by Fox, Sutton
Cowards, Morgan thought irritably as she turned on her side and tried to find a comfortable position that wouldn’t aggravate her bruises. She felt like she’d just been steam-rolled by a teddy bear: really warm and snuggly, but flattened just the same.
Four hours later, the rising sun brushed the light blue sky with streaks of palest pink. Morgan sat speechless in the front seat of a silver, high end Mercedes sedan as they crested the last hill and the hotel, er, house came into view.
It had to be the largest Georgian-style mansion she’d ever seen. Four tall, slender columns boxed a white portico two-stories high. Matching red brick chimneys stood guard on either end of the hipped roof, over two long rows of double hung sash windows. The white mullioned windows added perfect symmetry to the red brick façade.
Okay, she hadn’t seen that many up close. She remembered foggy details from an American history class long ago, and recalled vacationing with Mom and Dad in Williamsburg, Virginia once.
This wasn’t too far off from the pictures they’d brought back. She’d already had her tour of the Governor’s Mansion, thank-you-very-much.
A slender, gray-haired woman came bustling out the front door to meet them. Dressed in chic black from head to foot and sporting a stylish bobbed haircut, she opened the passenger door and greeted Morgan with a smile.
“Hi, I’m Melba. You must be Morgan.” Morgan smiled at the woman, wondering whose relative she was. Annie obviously held no such reservations. She popped out the rear door of the car with a squeal, launching herself at the woman.
“Melba, Melba.” She chirped, hugging the woman ferociously while the woman hugged her in return.
“Lord, look at you child. You’ve done grown a foot.”
Patty Ann and a very tired-looking Stephanie rounded the hood of the car as the group headed up the few stairs to the wide oak-paneled front door. Patty Ann put her arm around Stephanie and hugged her close while they entered. “Darlin’ your room is ready. Why don’t you go on up and have a nap. The others won’t be here until later on anyway.”
Sleepy eyes blinking, Stephanie nodded and whispered a tired, “See y’all later.” She slowly climbed the floating staircase and disappeared around the corner.
Others? What others? Morgan wondered. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask when it seemed Patty Ann read her mind.
“We’re having a family barbeque this weekend. My other children will be here later today, along with my grandchildren.”
Morgan watched the other woman’s smile brighten. The twinkle in her blue eyes made Morgan just a little homesick for her own mom. Great, just great. Nothing like crashing a family reunion.
“Morgan, forgive my lack of manners. Melba is our housekeeper slash secretary. If there is anything you need, you just let her know. She’s a wiz at everything.”
The affectionate tone of voice let Morgan know that, whoever she might be, Melba was important to them. “The guest suite is here on the first floor. Melba will get you settled in so you can rest. If you’d like to take a bath to wash away that awful hospital smell, I wouldn’t blame you a bit. You take all the time you need. Join us when you’re ready.”
Morgan easily gave in once more to that falling-down-the-rabbit-hole feeling. Melba led her to a pale blue suite of rooms, and tucked her under a fluffy down comforter. She lay quietly in the four-poster canopied bed and stared at the beautiful Queen-Anne-style mahogany furniture.
Her head rested lightly on a feather pillow while she pondered life’s odd twists and turns. Racecar corporations built like the Taj-Mahal, houses as big as hotels, private jets, housekeepers who were prettier than some middle-aged models. Dorothy, you’re a long way from Kansas.
She turned her head into the soft, blue-flowered cotton sheets. They smelled clean and fresh, and faintly of lavender. Before drifting off to sleep, she wondered if the three-tiered steps up to the marble bathtub in the adjoining room had been real or a figment of her weary imagination.
*
The sun sat high in the sky the next afternoon as Tyler sipped sweet tea and watched Morgan laugh at one of his sister Jessica’s jokes.
Earlier she’d helped to clear the table, watched over the youngest of the nieces and nephews, and found time to play games with the older ones. He felt a warm tingling feeling in his chest as he watched her. Morgan seemed to just fit, like she’d always been here. Down to earth, she treated every member of his family with simple respect and kindness, in a way that Cindy never had.
