Secrets Gone South (Crimson Romance)

by Pace, Alicia Hunter

  He didn’t look defeated but he didn’t look like he had any interest in backing down either. “Probably, you’re right. I didn’t even go to college. But there’s always that chance. For sure, there would be DNA tests and a big old mess on the front page of every paper in the southeast. And everyone would know this secret that you are so intent on keeping. For the life of me, I can’t understand why you care so much but you do. And I’ll use that.”

  “You’d do that to him? To Avery?”

  “What would I be doing to him? He’s twenty-two months old. He wouldn’t know what was going on.”

  “But later … ” And that was the thing she feared the most—that Avery would one day know she had given him away like a used book. How could Will not see why Avery could never know she had given birth to him? Wasn’t it apparent that what she had done was the ultimate rejection and the kind of thing that could ruin a child’s life? But she wouldn’t try to explain. He had enough ammunition. “Later, he would know. People would talk.”

  “Yes, I guess they would, wouldn’t they? You being who you are. I guess he would know all about it, how he had a father who wanted him so much that he was willing to take on the whole damned state of Alabama for him. Yeah, that would be a terrible thing for him to know.”

  Her indignation was beginning to give way to fear. She was dealing with a man who had nothing to lose.

  “Look, Will,” she said. “I’m sorry. I made a lot of mistakes.”

  “Starting with giving him away. You could have given him to me.”

  That again. Nothing would ever cut deeper and she got the feeling Will was enjoying that.

  “Do you think I wanted to give him up?” she asked. “That I couldn’t be bothered to take care him?”

  “What else am I supposed to think? I might have some more information if you had consulted with me.”

  “I tried!”

  “Not hard enough!”

  “We’ve come full circle, Will.”

  “We have not. We haven’t hit the first arc.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked. “I cannot unring this bell. I’m willing to do what’s right. I’m willing to let you see him. Informally, of course. We don’t need to make this a legal issue.”

  “Oh, really? Well, that’s just great. You’re going to let me see him. Let me see my son.”

  “I would not expect any monetary help.” She knew right away that had been the wrong thing to say—way wrong. His face flared up like a Saturday night bonfire. She expected his next words to be loud enough to raise the roof. Instead he bent forward and spoke very quietly.

  “I am not from Mill Town anymore. I have money. If I didn’t have money, I would get it for him. I’d get it, no matter what I had to do. Have you got that, Arabelle? Are we clear on this point?”

  She nodded. She was clear, all too clear.

  “All right. Okay. We’ll work something out,” she said.

  “I am not negotiating with you. You’ve had your way for far too long. You have two choices. Marry me and do right by Avery or lawyer up.”

  “That’s blackmail!”

  “I call it a choice. Go ahead and say it, Arabelle. I can see it working in your face.”

  “What?”

  “Threaten to call your daddy. Threaten to call Luke.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that.” That was exactly what she’d been thinking.

  “Sure you were. Call the National Guard, Santa Claus, and your mama’s whole damn sorority. When you get off the phone that boy will still be mine and I am going to have him. Frankly, I think Santa Claus and most of the National Guard would be on my side.”

  She lost it.

  “You don’t even want him! He’s nothing but a possession to you, like one of your”—she floundered around for an example—“saws or something. You don’t even know him!”

  He went stiller than still and met her eyes head on. “I know enough.” It was the old, soft, sweet Will voice, the one that had made her stomach turn over once upon a time. “I do want him. I want only what is best for him. That’s all. Like you. What I think is best is to give him a set of married parents. If you won’t participate, I’ll do what I have to.”

  She believed him but would have died before she would have said so.

  Then Will went to a place where she did not exist. He spoke but not to her. He seemed to be making promises, maybe to Avery, maybe to himself. One thing for certain, she was beside the point.

  “My son is going to play ball if he wants to, no matter how much the equipment costs. And I am going to take him to practice and every game. Or it doesn’t have to be ball. Plays, school choir. Whatever. He’s going to have a place in this community and not have to worry about anything. He will be secure. I don’t want him to ever have to wonder what’s going to happen, who’s going to pick him up, what will happen if he leaves his gym clothes at home. I will never let him down.”

  Arabelle’s anger ebbed. How could it not? He meant what he said. She opened her mouth and searched for something kind to say that showed they could find common ground.

  But then he slammed his eyes back to hers and spoke in that previous autocratic voice. “Just so we’re clear, I have some demands.”

  Never mind soft words and common ground. That didn’t go with demands.

  “First,” Will went on. “He will have my name. We will all have the same name. What’s his name now, anyway? His whole name?”

  “Avery Sewell Cooper. Avery was Sheridan’s maiden name, of course. Sewell was our grandmother’s maiden name.” She’d been worried about that name business, had assumed she’d just let him go on being Avery Cooper since he couldn’t be Avery Avery. Wait. She was thinking like this was going to happen. But wasn’t it? Didn’t it have to if she was going to stay out of a custody battle? As little as she knew about Will, she knew for certain he was not a man to make idle threats. Still, she said nothing.

