He wiped his hands on his jeans and reached for the receiver. With a shaky finger he punched out the number, thinking how granddad used to call him every week to bolster his spirits.
“Riverside Recovery, may I help you?” the cheery female voice asked.
He cleared his throat. “I sure hope so. I got a message from this number.” He grabbed at the last slip Walter had written on, glancing at the time listed. “About an hour ago. Let’s see, it says Vernon on it.” He chuckled uncomfortably. “I guess that doesn’t give you much to go by.”
“Oh, but it does. That’s got to be Doctor Vernon. I’ll connect you right away.” She put him on hold before he could say another word.
Little droplets of perspiration gathered on his neck. He rubbed them away.
“Vernon, here, how can I help you?” The guy’s voice seemed to rip through Chance.
“Yes. I’m Chance Deveraux.”
“Oh, Mr. Deveraux, I’m so happy that you called. I have someone who wishes to speak with you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. Hold on.”
Chance heard murmurings in the background as the phone was shifted from one person to another.
A second later, a young man choked out, “Hello, Uncle Chance.”
His stomach dropped and he gripped the edge of the desk. Closing his eyes, he clamped down on the well of tears rushing up from the deepest part of him. “Leo,” he said hoarsely.
“You remember.”
“How could I ever forget?” His heart thumped a mile a minute. Inside he screamed over and over again. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
The kid on the other end let out a deep, shaky breath, and then said, “I don’t know where to start.”
“Me, either.”
“I’ve been messed up for a while.”
“Since I killed your dad,” Chance said, pain vibrating in every word. The memory of that night on his motorcycle rushed back to him: The rain slick road, the crash, the sound of metal, and the screams from his best friend haunted him even today.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t so good before then either, to tell you the truth.”
That brought Chance back to the moment. “You didn’t have such a fair shake with your mom deserting you and all.” He kicked himself mentally for bringing that up.
Another heavy breath came rolling through the wires. “Nope. I went looking for her, you know, after dad died. She was so wasted. Even had a couple more rug rats. Man, I felt sorry for those kids. They were so dirty and picking at the dog’s food. I guess she hadn’t fed them that day.”
Chance cursed under his breath.
“Yeah, tell me about it. I went and got the little ones some fast food stuff and you should have seen them gobble it up. I booked outta there after that and stopped at the first pay phone I could find. I turned her in.”
“Good for you. You helped those kids out.”
“I sure hope so.” He hesitated for a minute. “After seeing them it made me realize how good a job my dad did. I mean, it wasn’t the best, but at least he took care of me.”
“And he loved you, kid. He loved you so much.” Chance hurt all over again for the little boy he’d practically orphaned.
“I know,” he said, trying to hold back a sob. “And you did, too.”
Chance sucked in a sharp breath. “Still do.”
The crying started then and Chance ached for the half-boy half-man, seeing himself all over again in him. “I’m sorry.”
“I know you are, Uncle Chance. I know you feel worse than me.” He continued to cry as he talked. “I tried. I really tried to hate you, but I couldn’t. You’re like a second father to me. I didn’t see that then, only now, when I’m stuck in this God-awful place.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting back the waves of pain. “Damn, I need a beer right now.”
That got him a watery chuckle. “Hell, I do, too.”
He laughed and the boy joined him. After a moment, he sobered, “That what you’re in for? Drinking?”
“Mostly that and some drugs.”
“How much longer?”
“Couple months, if I’m good.”
Chance smiled fondly at that, remembering the restrictions. “You know you always got a place once you get out.”
He sniffed. “I…I don’t know yet. I’ve got a lot of figuring out to do.”
“Of course you do.” He recalled the enormous amount of confusion when he’d gone through rehab and how long it took for clarity to set in after all the years of numbing his feelings.
“Can I call you again sometime? I mean, you did give me this number when I took off and said I could always reach you through this place.” The doubt crept into his voice and it sent a dagger through Chance’s heart.
“Any time, day or night, son,” he said thickly.
“No one’s called me that in ages.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” For the first time in the short conversation Chance heard the boy’s voice lift, as if he had some hope left deep down.
A few minutes later, Chance reluctantly replaced the receiver. The past had come crashing in on him, reminding him of all he’d been through. Now, he wanted that back, well, at least the possibility of going back and changing things. How differently everything would have worked out.
A tap on the door drew his attention. Tessa, with a tentative smile on her peach-colored lips, peeked her head in. “You okay?”
He held out his arms for her. “Come here, sunshine.”
In just a couple of steps, she was across the room and sitting in his lap, snuggling in his arms. He breathed in her sweet scent and burrowed his face in her hair.
“Walter called me and said you looked kind of ‘peaked’ and you might be needing me.”
Inwardly, Chance marveled at Walter’s observation abilities. The man hid a whole wealth of information at times and could read people better than any professional Chance had ever encountered. “Smart man.”
She giggled. “Don’t go telling him that or it will swell his already big head.”
