Because of Audrey

by Mary Sullivan

  Who was this woman? This Shelly? Was she for real? Were her accusations true? That Dad was her father? He checked the postmark. Denver. Too close to home for comfort’s sake, only an hour away.

  At heart, Gray was a cynic and took nothing at face value.

  And yet, he had an eerie suspicion that everything she’d said was true.

  She’d enclosed a birth certificate, hers, with his dad’s name on it, along with a photograph of herself that showed a strong likeness to Dad. The final shot, though, of three children, one of whom was the spitting image of himself at around nine or ten, left him shaken.

  It all seemed legit. These kids looked like family. The woman bore an eerie resemblance to him.

  Nonetheless, after he’d received the letter yesterday, he’d posted one back to her. I need proof. Give me a DNA sample for testing.

  Let’s see if she had the nerve to provide one.

  His gut screamed she was telling the truth. In business, he trusted his instincts all the time—they rarely steered him wrong—but how could this be real? Dad couldn’t possibly have committed adultery. Could he have? Dad?

  If the woman’s allegations were true, Gray would need quick money to buy her off. It took time to come up with the kind of cash she demanded—four hundred thousand dollars.

  Four hundred thousand dollars. Mind-boggling. He started to sweat again.

  Yes, his business was successful, but he wasn’t a millionaire. He didn’t have buckets of cash lying around.

  He’d already started things rolling yesterday with instructions for his CFO to liquidate certain of his own assets, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

  Farm-Green was willing to buy now—the ultimate answer to this mess.

  The woman’s threat filled him with cold dread.

  How could Gray ever let Mom find out? How could she survive the betrayal once she knew that her husband had been unfaithful, that she’d been wrong about his character throughout her marriage?

  He dropped into his old desk chair. It squeaked under his weight. He wouldn’t let Mom be ruined by this. He threw the paper on to the desk—not while he had any say in the matter. But what could he do? If this woman was telling the truth—and it sure looked as though she was—she had a real need.

  Then again, if what she claimed was true, she was his half sister and only a year older than he.

  Man, that floored him. He’d been a happy child, but so alone. For a long time, there’d been an emptiness inside of him, a wish for more, a sense that he’d lost something he couldn’t name and couldn’t get back.

  For years, he’d wanted a sibling.

  Was he willing to accept this woman’s assertions too easily because of a long-buried wish for a brother or sister? For something to combat being alone in the future after his parents died, and to assuage his current loneliness?

  How was her existence even possible? Dad had adored Mom all of his life. Dad, the epitome of ethics and morals, a man whose backbone and strength of character were admired by all, couldn’t have had an affair.

  Gray, though, was stuck considering the unthinkable, that his dad had fathered an illegitimate child while married to his mom.

  Talk to Dad.

  Can’t. What if I find out it’s true?

  Suck it up and ask.

  It would shatter Gray, make a mockery of his history and his parents’ history.

  You need to know.

  In fresh clothes, he went back out to the garage where Dad still puttered.

  This whole thing could be cleared up with one conversation.

  When Gray stepped close, Dad looked up and smiled. Gray’s heart hammered. He was about to blow Dad’s world apart. And his own.

  He handed Dad the letter.

  “What’s this?”

  “It came yesterday.” Try as he might, he couldn’t keep the foreboding from his voice. Was Dad the man he thought he’d known all of his life? Or a stranger like the one he was becoming now?

  The man took a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses out of his sweater pocket and read the letter.

  “What is this?” He sounded genuinely confused.

  “Have you ever known a woman named Edie Kent? She was this woman’s—” he gestured toward the letter “—mother.”

  “This woman who says that I’m her father? No. I’ve never even heard of Edie Kent.” He thrust the paper back at Gray. “You don’t believe this crap, do you?”

  Gray handed him the photo. “Look at her son.”

  Dad’s skin paled. “My God, he looks like you. Like seeing a ghost. That’s impossible. Coincidence. Nothing more. They say everyone has a double somewhere on earth.”

  Now for the crucial question he’d never thought he’d ask his father. “Did you ever have an affair?”

  Dad scowled. “How can you even consider that? I adored your mother. Always have since the second I first laid eyes on her, and always will.” He slammed the photo against Gray’s chest, and Gray barely caught it before it fell to the ground. The man still had some power in him.

  Gray’s dander rose. He wouldn’t have even considered the possibility that Dad would do this, but that photo was damning, and waiting for DNA results would take too long. Plus, his dad was becoming a stranger. He needed to know now so he could put his mind to rest on this problem at least. He had too much hanging over his head, too much that needed to be settled, and all of it taken care of instantly. Yesterday.

  “Is it possible you could have gotten drunk one night and slept with this woman’s mother without remembering?”

  “No. Once I married your mother, I became a homebody.” Dad strode out of the garage, and Gray followed. “Besides, when would I have had time? I had a business to grow, and I worked my butt off to do it.”

  He stalked around to the front door. “Can’t believe you even considered that I might have—” He spun back to Gray. “Don’t you know me at all?” The anger had left his voice, replaced by hurt. He entered the house and closed the door behind him, as though Gray were no longer welcome in the home he’d grown up in.

