She lifted a brow. “Kaegan?”
“Yes, and I’m only telling you about him because he gave me permission to do so. Before coming here today, I talked to him on the phone and told him about the offer I would make to you. He said to tell you that if you doubted my sincerity or trustworthiness, to give him a call.”
Vashti didn’t say anything. Although she hadn’t asked Kaegan about it, she’d wondered how he could afford all those new boats and where he’d gotten the money to turn his father’s floundering business into a profitable one. “Any penalty for early repayment?”
“None.”
“I’d basically get the same terms you offered Kaegan?”
She was aware of his long silence before he answered. “No, not quite.”
She lifted a brow. Okay something was going on here. She could feel it. “What’s going to be different?” she asked in a cool and calm voice.
“Kaegan’s contract stipulates that if anything happens to me before the loan is repaid, payments will continue to be paid to my estate.” He paused a moment and then said, “I lost my only son and my wife, and since I was an only child, I don’t have family. The Lacroix line ends with me.”
She felt that same lump in her throat that she always felt when she remembered Julius’s death. “I’m sure I’ll have to do the same. Continue making payments to your estate.”
“You can if you wish, but that won’t be necessary.”
What he said didn’t make sense. “Why not?”
“Because if anything happens to me, Vashti, you become my heir.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
VASHTI WAS CERTAIN she misunderstood what Reid Lacroix had said. “Excuse me. Could you repeat that?”
He nodded. “If anything happens to me, you will become my heir.”
Vashti’s head began spinning. What he said didn’t make sense. “Why would you make me your heir? We aren’t related.” Were they? She hoped not since she’d gotten pregnant from his son. Was that why her baby had died? Had she and Julius been related and not known it. Was she somebody’s secret baby? Was she—
“You look like you’re about to pass out, Vashti. Whatever reason you’re assuming isn’t it.”
He had no idea what she was assuming. Or did he? “It’s not?”
“No. You and Julius were not related.”
She let out a deep sigh. For him to tell her that pretty much confirmed her suspicions. He knew. “Why would you make me your heir?”
Instead of answering her, he motioned for the waitress to refill his wineglass and asked Vashti if she would like hers filled as well. Since she had an idea what he was about to tell her, she figured she needed to drink something stronger than iced tea.
After both glasses were filled and the waitress had left, he said, “Before answering your question, I need to tell you this. Hopefully it will explain a few things.”
He took a sip of his wine and then said, “After graduating from high school Julius left for Connecticut to attend Yale. Roberta and I detected something was bothering him but had no idea what. Whenever we asked he would clam up and say it was nothing, but we knew there had to be a reason for him to start acting withdrawn and anti-sociable. It was during college he developed a drinking problem.”
She lifted a brow. “A drinking problem?”
“Yes. We hoped it was just a phase he was going through and things would be better when he returned home from college. But things got worse, not better. We tried to get him help but he refused. He erected a wall between him and us. That hurt us deeply because we’d always had a close relationship. Especially him and his mother. Then when Roberta got cancer, his drinking got worse. It was as if he couldn’t cope with knowing she had the disease. We didn’t even tell him it was terminal, but I believe somehow he knew.”
He got silent for a moment and Vashti knew he was trying to keep his emotions in check. It was hard to believe they were talking about the same guy. Julius never drank. Whenever they would steal away and meet in the woods between the two properties, he would bring a picnic basket with sandwiches and sodas. He’d once told her he didn’t like the taste of alcohol. When had that changed?
“I will never forget the day I got that call saying he was in that accident. He’d been drinking.”
She sucked in a deep breath. She hadn’t known that. She would always remember the day Bryce had called and told her about the car accident that had killed Julius. All she’d heard was that he had lost control of his car while driving at a high rate of speed. Nothing had been said about him driving while under the influence. “I didn’t know that.”
“Nobody did. The accident happened near Shreveport, and he was airlifted there. He wasn’t brought to the hospital in Catalina Cove, and I had his medical records sealed.”
“Airlifted? I thought he died at the scene.”
Reid shook his head. “No. He died at the hospital. In fact I saw him before he died. We were able to talk. That’s when he told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That he had been the father of your child and the reason he’d started drinking was because he thought he failed you.”
Vashti didn’t say anything because honestly she’d felt he had failed her, too. He had been the first person she’d told about being pregnant. He had held her. Told her everything would be alright and that he would stick by her side. He’d claimed he had wanted the baby as much as she did. That she didn’t have to worry about anything. Then he hadn’t shown up at their next secret meeting or the next. When he began avoiding her at school she’d known he was turning his back on her. The pain of his desertion had hurt, but she was determined to not let him know how much. Even when everyone found out about her pregnancy and all but demanded to know the father’s identity, Julius had remained in the shadows and not admitted to his part in her pregnancy. Yet she had still loved him.
Vashti met Reid’s gaze. “He did what he believed he had to do.”
“No,” Reid said with strong conviction in his voice. “He failed you like he said. I reached that conclusion after he told me everything. The promises he’d made to you and didn’t keep. A part of me feels responsible.”
