Finding Home (St. John Sibling Series Book 2)

by Barbara Raffin

  "We were just having a bit of fun," the girls said in unison.

  "Besides," Lola said, "she got two smart phones."

  Sam flashed back to the day he'd caught the girls in Weston's room. One of them had mentioned the phones, but the other diverted his attention by bringing up the computer with all the bells and whistles. But he wasn't pondering how the twins had duped him but rather why Miss Weston needed such an elaborate computer. Photo shopping photos maybe?

  "What do you teach?" he asked Miss Weston, while Annie confronted her girls with, "You took something that didn't belong to you then damaged it."

  "Math," Weston sputtered, her attention clearly torn between him and what was happening with the twins.

  "And how'd you two leave a ransom note in Miss Weston's room without me spotting you?" Nana asked while Sam considered how math and computer science went hand in hand.

  "Easy," said Lulu to Nana's question. "We just climbed onto the porch roof to the back balcony."

  "Next stop," Lola finished, "Ms. Weston's room."

  While the twins led their mother to the location of the kidnapped monkey, Sam revisited his theory about someone using a long lens to take the damning pictures of him and Dixie. Someone on the inside wouldn't have had to deal with tree limbs and leaves—wouldn't have needed a long lens to capture intimate moments in Dixie's bedroom. She would merely have had to enter Ben's empty bedroom, climb out the window onto the porch rood, then over the railing onto Dixie's balcony. And that person wouldn't even have had to hack into Dixie's computer to upload that file of pictures.

  The twins returned with the tailless monkey, singing, "We know why she's so freaked out about her monkey going missing. She's got a camera in it."

  All eyes turned to Weston.

  "Why would you hide a camera in a stuffed animal?" Dixie asked.

  "That's nonsense." Weston reached for the monkey

  Sam was quicker, though, snatching it before she could take it. It didn't take a leap of faith to envision the diminutive Westin sneaking through Ben's room and slipping out his window to take photographs from Dixie's balcony. But she wouldn't need a hidden camera for that. Still, he'd caught her pointing the damn thing at them more than once.

  A closer look revealed a tiny hole in the monkey's nose. He turned it over and tore at the loosely sewn back seam.

  "What are you doing," shrieked Weston. "You're supposed to be working with us!"

  Weston working for Stuart didn't come as a surprise to him. But it was to everyone else in the room…as was Weston's revelation about him.

  Sam looked up from the tiny camera he'd taken from the monkey and found all eyes on him. But the only pair that mattered were cornflower blue. They looked at him with confusion.

  "Sam?"

  "If you'd uploaded that file I sent to your phone like I told you to," Weston wailed on, "I wouldn't have had to sneak down the hall this morning and do it myself and those wretched girls wouldn't have gotten into my purse and taken my monkey. We would never have been found out if you'd done your part."

  "My part?" he asked, his voice hollow in his ears.

  Weston snorted. "You're the one who has unlimited access to her bedroom. No one would have questioned you being in her room. I damn near got caught—had to sneak off before I could upload the file from her computer."

  "Uploaded from her comnputer so there'd be a trail that would make it look like she posted the pictures herself," Sam murmured, realizing the full purpose of the deception. To make Dixie look so uncaring of her son's well-being that she'd post indecent pictures of herself to the Internet.

  As though through a long tunnel, he heard Annie saying something about issuing punishment later as she ushered her daughters out the back door, that it was time to go home…and that she was taking Ben with them. Nana said something about helping Ms. Weston pack and making sure she didn't leave with anything that didn't belong to her. That last brought him out of his paralysis.

  Sam charged up the steps after Nana and Weston—bolting past them into Weston's room. He grabbed her over-sized purse off the nightstand and emptied its contents onto the bed.

  "No electronics leave with her," he said, focusing on a problem he could do something about immediately.

  "Those belong to me," Weston shrieked as he picked up two cell phones, an electronic notebook, and a flash drive from the pile on the bed.