For the first time in years, he felt as if his ex-wife had truly become part of his past. He took another drink, and realized it didn’t hurt to think of her anymore. The distance from painful memories offered its own brand of freedom.
“She’s a beauty. Tough as nails too, I hear.”
“What? Who?” His father’s voice caught him by surprise. Sharp as a tack, his dad never missed a trick. A sheepish grin pushed at the corners of Tyler’s mouth. “Yeah. She is,” he answered with a smile in Morgan’s direction.
“I meant your mother.”
Tyler turned his head to stare open-mouthed at his father, who laughed a deep belly laugh in return.
“Caught-cha!” He snickered again. “Why don’t you take her for a walk in the maze? Instead of standin’ here making cow eyes at her like you’ve been doin’ all afternoon.”
Tyler straightened himself up to his fully-insulted, six feet two inches and looked down his nose at his dad. “I don’t make cow eyes.”
Bob Dalton punched him in the arm. “Yes, you do, boy. Now go on. Git. Before I take that pretty little brunette out there myself. We’ll look out for Annie.”
It was Tyler’s turn to laugh as he moved in Morgan’s direction. He knew how much his dad loved his mom. Forty years of marriage and there had never been another for either one of them. Growing up, he’d always hoped to find a love like theirs.
He looked across the terrace and his eyes met Morgan’s. She smiled shyly at him and turned away. Tyler’s heart told him he’d done just that. There would be no going back.
It scared the crap out of him. He didn’t know what to do about it, so he did the same thing he’d always done when faced with a puzzling situation. He faced it head on.
“Would you like to escape the madness for awhile and take a walk?”
She started to set her half-empty glass on the table. “I’d love to.”
Tyler grabbed the open bottle of red wine and another glass. “No, bring your glass. It’s not far.”
He led her to the opposite side of the pool patio and down a row of ten ivory steps. An opening in the row of shoulder-high hedges bordered the far side. Tyler walked slowly beside her as they stepped through the opening.
“This is the maze, isn’t it? I could see it from the family room window. It looks really great from up there. How big is it?”
Tyler laughed. “Okay, we’ll play twenty questions. You’ve just asked me two. I’ll answer, and then I get to ask you two.”
Her eyes lit at the prospect of another game. He found it fascinating that she never tired of competing.
“Yes, it’s the maze. It’s ten acres. Now it’s my turn.” He turned left, then right, then left again. “How do you feel and why are you moving so stiffly? Did you hurt something we don’t know about?”
Morgan laughed. The sound caressed him and he thought about the way she’d touched him the other night.
“That’s three. I feel fine. Dr. Miller called earlier and said the results showed my head to be hard as ever with no apparent injury.” She stopped a moment and took a small sip from her wine glass. “These hedges are fantastic. Do you ever get lost in here? Oh, it’s still your turn. Sorry.”
He watched as she rolled her eyes at him and began walking again. “I’m moving stiffly because I am stiff. I always feel this way the day or two after I roll my car. The force of it stretches all your joints and ligaments so they ache a bit. Pretty much everything hurts. It’s nothing permanent. I think it happens to
remind you that you’re human.” She held up her fisted hand and stuck up her fingers. “One, two, oh, and three. No, I didn’t hurt anything else.”
She wiggled her eyebrows and grinned wickedly at him. “It’s my turn.”
Tyler wondered what she would ask him. Maybe there’d be questions about Annie or something from his past. He led them left again, and right, then through a wide opening into a grass covered circle. Suspended from a high branch underneath a tall oak tree hung a wooden porch swing.
He gestured to the swing. “Please, sit down. We can rest a bit.” He filled his glass and refilled the remainder of hers. The empty bottle found a home on the grass not too far away. Pressing the ground with his feet, he gently rocked the swing and they moved softly, in silence.
