Enchanted Heart

by Felicia Mason

  People on the outside looking in thought the Hearts lived charmed lives in their big houses and with bank accounts overflowing with profits from the chain of department stores the family owned. The reality: A few, those who’d managed their assets well, including Cole and his grandmother, did have lots of money. The primary players, as his cousin Lucia called them, “the mainline money,” had pocketed millions in the sale of the stores to the Knight and Kraus chain. And Lance, being an heir of Coleman Heart II, had gotten his good share.

  The rest of the family, the hangers-on, Hearts by marriage or affairs, maintained an elaborate facade of aging wealth. And just about all of the grandchildren—Lance being the exception because Cole had initially managed his income—worked for a living.

  Lance pulled a small notebook from the glove box. While he waited for his grandmother, he began to jot down some ideas for the consulting business to which he hadn’t given much thought. That business, after all, was why he’d been initially interested in Viv.

  His mouth quirked up. Well, one of the initial reasons.

  As a professional model, Viv could put him in touch with the right people, give him a few pointers on dealing with her world. But his dream for his own company had somehow gotten stifled in the middle of all the other drama. And the sex. The sex had definitely gotten in the way. And look what had happened there.

  Lance figured he ought to be counting himself lucky that he didn’t have a slew of kids running around. He’d always been careful about that, so very careful.

  But now, Viv was pregnant. Taking care of that baby and of Tarique would require not only a consistent income, but a father whom they could look up to, a role model. Lance bent his head to his notebook again, this time seriously mapping out a business plan.

  His opportunity to confront Virginia never came. A cramp in his leg let him know he’d been sitting awhile. He put the notebook down and got out of the car. More than an hour had passed. He told Penelope to leave a message that he’d be back. Lance wanted to get to the bottom of what had happened to Gayla, and Virginia had answers. Even though he hadn’t seen Virginia and was spoiling for a fight, he’d discovered just what he wanted to do with his own consulting firm.

  The last thing Lance felt like dealing with was a crowd of people pushing and shoving. The driving beat of hip-hop from oversized speakers blared in four corners of the recreation center gym. Outside it was worse. The crowd pressed close to the fry stations where deep-fried catfish beckoned hungry palates, and juicy burgers, flipped on the grill and dressed out with lettuce and tomato straight from the farmer’s market, awaited eager hands.

  Between the incessant beat of the music, the excited yelling of kids and teenagers, and smoke from both the grill and cigarettes blown in his face, Lance opted for the relative quiet of the gymnasium. Only about two hundred people were crammed in there.

  “Here, you look like a truck ran over you.” T.J. pressed a hot dog and bun with what looked like chili and jalapenos on top, into Lance’s hand.

  T.J.’s assessment hit the mark.

  “Rough night,” Lance said. He shook his head and handed the hot dog back but snagged one of two icy cold cans of Coke from under T.J.’s arm and pressed it to his forehead. “Look, man, I need to jet soon. I’ve got some business to see to.”

  “I was hoping to do the computer draw at five. The TV crew will be here for a live shot on the five o’clock news.”

  Lance groaned. “This was supposed to be a quiet thing.”

  “Well, the folks from the computer store are supposed to be here then. They want to make a big splash, too, since you talked them into donating the equipment.”

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to fight off a headache, Lance groaned. Sure, he’d put things into motion, but his contribution today—a smile and a handshake—hardly seemed worth the fuss. But T.J. was happy. He’d also been talking about a seat for Lance on the rec center’s board of directors.

  “No thanks,” Lance had told him.

  It had been an expensive month and things were going to cost a whole lot more now that he had a son and another child on the way. He wasn’t in a position to be on anybody’s board, since what they did most was fork over cash or find other people to do that. His plate was already filled with more than he could handle at the moment. Namely, a wife he wanted to get rid of. But in Gayla’s current mood, he knew she’d hardly agree to a divorce without a huge settlement.

  Lance swore.

