Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles)

by Lee, Kimball

  “No, I’d like you to listen to what I have to say,” Bly said. “I’m worried about Charlotte, and she won’t take my calls…”

  Finn was on his feet in a flash and he pulled Bly up to face him, “Well isn’t that just a motherfucking shame that my wife isn’t at your beck and call? You obviously don’t know her very well to think she wants to hear from you. We’re happy, Bly, something you obviously can’t comprehend. She made her choice, and this is the last time I’m telling you to fucking accept it and stay away from her.”

  Bly pushed Finn away and he wanted to beat him as badly as he had beaten Bennet, but Charlotte’s safety was the reason he had come, so he sat down and told Finn to listen.

  “I have a cousin named Bennet Sommerfeld and he’s been in trouble with the law since the day he was born. He’s been involved mostly in theft and embezzlement, but a while back he very narrowly escaped a rape charge. He’s in a French hospital right now, and then he’ll be taken to jail, but I don’t know how long they can hold him.”

  “Why are you telling me this? That’s not the area of law I practice, I don’t handle theft or rape cases. If you want Charlotte to take his case you can shove it up your ass,” Finn said, his normal calm, cool demeanor had gone out the window, and his ‘assassin for hire’ tendencies were itching to get out.

  “He’s been stalking Charlotte, I just left him hospitalized after he admitted that he attempted to molest her at the Mayor’s Gala. She’s blocked my calls and I thought you should know, I have Billy Kipling following her to keep an eye on her just in case…”

  Finn got up quickly and closed his office door, then he unlocked a safe that stood in a corner. He laid three handguns on his desk, “take your pick, I’m going to speak with my wife right now. I suppose you introduced them, should I thank you for that, for bringing my wife to the attention of a madman?” he loaded one of the pistols and stuck it inside his jacket, then opened the door and motioned for Bly to leave.

  “I have no idea how he knows her, I rarely see my cousin, and I didn’t give him a chance to explain how they met before I damn near killed him. I already have a gun, and just so you understand, I’m not used to losing. Especially not something, or someone, that means everything to me, but I suppose it’s over and done with.” He walked to the door and before he left, he stood face to face with Finn, “if she had made a different choice, if she hadn’t chosen you, would you have moved on and forgotten her by now?”

  *

  Finn left the gun in the car and sat on the last row in the courtroom watching Charlotte. It was almost an art-form, the way she managed to persuade everyone except the opposing council to see things her way. He listened to her closing argument, then the jury filed out to deliberate, and she gathered her briefcase and shook a few hands before she spotted him.

  “Hmm, looks like it’s my lucky day, are you here on business or pleasure?” she asked as they walked to her car.

  “I’m here because I don’t remember ever being mad at you, but I am right now,” Finn said, and his voice was cold and hard.

  “What is it, my love?” Charlotte asked, truly frightened of what might have happened.

  “Drive,” he told her when he sat in the passenger seat of her car. “How do you know Bennet Sommerfeld, and why the fuck haven’t you told me about him?”

  “Oh… because he’s just some strange guy who wanted me to handle a case of his and I said no. Then he showed up at Starbucks once, and he tried to get a little too friendly at the Gala, so I left. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to go all Navy Seal water torture or some shit on the poor idiot,” Charlotte said, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “The ‘poor idiot’ has a criminal record and is also an alleged rapist. The reason I know all this is because Alex Bly came to see me today. Bennet Sommerfeld is his cousin, the black sheep of the Bly family, I suppose. Bly beat the fuck out of him in Paris for saying he intended to rape you. Which he might have done while you neglected to tell anyone, namely me, that the crazy bastard was stalking you,” Finn was breathing hard, he held Charlotte’s hand for a minute, then pushed it away. “You were nearly killed in a car wreck, Charlotte, now you neglect to tell me that some lunatic rapist has been harassing you? Thank you, Charlotte, thank you for not giving a flying fuck if you put yourself in danger.”

