He breathed a sigh of relief, but wondered what condition he’d be in ninety minutes from now conducting a meeting between an estranged father and his very pissed off daughter.
Once they got to his office, Reese whisked Quinn into the first vacant conference room and left her while he went down the hall to deal with Nick Tyler, the rock legend that Rolling Stone magazine had once called the best lyricist of his time.
Knowing how the man had ignored his own daughter, though, Reese wasn’t particularly taken with the rock icon. But when Reese noticed him staring at something behind him, he glanced over his shoulder to see Quinn standing in the doorway.
She looked ready to explode in full rage-mode.
And when she opened her mouth to speak, what came out was loud enough for all the people on the eighth floor of his office building to hear and then some. “What the hell is he doing here? You went ahead and did it, didn’t you, without asking me, without consulting me? You begged this asshole to come over here! How dare you go behind my back like this! How could you do this to me, Reese?”
“You wouldn’t go to him, so I brought him to you. After I explained what a dangerous situation you were in, he was concerned enough about your safety, your wellbeing, to make the trip.”
“Why? I asked you to butt out. I trusted you. God, when will I learn you can’t trust a man to keep his word, let alone a lawyer?” She spat out the last word like nasty venom sucked from a poisonous snake bite.
“Whether you want to admit it or not the man’s your father, Quinn. He’s traveled eight thousand miles to answer your questions; questions you assured me had always been nagging at you since childhood. You need answers, answers to why you were an afterthought to him. I, for one, intend to find out. And speculating about things now with him here is a waste of time. It’s better to get answers from the source. Now take a seat and see if you can be quiet for five damn minutes while I ask him where the hell he’s been for the past twenty-five years while you were practically living on the streets.”
“Be quiet, my ass. Do not talk to me like I’m a child! Just because we’re hitting the sheets doesn’t give you permission to interfere in my life like this. It’s my life, Reese Brennan! What about that do you not understand?”
“Your life is connected to his. You want answers, now is the time to shut up and listen to what he has to say. And if you want me to stop treating you like a child then I suggest you stop acting like one!”
“I knew something was up. I knew it!” She glared at him, then at the other two men in the room, sitting wide-eyed watching the exchange between man and woman. “Fucking lawyers, you’re all exactly alike. None of you show any regard for anyone but yourselves,” she grumbled, but reluctantly took a seat at the other end of the table, the chair closest to the door.
Grateful she finally sat down, Reese wasted no time getting down to business. “First, Mr. Tyler, Mr. Baines, thank you for coming. As I just pointed out to my client, we have a few questions, so let’s get to it.”
“I see the Rock Star didn’t leave Ireland without his fucking lawyer in tow. Figures.”
“Quinn…” Reese warned.
Quinn sat there, arms crossed like a defiant three-year-old and fumed. But she shut up secretly hoping Reese could ply some answers out of the asshole who had fathered her.
Nick opened a briefcase and took out a three-inch, well-worn file folder and shuffled through the stack of papers. In an unmistakable Irish brogue, he offered, “Maybe this will help fill up some of the holes for both of you.”
He slid the file folder across the conference table in Reese’s direction. He slanted a look at Quinn, trying to gauge the depths of the woman’s ire. He’d never seen anyone glare at him with such cold-hearted fury like the young, beautiful woman sitting at the end of the table. His daughter had turned into a stunning but consummate professional. Who would have thought his little girl would grow up to be a doctor? No doubt the life in Beverly Hills had been good to her, which only made the lawyer’s earlier comments a bit perplexing at the moment.
Reese picked up the file folder, began thumbing through the papers.
With her arms crossed, Quinn simply glowered in the direction of all three men, fuming, waiting.
After several long minutes, Reese said, “I don’t understand. There’s no mention here of Ella Canyon.”
Nick shook his head, obviously confused. “I’m sorry, who exactly is Ella Canyon?”
Quinn’s furious glower turned into pure rage. “God, you are an asshole, you know that?” To emphasize the point to Reese, she ranted, “Rock Star here can’t even remember all the women he’s knocked up over the years.”