“This is lovely. So peaceful.” She smiled serenely at him and leaned her head against the back of the seat. “I’ve got it.” She lurched forward, sloshing both wine glasses. “Oops. Sorry. It’s still my turn. What is the worst mistake you’ve ever made?”
Surprise made him chuckle. He thought about it for a moment. It helped to take his mind off wanting to kiss her. “I feel like a kid, playing truth or dare.” Aw, what the hell. Maybe he would make the worst mistake of his life right now.
His hand seemed to rise with a will of its own to stroke the soft skin of her jaw. At the touch, she turned to look at him, her brown eyes questioning. He cupped her chin and leaned down to touch his lips to hers. Wine flavored her soft pink lips as she opened for him. Heat hit him hard and fast. He worked to deepen the kiss, craving more. He turned her head further to match the angle of his face.
The stiffness of her movement and the lightest of moans reminded him she was recently injured. He pulled back with a start, mortified he’d gotten so carried away.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She patted his thigh, which didn’t help to lessen the ache of his own yearning. “I’m okay, Tyler. Don’t worry about it.”
In an effort to lighten the moment, he tried another tack. “Since kissing is out, I have a question for you. What’s with the baby shoe? Annie keeps telling me she needs to be at the race to give you Lily’s shoe. It seems very important to her. Who is Lily?”
It looked to him like her fair skin paled even more. She took a deep drink of wine and an even deeper breath. Exhaling slowly, she looked at him. Naked grief lay bleeding in her eyes.
“Lily was my little girl.”
“Was?”
“She’s dead now.”
The simplicity of the statement and the softness with which she delivered it struck him like a hammer blow. “Morgan, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” Silently he cursed himself for being an insensitive fool. Shocked, he sat in silence. He hadn’t known.
“It’s okay, really. It’s been almost six years, and I know it wasn’t on my bio for the show. Now you’re probably wondering why.”
“I guess I am.” He didn’t want to know. He could see silent resignation in the set of her shoulders. In her honest, straight-forward way, she would tell him. Bound by his contract for the series, any information he could find out should be used to spice up the show and raise the ratings. For once in his life he didn’t want to know someone’s secrets.
No way would she ever understand it was his job to use people’s secrets against them. Their weakness gave him the advantage when setting up the reality shows. He could set up situations which constantly pushed their mental buttons. It was one of the main reasons his shows were so popular.
“No, no. It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
She laughed a bitter sound. “I guess it must have been on my mind anyway. In part, it was the worst mistake I ever made.”
He watched helplessly when she ran an agitated hand through her hair. “I was twenty-one. I’d pretty much raced all my life until I met Josh. He’d come with some friends to the track, hung out afterwards and asked me for a date.”
Her voice sounded flat to him. Void of expression, like the story belonged to someone else.
“You know how it goes. One thing led to another and three months later, I was pregnant. I gave him credit at first, for doing the right thing and marrying me. I loved him. At least I thought I did.”
Quietly he sat, held in thrall by her silent dignity. She gazed at the sky a moment, watched the clouds move over the sun, covering the blue with gray.
“Things came easy to me. School work was a breeze. My grades were great, even with the racing. I won championship after championship in one series after another. Naively, I assumed my marriage would work the same way.” Pausing, she took another deep drink of wine and emptied her glass. She didn’t look at him now. She stared straight ahead, ensnared by her past.
“Lily came, and Josh started working a lot of overtime. He pretty much ignored her. Being angry at him, I focused all my attention on Lily. Looking back and knowing what I know now, I should have made him more of a priority. I understand now that it takes two people to make a relationship work. I didn’t then. I convinced myself Lily was a baby and needed all the attention. He’d just have to deal.”
Tyler gave in to his need to touch her. He reached over to rub his hand in circles on her shoulder. Funny, he needed the comfort. His heart ached for the young girl she had been.
“By the time Lily was two and a half, she knew who her daddy was. Even if he ignored her most of the time. She’d cry when he’d leave. It was awful. One night we got in a fight about it. He told me he needed to go to the store and I begged him to take her. Just so she could spend some time with him.”
