To Have and to Harley

by Regina Cole

  It wasn’t that she’d always wanted to manage a department store. Far from it. But she’d wanted stability. And Hudson’s had offered that. But with every passing day, she wondered if she’d made the right decision. The creeping dread every time she walked through the doors was becoming impossible to ignore.

  And now…

  “You can’t fire her.”

  “But Mr. Junes, she’s—”

  “Did I stutter? I said you can’t fire her.”

  “Sir, you’re completely undermining my authority. How am I supposed to manage my employees when they see Tiffany getting special treatment? It’s already caused a lot of grumbling, and—”

  “I don’t care. This is your responsibility, and if you go against my word here, you’ll be replaced. Understand?”

  Bethany’s blood ran cold. “So you’re saying if I fire Tiffany, even knowing her attendance problems and issues with authority, you’ll fire me.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, then get my pink slip ready, sir. I’m submitting her termination right now.”

  Bethany cut the call. The relief that cascaded over her was palpable.

  She’d just effectively quit her job. And for some reason, it felt fabulous.

  * * *

  The upbeat song made Bethany hum along as she entered the restaurant. The rest of her day had been spent cleaning out her desk. As she’d expected, Mr. Junes had called back to bluster and yell and threaten. But Bethany had already checked out.

  She’d put up with enough. It was time to figure out what she really wanted to do with her life.

  “Bethy!”

  At the sound of her nickname, Bethany turned. Sarah Yelverton, her best friend since seventh grade and almost-sister for nearly as long, waved vehemently. Her long, honey-gold curls bounced with the movement. Bethany smiled and walked over to the table in the corner where Sarah already had a bottle of wine waiting.

  Sarah, who was attending pharmacy school up in Virginia, had fortunately come home in time for Bethany to unload her drama in person.

  “So tell me all about it,” Sarah said, pouring a glass of red for each of them.

  “I quit. Well, I got fired. Well, it’s a little of both.” Bethany took a long sip of the rich wine while Sarah gasped.

  “I thought you’d be there forever. They really didn’t appreciate you enough. You poured your heart and soul into that place.” Sarah shook her head mournfully.

  Bethany bit her lip in consternation. “Well, that’s not the reaction I was hoping for.”

  Sarah grinned. “I’m so proud of you.” She lifted her glass. “Cheers.”

  With a soft clink, their glasses met, and they both drank to Bethany’s new beginning.

  As their wineglasses descended back to the tabletop, a glint caught Bethany’s eye.

  Sarah’s left hand was adorned with…with…

  “Holy crap,” she gasped, grabbing Sarah’s hand and turning it this way and that. The big, honking diamond on her ring finger was insanely gorgeous. “When did this happen?”

  Sarah’s cheeks pinkened, and she glanced away with a shy smile. “This morning. That’s why I wanted to meet you out for dinner tonight. Bethany, I’m getting married!”

  The mutual squeal of excitement earned them a couple of glances from nearby tables, but neither of them paid any attention.

  Looking at her best friend’s face as she excitedly told the story of her longtime boyfriend Mark’s proposal, Bethany couldn’t help but be swamped by emotion.

  Mark was finishing his doctoral degree in Asheville, but they’d agreed to meet over Valentine’s Day weekend back in their hometown. And at the lake where they’d met, back when they were both in high school, he’d taken her out for a romantic boat ride on icy waters and popped the question.

  The way Sarah told it, it was perfect.

  Of course Bethany was happy for her friend. Sarah had been more like a sister than a friend for far too many years, even convincing her parents to take Bethany in when her father passed away suddenly. Bethany would always be grateful for that. She had known more love and acceptance in their home than she could ever have dreamed possible.

  But she couldn’t help but be a little jealous. Sarah’s fiancé, Mark, was sexy, kind, and head over heels for her. And Bethany—well, Bethany was perpetually single. After about a dozen Tinder dates gone wrong, she’d resigned herself to her singledom.

  No matter what she did, she couldn’t shake the notion that she was somehow being left behind.

  “…hoping you’d help plan the wedding.”

  Bethany shook her head. “What?”

  Sarah laughed. “I could tell by your glassy expression that you were getting overwhelmed. I know, I go overboard when I’m excited. But you know how Mom is. She’s already bought out the wedding magazine section at the bookstore. She’s been texting me pictures of flowers and dresses and hair all afternoon. I’ve got finals coming up, both Mark and I are so far away at school, and you’re so much better than me at organizing events. After all, you did it for the store for years.”

  “But sales events aren’t weddings.” Bethany scratched her inner arm, desperate for any sensation to bring her back to reality. She couldn’t be hearing this.

  “Besides, you’re at loose ends, right? I’ll hire you as a wedding liaison. That way, there’s no gap on your résumé while you search for a new position. Plus, you’ll have some money to live off without messing up your savings, and you can run interference while Mom goes wedding bananas. I trust your judgment completely.”

  “You don’t want to pick anything out?”

  “Nope. Not the first flower, not the first dress. I want to run to the courthouse, but it’d break Mom’s heart. Mark totally agrees. Come on, Bethy, will you plan our wedding? Please?”

  Sarah fluttered her dusky eyelashes.