  “My love, I’m sorry, I thought you might go off the deep end and kill him, and it looks like you pretty much have gone a bit crazy,” Charlotte said, she pulled into the driveway of the house and stopped. “Please Finn, I’m sorry, I tend to think I can take care of myself, you know how I am. Say you love me, I can’t stand this, you’re never cold to me.”

  “Well what can I say, your fucking boyfriend shows up at my office and tells me his long lost cousin intends to rape you. Then I tell him to keep his fucking dick in his pants and stay away from you and he has the nerve to ask me if I would be over loving you if you’d chosen him,” Finn went into the house and up the stairs, taking them two at a time and slammed the door to the master bedroom.

  Charlotte used a butter knife to unlock the door and Finn was sitting in an over-stuffed chair. He started to get up, but she pushed him back down and straddled him.

  “Can I unzip you’re pants or did I go to court without panties for no reason at all,” she asked. She began unbuttoning his shirt and he stopped her hands, so she just ripped it open and licked his neck and moved her mouth to his.

  He turned his face away, “I’m pissed off Charlotte, and not just a little bit, so save it for another time. I’m not making love to you when my blood is boiling.”

  “Fine,” she said, “I’ll take care of it myself,” she unzipped her dress and pulled it over her head, then threw it aside. She pushed her bra down so that her breasts sprang free, her fingers squeezed her nipples and she tossed her head back and moaned.

  He stood up and she fell off his lap and onto the floor, and as he looked down at her, her fingers went to her pretty bare pussy.

  “I’m so glad you shaved me this morning,” she said, as she squirmed and gasped under her own hand. “It’s so sensitive this way, umm, I’m thinking of your cock right now, how good it feels when you force it into me…”

  “He unzipped his pants, then knelt between her legs and pushed them apart. His mouth went to her tender pink sex and she began to moan. She seized beneath him quickly, and drew his mouth to hers and he muttered against her lips as he held her ass in his hands and thrust into her.

  “I’m still mad at you, my love, this doesn’t change anything, I’m damn well furious.”

  “Good,” she said, lifting her hips firmly against him, “this is great way to get rid of negative energy.”

  *

  Jude married Meg just five weeks after he met her and she got pregnant immediately. He loved to rest his hands on her belly and feel the baby moving and kicking and getting stronger every day. Meg on the other hand was getting weaker. She was diagnosed with acute leukemia in her second trimester and she refused treatment.

  “I won’t risk my little boy,” she said, “three girls and now this darling boy, no, I won’t do anything to harm him.”

  Their love had been quick and passionate and it taken them both by surprise. She led him to her bed on the first night, when he had taken her home from the pub on the back of his Harley. They looked in on her three sleeping daughters then she jumped into his arms and steered him toward her own bed. She was slight and strong, with long yellow hair, and she smelled of sunshine and green fields.

  Jude had fallen hard and fast for Meg’s wild, sweet brand of love. She loved to take his long hair down as he moved above her. She whispered, “pretty, pretty,” as she wrapped her legs around him and climaxed again and again. Meg moved with her daughters into Dovecote Cottage the day after she and Jude met and they were happy from the very beginning.

  She loved to gather her little girls and walk to Jude’s office in the village every day. She would lie on the table with her growing b
elly exposed and watch Jude’s face as he moved the wand around so that images of the baby flickered to life on the screen. Keller would be his name, and he was tiny and vigorous and she wanted to see him and take his memory with her when she died. Jude begged her not to say such things and she told him not to worry, she was happy with her life, happy with him and her little girls and the baby inside her, for as long as she had left.

  The air cooled quickly as winter approached in Surrey. Henrietta was jealous of Meg at first, but she warmed to Jude’s wife and stopped by to check on her often. Meg began to feel less and less like walking to the village by the end of September, and she would sit in the garden, wrapped in a shawl and watch her daughters play. She grew more and more weary as the short days passed, but she still loved to lay with Jude at night and let his thick, dark hair fall around her.

