One to Win

by Michelle Monkou

  “Um... Fiona, could we talk, please?” Her mother looked like she had walked into a sauna.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Fiona left her grandfather’s side and rushed to her mother.

  “I’m fine.” She didn’t look fine. “Let’s go to the sitting room.”

  Fiona would rather have had a chance to clean up, but her mother’s request had a flavor of urgency and desperation. Instead she walked beside her to the sitting room opposite Grace’s office. She looked toward the door, hoping that Leo would open it. The expression on her mother’s face was tense, a mood that wasn’t unusual. Verona could be considered high maintenance. But along with the tension, there was a heaviness that seemed to suck the life out of her.

  “Have a seat, Fiona. Guess it’s kind of obvious that I have something important to tell you.” Verona wrung her hands. Her mouth widened for a smile, but it didn’t resemble one.

  “Are you sick? Is Dad sick?”

  Her mother shook her head. “This isn’t about any illness. It’s about the family.”

  Fiona bit her lip. More questions came to mind. Trying to stay calm, she sucked in the impulse to go through an interrogation process. From her mother’s unsettled demeanor, Fiona knew in her heart that she would not like the news. Only thing to do now was hold tight to the growing dread and pray that her mother would not drag out whatever she had to say.

  “Many years ago, while I was in college, I was pregnant.” Verona waited for her reaction.

  “And...?” Fiona said one word, while her thoughts rambled like an avalanche with questions, feelings, surprise and apprehension.

  “You have a brother. Dresden.” Her mother, who always looked retro in her style and self-possessed attitude, could have blended into a 1950s TV drama with ease. But not while delivering this latest news.

  “And...?”

  “I gave him up for adoption.”

  “How could Grace do that?” Fiona didn’t attempt to dial back her instant anger at her grandmother’s interference. Now it made sense why Grace and her mother looked ready for battle.

  “She didn’t make me do anything.” Verona rubbed at her forehead. She hadn’t looked Fiona in the eyes since she’d started speaking. “Grace didn’t know. Not even my sisters. Only Aunt Cassie.”

  “Cassie?” Apparently, Fiona could only manage one-word responses, while her mind reeled from the myriad of thoughts forming and reforming in an effort to help her understand.

  Verona nodded. “After college I married your dad and we lived our lives.”

  “Does he know?”

  “Yes. I told him when we dated. The guilt gnawed at me and I couldn’t feel normal, because it was such a secret. I didn’t know how to tell my mother, who expected so much from me, that I had done this. I put my child up for adoption because I felt like a failure to get pregnant. Heck, for having sex. And I didn’t want the news to get out and be made a symbol as my mother was making headlines as a role model for women. I handled it on my own.”

  “More like with Cassie’s help.” Fiona didn’t know whether to be angry with her aunt for helping or at her mother. But she didn’t know how to be angry at either woman without feeling that she was letting down those who’d had to follow through on actions that would make her weak in the knees.

  Fiona stood and walked around the room. She needed to keep moving. Her feet kept going until she opened the door and stepped into the hallway. Only then did she inhale a sobering breath.

  This morning, the only major issue on her mind had been a former boyfriend. How were she and Leo going to reconcile? Emotionally, she’d thought that was enough of a burden to solve.

  Now within the last few minutes, she’d been hit with a revelation that touched so many lives. Touched her life. She had a brother, a person she didn’t know. And her mother, who she’d thought was ideally perfect, albeit emotionally cool, had blown up that goddess status. She was normal, like her.

  Fiona went back into the room. She resumed her seat.

  “Grace hired Leo to find your brother. She wants contact. She wants to bring him into the family fold. There will be a will change. But don’t worry—you’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t give a hoot about the will!” Fiona screamed. She was back on her feet and racing out of the room. A will would never be the instrument used to threaten or reward her.

  But more importantly, Leo knew this secret.

  And he’d kept it from her, while he had the task to amend the will and probably to facilitate the family reunification. Well, they could plan all they wanted. She wasn’t participating in this circus. She stormed back into the room.

  “I can’t turn back what I’ve done.” Verona now raised her gaze to Fiona, who didn’t return to her seat. “But I ask that you don’t judge harshly. Life has a way of giving us tests, and when we fail, we have three choices. We can correct ourselves, we can continue the same mistake, or we can do nothing and pretend or hope that it goes away. I want to do nothing. I’d like to bury my head in the sand dune out there until all of this has blown over. But my own cowardice for giving up the baby did this. I picked the easy solution for me. So I will work with Grace to correct whatever I can.”

  “Good for you, Mom. But, I’m going to need a minute to digest everything.” Fiona felt as if she couldn’t possibly take in any more news.

  “Okay,” Verona replied.

  Fiona worked with families searching for their loved ones. More times than not, they were ecstatic when they learned the whereabouts of their loved ones, even in cases where the outcome was a sad one. The closure was what was needed. Then why wasn’t she ecstatic about the news of her missing brother, who also had been found?