  Given the changes at work, given Dad’s crazy decisions, Gray was left to wonder whether he knew him at all.

  He felt as low as low could be. He’d just hurt and alienated his father. But he’d had no choice. He’d had to know.

  * * *

  AT ELEVEN-THIRTY, Gray stood in John Spade’s law office tamping down rising nausea, not sure he’d heard the immaculately groomed lawyer clearly.

  “Jeez, John, what are you doing these days? Having facials? Mani-pedis? You’ve primped the daylights out of yourself.”

  “Stop avoiding the issue,” Spade said. “Can you do it?”

  The sweating had started again the second the lawyer had made his crazy suggestion. His absurd, impossible suggestion. The fresh shirt Gray had changed into at home was already soaked. Again.

  “You mean have my father deemed unsound of mind?” he asked, unable to mask his distaste. “Unfit to run the business he built from the ground up?”

  John leaned back in his chair. “For God’s sake, Gray, stop pacing and sit down. You’re making me nervous just looking at you. This isn’t like you.”

  No, it wasn’t. He had a cool head for business, but business problems had never hit so close to home. His father had never been blackmailed before, and Gray had never had problem after problem dumped on him, one on top of the other, until he was drowning in an ocean of anxiety, hanging on to a bit of flotsam by his fingernails.

  Was the universe out to get him or something? What had he ever done to deserve all of this?

  Oh, quit with the self-pity. Shit happens to everyone. Deal with it and find solutions.

  This—what John wanted?—was one hell of an ugly solution.

  “The sale o
f the property was legitimate,” John continued. “I’m just giving you an option. A way out. Has your father been incoherent at all lately? Has he had memory loss?”

  Gray stalked to the window and stared out on to the town. In the distance, he could see the sign for Turner Lumber. “Of course he’s had memory loss. He’s eighty. He’s not senile, though. He doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. It would kill him if I went behind his back and did something like this.”

  “Don’t get emotional. This is business.”

  Gray knew all about how to run a business, how to separate emotion from whatever had to be done to protect the bottom line, but this was his family they were talking about. “He’s my father.”

  “He’s also the head of Turner Enterprises, which you’re telling me needs a significant influx of cash. Selling that land is the smart thing to do. Audrey Stone is standing in your way. This is a solution to that problem.”

  “It would devastate my parents.”

  “It has to be done.” John’s eyes cooled to the color of wet slate. “I’m good at my job, Gray. This is possible. If I didn’t think this could be done, I wouldn’t suggest it.”

  Gray considered himself a tough businessman, but John’s expression chilled even him.

  “Go home and give the idea some thought.” John stood. “Rational thought.”

  Gray left John’s office but stopped just inside the front door of the reception area before stepping outside, tasting bile in his throat. Declare Dad unfit? Declare his mind unsound? Insane. This couldn’t be happening.

  No. There had to be a way around it.

  He left the office and stood on Main Street, disoriented, his skin clammy and his breathing shallow. He recognized the symptoms for what they represented. Shock.

  And why wouldn’t he be shocked? How could he declare a man he loved and admired unfit, a father who’d done his absolute best for his son?

  It would be like stabbing him in the back.

  Et tu, Brute?

  Like the worst betrayal.

  Benches lined the sidewalk, and he sat on one, needing a minute to wrap his head around a difficult decision.

  Declare Dad unfit.

  Impossible.

  What then? Was it better to have Mom learn that her husband had fathered an illegitimate child and then didn’t have the honor to admit to the affair or support the child?

  But Dad wouldn’t do that.

  It looked as though he had.

  Gray didn’t know how much he could trust his father. He’d been hiding things. Was he hiding the truth about this? He’d seemed sincere, though. But that photo...

  Circuitous thoughts boggled Gray’s mind.

  Pain radiated from his hands and up through his arms. He glanced down. He’d been clenching his fists. He stretched tight fingers. His nails had left arched red welts in his palms.

  He couldn’t betray Dad.

  Before he would even consider deep-sixing his dad’s good standing, he needed to try a couple of things—first, attempt to buy back the land. If that didn’t work, then second, he had to go to Denver and meet with the woman. Maybe she was lying, and, in person, he’d be able to detect her lies, and the problem would be solved. He could call her bluff. He’d buy himself time to take care of issues at work without this woman’s demand.

  Four hundred thousand dollars.

  Did she think they were made of money? Ridiculous.

  Across the street, Audrey’s tarted-up floral shop, The Last Dance, stood out like a peacock strutting on white sand. What on earth dancing had to do with flowers was beyond him.

  He crossed Main and checked out the window display—a microcosm of who the woman was, quirky, boldly colorful, and even classy as Mom had suggested.

  He didn’t know why the success of her creativity made him angry, but it did.

  She had to sell that land to him, had to save him from betraying the father whose business decisions he might question, but whom he adored.

  The sign on the front door said Closed, but he could see Audrey inside. He tested the doorknob. Unlocked. He stepped into a shop that smelled floral and felt cool.