  "My guess is they belong to Stuart Carrington," he said, piling the electronics on the laptop on the dressing table-turned desk. He caught a glimpse of Weston framed in the mirror above the table and a long ago memory of his last visit to Carrington Corporation surfaced—a memory of a dark-haired woman with mud-brown eyes framed in the opening of an office cubicle. No wonder Weston had seemed familiar to him the first time he saw her in the restaurant kitchen.

  He rummaged through desk and dresser drawers. "My guess is there's a camera with some very special low-light features somewhere in this room."

  Nana retrieved a suitcase from the closet as Weston snarled, "You're supposed to be helping expose her!"

  Dixie's voice lifted behind him, lost and bruised sounding. "What did she mean, Sam, when she said 'you're supposed to be one of us'?"

  Nana shoved the suitcase into Westin's hands and nudged her toward the bed. Sam grimaced and, with a fancy camera in his hand, faced Dixie.

  "She works for Stuart. Comes from his IT department. I didn't recognize her until just now."

  Nana dumped a drawer full of Weston's belongings into the open suitcase on the bed. Weston started to protest but Nana cut her off with a silencing finger.

  "And Stuart planted her here to spy on me?" Dixie said more than asked.

  "Yeah."

  "Did he send you to spy on me, too?"

  Sam winced and looked into Dixie's bruised eyes. "I believe his orders for me was to dig up dirt on you."

  "And did you find any dirt on me?" she asked, her voice tight.

  Weston's head snapped in their direction. Nana uttered an attention getting, "Shoes," and tossed a pair at Weston who juggled to catch them.

  "Red, I figured out within twenty-four hours of arriving I'd find no dirt on you."

  "Yet you stayed."

  "I tried to leave."

  Nana zipped the case shut, shoved it into Weston's arms, and prodded her toward the doorway muttering, "This is one conversation you're not eavesdropping on."

  Dixie didn't speak again until the bedroom door closed between them and Nana and Weston. "And you never told me he'd sent you."

  "I tried to a couple times but we always got interrupted."

  "Is that why you said we weren't a good idea?"

  "No, that was about me not being good enough for you."

  She flinched as though he'd touched her when she didn't want him to. "When you found no 'dirt' on me, did Stuart ask you to create some?"

  "I never wanted to hurt you."

  Her eyes fixed on his. "Did he order you to create dirt on me?"

  He wanted to tell her no. But the way she looked at him, he knew she'd see through the lie. He closed his eyes. "Yes."

  "And did you?"

  He opened his eyes. "No, Red."

  "Were you responsible for any of the sabotage?"

  "No. My guess given the events of today is Weston is responsible for all those problems."

  "Did you know about the pictures?"

  "I found out about them pretty much when you did."

  "What do you mean by pretty much when I did?"

  "I got a message on my phone with a file attached. I ignored it—didn't open it…until you and Annie were holed up in your room together."

  "And you were supposed to upload that file to the Internet through my computer, leaving a trail that would make me look like…"

  He nodded. "But I didn't. I never would have. My only regret is I didn't open the message earlier. If I had, I might have been able to head off Weston before she did and saved you a lot of hurt."

  She turned he
r face aside as if she couldn't bear looking at him.

  He threw the camera across the room, shattering it against the wall. "I didn't want to hurt you, Red. I never wanted to hurt you. That's why I tried to keep my hands off you. I knew anything between us could never end well."

  He reached for her. She flattened a hand at him, stopping him. "I need to think all this through."

  "What do you want me to do?" he pleaded.

  "Give me space," she said.

  "Okay. I can do that," he said.

  When Dixie looked up, the room was empty. He'd left. She dropped onto the edge of the bed.

  How long she sat there, words and emotions a tornado churning through her, she didn't know. Not until she heard the rev of his motorcycle engine did the tears come. Then silence filled the room and she curled into a fetal position, sobbing. Not since the night the police came to her door and told her Michael was dead did she cry so much and so hard—not since Michael left. And now Sam was gone, too.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  "No! You listen, old man." Sam rounded the desk, grabbed the armrests to either side of Stuart, and leaned in close. "You don't deserve to have a relationship with that boy."

