by Tina Martin
“Christopher Fargus.”
Carter shook his head, and let out a very uncomfortable chuckle. “I’m supposed to believe that Jackie is my mother and Chip Fargus, the C.E.O. of the largest bank in the country, is my father?”
Shayla handed him the birth certificate and watched his hands tremble as he stared at the truth. His lips quivered. “How long have you known this?”
“She told me last weekend.”
“This can’t be true...it can’t be. I work with this guy...just had a meeting with him and a few other managers last week.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“He just spoke…like he normally does, and got right down to business.” Carter sighed again, then said, “C’mon. Let’s go.” He stood up from the bed, slid his legs in a pair of jeans and threw a shirt over his head.
“Where are we going?”
“To her house.” He sat and put on a pair of Nikes.
“Carter, it’s after midnight.”
“I could care less about the time.”
“Okay, well are you sure you want me to go with you, because—”
“Positive.”
“Carter—”
“I need you with me, Shayla,” he told her. He appeared flustered, as anyone would be who believed their parents were deceased and found out that both of them were still very much alive.
“Okay.” Shayla stood, found some jeans, a T-shirt and a cardigan, then hurried to put her shoes on.
Chapter 24
Carter banged on the door when they arrived at Jacqueline’s house. It was close to one in the morning so she was probably in bed, which is why he knocked so hard. If she was sleeping, she had to get up now. If she didn’t, Carter would knock the door smooth off the hinges, because there was no way he was leaving this house without talking to her. No way.
He knocked again, louder than before, and then saw the living room light illuminate the curtains hanging at windows. Finally.
“Who is it?” Jacqueline asked behind the closed door.
“It’s Carter and Shayla.”
Jacqueline threw her right hand over her heart because she knew what this meant. Carter and Shayla showing up at her house in the wee hours of the morning meant only one thing – Shayla told him.
After tightening the belt around her robe then retying it, Jacqueline opened the door, already in tears.
Carter, wasting no time, held the birth certificate out in front of him and asked, “Is this true?”
Jacqueline wiped her eyes and said, “Carter, I’m so sorry.”
“Is this true,” he repeated.
Jacqueline sniffled, dabbed her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “Yes, son. It’s true.”
“Wow,” he said, not in an excited way, but more along the lines of I-can’t-believe-I’ve-been-lied-to-my-whole-life kind of way. And the fact he was standing in front of her, could feel some sort of bond with her, and see some of his features in her made the whole ordeal seem surreal. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Why keep this from me after all these years?”
Jacqueline opened the door wider and Carter, letting Shayla pass ahead of him, walked in the house and sat on the couch.
“I didn’t want to hurt anybody,” Jacqueline replied, sitting in a chair opposite of them. “I thought when Lenora died, the truth would come out, but it didn’t and I didn’t want to tell you, Carter, especially since you thought you’d buried your mother.”
Carter released a sigh and Shayla held on to his hand, assuring him of her support.
An hour or so later, Jacqueline had finished up telling him everything that had happened when he was a child – how Lenora didn’t want to give him back. She even went into details about his father, Christopher, and how they met at a concert, fell in love and how, when she got into trouble with the law, Christopher had left her. Said it wouldn’t look good for his career path and goals in life to be attached to a woman with a shady background. She then explained to Carter that she and his father were starting to talk again and over lunch last week, Christopher told her that he wanted to tell Carter he was his father, but she told him to wait.
Jacob was right all along, Carter thought. Standing up, he said, “I can’t believe this…going to take some time to sink in.”
Jacqueline stood, too. “I know you probably hate me—”
“I don’t hate you, Jackie.”
Jacqueline looked relieved. “I just want you to know that I love you very much. I always have.”
Carter lips trembled. He was trying to hold everything inside, like men typically do, but when he heard her say those words, he broke down. He could never recall an instance when Lenora said those words to him.
Tears sprang from Shayla’s eyes when she saw Carter upset to the point of tears. She stood up, wrapped her arms around him, telling him that everything was okay.
Carter collected himself, cleared his throat then said, to Jacqueline, “Lenora never said that to me…she never told me she loved me. She gave me things, left me all her money, but she never told me she loved me. I didn’t know what love was until I met Shayla.” He held Shayla’s hand tight as she stood next to him. “You were supposed to teach me that, Jackie.”
“I know, Carter. I’m sorry.”
In a move that surprised and impressed Shayla, Carter walked up to Jacqueline and embraced her warmly in his grasp, squeezing and not wanting to let her go. Finally, his life was beginning to make sense, even if it was happening too late.
“I love you so much, son,” Jacqueline said crying while his arms were still locked in place around her.
“I love you too, Mother.”
Shayla, standing nearby watched them embrace with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes, happy for Carter and his family, and that things were finally starting to make sense for him.
Carter and Jacqueline separated and he stared at her, seeing himself in her eyes. “You look like me,” he told her, then chuckled.
“I think that’s the other way around, Carter,” Shayla said, smiling.
“Right,” he replied.
“Thank you for telling him, Shayla,” Jacqueline said, “Because I don’t know if I would’ve had the guts to do it.”
Shayla smiled. “You’re welcome. I know I was getting a little irate with you over it for a minute there, but I love Carter so much and I wanted him to know.”
Carter looked at Shayla and smiled, feeling his heart skips beats at the happiness she’d brought to his life. Where would he be without this woman? He’d probably still be a playboy bachelor, clubbing it up with Terrance every other night, wining and dining women who had no interest in and he definitely wouldn’t know his parents were alive. Diverting his attention back to Jacqueline, he said, “Well, we need to let you get your sleep.”