  “You’re in a mood today. What’s up?”

  Lance shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. At least not now.”

  T.J. slapped him on the back. “All right.” Someone called for T.J. “I’ll be right there.” Then, back at Lance, “Five o’clock, Lance.”

  Lance nodded. This must be how Cole felt when Lance and his secretary had set him up to work all day at a community-wide spruce-up-the-neighborhood event. Trapped. Lance didn’t have anything against community work—unless it was cleaning out ditches on the side of the road. Today just wasn’t the day for being civic-minded. He had too much personal stuff with which to deal.

  “And remember,” T.J. said. “You started this. I’m not the one who gave a bunch of kids . . .”

  Lance held up a hand. “All right, already.”

  A glance at his watch made him groan again. An hour to kill. No way in hell he’d last another hour. He’d kept an eye out for Tarique, in the unlikely event the boy put in an appearance at the block party. From what T.J. had said though, Tarique was probably planning or executing a rip-off, probably of some of the very people who were here today hoping to win a free computer.

  “Tell you what,” Lance told T.J. “I’ll be back about ten to the hour. I gotta get some air.”

  He excused-me his way to the door leading to the rec center’s back lot, when a flash of blue caught his eye.

  “Tarique!”

  The boy turned around. “What’re you doing here?”

  Lance didn’t quite know what to make of the belligerent tone. He’d neither said nor done anything to the boy. “Hello, Tarique.”

  The child shrugged, as if Lance’s presence was of no consequence to him.

  “Where’s your mother?”

  The boy snorted. “If you can’t keep track of your woman, don’t expect me to.”

  His woman?

  Had Gayla told Tarique that he was his father? She’d promised that they’d do it together.

  “What did your mother tell you about me?”

  Tarique eyed him. “She ain’t tell me shit.”

  “Cussing make you feel grown-up?”

  “Pimping make you feel like a big man?”

  Lance didn’t know what to make of the boy. He was ten years old, going on forty-five. “I’m not a pimp.”

  “Then what you doing hanging out with my mama? That’s the only kind of man she like, less you . . .” The boy’s eyes widened, and he nodded sagely. “You need a runner? I’m quick. I know all the area.”

  For a minute Lance didn’t know what the boy was talking about. Then realization hit. Not only did Tarique think he was a drug dealer, he was standing there asking for a job!

  How could so much go so wrong so quickly in such a young life?

  “I’m not a dealer. Your mother and I . . . well, we’re, uh, friends. We go way back.”

  Tarique smirked. “Yeah, okay. Friends. Well, friend, all that money you gave her is gone. Smoked up.”

  “Smoked up?”

  “Exactly how stupid are you?” Tarique asked.

  Lance snatched the boy by the collar. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  “Hey, this is kidnapping.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve done it before.” He nodded toward a cop who’d just walked in the door. “If you’d prefer, I can tell that kind officer about that bike you’re riding around on. Something tells me your mama didn’t buy it for you. Care to shed a little light on how it came to be in your possession?”

  Tarique jerked
away. “Leave me alone.”

  “You can come with me or we can stay right here and talk about things.”

  “I ain’t got nothing to say to you.”

  And before Lance could move, the boy darted out the door and disappeared into the crowd.

  Lance swore.

  “You know, that language is really a bad influence on the kids.”

  He didn’t acknowledge T.J. at his side.

  “What’s up with you and Trouble Stewart?”

  “Trouble?”

  “I told you man, that boy is nothing but trouble with a capital T. If those computers weren’t under lock and key right now, I’d guess he was trying to steal them. He’s not even supposed to be in here.”

  “He’s just a kid. He can’t be all that bad.”

  T.J. shook his head. “He’s working on it.”

  Lance stared straight ahead. “Maybe all he needs is a mentor, a father figure.”

  “Uh-huh,” T.J. said, not even bothering to shield his skepticism. “Be my guest, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. And look out for the rims on your car.”