  Bethany shook her head and gave a heavy sigh. “You’re insane.”

  “So you’ll do it?”

  Bethany grabbed her wineglass and drained it, then snagged the bottle and poured another glassful. “Better get another bottle. I’m going to need alcoholic fortification if I’m planning a wedding with Mama Yelverton.”

  Sarah’s whoop of joy and Bethany’s groan of despair sounded at the same moment.

  Bethany had somehow found herself planning her best friend’s wedding.

  Well…crap.

  Chapter Two

  The pounding of his head and the churning of his stomach had less to do with the mass quantities of alcohol he’d consumed than he would’ve presumed.

  Even if he’d been drinking pure water, the hangover of discovering that his whole past was a lie would have been sickening enough.

  Trey shook his head as he sat on the deck behind the house he’d bought when he became leader of the Shadows. His under-the-table private security gig—and Lars’s flair with investments—had gained them enough capital to need a home base.

  It was simple. An old stick-built shack, really, in a rural area of Durham County. But it was surrounded by woods. Solitude. And with Wolf’s construction background, it was now in much better shape.

  The coffee in his hand and the sun high overhead competed for control of Trey’s headache. He squinted as he leaned his head back against the Adirondack chair.

  His mother. Mom. For so long that person had been a demon in his head.

  But now? Now?

  The memory of just two nights ago sucked him in, and he replayed it in his head as he’d done almost incessantly ever since.

  * * *

  Trey thumped his fist on the table, the loud sound drawing more than a few sets of eyes his way.

  “Ginger,” he barked, and the waitress immediately came over. “I need somewhere private.”

  “Sure. You can use the office,” she said, her gaze d
arting from Trey to the stranger and back. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Trey gave her a terse nod and beckoned to Wolf and the stranger. The trio walked through the beat-up door marked “Office—Employees Only.”

  Trey didn’t pay a lick of attention to the junk strewn around, the boxes of liquor, the tacky decor that Ruby had placed about the room like a tchotchke-obsessed Martha Stewart. He rounded the desk and sat down, Wolf sticking to his side like a huge, bearded guard dog.

  “Say your piece,” Trey growled. “And no bullshit.”

  The investigator smoothed his wrinkled pants with a quick motion. “Yeah. No problem.”

  He looked around for somewhere to sit, but Trey was in the only available chair. With a shrug, the PI pulled over a stack of empty plastic egg crates and plopped down. “I was hired to find you.”

  “How do you know it’s me you’re looking for?” Trey wasted no time.

  “Because you were a suspect in a violent crime four years ago.”

  Trey sat bolt upright. “I had nothing to do with that murder. I was in the same club that night, but I was nowhere near that fight when it went down. The evidence didn’t lie.”

  The guy held up his hands. “Not saying it did. Even though you weren’t charged with anything, your DNA was taken and put into a state database. You came up as a match when we did our search.”

  Sagging back into the chair, Trey felt curiously light-headed.

  “Why does she want to see me now?” Suddenly the fight seeped back into his veins. He launched out of the chair, bracing his palms on the desk and sending a cup of pens flying to the floor. Gritting his teeth, he stared the investigator down. “She abandoned me. She left me in a gas station bathroom stall, with nothing but a ragged blanket, a dirty shirt, and a spare diaper. Why does she suddenly give a damn now?”

  “Because you were kidnapped.”

  Trey’s elbows were locked, which was the only reason he didn’t fall back into the chair again. Wolf had moved closer to the desk, and his right hand’s presence reminded Trey that this was reality, not just another of those stupid dreams he’d had over and over. The ones where Mommy Dearest wasn’t a drug addict who’d abandon him without a second thought.

  “Your mother is Dolores Yelverton. When you were born, you had some problems. Difficulties with feeding, gaining weight, that kind of thing. Your parents hired a nurse to help cope with your special needs. Unbeknownst to them, that nurse had her own issues. And one night she took off with you.”

  Wolf’s hand appeared on Trey’s shoulder, guiding him back into the chair. Trey was grateful, but he was too stunned to do more than shake his head slightly as the investigator continued.

  “For months, there was a manhunt for the two of you. The Yelvertons were desperate. But then the nurse’s car was found by the authorities in a lake in Roanoke County. Her body was recovered after dragging the lake, and there was a car seat in her vehicle. It was presumed she’d freed you from the car seat before you both drowned.”

  The investigator smiled. The expression was so at odds with the emotions swamping Trey that he nearly launched himself at the guy.

  Control. He had to get control of himself.

  “I was found in Michigan. Where is my…” Trey cleared his throat. “Where are the Yelvertons from?”

  “Wake County. Southwater City. Steven moved away after the divorce, and unfortunately passed away about three years ago, but Dolores still lives there.”

  Trey’s whole body turned to stone. He couldn’t even draw breath.

  All this time, his mother, his family, was a single county away from him. A town that was only a fifteen-minute drive from his front door.

  Fate could be so incredibly cruel.

  “If they’re from around here, how’d I end up in Michigan?”

  The PI looked down at his hands. “The nurse was suspected to have participated in human trafficking. She was posthumously connected to several other mysterious disappearances of infants and young children. You were presumed dead then. I think she passed you off to another middleman who was being investigated by the cops. He was tipped off and dumped the evidence.”

