by JJ Giles
“No. Just stop that now. You live your life. You don’t need to worry about what kind of image you project to the world anymore. I don’t. Alex never did and Alex has led a much happier life than the rest of us put together.”
“But you don’t understand. If Morgan...and the world knows I’m an Abernathy then people will come to her just to get to us. I think she would grow to resent that.”
That was probably true. It would change Morgan’s life not necessarily for the better. Neither of them had any advice for that.
“Brian, please, call her. Morgan is so well versed at human foible and she certainly doesn’t hold it against any of us. Tell her how ashamed of yourself you are, not because you’re an Abernathy but because you walked out on her. At this juncture, you don’t have anything to lose...right?”
Brian huffed. “But if she needs you...”
“No, son. Morgan doesn’t need me. Maybe once in a while she craves what I’ve got to offer, but she certainly doesn’t need me. Brian...call her.”
“Brian,” Alex said affectionately, “we’ll always be here for you. Your father and I both. There’s other things we need to talk about, too, but first you need to get straight with Morgan.”
“She’s pretty cool, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Don’t you know she hired a man for me?”
“She would do that. Who is it?”
It never occurred to Alex that Brian might know the guy, but on second thought it was obvious. “I don’t know his name.” Yet a quick description was uttered.
“Oh...Ricky Blanton. Nice guy,” Brian offered admiringly. “Quite well hung.”
Quickly, Alex cleared his throat to make Brian shut up and not insult Jerry. But Jerry never offered so much as a snarl to show his distaste.
“Call her, Brian,” Jerry insisted.
“Tomorrow,” Brian whispered. “I’ll call her in the morning. How the hell am I gonna get out of here though?”
“You and Cherry be on the dock at eight and I’ll have a trash truck pick you up. You can slip out with the garbage.”
Broadly, Alex smiled. Rather ingenious if not demeaning. But Brian’s reaction was so enthusiastic, he assented.
“I love you both,” Brian whispered.
“We love you both,” Alex purred.
But Jerry only contracted again with something he could never say often enough. “I love you all. I expect to see you tomorrow.”
“Dad?” Brian gasped full of panic.
“It’s alright, son. Everything will work out.”
Brian broke the connection and rolled over in the bed to clutch to a pillow and stare at his sister. What was this about really? His father’s encouragement to return to a woman they both love? A test? A duel? May the best man win? Yet it didn’t feel like that even though that was something he could expect from his father. Curiously, it didn’t feel like that and obviously only because Morgan had really gotten to his father, had given him back to himself like she did everyone. Isn’t that what started this anyway? Brian wanting to see his father again, for his mother and father to be the way they used to be? When they were happy? When he was a kid. Yet, it came to this.
* * * *
Alex watched as Jerry grabbed his cigarettes and pulled one from the pack, some ridiculously expensive and affected European brand. “You’re smoking again,” he warned.
“What’s another heart attack compared to what I’ve been through? It would be a vacation.”
“You’re doing the right thing.”
Hunched over, Jerry nodded. “For maybe the first time in my life.”
“I’m very, very proud of you.”
Jerry turned and stared. Rather than speak, because he had done much too much of that his entire life, he simply grasped his brother and embraced him affectionately, willfully and above all, gratefully.
* * * *
Five o’clock in the morning and Jerry had yet to sleep and probably wouldn’t for a few days. He trudged down the hallway and held his hand on the brass lever. She was in there, could almost scent her lying between the sheets, could almost feel her warmth. He’d never wanted anything so badly in his life as her. But what was stopping him other than his precious son, a man he admired greatly.
“Oh, Morgan,” he breathed. Pained, he opened the door.
The thick carpet swallowed his footfall. The sound of her quiet breathing, the soft rustle of silken skin against satin. The flickering candlelight, the moist breeze all conspired against him.
He laid back the covers and slipped in beside of her. Still asleep, she responded, her arms reaching out for him. Still asleep but she rolled onto her back and pulled him with her, and he moved to comply, to surrender to her desire. Her lips parted on the flesh of his neck and sucked gently to draw him in.