  After finishing up his civic and charitable duties with T.J. at the rec center, Lance took three aspirin to ease the headache that had been torturing him. At this rate, he was turning into Cole. He rarely got headaches and surmised it had more to do with the people and situations with which he’d been dealing lately. A plane flew low overhead. Tracking it as it headed in the direction of Fort Eustis, Lance thought about Cole. By now, he would be settled in his hotel room and, knowing Cole, hunched over a laptop instead of out enjoying the sights and sounds of Rio.

  “Cole, my brother, you just don’t know how to live.”

  Lance laughed at the thought, then quickly sobered. Cole’s life might be typically suburban, even pedestrian. The erudite Coleman Heart III would never find himself stuck with a pregnant girlfriend, a secret wife and a belligerent kid. The only good thing about this whole mess was that things couldn’t get much worse.

  He pulled into the drive at his grandmother’s house and parked behind the Cadillac he recognized as Miss Lily’s. When he was a kid, he’d had a crush on his grandmother’s elegant best friend. As an adult, he could still appreciate what a beautiful woman she still was.

  This time, Lance didn’t play the front door game. He went around to the side where he knew the two women probably were.

  “Grandmother?”

  No one answered, though the door was open. He pushed it and went into the house.

  “Grandmother? Miss Lily? Is anybody home?”

  Penelope appeared. Her hair was a mess, the shirt she had on was buttoned all wrong, and something white was smeared on her face. Lance raised an eyebrow.

  She cast a quick glance backward, toward the wing that held bedrooms. “Lance. Uh, what are you doing here?”

  He grinned and advanced on her. “Hmm, having a good day?”

  “Come on, Lance. Give a girl a break.”

  “Do I know him?”

  She glanced back again. “Uh, maybe. You’ve missed her again.”

  “But Miss Lily’s car is outside.”

  Penelope nodded. “She left it here while they’re gone. Whatever it is you want will have to wait. They won’t be back for ten days.”

  Lance swore. He ran a hand over his head. “All right. Well, I guess I’ll have to deal with that later.”

  He leaned forward and with his thumb, swiped a bit of whipped cream from her cheek. “I’ll let you get back to your fun.”

  He licked the whipped cream from his finger and waved as he let himself out of the house.

  Viv hunched over the toilet, puking her guts out. “This is awful!”

  Vicki helped her up, then pressed a cool washcloth into her hands. “Here. Come on. I made you some tea.”

  “I hate it that I don’t know my own body.”

  “You know it,” Vicki said. “This is just a phase. The book I read . . .”

  Viv glanced down at her sister. “You’re reading books on pregnancy? Why?”

  Viv regretted the question the moment it came out. Vicki’s hurt look only made her regret it even more. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, quickly apologizing.

  “I know what you meant.”

  “But why?”

  Vicki helped Viv to the bed, stirred honey into the tea she’d set on the nightstand then stood by her sister’s big bed. “I want you to have this baby, Viv. I know you’re all freaked out about it and about your relationship with Lance, but you don’t have to raise it. I will.”

  Viv couldn’t have been more stunned than if Vicki had told her that she, too, was pregnant. “What are you saying?”

  She scooted over so Vicki could sit on the bed with her.

  “I want this baby.” The incredulity on Viv’s face must have been evident because Vicki held a hand up. “I know that probably sounds crazy to you.”

  Viv ran a hand through her tousled hair and shook her head as if trying to clear the sudden cobwebs that blinded her to her sister’s needs. “I just never thought . . .”

  “That someone like me might want to be a mother.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, Vicki. If you want to be a mother, be a mother.”

  Vicki swiped a hand at her face and at her leg. “Are you blind?”

  “No. But I think you are. You’re so wrapped up in your woe-is-me routine that you’ve convinced yourself you need to hide yourself away like a hunchback in a bell tower.”