Vashti took a sip of her wine, her throat suddenly dry. “And why do you feel responsible?”
“Because from the time he learned to walk and talk, I instilled in him that he was a Lacroix and what that meant. It was a name to uphold. Pride. Certain standards to live by. And more than anything a scandal-free existence. The latter is the reason he did what he did by putting the sanctity of the family’s name above his love for you. You and Julius engaged in a secret love affair and at sixteen you got pregnant. He saw the scandal that would cause. So he kept quiet and eventually guilt began setting in. He couldn’t handle letting you down. He loved you.”
Anger thickened her throat as she shook her head. “Julius did not love me. A guy who loves a girl would not have let her go through what I went through alone. He couldn’t even look at me. Yet that night I went into labor, he was the one I wanted with me. Not strangers and not my parents. I wanted the guy I loved.”
Vashti felt tears that threatened to fall from her eyes. After all these years she swore she would not cry again over Julius’s treatment of her, yet here she was doing just that. And in front of his father.
“Trust me, Vashti. He died loving you and knowing he’d failed you. I’m convinced that’s why he started drinking. The timeline indicates as much. He failed you and I failed him. I failed him by drilling into him the importance of family duty over love. I thought it was perfectly okay for him to one day marry a woman that I chose for him the way my parents chose Roberta for me.”
Vashti lifted a brow. “Your parents forced you to marry your wife?” She’d heard of wealthy families having such ideas but to hear him admit such a thing was unexpected.
“I didn’t consider i
t as being forced. I saw it as doing my duty to keep the Lacroix’s line moving. Roberta and I were friends and by the time our son was born I had fallen in love with my wife. I was willing to accept that same fate for Julius. I was wrong to do that and I told him that before he died. He gave up on love, happiness and life because of me.”
Vashti didn’t say anything. Although she didn’t know Reid Lacroix she’d known Julius loved his father. She’d always seen him as a man who was wealthy, polite, dignified and coolly controlled. Now she saw him as a man with regrets.
“By the time I got to the hospital Julius knew there was nothing the doctors could do, so with his last breath he made a request of me. He wanted me to tell you, if you ever returned to Catalina Cove and I saw you, that he loved you and that he loved the child the two of you made together. He wanted me to let you know that he did mourn the loss of his child and regretted not being strong enough to stand by your side.”
Reid Lacroix got quiet and then he said, “Because of that weakness he went through his own hell that was filled with guilt. That’s the reason he’d turned to alcohol. I hadn’t known.”
Vashti wondered why he was telling her this and what any of it had to do with him wanting to make her his heir. “I’m sorry, Reid. I loved Julius and I loved our baby as well. Even when my parents tried forcing me to give my child up for adoption, I refused to do so. I intended to raise my baby alone if I had to. Even if it meant leaving Catalina Cove.”
She paused a moment and then continued, “I’d figured out everything you told me, except Julius’s drinking problem. I hadn’t known. And I hadn’t known he loved me and wanted our baby. What I had known was that I was not the woman his family would have wanted for him to marry and in the end he’d made a decision about us.”
Vashti took a sip of her drink to alleviate the thickness she felt in her throat as a moment of sadness tried overtaking her. Not for the first time she wondered how different things would have been if her child had lived. Had she brought her son back with her, she wondered if her secret would have finally gotten out when he got older and began looking like his father? Or would Julius have denied her child as his son? She glanced at Reid. She was getting to know a side of him that she hadn’t before. It was obvious that he was a father who had loved his son. The final analysis was that he believed he had failed him like Julius believed he had failed her.
“Julius died seven years ago. Why are you just telling me this now?” she asked.
He met her gaze. “I had to deal with Roberta’s grief. She took Julius’s death hard and refused to take any more chemo treatments. I finally got her to start them again but by then it was too late. The cancer had spread and she died less than a year later. Losing both my son and wife within months of each other was hard for me. I underwent grief counseling, and several trips abroad to pull myself together. By the time I did and hired someone to seek you, I discovered you’d gotten married the week before. I knew what I had to tell you would be the last thing a newlywed wanted to hear so I decided to wait and tell you at another time. And then I heard you’d returned to town for the sale of the inn and that you were now divorced. I knew it would be the opportunity to tell you. Before I got a chance to request a private meeting with you, you’d left the cove. I hadn’t figured you would leave so soon.”
She nodded. “Honestly, I stayed longer than I had intended. Thanks for keeping your word to Julius and telling me what he’d said, Reid. But that still doesn’t explain why you’d want to make me your heir.”
He had been looking down, studying the contents of his wine. When he looked back up at her again, his eyes were watery. “I don’t have anyone now. My son and my wife are gone. You are the woman my son loved until the moment he died. In fact, your name was the last word off his lips. I see you as the woman my son loved and the woman who carried my grandchild before giving birth to it. It pains me to know I lost my one and only grandchild. A grandchild that would have come from you had it lived. That means a lot to me.”