Chance joined in her laughter, pulling back and gazing into her smiling features. “You know something, Tessa Warfield Deveraux? You’re good for me.”
Her face brightened even more. “Not as good as you are for me, Mr. D.” With that she kissed him, a soft sensuous one that reached deep down in his soul and swept away his lingering sadness.
“Wanna bet?” he asked once she ended the embrace.
“Depends.” She giggled, kissing the edge of his mouth. “What’s the prize?”
***
Kneeling down, Chance stuck his hand in the dark, cavernous office safe and pulled out another handful of papers. The disarray of this bunch shouldn’t have surprised him after first few, but it still did.
“Granddad, how in the world did you keep anything straight? Geez, what a mess.” He dumped the pile he held into a box he’d confiscated earlier, then went back to the safe for more. Damn, he should’ve took Tessa up on her “prize” of making love. It would’ve been a whole lot more pleasant than this task. He sighed heavily, knowing he had to get this straightened out once and for all. Since talking to Leo, he had the urge to clear the rest of the cobwebs from his past.
“No wonder the bar was in the red,” he muttered under his breath.
“Say something?” Tessa sweet voice asked from somewhere behind him.
Looking over his shoulder, he sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of her. Then he gulped hard, his gaze lingering over the bottom half of her. He’d come through on his promise and bought her a pair of jeans, which she wore now. The way they molded every inch of her hips and legs drove him to distraction.
“Damn, baby, you look good.” He couldn’t conceal the huskiness that crept into his voice.
She chuckled, and then twirled around. “Like them?”
“Like ’em? Hell, I love ’em!” He stifled a bubbling groan deep in his chest. Her round little
bottom in the form-fitting jeans had him breaking out in a sweat.
“Need help?”
“Oh, yeah.” Visions of the kind of help he needed right at this moment danced in his head.
Bending to his level, she placed a finger under his chin and raised his face to hers. Her soft touch sent a shiver down his spine. A whisper of her lavender scent drifted to him and he sucked in a deep breath, wanting more. “I didn’t mean that kind of help and you know it.”
Finally, gazing into her eyes, he saw the sparkle of delight there. A warm glow washed over him. Grinning, he shrugged. “Hey, I guy can always try, can’t he?”
She laughed again, this time a muffled one. “You lost your chance, buster, when you choose this over me earlier.”
He groaned in despair.
“You should be locked up for being hot and dangerous, Chance Deveraux,” she whispered hoarsely. Leaning forward slowly, she gave him the softest kiss. His pulse beat overtime.
When she pulled away, he said, “More, please.”
She grinned at that. “Shameless man.”
“Yep, that’s me.”
“Later, that’s a promise.” She nodded to the disarray all around him. “I’ll lend you a hand with this mess and we’ll be done in no time.”
“Then will it be later?” He liked flirting with her, especially when her cheeks flushed and his nerves tingled like they were both doing now.
“You devil, you.”
Inwardly, he soared; she’d finally converted the dog to the devil when referring to their playful exchanges. “Yeah, that’s me. too.”
“And you love it.”
“Of course. But you still haven’t given me an answer.”
She glanced around. “We’d better get back to this, so we will have a later, much sooner.”
He laughed at that, making her blush even more. “Yes, ma’am.”
An hour later, Chance sat Indian style facing Tessa on the tiny office floor. They’d cleaned out the safe and were now tediously sorting the slips of paper into piles, each assigned a specific category.
“Bill,” Tessa said, handing him the page to put with the pile at his side.
“IOU slip from someone,” Chance muttered, squinting to make out the sprawl across the bottom.
“Man, what didn’t you grandfather keep in there? I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a couple of bottles hidden back there.”
He chuckled. “Nah. That was the bottom right hand drawer. He kept the good whiskey there.”
Glancing up at him, she raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah, as a teenager I used to sneak back here and take a nip now and then whenever I came down here to lend a hand.”
She made a tsk tsk sound. “Shameful, simply shameful.”
His laughter came out husky. “Oh, I can show you how shameful I can be, sunshine, just wait and see.”
She gasped, clearly reading his intentions as she stared at him. A dull red crept up her neck and into her face. “Devil.”
“And how.”
They both burst out laughing, and then reluctantly went back to the disheveled papers scattered around them. Chance stuck his hand into the box and pulled out a thick envelope. Turning it over in his hands, he frowned. “Confidential.” The big black letters stretched across the cream-colored stationary. In the upper left hand corner, he read Gil Lambert, Attorney at Law.
“What’s that?” she asked absently, bent over what looked like a bunch of pictures.
“Don’t know. Something important, I guess. Maybe an old will.” Doubt and curiosity edged his words.
“Open it,” she said offhandedly. She held up her discovery to the single light in the office, squinting at the images.
“Find something interesting?” He flipped the envelope over in his hand and began to tear open the flap.
Suddenly, she stilled. “No, it can’t be.”