  The old man sputtered with indignation even as he strained back from Sam. "She's not fit."

  Sam jabbed a finger in Stuart's face. "You're the one who's not fit, not as long as you want to take Ben away from his devoted, loving mother."

  Stuart pushed Sam's hand aside. "That uncultured—"

  "Uncultured? Is that your problem with her?" Sam straightened, towering over Stuart as he never had. "She's traveled the world with her parents, who were in the Foreign Service as your background check no doubt revealed. She's met world leaders. Dixie has experienced more culture than you, Mickey, and me combined."

  "She's a gold-digger," Stuart stubbornly argued, though with less conviction.

  "Let me tell you what that gold-digger, as you call her, did with Mickey's substantial life insurance policy. She spent it all fighting you for custody of Ben."

  Stuart shook a finger in his face. "I never said she wasn't smart. She's after the bigger prize, the trust fund, and, when I'm dead, the entire estate."

  "Then leave your estate to charity and retain control of the trust."

  "Do you know the legalities of establishing such conditions?" Stuart turned his face away from Sam as though even he knew how lame his reasoning was.

  "No. But you do. You've controlled Mickey's and my trust funds all our lives. You cut Mickey off when he married Dixie. You'll no doubt cut me off after today."

  Stuart scowled up at him. "Without the allowance I provide you, you won't make it to the end of summer."

  The end of summer.

  There'd been a day when Sam had actually thought he could still be with Dixie and Ben come summer's end. Like there'd ever been a chance of that. Not for a wolf in sheep's clothing…not for a man made of tin without a heart.

  He returned Stuart's scowl. "Is that what you thought cutting off Mickey would do, make him needy enough he'd leave his wife and come running back to you—beg you to put him back on the dole?"

  "He wasn't on the dole," Stuart said, his voice thick with indignation. "The trust was his."

  "If that were true, you wouldn't have retained control of it."

  "He'd have blown the money if I didn't," Stuart fired back.

  "On what, Stuart? A wife he loved? His son?" Sam shook his head with disgust. "You might not believe Mickey turned out a success, but success is measured in more ways than by how much money a man makes. Michael loved an amazing woman. They were building a successful life together; and I'm not talking about any restaurant. I'm talking about a family.

  "Ben." The old man murmured.

  "Michael was happy," Sam said. "If there's anything I learned in the past month, it's that that's success."

  The old man's eyes grew moist and, when he spoke his voice cracked with emotion. "I lost my boy."

  Sam sighed. "And you think Ben can replace him."

  Stuart slumped in his chair, looking smaller, grayer, and frailer than Sam had ever seen him. "She'll never let me near him, not after Weston did what she did."

  "You ordered Weston to ruin Dixie's reputation."

  "I ordered her to dig up dirt on her, just as I ordered you to do."

  Sam brought his fist down on Stuart's desk, making the old man jump. "But I didn't find any dirt on her, just as Weston didn't. So you ordered her to create some, like you ordered me to do."

  Stuart scrubbed a hand over his face. "I didn't know Weston would take things so far."

  "You ordered her to create dirt on Dixie," Sam repeated, determined not to let Stuart off the hook for making life so hard for Dixie…and Mickey and Ben and anyone else who had or did love her.

  A tear slipped down Stuart's cheek. "I was desperate. I made a mistake."

  Sam had never seen the old man shed a tear. Silently, he cursed. He wanted Stuart to pay for the damage he'd done. He wanted him to suffer. But he no more had it in him to hurt Stuart than did Dixie have it in her to be vindictive.

  Sam squatted in front of Stuart and looked him in the face. "You can have a relationship with Ben. You can be part of his life. You can be an influencing factor in his growing up and tell him far more than even I can about his father."

  Stuart flipped a dismissive hand. "She knows what I've done. She'll never let me near Ben."

  "You're wrong again, old man. Dixie wants you in Ben's life. She always has."

  "But I tried to ruin her."