Oh, Morgan, he prayed as her legs drew up and wrapped around him. Silently, his penis slipped into her affection. In agony, he began to weep.
Chapter Forty-Three
The soft cooing of mourning doves echoed through the dim twilight as Morgan held him to her chest. She had believed he was too exhausted to sleep comfortably because he had twitched all through the night. Had even gotten up and began to wander. When he would actually be able to rest, she couldn’t know.
He stirred against her, his sleep in fits and starts, his nightmares more horrid than reality. His heavy arm slid around her to pull her close.
Her wet lips pressed against his forehead and held there. Her fingers threaded through his hair. “I want you to lie here and relax and then I’m going to feed you, bathe you, massage you and put you back to bed,” she whispered.
It sounded like one of those heavenly rewards for good deeds on earth. But he had committed no good works and this was the proof of it. “Actually, that sounds wonderful but I’m certain you have more to do than that and I think I should just hang out here. Try to get some actual sleep. It’s hard to sleep with you around. But I appreciate it.”
She scowled playfully. “You’re dismissing me?”
“I just need to be alone for awhile. Can you wait until this afternoon?”
“Of course. And if you don’t feel like roaming the house, just call the kitchen and Kitty will bring you something.”
“Thank you,” he said, restraining tears. “You can’t know what you’re doing for me.” Rather than linger, he left a shimmering kiss on her lips and rose, went to the bathroom and closed the door. The gentle sound of the shower told her he’d be gone awhile.
Just needs to be alone, she told herself, fending off the hurt of dismissal. She stretched long, awakening her muscles, and sat on the edge of the bed a moment. Through the broadening light, she caught a glimpse of something metallic in his opened suitcase and moved toward it. It was the edge of a frame. Carefully, she laid back the shirt. Her entire body contracted to the sight of it. Horrified, she stared.
Those sweet curls, the soft arch of eyebrows. Violently, she shook her head. That was most definitely Cherry with hair the color of the sky. And that was most definitely Brian, his arm around his...sister!!!
Her mouth agape, she stared at the bathroom door a moment. Shock, the kind of shock to hear that someone precious had died suddenly and unexpectedly assuaged her. No, no it can’t be, her gaze returned to the picture only a moment and then she dropped it back to the suitcase, clutched one hand to her heart, one to her stomach and ran.
Inside of her own bedroom she fell to the floor behind the closed door. What did it mean? Dear God, what did it mean? She thought of her beautiful Mouse and the night they played ‘pickup’, the night he confessed his--apparently--true identity. Every organ in her body suddenly cramped with a debilitating pain and shut down.
Unable to carry her own weight, she crawled to the bed. Not possible, she told herself. What the hell does this mean? I’ve been fucking his father! she screamed inside. Fallen in love with his father? Suffering a very healthy attraction for his sister? To the patron saint of prostitutes, she cried out, “St. Genevi
eve,” for illumination.
Muscles in her body seemed to cramp and blood vessels closed off with shock. Impossible, she told herself yet she knew it was true. His elegance, his easy elegance and suave demeanor. Never a situation in which he couldn’t handle himself whether it was Hoboken or Paris.
A tortured sarcastic laugh echoed out of her chest. He probably went to France as regularly as she went to Cleveland. She thought about ordering dinner there and felt the perfect ass for trying to teach him French. For trying to teach him anything at all. She had thought of him as a street urchin, a disheveled runaway for whom no one in the world cared...just like her.
The pain grew even more intense and she rolled onto her front and pulled her knees to her chest. The perfect ass, she thought of herself. Such unholy shame, such morbid shame and if she could just go dig a hole and bury herself alive, death would come quickly.
But how did Jerry get involved? Why did Jerry ever contact her?
It was Brian who gave Jerry her card, Jerry had said. But why?