  He sneered with clear disgust. “Last names for first—your kind does that. Demand two. Starting tomorrow, he’s going to be taught to call me Daddy. That’s who I am.”

  What? “Starting tomorrow? Will, you cannot mean that. Even if we do this thing, we have to go into it gradually. We’d have to date for at least a year.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “I said no. No one has said that to you very many times, have they, princess? We are getting married within the week. Until then, I’m going to see Avery every single day.”

  “Impossible. How would I explain that to my family and friends?”

  “Near as I can tell, you don’t have any friends. Brantley says you won’t have anything to do with those book club women, though they keep inviting you. You can tell your family anything you want to. Tell them we’ve been in contact since Lanie and Luke’s wedding and we’ve kept it quiet because we didn’t know where it was going. Tell them your fortune cookie directed you to marry the first man you laid eyes on next and it was me. Tell them the truth. I do not care.”

  “How can you not care?”

  He didn’t bother to answer her question but plowed on through his agenda. “Third, no matter how we feel, in public we’re going to act like the happiest pair to ever hit the matrimonial trail. That’s what’s best for Avery.”

  “Do you really think it’s best for him to live with two people who despise each other?”

  “We don’t despise each other. You feel guilty and I’m mad. We’ll get over that. We always liked each other pretty well. I expect we’ll deal with each other well enough. And I am willful. It will be fine because I say it will be.”

  “So you’re willing to go into a loveless marriage?”

  “Not my first choice but I should have thought of that before I climbed into bed with you. We both should have. Anyway, who says there’s any such thing? Even if it starts out that way. What’s important is Avery.”

  She really couldn’t argue with any of that. “Are those all of your demands?”

&
nbsp; He thought for a bit. “Yes. I guess that about covers it.”

  “Then I’ve got a demand of my own.”

  “You are in no position to make demands.”

  “Am I not? Well, hear me out. I will do this thing. But it’s not because you’re blackmailing me. It’s because what I wanted for my son from the start was two loving parents. I wanted that so much, I gave him up. And I believe you are a decent man. But no one is ever to know. I mean that, Will. He can have your name. He can call you Daddy. You can be the only father he ever knows, but to the world and—most importantly—later to him, we are not his biological parents. That’s how it will be.”

  “I don’t see why—”

  “You don’t have to. You think you’re playing hardball? You don’t know hardball. If you don’t agree, I’ll let you take me to court. You’ll lose, but we’ll do it. Then I’ll take him and leave. I’ll go to the West Coast, or maybe even out of the country.”

  “You can’t stop me from seeing him.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of trying. But it will be hard. The most you could manage would be a few weekends here and there, a week or two in the summer. At his age, he wouldn’t even know you.”

  “What’s to stop me from picking up and following you?”

  “These woods.” She gestured to the window. “You won’t leave them. You waxed eloquent about them that night we came here. You aren’t going anywhere.”

  “I wouldn’t want to but I can make furniture anywhere. You underestimate what I would be willing to do for my child.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But the point is, you don’t have to leave. You just have to keep a secret. If you don’t want to do that, I’ll go with my own plan B. Don’t think I can’t and don’t think I won’t.”

  His head dropped like all the muscles had given up. She had won the point—but precious little else.

  “I don’t like it,” Will said, meeting her eyes again. “But you aren’t giving me any choice. Just like I’m not giving you any.”

  She nodded but she knew what he said wasn’t exactly true. She had a choice. He might think she had only agreed to marry him out of fear but there was much more to it than that. She was doing it because he’d fallen in love with Avery in a split second and she had cheated Will and Avery out of two years with each other. Will wanted some kind of 1950s Father Knows Best family and she owed him.

  And, truthfully, was it such a high price to pay? She’d paid worse.

  Chapter Five

  “You are going to do what?”

  Arabelle had been waiting in Luke’s chambers when he got out of court. She thought she’d try the story out on him first. She’d decided to go with an augmented version of what Will had suggested—that they had been in touch for quite some time. If she could get Luke onboard first, maybe he’d help her with the parents.

  Luke pulled at his tie and ran his hand over his hair. “You think you’re just going to up and marry Will Garrett? You don’t even know him.”

  “That’s not true,” she said evenly. “Will used to work summers at the country club when we were teenagers. You were in college by then and weren’t coming to Merritt much. I knew him then.”

  Luke leaned forward “Did you date him back then?”

  “No,” she said slowly. She was making this up as she went. “I would have. I wanted to. I think he liked me too but he never asked.” She took a breath and continued on. “Daddy bought the land the hunting lodge is on from him. Then, the weekend I was here for your wedding, I ran into him. Something sparked between us and we stayed in contact the whole time I was in Africa. When I got back to the states we began quietly seeing each other—when I was here and he would visit me in Atlanta.”

  Luke cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you like. It’s the truth.”

  “Why has it been such a big damned secret then? Even over Christmas, you never said a word. Even if you weren’t going to let him have any ham and sing around the tree, it looks like you would have had him over for a cookie and some eggnog.”