  Vicki’s eyes clouded up and her lips trembled, but Viv pressed on. “You have a job you love—making a heck of a lot of money at it, I might add. You’re a fabulous cook, you’re smart and funny. And you hide up in here like you don’t want to subject the world to how you look.”

  Vicki turned away. “I don’t. And it’s not fair.”

  “What’s not fair?”

  Vicki slid off the bed and made her way to the French vanilla chaise, identical to the one in her bedroom and at Guilty Pleasures. “You have everything,” she said, her voice so soft that Viv sat up.

  “What was that?”

  Vicki whirled around and almost lost her balance. She collapsed onto the chaise and buried her face in her hands. “You have everything. Everything I ever wanted.”

  Her tears flowed now, steady and heartbreaking to Viv.

  Tears in her own eyes, Viv went to her sister’s side and sat on the chaise next to her. She wrapped her arms around Vicki and the two women sat together like that until Vicki’s tears subsided and Viv’s dried.

  “I love you, Vicki.”

  “I love you, too.” Vicki swallowed. Then she turned and cupped her twin’s face. “All my life I’ve been jealous of you.”

  “Why?”

  Vicki didn’t even bother answering that question. She went straight to what hurt so very much. “He doesn’t want me.”

  “Who doesn’t want you?”

  Vicki sighed. “His name is Clay.”

  “You have a boyfriend?”

  Vicki wiped at her eyes again. “You don’t have to sound so stunned.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just . . . well, you never said anything.”

  “What was there to say, ‘Hey, Viv, I’m having computer sex with a stranger.’ ”

  “Computer sex, eh? Sounds fun. I can’t say that I’ve tried that.”

  “You don’t have to, you get the real thing.”

  “Vicki.”

  Vicki shrugged. It was the truth.

  Viv nudged her sister. “So, is he hot?”

  Vicki nodded. “He sent me his picture.”

  “Can I see?”

  “That’s not all,” Vicki said.

  A bleakness in her tone made Viv turn again, looping her arm through her twin’s. “What is it?”

  Vicki swallowed several times, opened her mouth and closed it several times, then finally confessed in a torrent of words. “Instead of sending him my own picture, I sent one of you.”

  For a beat,
then two, Viv didn’t say anything. But she did extricate herself from her sister.

  “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “Well, in profile we are identical.”

  “What I did was wrong, Viv. Don’t try to sugarcoat it to make me feel better.”

  “But why?”

  “Why? Viv look at us!” Vicki got up, took Viv’s arm and tugged her toward the mirror over the bureau. “Look, just look at that.”

  The reflection in the mirror showed two women, obviously sisters. One, though puffy eyed at the moment, was a dark enchantress with wide eyes, perfect skin and a glow that couldn’t be attributed to her pregnancy. She stood tall, and for now, serene. The other sister seemed the twisted reflection of the other, as if viewed through a fun-house mirror. She, too, was dark with wide eyes. One side of her face matched the beautiful one’s, but the other side was mottled with a jagged scar running along the hairline from forehead to ear. And the difference in height, also noticeable, marked them as not quite the same.

  “I don’t want to be a freak.”

  “You’re not a freak, Vicki.”

  “Lance called me a ghoul.”

  The outrage came swiftly and intensely. “He said what? I’ll kill him. I swear to God . . .”

  Vicki grabbed Viv’s arm. A small, sad smile played at her mouth. “You’ve always been my champion, Viv. I love you for that. But this battle is mine.”

  “I can’t believe Lance actually . . .”

  “He didn’t. Not to my face. He’s never even met me.”

  “Then how?”

  Vicki told Viv about the day Lance had called, leaving out how completely devastated she felt.

  But Viv knew. She sensed it in the way her sister dispassionately told the story, but more than that, she sensed it on another level. The psychic and emotional bond that twins shared had always been strong between them. Over the years, however, she’d learned to block that connection and at other times ignore it because Vicki’s despair could be so all-encompassing that for days afterward, Viv herself couldn’t shake it.