  A dog came out from behind the counter and sidled close to Gray, butting his hand with his head. Instinctively, Gray petted him, and the dog closed his eyes, leaning into the caress.

  The lovely trust of this uncomplicated creature moved him, reminded him of his Bernese mountain dog, Sean, who’d died a month after the accident, compounding Gray’s already raw grief.

  His chest hurt and his throat ached, locked as he was suddenly and inexplicably in that grief again. It happened too often, brought on by nothing and everything.

  A movement to his right caught his eye, breaking the spell of pleasure/pain the dog brought out in him. Audrey turned from the flowers she was arranging and watched him silently. Beneath wariness, he could almost detect compassion in her eyes, but why? What was she thinking? What did she see in him?

  He looked away from that knowing gaze and down at the long-haired brown-and-white beauty. “What’s his name?”

  “Jerry.”

  Gray thought about the dog’s name and did a double take. “Isn’t he a springer spaniel?”

  “Yep.” She waited, watched, wondering whether he would get the joke. He got it all right. Jerry Springer Spaniel.

  If he weren’t so pissed off at the woman, he’d laugh. Her sense of humor was every bit as quirky as her style.

  “Yeah?” he asked, feeling the rare hint of a grin tug at the corners of his mouth. “Who are his parents?”

  “We don’t know the father. We’ve done DNA tests, though. The results promise to be shocking. We think his mother slept around. It could get ugly.”

  Audrey leaned her elbow on the counter and rested her chin on her fist. Her other hand sat on her cocked hip. She had good hips—ample and shapely. A smile tipped the corners of her lush red lips, pride in her own joke.

  That tiny smile did a number on his equanimity, threatened to turn him soft, to treat her with tenderness when he couldn’t afford to. If he had any hope in hell of pulling his family out of the mess they were in, he had to hang tough.

  He straightened and removed his hand from the dog’s head, denying both himself and the dog pleasure. These days, Gray was more at home with pain.

  “Sell me the land.”

  He’d shocked her. She stepped behind the counter, putting distance between them. “No.”

  “I can move your plants to other greenhouses. At my cost.”

  “Moving them at this stage would kill them. Besides, the nearest greenhouses are miles away. I don’t even know if there are any available.”

  Damn. “I can research it.”

  “No, I won’t risk killing my plants by disturbing them. I don’t have to. I own that land legally.”

  “How much do you want for it?”

  “Nothing. I’m keeping it.”

  “I can give you far more than the plants you’re growing are worth.”

  “No.”

  His jaw, where all his tension centered, cramped. “What’s your problem? They’re only flowers.”

  “What’s your problem?” she countered. “Is money all you think about?”

  “These days? Yes.”

  “Money is not all that matters in life,” she asserted.

  It is if it saves my mother, my family, our business and all its employees. He would never say this to her or to anyone else in town. He would never show vulnerability to an opponent or give her ammunition to use against him.

  As far as the business went, only Gray and his accountant knew how close to the edge they were. As far as Gray knew, he was the only one who’d received the letter. That could change, though, if the woman didn’t get what she wanted. I’ll go to the newspap
ers.

  The thought of the tawdry truth splashed across newspaper headlines, the thought of his mother finding out about Dad in that way, in any way, left Gray chilled. Desperate.

  He thought of how Mom had looked this morning, fragile yet perky, about as classy a woman as he’d ever known.

  How could he let this destroy her?

  How could he get Audrey to sell? Now? Today?

  “Name your price,” he demanded, an incredibly stupid move for a smart businessman, but he needed that land.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Everyone does. What’s yours?”

  “Gray, leave my shop.”

  “No. Not until you promise to sell to me.”

  A frown formed between her dark arched eyebrows, and she edged her hand toward the telephone. “Seriously, Gray, go now or I’ll call the police.”

  “No.” He couldn’t, not until she agreed.

  She reached under the counter for...what?...a gun? For mace?

  He was frightening her. He might be mad to get the land, and she might be the strangest woman he’d ever met, but scaring her was unconscionable. Intimidation to get her to sell? Yes. Outright frightening her? Dead wrong.

  He backed away.

  “Think about it,” he said, the slightest thread of recklessness seeping into his voice. As a businessman, he was making mistakes left, right and center.

  She shook her head, and there was such implacability, such conviction in the movement he knew she would never sell, no matter how high his price.

  When he turned and left, desperation wrapped around his throat like a noose. He was going to have to do the unthinkable and have Dad declared unfit.

  No. Before he did that, he would drive into Denver and see this woman for himself.

  He couldn’t wait—for DNA results, for the woman’s next move, for another damn day. On the heels of that thought, he swore. He couldn’t leave today. He had an appointment with Dad’s accountant that couldn’t be put off.

  Tomorrow then. He’d go to Denver first thing tomorrow.

  Time for a showdown.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GRAY SAT IN his car for ten minutes getting his emotions under control, and then started the drive down Main toward Turner Lumber on the end of town opposite to where his parents lived. He couldn’t go home to face them.