She looked accusingly back at Nick. “How many were there for God’s sakes that you can’t keep them all straight? Lost count, Rock Star? You must be so proud of the life you’ve lived. How many others were there where you acted as nothing but a sperm donor? Oh, and by the way, I want you to know right here, right now, I can’t stand to listen to your music. It’s utter…garbage!”
Nick knew she’d be angry, this daughter of his. He’d come here knowing this day was an eventuality; someday, one day, he’d have to face her. But finding such an angry adult, he was in over his head.
But there was only so much a man could take. “I always heard Beverly Hills produced snotty, spoiled women, now I know for certain it’s true.”
Quinn snarled back, “Snotty? Spoiled? I’ll show you snotty.” She stood up and took a couple of steps toward Nick just as Reese snatched her around the waist and plopped her back down in the chair.
“Take your hands off me,” Quinn shouted. “Don’t you touch me like that ever again!”
Coolly, Nick looked at Reese. “Obviously I’m at a disadvantage. I came here under the impression this was a meeting between me and my daughter, the daughter who was the product of my relationship with Lisa Redfield.”
Quinn shot back, “Who the hell is Lisa Redfield? My mother’s goddamned name is Ella Canyon!”
Nick lost it then and shot back, “Like hell. Your mother’s name is Lisa Redfield. I ought to bloody well know.”
“Then I’ll ask again, who the hell is Lisa Redfield? Another woman you obviously knocked up during the band’s heyday?”
Warm, brown eyes met cold furious deeper brown. Nick shot a quick glance at Gerald Baines. “Lisa Redfield is the underage girl I had sex with in a San Francisco hotel room when she was fifteen years old. Though, I might point out, she didn’t look fifteen. But you, Quinn, look just like her. You have her coloring, her Native American blood shows straight through you.”
“Jesus! Under-aged? Are you kidding me? You’re even more of a sleazebag than I thought! And believe me, I consider you scum.” Even though an image of Ella at around twenty-four popped into Quinn’s head, she had to admit during all their years together her mother had never once mentioned the liaison that had taken place at such a young age.
And fifteen? Something didn’t add up. She knew Ella’s birthdate as well as her own. Quinn also knew firsthand how her mother had looked dragging her from pillar to post. Even if she added three or four years to that, Ella certainly seemed infinitely older than eighteen or nineteen. Back then she’d been strung out. Even then Ella had been a hardcore addict.
Didn’t druggies have a tendency to age faster than most people, though, especially if they were hooked on meth? That had to account for the age difference.
Nick ignored Quinn’s outburst and turned to the cooler head in the room. “Mr. Brennan, Lisa’s family hired a lawyer, a woman by the name of Jessica Boyd. It’s all there in the file, if you’ll bother to read it.”
Hearing the name Jessica Boyd, Reese visibly winced.
When Quinn started to speak, Reese stilled her with one wave of his hand. “Maybe you should start at the beginning, Mr. Tyler. It might be easier than reading the entire file while we conduct our meeting. My playing catch up is going to take some time we don’t necessarily have at the moment. What
exactly happened after you got this fifteen-year-old girl pregnant and Jessica Boyd got involved?”
Gerald Baines spoke for the first time. “This lawyer Boyd came after Mr. Tyler with money in mind, not child support, mind you, but rather blackmail. Nick’s team of lawyers, led by a man named Portman at the time, knew from that first contact it was all about the money.
“Ms. Boyd offered us a settlement of a million pounds, American dollars if you will, upfront and ten-thousand-dollars a month child support thereafter and she would keep it out of the papers, keep Nick from getting arrested, from spending time in jail for statutory rape.”
Nick interrupted him. “I went along with it because I was twenty fucking years old by the time I learned she was pregnant. Our first album had just gone platinum. I let the lawyers handle it. All of it.”
He turned his attention to Quinn then. Matter-of-factly, he offered an excuse. “I was young, Quinn. Twenty is too young no matter who you are or what your dreams happen to be at the time. Mine was my music back then. I had no need of being tied down to a kid, or a teenage bride for that matter. The way I saw it, why should I be punished for one bloody night in the sack, one night of a drunken stupor, to be tied down like that when I had the money to make it all go away?
