Chain of Title

by Robyn Roze

  He was a better dad than that...a better man.

  “Why would he say that to you?” she said more to herself than Danielle. Shayna hadn’t said anything uncomplimentary about Frank to their daughter, so this wasn’t tit for tat. He just wanted to hurt her, while driving a bigger wedge between her and Danielle. That sonofabitch.

  “Are you going to do that to me? Cut me out, because I agree with Daddy and don’t like what I saw here today? Is this Sean Parker the reason you won’t give Daddy another chance?”

  Shayna just stared at her daughter for what seemed like an eternity, powerless to speak. She inhaled sharply and shook her head. This day had certainly spiraled down and crash-landed.

  With preternatural calm, Shayna admitted, “I don’t like being hurt, Danielle. And I don’t give people a second chance to hurt me. It’s that whole ‘shame on you the first time, shame on me the second time’ thing. Yes, your father made a mistake. That word hardly covers it though. It makes it sound more like he forgot to pay a bill or what day to take out the trash. If you really want the details, you’ll have to ask him. And, no, Sean Parker has nothing to do with why I won’t reconcile with your father. So, just leave him out of it. As far as cutting you out of my life,” Shayna sighed, feeling deep, overwhelming love swell inside, “You are the one and only person I would never, could never, cut out of my life, no matter what you did or said to hurt me.”

  Shayna saw the emotion register in Danielle’s eyes and then the earlier combative demeanor and anger quickly masked it.

  “You’re a twenty-three-year-old woman, Danielle, start acting like one. And here’s a suggestion: stop calling your father ‘daddy.’ You’re not a toddler anymore.”

  Danielle’s eyes popped open and she blurted, “Why do you have to be such a bitch?”

  Shayna reflexively slapped her daughter hard across the face. It wasn’t until she saw Danielle cover her red cheek and saw her shocked expression that Shayna even realized what she had done.

  With a firm tone, Shayna scolded, “Don’t ever talk to me that way again, Danielle. I know I’m far from the perfect mother or wife. I have no illusions about that. But I also know, without a doubt, that I’ve been far better at both those things than my mother ever was.”

  She saw the tears threatening to spill over Danielle’s lush, dark lashes—and the remorse in her eyes for the epithet. Danielle, clearly embarrassed and flustered by the altercation, moved quickly to scoop up her purse and car keys, unable to make eye contact with her mother.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it. I just think you’re making a huge mistake. You need to talk to Daddy...Dad. Oh, whatever! You two need to talk!”

  Danielle raced out of the house without looking back. Shayna heard the tires on the blue BMW screech around and out the circular drive. The day could only get better from here.

  Right?

  CHAPTER 8

  For a good chunk of the afternoon, Shayna sat and stared out blankly from her hilltop home over Lake Indigo to the city of Mt. Pleasant, trying to reconcile the events of the last twenty-four hours. Hell, the last forty-eight years. Oh, how she wished she could talk to her dad. He had always been able to make her feel better. If nothing else, he could’ve just wrapped her in one of his big, warm, Montgomery bear hugs. He wouldn’t have had to say a word.

  She thought about calling one of her brothers, but they were barely speaking to her right now. They had drawn a line in the sand. Their prodigal mother had wormed her way back into Jackson and Scott’s lives after the death of Ben Montgomery, and they felt that Shayna should be more accepting of her. She wanted a relationship with her brothers, just not with their mother. She really wasn’t angry with them. A little hurt maybe, but not angry. Why they felt the need to choose sides was a mystery to her, but they had—for now at least.

  The Montgomery brothers didn’t know everything that Shayna did about Abigail Montgomery, and she saw no need to tell them—in honor of their father. It would only make her look spiteful if she did.

  Now she had Frank trying to manipulate their daughter into choosing sides—his, of course. Why would he suddenly be doing that? Or maybe it wasn’t all that sudden, maybe today was just the first she had gotten wind of it. He couldn’t possibly have been surprised that she went through with the divorce. That was just crazy talk.