His middle dropped. “Tessa, you’ve gone white. What’s wrong?”
“This is.” She shoved it at him. “It’s granny.”
“What?” Leaning forward, he grabbed it from her. The young smiling woman in the picture couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. “You’re wrong. It doesn’t even look like her.”
“Today, no. But, Chance, back then, yes. We have the same exact picture in one of our albums. It’s her. She told me.”
At the strain in her voice, he knew the story that went with it hurt Tessa. He gritted his teeth, guessing what it could have been about. “What did she say?”
She blinked back tears and it tugged at his heart. “Only that she had to change once I came along.”
“Meaning she was happy before she took you in.” He stomped down on his burning anger.
“Something like that.”
“Bitch!”
Shock raced over her features.
“Don’t go and deny it.”
For long moments he watched the play of emotions in her eyes. Finally, she took a deep cleansing breath. “You’re right, Chance. Who would intentionally inflict that on a child?”
“A bitter old woman who never had the courage to live the life she wanted, so she took it out on you, that’s who.” Disgust filled his voice.
She shook herself, saying, “Forget about me, what about that picture. Why would your granddad have that in his safe?”
Contemplating the image, Chance couldn’t fathom either the Granny Warfield who was once this young woman or the reason behind his grandfather possessing this piece of history. “There’s only two reasons possible I can think of. One you’d keep a picture if you took it. Two you’d keep it if you knew the person and they gave it to you.” He looked over at Tessa with a wry grin on his face, saying, “Granddad never owned a camera as far as I can recall. So they had to know each other back then. Maybe even well.”
She frowned darkly. “Well?”
He shrugged. “Why else would you hold onto something like this after all this time, especially when you’re having a feud with them?”
Shaking her head, she said, “It just doesn’t make sense to me. She’d have told me the truth.”
“What? Granny doesn’t lie?”
She sat up at that, straightening her spine. “She doesn’t to me.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the picture. “She didn’t tell you about her and my grandmother being friends once, so what makes you so sure she’d mention this or my granddad?”
Doubt tugged at her brows.
He handed over the photo. “Here, you decide what you want to do with it, confront her or chuck it. It doesn’t really matter. All I know is there’s some strange things happening lately about pictures. That one and the ripped one I showed my grandmother. Remember, I mentioned that to you.”
“Who could forget?” Handling the image, Tessa stared at it long and hard, and then slipped it in her back pocket. No longer distracted, she nodded to the envelope he held. “What do you have there?”
“Don’t know yet.” He tore into it, the sound of ripping paper rent the air. Pulling out the packet, he snapped open the pages, and then smoothed them out. “Huh? It looks like some kind of certificate or something.” He tilted it to the dim lighting, quickly scanned the official seal, and then said, “Oh, it must be granddad and grandmother’s marriage certificate…” He ruffled through the rest of the pages quickly. When he came upon the last document, it felt like a fist slammed into his belly. “No!”
“What is it?” She leaned forward.
“It can’t be,” he muttered, shuffling back to the first page. When he found it, shock raced through him and he shook all over. “Holy shit!”
“What? Chance, are you all right? You look, almost green.”
With a trembling hand, he laid down the bundle, staring at her. “You’re not going to believe this,” he choked out. “They were married.”
In a daze, he saw relief replace the concern in her eyes and she smiled. “Of course, silly, your grandparents were
married. What’s so surprising about that?”
“Not mine, ours.”
“Huh?” The smile disappeared quickly.
“Your granny and my granddad. Married.”
Chapter 23
Tessa crept into the big silent house. Even though she knew her granny was at the doctor’s she still felt as if she needed to sneak around and not make too much noise. The scent of mothballs assailed her senses and brought back a rush of heart-tugging memories. She’d tried so hard to please her granny for so many years.
As tears of frustration and regret welled in her eyes she shook off the sad, poignant times. Now, she focused on the cold, hard dread that rested in her middle. How could granny keep something this big, this important from her? How much more had she not told Tessa? How many times did she betray me when she expected undying loyalty from me?
Gingerly, she walked through the living room, and then crept up the stairs. But her mind whirled a million miles a minute, recalling Chance’s bombshell. They’d both been blown away with the news. The shock written all over his features seemed to have matched her inner turmoil. With their heads together, they had read and reread every piece of paper in the packet until the enormity had sunken in. Gabe Deveraux and Theresa Barrows had been married as teenagers. “And divorced in less than a year,” Tessa muttered, still shaking from that knowledge.
She rounded the post at the top of the stairs, gripping the solid wooden ball with all her might. Down the hallway, the door stood half-way open to her granny’s bedroom. She gulped hard, feeling like a traitor. She forced her frozen legs to move, first one foot, then the other until she reached her destination.
“Now, all I have to do is go through the doorway and…” At the thought of what she had to do next, cold perspiration gathered along her brow. She swiped the back of her hand across her forehead, and then squared her shoulders.
Lies of the Heart (Heart Romance #3) Page 19