“I’m too excited to sleep, now,” Jacqueline admitted.
“Me too,” Carter said, “But we’ll pick this up tomorrow. We still need to talk about my father.”
“Yes, of course.”
Jacqueline hugged them both again before they left.
Chapter 25
“So that wasn’t so bad, huh?” Shayla asked.
Carter shifted the car in reverse, backed out of the driveway and said, “No. Not at all. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be.”
Driving down the road, he turned to look at her, several times, watching her briefly then glancing back at the road. The look of satisfaction on her face spoke volumes in terms of her love for him. She did this for him, even against Jacqueline’s wishes she told Carter things she felt he needed to know. What woman had ever gone to greater lengths to make him happy?
He glanced at her again, feeling a swell of elation in his heart that she was his woman, reflecting back on his life with her – how he found her. Homeless. Jobless. Dirty and fraile. How he stayed with her in the hospital. Brought clothes for her. Took her to his home the day she was discharged from the hospital. Cared for her. Made sure she took her medicine. Gave
her his car. Opened a bank account for her. Nursed her back to help. Took her to therapy. Helped her find a job, get back on her feet. He was foolish to let her go, once, but quickly fixed that error by making her his wife. And even after all the things he’d done for her, what she’d done for him far outweighed it all. She brought his mother back into his life. She found out his father was still alive. And above all else, she loved him.
At home now, Carter kissed and pulled on her lips with his, and while they made love, he thought about all the things she’d done for him. When they first met, he saved her, but after their journey together, he realized she was the one who saved him. They saved each other.
Holding her quietly against his chest now, their bodies relaxed, he ran his fingers through her hair and said, “I’m in love with you, Shayla.”
Shayla smiled, tired and sleepy but said, “I’m in love with you, Carter.”
“You are the reason my life is turning out the way it should be. I don’t care if it was an accident how we found each other or not...doesn’t make a different to me.”
“What you talking about, Carter?”
“A while ago, you said our marriage was an accident.”
“I was upset when I said that.”
“Yeah, but it was on your mind, otherwise, you wouldn’t have said it, right? So let me put your mind at ease, darling. Think about this for a minute…had I not stopped that day I found you and helped you, I wouldn’t even know any of this stuff about my family. I think about that constantly…how I wasn’t supposed to park where I parked that day…wasn’t supposed to take that walk to my office and wasn’t supposed to even stop and help you because truthfully, I never do things like that. But I stopped, fell in love with you, married you and you have truly changed my life, Shayla.”
Shayla kissed his chest then rested her head against him again, feeling satisfied and happy that she was able to do these things for him.
“You reintroduced me to Jackie, who I now know is my birth mother. You gave me some insight into Jacob’s death, and you even found out that my father is still alive. And you know what the truly amazing thing is to me?”
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t have to do any of those things…but you did because you love me.”
A big smile grew on Shayla’s face. “Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, I love you so much, that I called your father’s secretary, left a message with her to have him call me and he called me yesterday.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“It’s difficult to get the C.E.O. of one of the largest corporations in the country on the phone. How did you manage to do that?”
“Easy. I told his secretary to tell him I was married to his son and wanted to arrange a meeting. Not even five minutes had gone by before he called me back, almost in tears. Said he wanted to tell you that he was your father after working with you for so long. I invited him over Tuesday night. I hope that’s okay.”
“Yeah...it’s cool. If you thought I was being rough on your father, wait ‘til you see what I do to mine.”
Shayla giggled. “Speaking of my father, you know he’s leaving in the morning. We should get up early and have breakfast with him.”
“Yeah, we can.” Carter glanced at the clock. “We only have a few hours before we gotta get up, though.”
“Uh huh...like our honeymoon night. Remember we stayed up extremely late?”
“Yep.”
“Then we had breakfast with Kaitlin and Russell...wonder how they’re doing?”
“Didn’t you exchange numbers with her?”
“Did I? That was a whirlwind trip...I don’t remember what I did.”
“But you remember making love to me.”
“Of course. How could I not remember that?
Carter smiled. “But getting back to what I was saying, the bottom line is, sweetie, I don’t care how we met. I just know that we were meant to be together and what we have could never be called an accident. Agreed?”
Shayla snuggled in closer to his chest, getting comfortable and feeling extremely loved and adored by her husband, the man who’d saved her life and given her a new chance at happiness. “Agreed.”
Looking forward to the future, they had so many plans ahead of growing their relationship, traveling the world together, he introducing her to things and places that she’d never been. They would work hard to reestablish relationships with their parents before planning a family of their own. Now, their lives together could truly begin and their love for each other would last for an eternity.
# # #
Start reading Book 4, What Donovan Wants now.
Explore other books by Tina Martin:
Accidental Deception, The Accidental Series, Book 1
Accidental Heartbreak, The Accidental Series, Book 2
Accidental Lovers, The Accidental Series, Book 3
What Donovan Wants, The Accidental Series, Book 4
Dying To Love Her
Dying To Love Her 2
Dying To Love Her 3
The Millionaire’s Arranged Marriage (The Alexanders, Book 1)
Watch Me Take Your Girl (The Alexanders, Book 2)
Her Premarital Ex (The Alexanders, Book 3)
The Object of His Obsession (The Alexanders, Book 4)
His Paradise Wife (The Champion Brothers, Book 1)
When A Champion Wants You (The Champion Brothers, Book 2)
Secrets On Lake Drive
Can’t Just Be His Friend
All Falls Down
Just Like New to the Next Man
Vacation Interrupted
The Crush
Read book descriptions and more at www.tinamartin.net.