only hello to Mahogany, then go meet your granddaughter.”

  I so loved this man right now, but why did he make it seem as if we were dating in the traditional sense of the word? He was still ‘fucking the pain away’ with me as far as I knew. Obviously, I needed to have a word with him. We were no longer on the same wavelength. As long as I knew what I was getting into, and what to expect, I could deal. Deal was what I did best. Changing up on me suddenly pushed me out of my comfort zone. He and her both were doing that to me, him first with the laundry then helping me out of the car after saying the sweetest of things to me in it.

  Mrs. Middleton smiled brightly. “Hello, Mahogany.”

  I waved with a shy wiggle of my fingers. “Hey, Mrs. Middleton.”

  She stepped forward then heaved me by the shoulders into a hug and murmured by my ear, “Call me, Dania.”

  “I… okay,” I agreed, with a glimpse at Chance, who was clearly embarrassed and motioned with his head for me to go out the door, but I never got to it.

  The family members that couldn’t get to Majestic got to me halfway on my escape route. Some of his relatives I knew already, like Cena, who was kind and unmarried and wanted a hug too before she tried to wrestle my daughter from Chance’s great-grandmother again. The old lady held on tight, claiming she had one foot in, one foot out the grave, so that gave her first dibs on all children born after her. The people I didn’t know personally because they weren’t kind, like his aunts and uncles and older cousins that were just as dismissal as Dania years ago, bombarded me. His father stood back, still straddling the fence when it came to me: friendly when Dania wasn’t near, avoided me when she was.

  One of Chance’s aunts wanted to dress me up too, soliciting my and Majestic’s sizes to send me custom Mumbai wear from her boutique in Fredrickson so we wouldn’t feel out of place when we visited their native country during the annual family trip at the beginning of the year sponsored by Chance. The terms of ‘dating’ Chance did not include family gatherings, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell these people who wanted nothing to do with me years ago that I didn’t want to be in their family fold now just because my uterus worked properly.

  Holy hell, what had I lugged into my world when I jerked Chance into it? A nagging premonition that warned I was about to find out dropped like dead weight in the bottom of my stomach.

  Astrid announced she had to leave for another call thirty minutes later. I almost pleaded with her to deputize me, then take me with her. Instead, I used the excuse of walking her out to her cruiser to get a break from the people clamoring to get to me as much as they were Majestic. After Astrid dumped in my hands the candy sack that would bring any kid joy on Halloween, she drove off with a promise to come see Majestic when less people were around. I watched her brake lights until they vanished on the open road, then plopped down on the hood of Chance’s rental car, exhausted. There I sat for an hour until he walked out of the building. Looking a little troubled, he took the initiative to pull me off the car, spun me around before stealing my seat on the hood, then hauled me between his widespread legs where he cupped my spine with his hands. Only then did my own troubles recede.

  “Don’t worry, Mahogany. The novelty of you and Majestic will wear off soon, then you two will just be one of us. If it doesn’t, my relatives visiting from Mumbai have to go home tomorrow, the rest back to Fredrickson. Your timing is perfect to meet just about everyone but not have to deal with them for long.”

  I tipped my head over into his chest. “That’s a relief. I’m not used to everyone liking me.”

  But when was he going home? Couldn’t bring myself to ask him. I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want him to go. Didn’t know how to make myself feel any other way about it either.

  His chest began to vibrate beneath my brow as he chuckled his ass off. “You know my father went through the same thing with my mother, except it was her mother that didn’t think my parents’ relationship would last long because of the differences in their cultures.”

  “Did your mother hide you from your father for two years before they accepted him?”

  “Nope, they broke up three years before I was born for the same reasons my grandmother predicted. A year after the breakup, they reunited then broke up again. Then my mother discovered that she was pregnant with me before they accepted him. My family has a rigid belief that we should marry someone Indian so we can’t forget where we come from, but they also think if you can make a baby together, you can damn sure stay together to raise it… unless one partner is too undesirable to keep around. Domestic violence amongst a few other no-no’s is not tolerated.”

  “So, Lenox was accepted into the family by default too, huh? Who pulled on his clothes and assumed he and your mother would be getting married?”

  “My mother’s mother did about five years before she died. My parents have lived happily ever after most of the time too.”

  “That’s not our future though, Chance,” I said quickly to remind myself and those damnable hopes of mine that’ll float to the top if I wasn’t paying attention.

  “You don’t think so?” he asked quietly.

  “I know so.”

  “How’s that?”

  I moved to get eye to eye with him. “Because you’re trying to get over me, remember? And I’m trying to get over you.” That wouldn’t be the case if life was fair, but it wasn’t and I had to remember that my lot in life was what it was and had always been: to do without what I wanted the most. Majestic my only miracle.

  He sucked air through his teeth. “How could I forget that? Well, in that case, I should get in another kiss while you feel responsible for helping me to get over you, don’t you think?”

  Truthfully, I wanted him to say something else like he didn’t want us to get over each other. He didn’t. A piece of my soul splintered, so I lifted my head and stole his mouth for my own, to kiss the damn pain away and created a ruckus in my panties instead.

  “What is it with you two kissing in parking lots?” Tommy asked out of nowhere after much time had passed. “Do the lots have to have specific requirements or do you two just eeny meeny miny mo it?”

  Chance snickered like a dry-throated dog. “Mahogany is being adventurous with me.”

  “Lucky bastard,” Tommy grumbled good-naturedly.

  I wasn’t in a joking, grumbling, or good-natured moo
d, more interested in eye-raping Chance, with my hands draped on the thick cords of his neck. In my side view, Tommy held a sack from his restaurant. The smell of the food made my stomach grumble. Chance swiped hair out of my face then removed one of my hands from his neck to stuff the BMW keys in it. Rather strange thing to do, I thought.

  “What are these for?”

  “For you to run off if you want to. I should get back inside. Come in when you’re ready… or don’t. I don’t want you uncomfortable and my folks will understand. They know they can be overpowering, you need to get used to the new status quo, and they should be hungry by now. Tommy, I’ll be bringing twenty-one customers by the restaurant in a little bit, so get out the menus, push some tables together, and I’m paying.”

  “If you’re bringing that many people, damn right you’re paying. I can do one or two free plates at a time because business is good, but not ‘empty out a whole freezer for free’ good. Gotta draw the damn line somewhere.”

  In no hurry to return to the strange acceptance currently located in Majestic’s room, I backpedaled after leaving a tiny kiss on the corner of Chance’s mouth for considering my needs when he didn’t have to, especially after I had deceived him, but it was past time I forgave myself for that even if he didn’t. I wasn’t so sure that he hadn’t forgiven me too when he planted a tiny kiss on the corner of my mouth then winked before getting up. Tommy crossed over to my side. I finally noticed his car a few spaces away along with two big tour buses Chance’s family must have arrived in.

  “You’re not going back inside?” Tommy asked with a frown.

  “No time soon,” I stated while observing Chance disappear through the hospital doors.

  Tommy’s grimace deepened in my side view. “Why?”

  I swung my attention to him. “Because everyone has flip flopped on me, including Chance.”

  “What does that mean?

  “Well, when I was with Chance, his family didn’t think we’d last, so only his sister wasted her time being nice to me whenever I came around. The rest of his family were right though, we didn’t last. Now that I have Majestic—”