  Inhaling deeply, she stretched her arms up and over the back of the thickly padded chaise lounge, dragging the pale yellow sundress farther up her toned legs. The warm summer breeze, as comforting as it felt on her skin, wasn’t able to ease the cold ache in her heart. A part of her hoped that Frank really did hurt as much as she did from the ruin of their marriage. Then at least she could feel like he had loved her. Not enough, in the end, but close.

  If she had learned anything during her time on earth, it was that there are all types and degrees of love. The way she had loved Frank wasn’t the same as her first love, but that was okay. It was still a strong, passionate love, and they had been good for each other. They’d had a sizzling chemistry, a connection from the very beginning that hooked her. She had thought they would be together until the end—death, that is, not divorce. Now she had experienced both kinds of endings, and they were equally painful, disorienting, and suffocating at times.

  “Hello, beautiful.” Shayna inhaled sharply and almost choked before jumping up from her lounger to see Frank standing on the deck.

  “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “No, hello? How’ve you been?” He was clearly pleased that he had startled her. Slowly moving a few steps closer he said nonchalantly, “I have to say, Shay, I completely disagree with our daughter on this one. That hairstyle suits you. Christ, you look amazing.” He openly eyed her from head to toe as if he had the right to.

  “I asked how you got in here, Frank.”

  The question was moot. Dani had obviously run to tattle and had given Frank her key—or maybe he had copied it even before today. The thought galled her.

  “The place looks incredible, too.” He gestured back to the house. “The colors, the style, it’s definitely you, Shay.”

  She cocked her head in doubt. “You mean unforgiving and cold?”

  She couldn’t believe Frank was standing in her home so cavalierly, as if he owned the place, as if they were still together. She hadn’t been face to face with him in quite some time. He looked a little older, more salt than pepper in his hair now, but still thick and wavy. His bright, sapphire blue eyes matched the silk shirt he was wearing anchored by the Rolex gleaming in the sun, just above the pocket of the black dress pants that he had casually tucked his hand into. It was simply wrong that he still looked so good. There was no way she would look that good in seventeen years.

  He held his hand up in a gesture of truce. “I never should’ve said that. I’m sorry, Shay. I just haven’t been myself lately.” He stood staring at her as if she were a port in the storm. “I think we should talk,” he said softly.

  “Now you want to talk?” She shook her head. “Now? Not before you screwed that girl in our bed? Please don’t tell me again how it didn’t mean anything, as if the fact that it means something to me means I’m the one blowing it out of proportion!”

  She moved closer into Frank’s space and lowered her tone. “Tell me, Frank, how do you think you’d have felt if you’d walked in on me with another man’s dick inside me—in our bed?” She saw a ripple break his calm surface. “Think you could ever get that image out of your head? Think you could ever look at me again and not see that?” Frank swallowed hard. Shayna straightened and inhaled deeply. “I don’t know why you’re here, but you need to turn around and leave.”

  She stood her ground and kept her unyielding stare locked on his. Frank blinked a couple of times before stepping back and clearing is throat. He glanced over to the hillside lush with evergreens before looking back to Shayna.

  He spoke contritely. “You’re the last person I ever wanted to hurt, Shay. I
know that what I did is unforgivable, and yet, here I am, asking for your forgiveness. I never wanted to be without you. I thought we’d be one of those rare couples that’d be together until the end. Not because we felt obligated, but because we wouldn’t want any other way.” She glimpsed the watery sheen in his eyes before he blinked rapidly and looked away. “Other couples get through this sort of thing, Shay. It’s not easy, I know that. But they find a way to start over and make it all work again. Why can’t we?” He asked roughly, staring pointedly at her.

  “Because we’re divorced, Frank. You already know the ending; you just don’t want to accept it.” He exhaled sharply. “If you’d known me at all, the way I thought you did, you’d have known what you did was a deal-breaker for me. When someone hurts me that deeply you know I don’t look back, don’t give that person the chance to hurt me again.”