Disconnected thoughts appeared and dissipated like the random pinging of a pinball machine. Ten years since Jerry had seen his son. A sister Brian occasionally spoke about. An uncle...has to be Alex. Cheryl Abernathy is Brian’s mother! The thought caused her to convulse. A prostitute. Ashamed of his mother and equally ashamed of me. She curled even tighter with that thought. And I’ve been fucking his father! Why?
The answer struck as suddenly as a stroke. She twisted off the bed and began to stomp. Brian’s getting married and doesn’t want me to interfere. Rather than be honest, he made sure I was hooked up with someone else. And I was instrumental in Jerry’s defeat...shaking her head violently. All that mistress shit got his mother and father separated, and he very effectively got back at his father for hurting his mother. Very, very clever, she thought filled with more rage than ever she’d known.
You son of a bitch...you motherfucker! Well, guess what, Baby. You got it. She would be Jerry’s lover for life, and Cherry’s, too.
Easily, she tore the ring off her finger and threw it, hoping to hear it shatter. When it merely landed on the carpet with a dull thud, she picked up an empty glass and threw it at the mirror, not wishing to see herself. The shattering was deafening, but at least, the outside resembled the inside and she fell to the floor, broken, humiliated, wounded and dying.
The phone rang; she could hear it as through the passage of time. For whatever reason, it continued to ring. She crawled toward it and her arm flew over the top of the table pushing it to the floor. Reluctantly, she whispered, “Yeah...”
“Morgan,” Brian whispered. “Honey, it’s me.”
For a long moment, she lay frozen as if in ice. “Brian? What do you want?”
“Honey, I’ve made a mess of everything. I need your help.” She snarled to hear the break in his voice.
The taste was like rotten eggs in her mouth. You haven’t seen a mess in your silver-spoon-fed life, not yet anyway, you son of a bitch. “What in the hell do you think I can do for you?”
It frightened him terribly, the rage, the recrimination that seemed already there.
“Honey, could you please just listen to me? Would you let me come home and talk to you?”
“Home? Home?”
“Honey, please. I’ve really fucked up bad. I’ll certainly understand if you never forgive me for it. I don’t think my dad will either, and I won’t blame him. But please, Baby, let me try to explain and tell you what an asshole I am and if you can’t get over it, I’ll leave. If it’s something that will be between us the rest of our lives, I’ll leave you be. Please, Morgan.” She heard a gasp for breath that sounded like a sob.
“You know where I live.” She clicked off.
Without will, she pulled herself to the bed and wrapped the sheet around her naked body. Incomprehensible that he was an Abernathy. A great grandson of the president of the United States. Jerome Bryant Alexander Abernathy IV, world’s most eligible bachelor. It sounded like the perfect life.
Chapter Forty-Four
It seemed only a few minutes passed that she heard a rustling of foliage on the arbor outside her window. Only another few seconds until he climbed that arbor. She felt his presence behind her, his breath heaving yet she couldn’t turn even to glance. Her anger to have him so near was a puddle of oil floating on a sea of rage.
Quickly, he moved toward her and stared at her refusal to meet his gaze. Yet he couldn’t be contained and he fell to the edge of the bed and gathered her tightly into his arms. “Oh, God, Morgan, I’m so sorry.”
Still stiff, she pushed him away. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Mr. Abernathy.” The flesh between her brows was as deep as furrows in a freshly turned field.
As if she were the Fire of Retribution, he retreated. His own anger flared up. “You know. He told you.”
“I know, but he didn’t have to tell me. Just a few minutes ago I found a picture of you and your sister in his suitcase. He was in the bathroom. He doesn’t know that I know, but very soon he will.” Her ire as sharp as anything else about her.
That she felt betrayed was so obvious when he hadn’t meant for her to feel that way. He reached behind him to retrieve his wallet to remove an old ID. “I saved this for you.”
She took the yellowed license curved to the shape of his ass. “Jerome Bryant Alexander Abernathy VI, age sixteen. When exactly did you become Brian Alexander?”
“When I graduated from Harvard.”