  "She has the most forgiving heart of anyone I've ever known. If you'd taken the time to get to know her, you'd know that, too."

  Stuart looked up at him, hope bright through the cracks of his despair.

  "Let her forgive you."

  #

  When she saw the email from Stuart, Dixie nearly deleted it. But the subject line stopped her.

  To Mrs. Carrington

  Stuart had never before referred to her by her married name. She opened the email.

  First, my deepest apologies for all I've put you through. I've been a foolish old man. Sam tells me you have a forgiving heart. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me enough for a conversation, I'd like to talk with you. Please name a time and day when I may call.

  She sat back in her desk chair, thinking. For days, she'd performed her duties as though she walked the fringe of Oz's intoxicating poppy fields, numb with loss. Thank goodness for Jessie, Annie, and Nana. Given time, she'd be her old self again. She'd done it before…after Michael's death.

  But, staring at Stuart's email, seeing Sam's name only reminded her Sam's absence wasn't like Michael's. It wasn't permanent. But, like Michael, he left and hadn't returned. Reconnecting with Stuart would only complicate that issue…if Sam had truly run away from her.

  She hit the reply button and typed, "Now."

  Within minutes, her phone rang. She answered.

  "What do you want to talk to me about, Stuart?"

  "I've made a big mistake regarding you. Because of it, I lost my son long before he even died."

  "You lost out on a lot, Stuart," she stated.

  "So Sam has already told me," Stuart said.

  Sam.

  She closed her eyes, the emotions she'd been holding at bay flooding her heart. She'd told Sam she needed time to think things through. She hadn't meant for him to go away forever. Had he too thought things through, decided he didn't want to deal with a widow and premade family? Had he run away? Her heart ached for him.

  On the other end of the line, Stuart cleared his throat. "I was wrong to have pursued sole custody of Ben. I was wrong to have sent Miss Weston into your home to spy on you—wrong to have ordered her to get dirt."

  "Did you order Sam to do the same thing?"

  There was a long pause before Stuart spoke again. "I did. But, unlike Miss Weston, he proved you to be the best parent for Ben."

  "Does this mean you won't be pursuing custody a
ny further?"

  "Yes. I was foolish to do so in the first place. Foolish and grief stricken. I'd lost my only son…"

  She heard his voice falter. "I understand, Stuart."

  "Sam said you would."

  Sam. The mere mention of his name made the ache in her chest grow.

  "You've been a good influence on the boy," Stuart said.

  For a moment, Dixie was confused as to whether he was talking about Sam or Ben.

  "He faced me and pinned my ears back quite sharply."

  Sam.

  "He did, did he?"

  "The boy grew a backbone in the short time he was with you. Told me what I could do with his trust fund in quite graphic terms."

  She smiled in spite of her ache. "He did?"

  "Is there a chance…could you find it in your heart to let me visit Ben?"

  "Of course, Stuart. You are his grandfather. He should have you in his life."

  "Thank you," his said, his voice thick. "Sam told me you had a forgiving heart."

  A tear tumbled down Dixie's cheek. "Will you do something for me, Stuart?"

  "Of course. What?"

  "Remind Sam of my forgiving heart."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "We're pregnant."

  Dixie dropped the paper plates on the picnic table, rose on her toes, and threw her arms around her brother's neck. "I'm so happy for you."

  Roman whispered in her ear. "I wish you could be as happy."

  "Don't you dare ruin this wonderful moment with any of that," she whispered back and released him.

  Turning to her slim, dark-haired sister-in-law, she pulled Tess into her arms. "You've made him a very happy man."

  "I'm happy, too."

  Dixie drew back but kept hold of Tess's hands. "You are glowing, but—"

  Tess laughed. "You're worried the girl who vowed never to marry is going to regret getting pregnant within a year of the wedding?"

  "No. I worry that Roman pressured you into this so soon. I know him and his five year plans."

  Tess pressed her forehead against Dixie's as if her words were for Dixie's ears alone. "He didn't have to pressure me at all. Sometimes even a stubborn girl like me needs to just plain give in to her heart."