  She’d been expecting that. She looked at her hands for effect. “Things weren’t so good between us then. After Sheridan died and I got Avery, Will asked me to marry him and move here. I couldn’t handle it. It was too much at once. I broke it off but it didn’t take me long to discover I had made a mistake. But Will is a proud man. I wanted to demonstrate to him that I was willing to move here for him—well, partially. I wanted Avery to be near his cousins. And you.”

  “And you never said a word.”

  “Luke, you know I’m a private person.”

  His eyes went sad. “You didn’t used to be.”

  He might as well have said it—before Carrie, before Jake, before Sheridan.

  “Things change.”

  “Yeah.” He undid his tie completely.

  He was feeling sorry for her now, feeling his own grief. She felt bad about that but not bad enough not to use it. These were desperate times.

  “Look, Luke, right after the holidays, we got back together. We were going to take it slow, but why? We’re adults. We’ve been exploring this for a quite a while. We’re sure. Why wait?”

  Luke lined up his letter opener, stapler, and tape dispenser. Then he rearranged them twice. “Arabelle, nobody knows better than I do how hard it is to be a single parent, especially to such a young child. But you don’t have to do this. You can move back to the farmhouse with Lanie and me. It’s your home too and we’ll help you.”

  She held up her hand. “It’s not that, Luke. I swear it.” Luke shook his head in disbelief. “At least, it’s not all about that. Will and I want to be together. We would, no matter what. So why not go ahead? Will wants to be a father to Avery and he wants it now.” At least that last part was true; in fact it was the understatement of the millennium.

  “I don’t like this, Arabelle. You have had so many changes. This is major. You should wait at least a year. Come home to the farm. Set a date with Will for next year if you want. I know about these things.”

  “No, you don’t. You have always done just exactly what you wanted to at whatever speed you pleased.”

  “That’s not fair. I was alone for a long time. I didn’t marry the first person who came along because I needed help with Emma. I waited for Lanie.”

  “Will is not the first person who has come along.” In fact, he hadn’t come along for her at all. “And you aren’t alone anymore.”

  “You don’t have to be either. You can be with Lanie, the kids, and me. And you can cultivate some friendships.”

  Oh, damn, that friendship thing again.

  “I am going to marry Will at the end of the week. I would like to do it at the farm on Saturday morning and I would like for you to perform the ceremony. If you won’t, Will and I will go to the courthouse in Jefferson County on Friday.”

  “Arabelle! Stop it. It’s not about whether I will do it. This is not what you want. Mother is going to have a fit. She’s been planning your wedding all your life.”

  “Then she ought to be ready.”

  “You can’t even get married at Christ Episcopal that soon. At least wait the three weeks it would take to have the banns read. Mother and Lanie could make something nice in that amount of time.”

  At least now Luke was talking like he believed it would happen. He had gone from next year to three weeks in a matter of two minutes.

  Though Luke had a point. Things would go easier with the family if they got married in the chapel with Father Gregory officiating. She might even be able to talk Will into it, especially if she made the case that this kind of wedding fit in more with this fantasy backdrop he had invented for Avery’s life. But there was no way she could stand up in a church without Carrie and Sheridan by her side. That’s how it was supposed to have been.

  Besides, now that she had accepted that this was going to happen, she wanted it done.

  “No,” she said. “This Saturd
ay. Or Friday if we have to go to Jefferson County.”

  Luke sighed. “The parents are going to have a come apart.”

  Suddenly, she was a little mad. “And why is that, Luke? Are you going to have a come apart, too? Did Will not grow up in the right part of town, with the right people?” Why did she feel so protective, so defensive? This was a man who was basically blackmailing her.

  A frown washed over Luke’s face. “You should be ashamed. You know I’m not like that. And neither are they. Will is a good man. He’s made a great career. This is not about Will. It’s about rushing.”

  Oh, she had him there! “No more than six months passed between the time you met Lanie and you married her.”

  “Seven.”

  “Oh, seven, was it? And how long did you actually date? Two months? Three?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Damn straight it’s different. I’ve known Will for years.”

  Luke’s face did not soften. She had to change her tact.

  “Luke, look. We’ve had a hard few years. I just want to be happy, like you are. I want it now. Is that so wrong?”

  He sighed. “No,” he said softly. “I know this has been rough for you. I know I got all the sympathy when Carrie and Jake died but it was hard on you too. And then, on top of that, Sheridan. I want you to be happy. I do. I’m just afraid for you.”

  “Could I have talked you out of marrying Lanie?”

  “I’m not trying to talk you out of marrying Will. I’m trying to convince you to wait a bit.”

  “Like you did?”

  “Do you love him?” Luke asked and she was taken aback. She had never discussed love with Luke. Regardless of the truth, there was just one answer she could give.

  “I do. I really do.”

  That sounded sincere, even to her own lying self.

  “All right. Okay. At the farm Saturday morning. I’ll tell Lanie. When are you going to call the parents?”

  “Tonight. I would appreciate your support.”