  * * *

  Leo couldn’t stop staring at the photo of the man who was Grace’s only grandson. Dresden Haynes. He had to admit that he’d thought Dresden would have the tall, slender physique of the Meadows women. Even Henry, and who now battled with his body’s traitorous spread, had been a tall, gawky young man in his younger days. Not so with Dresden.

  Muscles were all over this guy. He had either bodybuilding or professional wrestling on his horizon. The man standing in an all-black suit with dark shades to match looked like the too-cool-for-school type. Yet Leo couldn’t make any conclusions about the guy. Except that it was more than a cosmic coincidence that he, as a bodyguard, had taken on a profession as a protector, like Fiona.

  The biographical details provided by his firm’s recommended PI had been committed to memory before he turned over the information to Grace. Reading the information had filled him with nervous anticipation. His concern wasn’t about Grace or even Verona’s reaction. Fiona filled his thoughts. While he knew that one day soon she would be told, he nevertheless dreaded the very minute when she learned the truth. He hoped that the tumultuous mix of anger and joy, confusion and acceptance, would give way to healing. Both mother and daughter would need support from each other.

  “I like the name—Dresden,” Grace said. She hadn’t put down the file since he handed it to her. She read aloud. “It says here Dresden Haynes had no other siblings and was adopted by an older couple who had been living on a US military base in Japan. The parents now lived in Florida, while his current address is unknown.”

  While Dresden’s background was interesting, the focal point of Leo’s interest was the photo. There was no doubt that Dresden and Fiona were siblings. It didn’t matter that they didn’t share the same father. Similar features from their mother and their grandmother came through in brother and sister.

  Leo suspected that Grace had already read it several times, committing all the details to heart.

  “I want to meet him as soon as possible. I will send the jet wherever and whenever to make it happen.”

  “I think you should take things slow,” he cautioned.

  She
nodded, but the joy in her eyes reflected the temptation to go against his wishes.

  “I don’t want you to get your hopes up before I’ve had a chance to make contact.” Leo didn’t want to remind her that this wasn’t a business acquisition, where she might be perceived as the hero. This was a real person who could condemn her actions.

  “I understand. I’m so eager that I’m not thinking that he wouldn’t want to see me.”

  “We don’t know if his parents told him about the adoption. And...we don’t know if they would protest such a move if they didn’t.”

  “He’s an adult. He’s four years older than Fiona.”

  What Leo didn’t say but also considered as a scenario: If he knew, in all that time, he never made an attempt to contact you or Verona.

  Grace waved off his report. “That’s why I have you working on this, Leo—to make it happen. You understand. You know how to be sensitive. I don’t care about the past. I can’t do a damn thing about it. But from this day forward, I can do everything in my power to have my family whole again. And that is my birthday wish to myself. I want to meet him.”

  “Grace, I think that this part of the project should come from someone close to the family.”

  “Wouldn’t that be you, Leo?” Her eyebrow cocked as if the answer was a given. “You are close to everyone. And you are close to Fiona. That’s why I’m volunteering you. I need someone who can be strong but sensitive to the client’s needs.”

  “Don’t use Fiona to manipulate me.”

  “Because you fancy her? And you’re afraid of what she’ll think?”

  Leo remembered Fiona’s advice that Grace was testing him. But the term fancy sounded so temporary. “It’s not a fancy.” This seemed like a day for revelations.

  “I would hope not. My granddaughters are perfectly capable of picking their partners. I may have my opinions, but I don’t intervene with relationships. Lord knows I’ve done my own thing.”

  Leo exhaled a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I feel better about not having to sneak around.”

  “Not that either of you were great at sneaking. Let me put it this way—I would not recruit you and Fiona for any clandestine operation.” She chuckled.

  “But I haven’t done a bad job with this case.” His face was warm from embarrassment.

  “You’re absolutely right. But that’s why you should contact Dresden.”

  “And I insist that someone in the family make the first contact.”

  “Why?”

  “For thirty-six years, this man has had no contact with any of you. You don’t know what he’s been told. And I think that you should make the effort to contact his parents. While it would be easier to send someone with no connection to the family, it also would be easier for him to shut the door on all of this.”

  Defiance squared her shoulders. Her mouth flattened in a straight line. Determination glittered in her eyes. “I’ll write the letter. You will deliver it.”

  Leo wasn’t keen on being the deliveryman, but this was a little better than him knocking on the door with a story that could get him punched in the face.

  Chapter 9

  Fiona didn’t wait to talk to Leo. She’d sucked in her breath and reached deep for enough courage to ask Grace for Dresden’s information. It was one of the rare times that Grace merely nodded and handed over the file with a look that could be sympathy. But Fiona didn’t want anything but the information.

  With Dresden’s information in her hand, she could run a check on him to get his current address. No one wanted her to contact him before Grace had a chance to make the official introduction with him via Leo. She hadn’t planned as far ahead as meeting him. Every few minutes, the new reality set in again that she had a brother. Now that she’d thought about having a meetup, she felt lighter about the entire situation. Besides, her brother carried zero responsibility for any of her misgivings over this revelation. But she couldn’t deny that she had lots of questions for Leo.