He swallowed once, twice. “Had Julius lived, everything I possess would have gone to him. Knowing that, I have no problem leaving it all to the woman he loved. The mother of my grandchild. Losing the baby at birth doesn’t matter to me.”
It was hard for Vashti to swallow. “I didn’t lose the baby at birth.”
Reid lifted a brow. “You didn’t?”
“No. My baby was born alive. However, he didn’t live but a few hours. My parents were there and took care of all the arrangements.”
“He?”
“Yes. I gave birth to a boy.” Julius hadn’t even known he’d had a son because he never asked. When she’d returned to town he avoided her and hadn’t asked her anything and she’d reached the conclusion he hadn’t wanted to know.
“There were complications during labor and delivery. The doctor explained them to me, but I didn’t want to hear anything that he or anyone had to say. All I knew was that I’d lost my child and I grieved for him.” There was no need saying that she still grieved for him now, that she thought about him on what would have been his birthday every year. He was buried in a cemetery in Little Rock and she’d gone there several times to visit his grave.
“Did you get to see him? Hold him?”
She shook her head. “No. Because I had a difficult labor and delivery, I don’t remember any of it. I recall waking up hours after my delivery and being told that although my child had been born alive he only lived a few hours and eventually died of a collapsed lung.”
She watched him pick up his wineglass again to take another sip. She still saw a man filled with regrets. But at that moment she also saw a man filled with loneliness. Although she didn’t have a close relationship with her parents, they were still alive, well and living in Pensacola, Florida. Then she had Bryce and Bryce’s family who years ago had made her one of their own. But Reid had no one. Why should she care? Because she realized something. Just like she’d been the mother of his grandchild, he was the grandfather of her child. Regardless of whether she was ready to accept it or not, they did have that connection. That bond.
And it was that bond that was inspiring him to make her his heir. He also wanted her to return to Catalina Cove and reopen Shelby by the Sea. Return the inn to being the beautiful place it had once been. Even though her aunt never requested her to do that, a part of Vashti knew she would have wanted that. But it wasn’t just the inn that she found significant. Everything he’d told her today was overwhelming, especially what Julius had wanted her to know before he’d died.
“Will you consider returning to Catalina Cove to live and run the inn, Vashti?”
She took a deep breath, knowing she was not ready to give him her answer. Surprised that she would even entertain any thoughts of doing what he’d suggested. “I need time to think about it, Reid.”
He nodded. “Alright. Take all the time you need. And just so you know, becoming my heir does not hinge on whether you return to Catalina Cove or not, Vashti. You will become my heir regardless.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“EVERYTHING IS ALL SET,” Erin said. “I got Jade a straight flight from New Orleans to Waco and she will be with me for two weeks for spring break. I can’t wait. The boys, Damon and I are excited about her coming. I tried to get three weeks out of her this summer, but she said something about getting a job.”
Sawyer shook his head. “That’s not a definite. We’ve talked about it but I’m not sure I want her to work. She’ll have plenty of time to do that. I would like her to use her time to volunteer at the hospital again this year.”
“And what about that car my goddaughter wants?” Erin asked.
Sawyer smiled. “She’ll get one eventually. I’m in no hurry to see her behind the wheel of one. Besides, she just got her license a few months ago.”
“I know. They grow up fast.”
“Tell me about it. I regret not being h
ere when she was born. I would have been right there in the delivery room with Johanna. I hate she did it alone.”
When Erin didn’t say anything, Sawyer said, “Erin? You still there?”
“Yes, I’m still here. Sorry about that. Damon stuck his head in the door to let me know he and the boys are going for ice cream,” she said. “And Johanna understood why you weren’t there. You were in Afghanistan serving our country and could not be with her.”
“Glad you were there.”
“Thanks. Well, I need to talk to Damon before he leaves and remind him that Lil’ Damon can’t eat all flavors of ice cream. He and chocolate aren’t best buddies.”
“And how are Damon and the boys?”
“Fine. Damon has a new toy. A Harley-Davidson. And the boys are growing like weeds. It’s hard to believe Lil’ Damon is five and Lonnie is three. Damon hints about having a third child. He still wants a daughter.”
“Daughters are nice,” Sawyer said.
“You don’t regret never having a son?”
“No. Although I wanted more children, I knew because of all the problems Johanna had in delivering Jade, she would be our only child.”
“Think you’ll ever remarry? You’re still young.”
He chuckled. This seemed to be a theme with the women in his life these days. “No. I have no plans to remarry and father more kids. Jade is my one and only.”
When Trudy gave her signature knock on the door, he called out, “Come in.”
Then to Erin, he said, “Time to get back to work. I’ll let Jade know things are all set for her trip.”
“Okay, Sawyer. I will talk to you later.”
“Same here. Tell Damon I said hello and I’m going to have to try out that Harley-Davidson when I come get Jade.” He would usually drive to Waco and pick her up instead of putting her back on a plane to return home. That way he got to spend time with her on a road trip that usually included returning to their neighborhood in Reno so she could visit with her old friends.
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