  She moved back into Frank’s personal space. “So, it’s one of two things, Frank. Either you thought you could screw around on me and not get caught—have it all—or you wanted me to catch you, so you could avoid that whole conversation about not wanting to be married to a middle-aged woman anymore. The woman that was there and stuck by you before you made your millions. After all, you’re an attractive, wealthy man who should be able relive his twenties for the rest of his life. Right? Was that it, Frank? I didn’t fit the image of what a woman married to a man like you should look like? Did you think you’d earned a younger model?” She noticed Frank lightly shaking his head with an odd expression. “I just became too old for you at some point and that’s why you screwed a girl your daughter’s age.”

  Frank’s expression was incredulous. “That’s what you’ve been thinking this whole time? That I thought you were too old?” He raked his hands through his hair and lifted his face skyward, shaking his head. “It really wasn’t about you, Shay. It was about me—my insecurities.”

  He stepped away from her with a dazed expression, walking slowly toward the cabled railing. “I still can’t believe I’m in my sixties,” he said, cynically, moving to brace his hands on the railing and looking hard across Lake Indigo. “I feel so much younger, but the reflection staring back at me doesn’t lie. It’s like I went to bed a thirty-year-old man and woke up sixty. Where the hell did it all go? Oh, I know the stereotype for this thing, I should’ve had a mid-life crisis in mid-life, for Christ’s sake. But I was too busy, then.”

  He paused as if reminiscing. “I never thought I’d get married, and then...there you were that day in the law firm.” He snorted softly, closed his eyes, and shook his head at the memory. “Then this beautiful girl agreed to marry me. Me. I felt like anything was possible. We started a business. We had Danielle a couple of years later and we just never stopped, never slowed down that whole time.”

  Shayna bubbled with conflicting emotions and turned her head when Frank glanced at her.

  “I started to think I was too old for you, Shay. I never really gave our age difference a thought until these last four or five years. But, Jesus, look at you. For the first time in my life, I started to feel like I’d robbed the cradle.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ben couldn’t have been happy about you marrying me, his beautiful daughter giving up her youth to a middle-aged man, but I didn’t even think about that back then.” He sighed loudly and turned toward Shayna. “I am so sorry that I fucked everything up so royally between us. I take full blame, Shay. I know it’s on my back, not yours.”

  Shayna chewed nervously at the inside of her lip, scanning Mt. Pleasant and refusing to meet Frank’s searching gaze, not wanting to give in to old habits, familiar ways—the trap that time laid. If she looked in his blue eyes right now, she knew there was every chance that’s exactly what would happen.

  “I understand why you didn’t want to talk to me in the beginning. Why you didn’t want to see me. I gave you space and then when you pressed for the divorce—I finally agreed, not because I wanted it—but because I hoped you would decide on your own not to go through with it. But then you signed those damn papers yesterday.” He released a stuttered sigh. “So, now, I’ve been telling myself that maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe that’s what we need, a fresh start. Get to know each other again, start with clean slates, date again, and take it slow.”

  Out of her peripheral view, Shayna could see Frank trying to catch her gaze. The bruised part of her ego wished they could start over, but the pragmatic part of her was dubious.

  “How many were there, Frank?” She saw his pinched expression in the corner of her eye. “Girls, women, whatever. How many were there?”

  He rubbed at his chin and thought a moment. “One.”

  “And you’re still together?”

  He waited before answering. “Off and on.” As if anticipating her reaction, he blustered, “You’ve wanted nothing to do with me, Shay. I’m not a monk.”

  Yeah, like she didn’t already know that.

  “Did you—do you—love her?”

  He took an offended stance. “No,” he answered resolutely. Shayna nodded deliberately watching the sun in its slow descent.

  “Did you tell her that you loved her to get her into bed with you?”

  She heard him swallow. He hung his head. His silence was the answer—and she had expected it. She turned with a stony stare to look Frank squarely in his eyes.