  “Me,” Trey said without a hint of emotion.

  The PI nodded.

  “So why’d Dolores keep looking for me?” Trey’s voice was the barest whisper.

  The investigator’s expression turned wry. “Because she never believed you were truly lost to her.”

  * * *

  Those words had haunted him for the last forty-eight hours.

  She never believed you were truly lost to her.

  There’d been a funeral for little Samuel Yelverton, which had been his birth name. But his mother hadn’t attended. She’d been too busy fighting to continue the search.

  “Boss.”

  The deep voice broke through Trey’s thoughts, and he glanced over his shoulder.

  Wolf was mounting the steps to the deck, his big, copper Doberman, Pistol, at his heels. At odds with her name, Pistol was the biggest mush of a dog Trey had ever met. It wasn’t unusual to see the pair of them this early—they lived on the other side of the property. Trey reached down and scratched Pistol’s ears as Wolf dragged over a chair and sat beside him.

  “So. You gonna call her?”

  Trey shot Wolf a look. His second’s dark hair was still wet from the shower, the tattoos just peeking above his plain black shirt’s collar, adding to his dangerous appearance. The screen of the cell phone on the side table between them reflected the midday sun’s light, almost as if taunting Trey.

  “Here,” the investigator had said, pushing a piece of paper toward Trey. “She wanted me to give you this. Now that you know what happened, it’s your call if you want to make contact or not. But she never stopped believing you were alive, Samuel.”

  “That’s not my name,” Trey barked before he could stop himself, and then he’d stormed out of the room, leaving the folded paper where the investigator had set it on the desk.

  “Can’t call her,” Trey said, remembering the shape and dusky-blue color of the folded note. “Didn’t take her number.”

  Just then, Wolf stood and reached into the pocket of his well-worn jeans. He tossed a small, pale-blue folded note atop the blank screen of Trey’s cell.

  “Now you do.”

  Patting his hip for Pistol, Wolf walked away without another word.

  Once the jingle of dog tags and the sound of footfalls faded into the distance, Trey looked over at the piece of paper.

  Should he?

  Could he?

  A lot of who he was had been tied up in the fact that nobody wanted him. Hell, it was the reason he’d basically built the Iron Shadows in the first place.

  Fuck blood. Blood was who you chose, not who genetics determined.

  But then again—

  “This is crazy,” Trey muttered and paced along the edge of the deck.

  Uncertainty was eating him up. This wasn’t like him. He chose a path and stuck to it. He had to. Indecision got people killed, or worse.

  “Damn,” he spat out, then turned and faced the side table.

  The edge of the folded paper stirred slightly in the breeze.

  His mind made up, he grabbed the paper and the phone in a single movement.

  Without any trace of a tremble, he unfolded the page and tapped out the number that had been written in a neat, feminine hand. Then the handset was at his ear, and the call connected.

  He swallowed hard before he spoke.

  “Hello, Mo—Mrs. Yelverton.”

  * * *

  His bike rumbled beneath him, his thighs tense as steel girders as he drove down the long, curving, paved driveway. Sunlight scattered beams through branches just spouting early buds, the flickering of light irritating to his already stretched-taut nerves.


  He rounded a sharper bend in the drive, and suddenly a run-down Victorian house came into view. Chipped paint and falling-down boards marred the appearance of what once would have been a true showpiece of architecture.

  His mother—Mrs. Yelverton, he corrected himself—had told him about it. An old man lived there, with three times as much stubbornness as he had money. As a result, the home was in pitiful disrepair. Trey’s destination was farther down the drive, on the next property.

  Past the Victorian, down another quarter of a mile, the drive bent the other way, and the trees opened up to reveal a huge brick home. Three stories, classically beautiful, it had obviously been given all the care and attention that the Victorian lacked.

  And in that home, at that very moment, was the woman who had given birth to him.

  Waiting for him.

  He cut his bike’s engine a good distance from the house, close to the three-car garage. Without getting off his bike, he looked down at the hands that still gripped the handlebars.

  Scarred. One of his knuckles was misshapen from a break that hadn’t healed quite right. Tattoos spread across his knuckles, reading “Iron Life.” Further ink disappeared into the long sleeves of his leather jacket.

  His jeans were dark, his boots were heavy, and he looked more like he should be there to rob the joint than to meet the lady of the house.

  Trey raked his hand through his hair and looked at the puffy-cloud-dotted blue sky.

  What was he doing there? He didn’t belong. He belonged back at Ruby’s, or riding the highways looking for trouble.

  This wasn’t him.

  And then he closed his eyes and remembered her voice.

  The soft catch as she drew in a shaky breath at realizing who she was talking to. The sound of her tears as relief spilled through her words, cascading in a rush of love long suppressed.

  “My son. My son.”

  His throat had felt curiously thick too, as she’d said it. She hadn’t called him Samuel, and he was grateful for that. He could pretend that it was really him she was longing for, really Trey she cared about.

  He looked at that house again. In another lifetime, maybe, this could have been his home, where he had grown up with a family that loved him.