Annie’s smiling face at two years old appeared in his mind’s eye. A little blonde-haired angel, face and fingers covered with chocolate icing from her birthday cake. How could a man not love that?
Morgan hiccupped and a single tear slipped down her cheek.
“The police came to the door later that night to tell me there’d been an accident. Josh’s car had pulled out in front of a tractor-trailer and been broadsided. I remember it so clearly. They asked me if I knew who Jolene Johnson was, over and over.” Another tear fell and she swiped at it with a shaking hand.
“You’d think it wouldn’t upset me so much.” With a tinny laugh, she continued. “All three people in the car were killed: Josh, Lily and Jolene. Jolene had been the one driving Josh’s car.”
Tyler wanted to put his hands over his ears and go la-la-la so he didn’t have to listen to any more. Her pain became a living thing sitting between them. “Morgan. Stop. You don’t have to do this.”
“Oh, it gets better. The investigation revealed Jolene had been Josh’s mistress since the day we were married. She was his high school sweetheart and they’d never really broken up. How’s that for being oblivious?” Her voice took on a bitter note. “All his late hours were bullshit.”
Tyler watched as she clasped her hands together, folding them as if in silent prayer. Impotent rage surged through him, made him want to slay the demons of her past. It was clear she blamed herself for her daughter’s death. His mind whirled, searching for a way to help erase the pain.
“So, long story short, I had a breakdown. Just freaked. Couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, I couldn’t focus on anything. My parents stepped in. They used their savings to pay for my therapy, and to pay for me to finish college, get my degree. Like Humpty-Dumpty, it took them two years to put the pieces back together again.”
He couldn’t help himself, he had to ask. “After all this, why would you want to be part of a reality series and put yourself under such stress? Don’t you have enough stress with just the racing?”
Tyler watched her when she got up and paced a few steps away from him. She turned back to face him and seemed to be thinking carefully about her answer. “My parents are in a bind right now. If I can win the money from this show, I can pay them back for what they’ve done for me.”
He didn’t think he could be more surprised than he was. “They expect you to pay them back?”
>
She spoke to him as if he were thick-witted. “Of course not, silly. They love me. They just...they just need the money.” Morgan picked up the empty wine bottle and looked at him sadly. “As for the racing, it’s who I am.” Her eyes burned when she looked at him, she waved the bottle to emphasize her point. “I gave it up once and look what happened. I’ll never give it up for anyone. Ever again.” She held her arms wide, then dropped them as if in defeat, soulful eyes beseeching. “Besides, when I’m on the track, the necessary focus is so intense, it’s the only time I don’t miss my daughter.”
He rose slowly to lead them back, through the maze, to the house. For the first time in his life, he hated his job and questioned his own morality.
Chapter 16
Morgan hugged Jack tight and stepped away from him. “Take care. Be careful and I’ll see you guys in Ohio.” She pulled Phil close and he hugged her in return.
“Don’t worry, just take care of yourself. Jack and I can handle this. Everything will be ready when you get there.” Phil reassured her, his voice sincere.
“Did you boys get the basket Melba fixed for you?” Patty Ann inquired with a grin.
“We sure did, ma’am. Thank you very much. Your southern hospitality sure does ring true. Thanks again.” Jack all but bowed as he shook her hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you. You’ve got a fine family, real fine.”
“Thank you. We think so.” Mrs. Dalton, proud of her large brood, preened just a bit. “Y’all come on back anytime you’re in the neighborhood. Don’t be strangers.”
Morgan waved goodbye until the hauler pulled out of sight. A tiny tug of sadness nipped at her because she wasn’t going with them. It seemed everything was changing. Fast. She followed Patty Ann into the house and to the kitchen.
“Those are some good men you’ve got working for you.”
Softness touched Morgan’s heart when she thought about all the hours she’d spent with Phil and Jack over the years. How hard they worked to be sure she had what she needed to win. “Yes, they are. Very good men.” Her heart fluttered in her chest. It reminded her of how much she missed her dad.