  Georgina arrived in Surrey the week before Thanksgiving so she would be there when Jude and Meg’s baby was born. He wasn’t due until the end of December, but Meg was failing fast so he came into the world on the twenty-fourth of November and Meg passed away nine days later. Her parents came for the small memorial service and to take her cremated ashes and her three little girl’s home with them. Jude told them he would raise Meg’s daughters, but they said no, they were attached to their granddaughters, and they would visit the baby when they could.

  Keller was a month early, but he was healthy and Jude brought him from the hospital after three days. By then his mother no longer cared about anything except how to survive from one minute to the next. Jude was crushed when Meg slipped away, and simply wanted to be left alone. Georgina and Henrietta knew just what he needed and they placed his little son in his arms as often as possible. Soon he was in a new kind of love, Jude was in wild crazy love with his little boy.

  “Come back with me to San Diego,” Georgina pleaded, but Jude said it was too soon to make such a big decision, and he wanted Keller to be near his sisters.

  “No, Mum, my life is here,” Jude told her. “I want Keller to grow up in Dovecote cottage, but we will come to visit. Charlotte called my office today and asked if she and Atticus might come stay after Christmas, while Finn goes to ski.”

  “That will be good for Charlotte,” Georgina said, “and you won’t recognize Atti, he’s grown so much. She tries not to show it, but Charlotte’s had a hard time since the wreck, and her baby would have been due in just a few weeks.”

  *

  “I know about Atticus,” Amanda said, as she and Charlotte stopped their Christmas shopping long enough to have a bite of lunch. “Why Charlotte? Why are you keeping him from Alex?”

  Charlotte couldn’t answer at first, she searched for the right words to explain it all to Amanda, but they didn’t come easily.

  “I didn’t know until a few months ago, or I would never have come back from England. I’ve never looked at the results of the paternity test, and Bly could have requested a copy but he didn’t. We were both so sure of what it would say. Then, after Finn and I moved into the new house, I was sitting on the floor and Atti toddled up to me and smiled, then I saw it. After the car wreck when I lost the baby, Finn told me that he knew. He said he’s always known, but he feels like Atticus was meant to be his,” Charlotte looked at Amanda with tears streaming down her cheeks, and asked if she was going to tell Bly.

  “He’s my brother, and that’s his son. Don’t you know what this will mean to him?” Amanda asked, wiping away her own tears.

  “I know exactly what it will mean, the twins will be his second choice. You said he’s building his entire life around those babies now, and Maddie isn’t even interested in being a mother to them. You know how obsessive he is; he’ll focus on his first-born son. The twins will be raised by women hired to simply care for them. Do you think a nannie will love them the way their own father will? I thought about opening that envelope, and I thought about telling Bly, but then he was getting married and Maddie was pregnant. It is my fault, all of it, but what really set everything in motion? Think of all the variables, did it start with the photo-shoot when Bly and I first met? Or when I lived with Finn and JP, and I fell in love with Finn? If Finn had quit covert ops then I wouldn’t have gotten involved with Bly, and I wouldn’t have come in contact with Jamey Huang, and on and on….”

  “I have to be true to my brother, but you are right, the twins will be second best compared to your son,” Amanda said, trying to get comfortable, she rubbed her hands across her ‘due any day’ belly. “Maddie is being induced in the morning, and Alex is so excited. I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to decide if I should tell him, I don’t know what to do. Mother has this portrait of Alex when he was a year old and when I saw it there was no question in my mind. She even said the photographer used it in an exhibit because he was a beautiful baby, what a coincidence, huh? What about Finn, how does he feel about this, he seems so in love with Atticus?”

  “He is, he says Atticus was meant to be his son, and now, Amanda, what if I can’t have another baby? Sometimes I think Atti loves Finn more than he loves me, leave it as it is, please. My son has a father who loves him, and I chose Finn, and this is best for everyone, considering the situation. You’ll always be close to him, I’ll teach him to call you Auntie, and we’ll raise our kids as cousins. It’s for the best, Bly will be a father tomorrow and your baby is due any minute…”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Amanda said, with a look of surprise on her face.

  “I am, aren’t I?” Charlotte asked, she wanted desperately to hear it from Bly’s sister, that she’d done the right thing.