  When she spoke, it was with marked sadness and the acceptance of great loss.

  “Your words are lovely, Frank. But your actions are ugly, not to mention louder than anything you could ever say. And your logic? It’s flawed, and that’s being kind.” She answered his quizzical expression. “Your new found concern for robbing the cradle? Well, it’s a bit hard to believe when you demonstrate your anguish by screwing a girl half my age.”

  He started to speak, but Shayna held up her hand, shaking her head. “You should really stop talking.” A single tear streamed down her cheek. “If it wasn’t for Danielle, the last twenty-five years of my life would’ve been a complete waste. You did take my youth—and wring out the last drop. You didn’t love me enough to be honest—even now. Then, to top it all off, you insult me further by saying God knows what to our daughter about me and Abigail. I couldn’t possibly be more disappointed in you for not at least being a better father than you were a husband.”

  Shayna turned to leave and Frank grabbed her arm. She jerked back and yanked herself free from his grip. “Don’t ever lay a hand on me again! You lost that privilege three years ago, and you’re not getting it back.” Her voice laced in warning, she pivoted to walk away.

  “What do you know about this Sean Parker, Shay?” Frank asked in a bruised voice he attempted to cover with calm.

  Shayna stopped dead in her tracks. Dani! She exhaled and shook her head at the realization of what this visit had been about all along. She heard Frank approach and stand behind her.

  He leaned down and admonished, “You need to be careful, Shay. You’re a mature, single woman with means now...substantial means. Younger men with money troubles, failing restaurants for example, will be very interested in you.”

  He had come out swinging now. Shayna buffeted the insult and turned slowly to look boldly up into his eyes.

  “You need to be careful too, Frank. A twenty-something without her own means will pretend to be very interested in a man others might mistake as her father...or grandfather.”

  He straightened, and his lips thinned in restrained anger. His chest expanded in a deep inhale.

  “You’ve already fucked him, haven’t you? I heard all about the permanent smile on your face at the gym this morning and again after our daughter walked in here,” he said gruffly, motioning around the deck.

  Boy, for a city the size of Mt. Pleasant, it sure felt like a small town.

  “Well, Frank, I’m not a monk.” She saw the hurt in his eyes. “Now get out of my house. And don’t bother giving Dani her key back. I’m calling a locksmith immediately.”

  With that said, Shayna stormed into the house and up
stairs to her bedroom. She heard the frosted glass panels rattle downstairs when Frank slammed the door shut and watched from a bedroom window as he got into his black Mercedes and sped away.

  She circled slowly, gazing out at the sweeping views the contemporary design of her home afforded. Then she walked in a daze to her bed, feeling hollowed out, stripped. She collapsed onto her back on the white, downy comforter, not remembering ever feeling so...lonely. Her father was gone, she’d written her mother off long ago, her brothers were barely speaking to her, Dani was disillusioned with her—and Frank... A man she had loved most of her life, who had given her hope in hopeless times, and had ultimately wounded her irrevocably.

  As much as she hated to admit it, she did believe Frank was sorry about what he had done, the way things had ended. She didn’t really think he wanted to hurt her. She had read the genuine anguish in his eyes, the regrets, and the sincere desire to make amends and start over. She was so glad he had stormed out. If he had stayed, if he had kissed her, it would’ve been all over—and she knew it.

  She suddenly felt a desperate need to hold onto to something that proved she hadn’t wasted all of those years. The only evidence of that right now was one angry, disappointed daughter.

  Shayna felt the gentle current from the ceiling fan and began counting the white planks high above.

  Then the tears fell.

  CHAPTER 9

  The sound of her name in the distance and the gentle nudging woke her. Her vision was hazy, and it took her a moment to acclimate. When she finally did, Sean Parker was smiling expectantly down at her.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he whispered, stroking her cheek.

  She gave him a sleepy smile and then her expression quickly turned to alarm and she bolted upright, the comforter covering her, falling away.