“Harvard.” She tossed her head in anger.
He backed away further. “Harvard, honey. You can’t imagine what a pain in the ass it is being an Abernathy.”
“Or the world’s most eligible bachelor?”
“That’s right. Every society chick in the world wanting to get married. Every other bitch in the world just wanting to get laid, and/or married or at least pregnant. None of it had to do with love, Baby. Not until I met you who didn’t and never knew who I am. Nor did you seem to care.”
She noticed his soft brown eyes, swollen with grief. Yet she looked away, not ready to have to feel sorry for such oh-so-pitiful circumstances. “Poor poor baby! So you just what...dropped out?”
“Yep. I just dropped out. My father decided I was going to be an accountant with a securities license and practice white collar crime with him. I was sitting in my office one day writing up the papers for a leveraged buyout of a company called Genlabs. My two o’clock appointment walked in and started peeling off her clothes when the call came to hold up on the papers. Paul Howard had just shot himself. He couldn’t get the financing to expand anywhere else but Abernathy. You see, that’s the way my father conducted business. Loaned people money they can’t possibly pay back and then forecloses on them. The old man was ready to take over and the guy sat at his desk and shot himself in the head while one very attractive woman rubbed her tits all over my face.
“That might not sound like much to you, but it finished me off. We had everything we could possibly want and a whole bunch of shit we didn’t want and people were killing themselves to make sure we had it.
“So after I scared the shit out of my two o’clock when I slammed the monitor to the wall, I went upstairs and told the old man to shove that job straight up his ass. And then I went to my very cushy condo in the Tower to hear my girlfriend mouthing off about it...she’d heard about it already, and I beat the shit out of her. And then I changed my clothes, got in my graduation present, a Lamborghini Diablo and I went to my mother for a little comfort. What do you suppose she had for me? Her comfort amounted to a confession about who my real father was: Alex.
“So I drove around until I ran out of gas and started walking. I fell on the curb and decided that the next bus that came by would deliver me. My mother’s a fucking...I don’t know.” In despair, his face fell to his hand. “And the man I loved and adored and depended on for everything, was not even my father.”
Quietly, he sat on the edge of the bed because he needed her comfort just
then. “But God loves me. Instead of a bus, it was a triple black lacquer Corvette.” He smiled fondly though tears. “And then you walked around the car and tripped over me and I knew then that I was looking at a woman whose got it all together in a very neat and appealing little package.
“And Baby, you make it so easy for people to forget their problems. And that’s what I did. For a lot of years, I simply didn’t remember. The day I left here, you told me I didn’t know anything about what was going on with my family and you were right, Honey. I’ve also since learned that you knew my grandfather. Morgan, I’m so sorry for that.” Quietly, his eyes began to bleed with copious tears. “I can only imagine what you experienced with him. I’m not real proud of being an Abernathy, Morgan. And I never wanted you to be ashamed of me.”
Incredulously, she stared. “Me...ashamed of you?”
“Yeah. We’re criminals, Morgan. But I don’t like living like that. If I have to steal something, I don’t fucking need it.”
“I rather doubt you have to steal anything.”
For a sad moment, he allowed her enmity to penetrate. “You’re right. I can have anything I want. Name it. Doesn’t matter what it is. If I wanted to be president I could easily buy my way into the White House. Yachts, castles, diamonds, name it, but I’d be using someone else’s money to do it, wouldn’t I?”
Curious, she perked. That was true. If he didn’t earn it, it wasn’t really his. Yet, she curled the sheet around her a little tighter. “You can’t imagine what kind of asshole I feel like.”
“Why, Baby?”
“Trying to teach you French, dress you in tuxedos.”
But he only smiled. “Morgan, looking at the world through your eyes is an incredible experience. I used to live in Paris, and there’s so much I never knew about it until I went there with you. When I was there I was looking at the cars, the women, the clothes. When we were there, I saw the people, some rich, some destitute. For the first time in my life I saw the landscape.”