“And from that point on, the whole thing skyrocketed out of my control. The music became a business for me and mine. I was on tour nonstop for almost three bloody years after that.”
Reading through the file, Reese announced, “There was a paternity test.”
Nick nodded. “My lawyers demanded one. And after the baby was born, turns out, I was Quinn’s father. Lisa’s lawyer even let her fly over to Dublin to have the baby there. Lisa knew my mother’s family name was Quinn so she chose that for the baby’s name. I was touched by the gesture… I want to make it clear Lisa was a wonder, a talented…”
“Touched, my ass,” Quinn tossed in just in case anyone had forgotten she was in the room.
Once again, Nick tried to overlook the angry tone. “As I was saying, I gladly ponied up the million, agreed to the ten grand, and signed some papers to make the lawyers happy. About four months after the baby was born, Lisa eventually flew back to America, and took Quinn there with her.”
He breathed out a sigh, staring directly at her now, taking the wrath aimed at him with the full force he deserved. “I’m sorry, Quinn. I was raised better. But I had my career to think about; my music was everything to me back then. At the time, that’s all I wanted.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Quinn said flatly, unmoved. “There’s just one little problem here, Rock Star. My mother’s name is Ella, Ella Canyon. Think real hard and do your damnedest to try and remember her. I have no idea who this Lisa Redfield is that had your other out-of-wedlock baby and who touched you so.” She snorted at that. “Whoever Lisa is I’m sure she touched you a lot at the time, but she doesn’t have a damned thing to do with me.”
Quinn thumbed her hand at Nick and said to Reese, “These are the answers you thought you’d get? What a joke! I tried to tell you. Rock Star here never even laid eyes on me until today, twenty five years after the fact. He’s a fucking sperm donor to me, nothing more.”
Before Reese could say anything, Nick said quietly, “Uh, that isn’t exactly true. I saw you twice. In hospital, of course, the day after you were born and when you were perhaps three-and-a-half-years-old. I was at home in Dublin, taking a break from touring, my first break in a long time. I had inquired about you when I had some downtime. Someone made a call to the lawyers, set up a meeting, so I could get a look at you again.
“Your nanny brought you to Ireland and out to the farm. We visited for maybe three hours. I gave you a big stuffed frog; you called it Broggy, because you couldn’t say Froggy.”
Reese shot a glance at Quinn, instantly recognizing her dream, the one she’d described as her perfect day.
Quinn had a look on her face that resembled a deer caught in the headlights. Nick had obviously hit a nerve.
“I took you on a tour of the barn that day. There you found a cat you fancied, a solid white one you called Snowball, and cried when you had to leave it behind.” At the memory, sadness engulfed him, remembering a little doe-eyed girl who had wanted nothing more from him on that spring day than a tiny kitten.
He swallowed hard. “And then your nanny said it was time to go and you left. You were a pretty little thing. I remember being disappointed because Lisa hadn’t accompanied you on the trip.”
Quinn ignored the brief perfect-day scenario she’d dreamed about her entire life. Instead, she shook her head in disbelief. “My nanny? You remember my nanny? Get real.” With derision in her tone, she informed him, “I got news for you Rock Star, I never ever had a nanny.”
She stood up, pushing away from the table. She leaned over to where Nick sat. “I’ve heard enough of this bullshit. And if you sent ten grand a month across the sea those first few years, it goddamn for sure never made its way to me.
“For the first eight years of my life, I never even had a stable place to live or enough to eat or proper clothes to wear.”
Or love, she thought now, from anyone.
“Sometimes I didn’t even go to school regularly because I wasn’t enrolled anywhere. As it turns out, it seems Ella had a problem staying in one place, and more than a passing fancy for the nose candy…and booze, the woman loved her morning vodka and orange juice. Naturally, in the evening she’d turn to the really hard stuff and mix the booze with a little of the candy so she’d be in the mood for her regulars.”