  She’d managed to avoid Leo the few times that he emerged from Grace’s office. Of course, he had no idea what she’d learned, or at least, she didn’t think so.

  Since feelings were raw, she didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Belinda’s high-road mantra still echoed. To guarantee that she stuck to the sentiment, Fiona went to her room to start packing. The curtain was closing on the Southampton vacation in a way that she couldn’t have predicted, with feelings that she never thought would have a second chance and with an anticipation of what would be next.

  Her nightmares and restless frustration over her career had diminished. Being out of that environment had helped a lot and she would blow her captain’s mind when she returned with an apology and acknowledgment of his rehabilitative wisdom.

  But only one smidgen of doubt about what she was doing with her life, in comparison to her cousins, was enough to generate a crisis of faith in her profession. Should she be honing an entrepreneurial spirit and conquering some unknown land with her skills? She’d landed at the door of the estate almost two weeks ago, ready to chuck it in, but with no idea of what to do. But she’d felt compelled to think of or do something. As her anxiety quieted and the other parts of her soul settled, healed and grew stronger, she’d stopped engaging the idea that she hadn’t found the job for her. She was a detective for Missing Persons. She was good at her job. She caught predators. She reunited families. Ultimately, that was her goal every time she worked on a case: reuniting, reconnecting, shoring up family bonds, even if the missing had passed on.

  The message of her mother’s cherry tree, to treasure the beauty and fragility of life, couldn’t have come at a better time. Fiona sighed and hoped that her mother could have closure now.

  “Dresden,” she said to the empty room. “I know my mother never stopped thinking about you, never stopped loving you.”

  * * *

  “Hey, baby.” Leo tested the ground with a soft greeting. “You’re here.” He was glad that she was in the guesthouse.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Fiona smiled at him from his bed and his insides melted.

  “Well, I didn’t know how you were doing after the news. Verona shared that she’d told you. She was worried when you disappeared.” He kissed her lips, still not sure of her mood. “I tried to find you.”

  “Had a quick run to make with Belinda.” She made a face. “I have to head back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Regardless of what she said, he knew this had to do with the news of her brother. “I was hoping to spend this final weekend with you.”

  “Me, too, baby.”

  “Is it an emergency?”

  “Belinda has to get back for a big meeting. She came up with Dana.”

  He nodded.

  “It’s not like this is the end. When you’re done with everything here, you know where to find me.”

  “Yeah.” Yet hearing of her sudden departure unsettled him. Here was the real test of whether they had truly turned the corner and were headed for a smooth ride for their relationship after they left this magical Hamptons setting.

  “Baby, stop frowning. I’ll run a bath for you.”

  He nodded.

  She hopped out of bed in a lingerie number that tied in the front but covered her upper body in a red see-through curtain. The bottom half was a string bikini that was more string than material, allowing for full appreciation of the small curve of her behind as she walked into the bathroom.

  He heard the water running and various bottles being snapped open and closed as she administered to the bath experience. It took only seconds to peel off his clothes and toss them to a nearby chair. Naked and aroused, he couldn’t wait to dive into the water. His goal was to get her out of her sexy lingerie and make fierce love to her.

  “Ready?” Her hand trailed along the scented soapy suds cover
ing the water.

  Leo took a tentative toe dip before sinking his body gratefully into the warm water. The magic of the temperature instantly loosened his muscles. He submerged his body underwater with a sigh. “You can join me. This tub is like an ocean liner.”

  “I want to bathe you.”

  “And I can’t wait.”

  She pointed the remote and lowered the lights, and the faux candles around the tub glimmered with their wavering light. Soft music played through the hidden speakers. A hint of mint perfumed the air.

  “Lie back and close your eyes.” She laid a dry washcloth over his closed lids.

  Leo complied, relaxed but still looking forward to what she was going to do; his senses were on alert.

  “I’m going to start with a scrub.”

  He almost whimpered under her first touch. She talked her way through scrubbing him, starting with his chest and moving up and along his shoulders. Her voice continued to soothe him.

  “You can’t leave tomorrow.”

  “That’s why I’m giving you this goodbye gift.” She slid the washcloth down his body and over his arousal. “I want your body to remember me. Every inch of you must have a reminder of me.”

  He hissed. The circular motion around his shaft and over his balls sent an electric jolt. He sat up and the washcloth fell off into the water.

  “You’ve got to keep your eyes closed.”

  It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. But damn if his nerves weren’t on edge with anticipation. Every inch of skin reacted to her touch as if hit by a Taser gun at regular intervals.

  Like now. The washcloth washed the length of his legs, and without warning, her other hand grabbed his shaft and offered a slight squeeze.

  Leo’s eyelids snapped open. His hand slid into the water with a splash.

  “Just checking to see if you’re awake.”

  “Yes.” His response dragged out into a ragged hiss.

  “Let’s wash you off and then a nice massage is coming right up to get the blood pumping.”