  “Yep, I am going to have this baby any minute, my water just broke.”

  *

  “Where the hell is JP, he’s not answering,” Charlotte wasn’t sure why she was whispering into the phone when Amanda was raising holy hell. She had driven Amanda to the maternity center and checked her in, now Amanda was doing a lot of screaming at the nurses.

  “He’s gone to the airport to pick up West, are you saying she’s in labor now?” Finn asked, he could hear Amanda giving orders as Charlotte spoke and he could hear Lizzie’s baby crying upstairs nonstop.

  “Why is West coming here?” Charlotte asked.

  “He has to testify in court tomorrow, you know, in the Natalie case, against the girl who sold her some of the drugs and took money for sleeping with West.”

  “Oh damn, that’s right,” Charlotte said. “Is that Lizzie’s baby I hear screaming? Go upstairs and tell her to get out of that loft, JP is about to become a father. That idiot JP, what a mess, he needs to get his shit straightened out. Seriously, tell that girl to pack up and move on today,” Charlotte said, and Finn promised he would take care of it, then he would get hold of JP and meet them at the maternity center.

  The minute Finn stepped into the freight elevator he could hear the baby crying as if something was terribly wrong. It sent a chill up his spine, and a dozen scenarios raced through his mind, all of them bad. The door to the loft was standing open and he rushed in expecting to find Lizzie dead of an overdose or something even more horrific. On the bed was a large mound covered by a pile of blankets and he began to sweat. The crying came from somewhere under the pile. He tore the blankets away and the baby boy lay surrounded by pillows, his face red with fury as he screamed. Finn picked him up and examined him quickly and the baby gulped and whimpered and then quieted. Finn talked soothingly to him as he checked every room in the loft, Lizzie wasn’t there and all her belongings were gone. He went into the kitchen to make the baby a bottle, and taped to the refrigerator was a birth certificate with a post-it note stuck to it. Finn held it in his hand and read the note, it said, “Sorry baby, but I can’t go to prison. Give him to his father.”

  *

  JP arrived at the hospital just in time for his son to make his grand entrance into the world. Charlotte had been holding Amanda’s hand and she moved aside to let JP take her place. When they handed the baby to him he felt his heart swell so that there was no room l
eft in it for anything other than his beautiful wife and baby Jack.

  “He’s so cool, wow, this is like… Amanda, just look at this great looking kid!” JP said, and Amanda’s smile lit up the whole room.

  “He’s huge! And I’m madly in love with him, and with his father,” Amanda said, kissing JP as he laid the baby next to her. “I’m going to need a lot of help with him John Paul, so you’d better pull yourself together. Oh, he’s so perfect, he’s gorgeous… my God, how much does he weigh?”

  “Nine pounds, fifteen ounces,” a nurse announced, “he is definitely a big boy! Okay, Mommy and Daddy give him a kiss and I’ll get him cleaned up and then he’s all yours.”

  “JP, oh, he’s so cute, congratulations,” Charlotte said, and JP caught her in a huge bear hug and began to cry. “Yep, I knew you’d fall hard, your life is so about to change, buddy!” She said as they gathered around Amanda for a group hug. The three of them laughed and cried, and talked nonstop about Jack, as if he were the first and only baby that had ever been born.

  West and JP had driven straight from the airport to the birthing center and now West tapped lightly on the door. JP was so beside himself that he tearfully hugged West and invited him to come in and join the celebration.

  Charlotte stepped back and watched JP telling West about the baby, his hand held Amanda’s and didn’t let go. He was like a kid with a sugar rush, he couldn’t stop talking about his son and kissing his wife.

  When West stepped away, he gave Charlotte a peck on the cheek and he looked so out of his element among the talk of labor pains and babies that she had to laugh.

  “Come with me,” she said, looping her arm through his, “let’s get a cup of coffee and leave the happy family alone for a while.”

  “Sounds good,” he said, as they walked down the hall toward the cafeteria, “that was intense, I’ve never seen a brand new baby. Do all parents get that excited?”