She paused to take a breath. “I went hungry, Rock Star. It wasn’t until Ella married Ross Jennetti and we moved to Beverly Hills that things turned around for me. I got to go to school on a consistent basis. So what if I took a knock or two once a week by a stepfather who never wanted a kid around? It was so much better than the way things were before I didn’t dare complain. So if you want to sit there and believe you were so goddamn magnanimous with your fucking money, go ahead. But face it, Rock Star, you never cared shit about me and never wanted to.
“Your record producer had more involvement in my life than you did. But that was before he got a little too friendly with his hands. Those were my teen years when I started filling out, which obviously caught the man’s attention, another sleazebag excuse for a man.
“And then of course let’s not forget your slew of fucking barristers. They’d send me money whenever Jennetti happened to bring some special need to their radar. You never even bothered to sign those checks personally, did you? Some underling lawyer did it for you. So, go fuck yourself, Rock Star.”
She stormed toward the door, muttering, “I’m done here. Thanks for nothing, Reese Brennan. Go to hell the lot of you!”
When the door slammed shut behind her hard enough for the walls to shake, no one quite knew what to say.
Reese had the urge to run after her, to soothe what he could of her temper. But the questions from two decades back nagged at him like a giant pesky fly.
Jessica’s involvement sent up a huge red flag the size of Orange County.
And because of that, Reese was the first to recover from the outburst. “Mr. Baines, how were the payments handled?”
But Nick held out a shaky hand. “Wait! Wait a damn minute. Did she just infer that this Ross Jennetti molested her as a teen?”
Even though Gerald acted like he wanted to change the subject, Reese tightened his jaw. “Yes,” he finally managed to answer quietly. “Still think she’s a snotty, spoiled woman from Beverly Hills, Mr. Tyler?”
Gerald took advantage of the sudden silence and got them back on track. “The settlement went to the lawyer, Jessica Boyd, a check made out to Lisa Redfield for a million American dollars. There’s a copy in the file you have in front of you. After that, each monthly check in the amount of ten-thousand-dollars was wired to her attention in care of the law firm. Our accountants will verify the information.”
“I just bet they will,” Re
ese murmured as he caught the stunned look on Nick Tyler’s face.
But Gerald went on, “Whenever the child needed anything extra for school or whatnot, anything above that, she had to put it in writing, or rather, her representative did.” Baines nervously mopped at sweat popping out on his forehead, before adding, “That eventually turned out to be the stepfather, Ross Jennetti.”
Nick eyed Gerald Baines. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“That was the arrangement. The details, the fine print so to speak, were that everything the girl needed had to be checked out and verified first. Look, Nick, if we hadn’t done it that way, the chances were the girl’s mother and her lawyer would have bled you…”
But Nick didn’t let him finish. “Well for God’s sakes, I can see why she feels the way she does. The thing is…this Jennetti…who the fuck is this stepfather? Jennetti was never my record producer. My producer is and always has been Austin Dempsey. We were schoolmates. Check it out if you don’t believe me.”
But no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Nick looked directly across the table at the friend he’d met in Catholic school at the age of six. He suddenly got a sick feeling in his gut. “Gerald Patrick Baines, you knew this Jennetti personally, didn’t you? You handpicked him; put him in place here in Los Angeles as the representative?”
Nick didn’t wait for an answer but stood up, braced his hands on the table, and leaned over to where his friend sat stoic. “Tell me now you, asshole, come clean this very minute or I swear to fucking God I’ll reach across this table and pull your lying tongue out of your lying head!”
Visibly shaken, Gerald began to perspire even more. “I was looking out for you, Nick. I was right out of College Cork, the ink not yet dry on my law degree. I was going through the files. It was so obvious this Boyd woman kept nickel and diming Portman for every little thing. You remember Portman, don’t you? That pot-bellied swine you had for a barrister who gave the Boyd woman the settlement she asked for without any attempt at bargaining her down? I had to get someone on the inside who could keep things in check, watch out for the bottom line.”
Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set Page 95
